by Weeks, Abby
Kyle’s hand was on her chest, gently squeezing her left breast through the bodice of her dress. It felt so good to be desired like that, to be wanted by a boy as wonderful as Kyle.
And then, just as she was opening the top button of her dress to let Kyle feel her breasts more freely, Becky heard the grating sound of a woman’s voice.
“Kyle?” the voice hollered from behind the bushes. “I thought that was your truck.”
“Shit,” Kyle said.
“Who is it?” Becky said, doing up her dress.
“I think it’s Trudy Luxton. I think she’s coming around.”
“From her front yard?” Becky said.
She swung around and looked at Trudy’s property. They were parked right outside it. A two-foot high brick wall marked the edge of Trudy’s yard and it was lined with a beautifully manicured line of Italian Cypress trees. Becky glanced sight of Trudy through the trees and ducked down under the window.
“What are you hiding for?” Kyle said, almost laughing at her.
“I don’t know. I don’t want everyone to think I’m a slut. I just moved here.”
“She’s not going to think that.”
“Just get out and talk to her,” Becky said. “I don’t want her to see me. Make her go away.”
Kyle shrugged and hopped out of the truck.
“Hi, Trudy,” he said as she came out through the gates of her driveway. Becky peeked out at them.
“I thought that was your truck,” Trudy said. “I’m really glad I caught you.”
“I was just taking a few pictures of the valley,” Kyle said and he held up his iPhone.
“How artistic,” Trudy said. “I was looking for my puppy, Cody, did you see him?”
Kyle shook his head. Becky felt silly hiding from her neighbor in the front seat of the truck, but she knew how easy it was to give the wrong impression. She didn’t want all the ladies on the row thinking she’d swooped in and taken Kyle because she was a slut. She really wasn’t and her reputation in this new neighborhood was important to her. Kyle was the first boy she’d been physical with in her life and it meant a lot to her.
Becky peeked out at Trudy and thought it was weird that she was in her bathing suit. It wasn’t even eight in the morning. She supposed that was what rich ladies wore up here in the hills. Trudy had a wicked figure for a woman in her forties. She had big, tanned breasts and a flat stomach and long, flowing hair to her shoulders. It made Becky self-conscious about how small her own breasts were. She wasn’t sure she was happy that Kyle was out there talking with her. She could just imagine him ogling Trudy’s voluptuous breasts and getting all sorts of kinky ideas. Trudy Luxton was a Milf and there was no denying it.
“Do you like taking pictures?” Trudy said.
“I love it,” Kyle said. “I’ve got like two thousand followers on Instagram.”
“Wow,” Trudy said.
Becky peered more closely at Trudy. She was leaning forward, squeezing her big, watermelon breasts together with her arms and giving Kyle a really good look at them. Was she flirting with him? The thought ran through Becky’s mind like an arrow. Was Trudy Luxton flirting with her new boyfriend? Becky tried to shake the thought from her mind. It was impossible. Trudy was old enough to be Kyle’s mother. She was best friends with Kyle’s mother! She wouldn’t do a thing like that, would she?
“Maybe you could come over some time and take a few pictures of me for my profile,” Trudy said.
“What kind of profile?”
“Oh, just some dating profiles I’ve been creating. The pictures are the most important thing.”
Kyle was nodding. Becky couldn’t believe it. Trudy was so obviously flirting. She was practically bursting out of her bikini.
“Sure,” Kyle said. “I can come over on the weekend.”
“I’d be happy to pay you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Kyle said. “It’s good practice. I’d love to do it.”
Trudy swung her hair over her shoulder and looked at Kyle with a blatantly flirtatious look. Becky wanted to get right out of the truck and punch Trudy in the face.
“Well, you’ll have to let me repay you somehow,” Trudy said and turned around and walked back through the gates, giving Kyle a perfect view of her tight little ass.
When Kyle got back into the truck Becky remained silent. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to look stupid, she didn’t want to be the kind of girlfriend who got jealous about every single thing, but she didn’t want Trudy Luxton flirting with Kyle either. What was she supposed to do in this situation? She wasn’t even Kyle’s official girlfriend, they hadn’t talked about anything like that, they’d just made out a couple of times. Did she have a right to be jealous? She didn’t know.
She decided the best thing to do was hold her tongue.
“We’d better get a move on,” Kyle said. “We’re going to be late.”
Becky nodded. She was quiet on the ride in to school. All she could think about for the entire day was Trudy Luxton and her luscious, gigantic breasts and cute little butt. Who needed help on their profile photos? It was just a ploy to be alone with Kyle. Trudy was flirting with him. She knew it.
III
ARIEL HAD A SHOWER AFTER Becky left for school. Then she made some coffee and sat in front of her computer. She rubbed her eyes as it came on. She felt stressed. She logged into her online bank account and checked the balance. They had plenty of savings to live off for the next few months, even a couple of years if she was careful. She owned her house outright and that was a pretty big asset. But as she looked at the savings balance and projected farther into the future she could see that she wasn’t going to be able to live off of her divorce settlement for the rest of her life. She was going to have to work. She was going to have to get a job or figure out some other way to make a living. She wasn’t exactly too worried over it, she hadn’t waited till the last minute and they still had a very healthy cushion in her savings account. She’d been smart in investing most of her settlement in a good house. She knew she was simply in the same boat as virtually every other woman in the country who had a divorce. She was going to have to learn how to fend for herself financially and that was going to take a little getting used to.
She clicked through to the websites of a few of her favorite galleries. Some were in LA but most of them were in New York or Europe. She’d made selling art her passion in life for sixteen years, it was the only thing she’d ever been good at, and she knew that if she was going to get a job, she wanted it to be in the art world again. She wondered what her chances were of getting a job at one of those galleries. She was a good buyer, she had a good eye for what would sell. She seemed to know instinctively what serious collectors would be willing to pay for a given piece and she’d proven herself by building Gabe’s gallery into one of the most respected art galleries in the city. But most of the galleries she was looking at were run by one or two talented people who did all the buying themselves. Those galleries worked with a small list of artists, maybe twenty or less, and only sold their work. They were established and didn’t really need a buyer like Ariel to tell them what to get. Her chance of finding a job as a buyer for someone else were slim and she knew it.
She also knew that there were new online art marketplaces, websites that listed the work of literally hundreds of artists, and those places had more need for buyers who knew what they were looking at. Still, it was all very new and it would take a lot of research for Ariel to figure out which of them were serious players with good prospects.
She felt a little overwhelmed as she clicked through the big websites, she was thirty-four, she’d been working in the art market since dropping out of college, and she felt like she was going to have to start all over again, right from the very beginning.
She looked up the contact information for one of the sites, Artsy. It was probably the largest online platforms for connecting collectors to the art they were interested in buying. The company was
based in New York but had openings for liaisons in various cities around the globe, including Los Angeles. She clicked on the link and read the job description. It sounded like something that would interest her. The job was to liaise with art galleries in the Los Angeles area and make sure they were a good fit. It would include building strong relationships with the best galleries so they would list their best work on the site. She would also have to ensure Artsy was represented at all the major art fairs and exhibitions in the city. There was no information about the salary she could expect to receive but it certainly looked like a good job. She would even have to liaise with The Getty and other important art institutions. It sounded like a dream job.
Application was by cover letter and resume. Ariel had never written a cover letter or prepared a resume in her life. She’d never even applied for a job. She’d started the gallery with Gabe and had worked there since before Becky was born. She had no idea how to go about starting her application.
She shut her laptop with a snap and got up from the table. She got a bottle of water from the fridge and drank half of it in a single go.
This is what it’s like to start from scratch, she thought.
*
ARIEL THREW ON A PAIR of shades and grabbed her purse and keys. She got in her car and drove down the steep incline toward the city. Before she knew it she was on Sunset Boulevard and headed for the beach. Sunset was narrow and hilly as it wound its way out of the city and descended to the ocean. She didn’t have any destination in mind, she just needed to get out of the house and clear he mind, but when she hit the Pacific Coast Highway she didn’t head north toward Malibu but went south, back into the city. Pretty soon she was in Santa Monica.
She headed straight for Monochrome, the gallery she and Gabe had run together for the entire sixteen years of their marriage. She looked at her watch. It was still before noon. Gabe probably wouldn’t be there yet. There’s no harm in dropping in, she thought, the place is still technically half mine. It was half hers until the final processing of the paperwork took place. The share transfer hadn’t been finalized yet. She’d signed her interest in the gallery over to Gabe as part of their divorce settlement. She’d been certain she never wanted to work with Gabe again and he’d offered her a very generous amount for her fifty percent share in the gallery.
She found a parking spot and quickly touched up her makeup in the car mirror before getting out.
“Ariel,” the receptionist said when she stepped into the cool, air-conditioned gallery.
“Lucy,” Ariel said, giving the girl a thin smile. Ariel had spent her entire marriage worrying about girls like Lucy. Gabe seemed to go through them faster than the art colleges could pump them out, hiring them, fucking them silly, and moving on within the space of a couple of months. Gabe had had so many affairs with receptionists and interns at the gallery that Ariel had long stopped keeping count. She assumed he was fucking Lucy without actually knowing it and as she pretended to look at the art she told herself that it wasn’t her problem anymore. She didn’t have to worry about it. She didn’t have to care about who Gabe fucked ever again. If anything, she should probably have taken it as a complement that the girls he went after were so similar to her. They were all nineteen-year-old versions of the girl Ariel had been when she’d first met Gabe. They were all art majors, innocent with a hint of vulnerability, petite, and pretty. Gabe definitely had a type and it hadn’t changed since his divorce. Ariel still liked to think that he was trying to recapture the feelings he’d felt when he’d first fallen in love with her.
In fact, the only thing that surprised Ariel about Lucy was the fact that she was still there. It had probably been six months since Ariel had set foot in the gallery and Lucy had been the receptionist then too. Was Gabe slowing down in his old age? Had he found in Lucy something he’d been looking for all along?
IV
VERONICA CAME DOWN THE STAIRS and turned on the television in the kitchen. She always watched television when she was upset. She hardly ever fought with Hank and the fight they’d had the night before had completely caught her off guard. Trying anal sex had been his idea. She hadn’t suggested it. He had. All she’d done was told him honestly that it was a fantasy of hers.
She put a capsule in her Nespresso machine and watched the frothy coffee drip into her cup. She flicked through the channels on the TV without paying any attention and played the events of the night before over in her head. It had been unfair. Hank had no reason to take out his frustration on her. The only reason he was upset was because he couldn’t figure out how to do it, how to get his cock into her anus. That was hardly her fault. And besides, it wasn’t a big deal. It was supposed to be fun. There wasn’t supposed to be so much pressure. That was the thing about Hank and sex, he took everything so seriously. He treated sex like it was a challenge he had to overcome, a place where he had to prove himself, but sex wasn’t like that.
She hadn’t been able to fall asleep after the fight and then she’d slept in. She looked at her watch. It was after eleven. Her morning was almost completely wasted. She picked up the phone and thought about calling Hank. She knew she needed to sort things out with him or else she’d fret about it all day. She hated having fights. That was why she’d married Hank. They never fought about anything.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the doorbell. She made sure her robe was fastened and went to the door. It was probably Trudy. She was always popping over in the morning for one thing or another.
“One second,” she called out as she made her way to the door. She opened it and it wasn’t Trudy at all, it was a good-looking Mexican man in his mid-twenties wearing the uniform of a delivery driver.
“Oh,” Veronica said, surprised to see him standing there.
“Veronica Roycroft?” the man said.
“Yes.”
He held up a beautiful bunch of yellow roses. “These are for you.”
So was filled with relief. This meant her fight with Hank was over.
As she took the flowers from the man, a wicked thought flashed through her mind. All she had on under her robe was the thin nightdress she’d slept in. She’d heard of women accidentally answering the door naked and letting delivery boys catch a glimpse of their assets. The thought of it thrilled her. It was so naughty. She was always getting thoughts like this at the most inappropriate of times. Hank had sent her flowers to show her that he loved her and all she could think about was flashing the delivery boy! What was wrong with her?
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
“Hang on, one second,” she said. She ran back to the kitchen to get a tip for the man. As she took the ten dollar bill from her purse she felt again the thrill of the wicked thought she’d had at the door. What was happening to her? How had her life become so desperate. She’d been such a risk-taker when she was younger. She’d had sex on the naughtiest beaches of the French Riviera with audiences of sexy European men looking on, stroking their cocks as they watched her copulate on the beach. She’d really lived. Now she was here in the suburbs, a house surrounded by a manicured lawn, sprinklers working on timers like clockwork, and she was so starved for sexual satisfaction that she was fantasizing about the UPS guy.
Without thinking she let her robe fall to the floor. She looked at herself in her nightdress. She pulled the neck down as low as it could go, revealing as much of her cleavage as she thought she could get away with without looking foolish. She wasn’t wearing any underwear and the skirt of the nightdress hardly went down to her thighs. Her vagina was bare and only ever so slightly covered by the soft skirt of the nightdress.
She took a deep breath and made her way back to the door. She didn’t know what she was doing, she didn’t even let herself think, it was completely out of character for her and she knew the delivery guy would see her for exactly what she was, a desperate housewife.
She passed the mirror in the hallway and glanced at her reflection. She looked hot.
“Here you go,” she said to the delivery man, the ten dollar bill held out in front of her.
A slight breeze came in and caught her skirt. The air flew up around her legs, reminding her of how exposed her vagina and ass were underneath. The feeling of it gave her a courage, a boldness that she didn’t even know she possessed. She opened her fingers and let the bill fall to the ground in the breeze. It blew behind her.
“Oops,” she said, flashing the man a provocative smile. She turned around to pick it up.
Instead of squatting down modestly, she bent over at her waist as she picked up the bill and gave the delivery man a delicious, exquisite, blatantly obvious look at her bare ass. She didn’t dare look back at him. She knew she was being the complete cliché of what a desperate, spoiled wife should be. She was almost ashamed of herself. But the thrill of revealing herself to this complete stranger outweighed the shame of it. She paused with her hand on the bill and made sure she gave the man a good, long look at her shapely ass. She pushed it out and spread her thighs ever so slightly so that her buttocks would open. She knew he could see her anus and pussy. The thrill of it was almost too much. Her pussy was quivering with excitement.
She picked up the bill and turned to the man. She was embarrassed now. She knew what she was, a horny, desperate housewife, and now he did too. She was a slutty, immodest, rich, spoiled bitch. The man would go back to the depot and tell all the other delivery guys. They probably collected stories of desperate women like her. As she handed him the bill he caught her eye.
“You like, I can come in.”
Those few words, so much was in them, so much temptation and lust and desire for her, and so much guilt. She knew it, she knew how she would feel as soon as it was over. She wanted to let him in and let him fuck her till she orgasmed like a Fourth of July fireworks show. She wanted it so badly it hurt.
