Chapter 3:

Jake

This was going to be a real fucking problem.

It’d been one of those days with Lenore. Hell, it’d been one of those weeks, or hell, those years with her. We just…shit, I don’t know. We didn’t work anymore; at all. It’d gotten to the point where I honestly wasn’t sure why she’d ever married me, or I her for that matter. Her father, I suppose, and the job he landed me with the U-Miami football devision before I went free agent as a recruitment consultant. Seems like a silly reason to have married into the family, but the more I thought about it, the more I’m pretty sure that was it. I got the job, she got stability and the little cookie-cutter life she wanted.

Of course, I was anything but cookie-cutter, especially after the Navy and after my time on the road in the pro leagues. I was not white picket fence guy, or pot-luck dinner with the neighbors guy, or hell, a marriage guy.

But hey, here we were, and where that was, I wasn’t even sure anymore. I don’t think shedid, either.

And then we have things like the BBQ early that day, and the whole storm of “what the fuck” that came with it. A whole shit-storm of confusion and roaring hormones like I was some kind of teenager again. And that storm had a name:

Chelsea McKenzie.

I mean Jesus fuck, when had that girl— no, woman -when had she become a woman? And when the hell had she gotten so hot? It was almost criminal is what it was; almost literally, actually. But somehow, right next door, cute little Chelsea McKenzie had gotten jailbait hot, and that was a problem.

It wasn’t like she’d suddenly grown tits or anything, or wild curves like some men go for. I mean shit, she was still rail-thin, with small tits and tiny little ass I could probably palm with one hand. But somehow, she was womanly in her litheness; all soft, demure curves and soft swells, like some sort of runway model without all the bullshit attitude. Actually, the way she carried herself was like she didn’t even know how hot she’d gotten; how fucking tempting she’d turned. She was light, and youthful, but then there was something so much more adult about her. She was smart as a whip, and she read intelligent, nerdy things like Isaac Asmiov for fucks sake. She was atotal nerd in a sense, of course, but there was something about that girl that got me hard as fucking stone. She’d somehow gotten herself hot, and hot in a way where she sure as shit didn’t know it.

But, I sure knew it, and that was the problem.

It hadn’t happened overnight, I knew that. I’d slowly started eyeing her in ways I seriously shouldn’t have ever since she’d turned eighteen, and not in a creeper way, just in this “you can’t help but see it” way. I’m only a man for fuck’s sake. But it’d been seeing her at that BBQ that had really hammered things in.

And I really shouldn’t have hugger her, that’s for damn sure. The feel of her warm body and her soft skin under my hands, the way she giggled into me and the way her whole face lit up with that hug. I mean, Jesus, I was like some sort of horny high school boy with a damn boner and a crush; tied up in a way I really wasn’t used to when it came to women.

So that’s where my damn head was, standing in the buff in my backyard after Lenore had gone back inside. I knew we probably shouldn’t have been outside doing that, and that I should probably have had some fucking pants on at that point, but I stayed another minute, letting the thoughts percolate.

Lenore had taken my moodiness that night as being in that kind of a mood, and then my hard-on thinking about Chelsea McKenzie as something else.

“Oh, good, we can try tonight.”

The baby. Jesus, the baby we “had” to have, according to her parents. Like this was some sort of feudal land and we needed an “heir” to carry on the the name and title or something. I mean this was Florida for fucks sake, not King Arthur.

It was the baby neither of us wanted to have; at least, not with the other. Hell, I’d have loved to be a father. I’d wanted to be one for years, and getting married had probably had a bit to do with that, at least subconsciously. But with Lenore? Her, a mother? No fucking way; not a chance. It was laughable if you’d met her for even five minutes; the woman didn’t have a warm bone in her whole body.

And I don’t know what had possessed us to be outside like that that night. Too hot, too much wine, a last shot at trying to make things hot and romantic maybe? But there was no romance, no seduction with this woman; anymore, or ever before, actually. With her that night it was pajama pants off, bending over chair and turning to just say “Do it, Jake.” And she wasn’t not bending over to be sexy, she was doing it because - well, my guess is because she didn’t want to look at me. She just wanted the act, and the result, and that’s all.

Welcome to life at forty, Jake Hardy.

And then it was done, as fast as both of us could make it. She left and I was sitting there with my cock out under the night sky getting hard all over again thinking about my barely legal, next door neighbor. My buddy’s daughter.

Chelsea.

Fuck. Like I said, this was going to be a problem. Thank God she was about to go away to school, I guess. Out of sight, and out of mind, and I could just go on with my strange, unsatisfying life.