As the leaves completed their color change and began falling from the trees, the temperatures began to drop as well. While I hated to see the summer dying away, I did enjoy passing the time on the cool evenings with a fire in my backyard fire pit. Once the fire was roaring, I could sit back with a book or a movie, sip on a glass of brown liquor, and maybe even light up a cigar. Before I could enjoy that, however, I needed to make some repairs. Over the summer, I got a little too close with the riding mower and knocked some of the decorative concrete blocks out of shape. There might have been a little bit of beer involved. And some of the blocks might have been sort of damaged and not just knocked over. And some of that damage might have been the kind that turns one block into multiple, smaller, and less useful blocks. The net of it is that I needed to head to the big box hardware store and buy some replacements.
The home improvement store was located in a strip mall about a fifteen minute drive from my house. Not a strip mall, really, but a "lifestyle shopping center" that had some restaurants, a trendy bakery, some clothing stores, a movie theater, and some other places in addition to the store I was interested in. After wheeling the heavy blocks out of the store and loading them into the back of my SUV, I decided to take advantage of the offerings in the center and popped over to one of the kitschy little chain restaurants with random crap hanging from the walls. The hostess seated me and I started flipping through the menu to find my lunch.
"Well, hello there, Mr. Landrum!" came a very familiar voice.
I looked up to see Jenna standing at the edge of my table, wearing the same jeans and polo shirt uniform that the servers wore. I hadn't seen Jenna since chaperoning my nephew's homecoming dance about six weeks ago, but I had certainly thought about her a lot since then.
"Jenna!" I exclaimed. "I didn't know you worked here!"
"Oh, I love it here! I've been working here for about a year now and I can really clean up on the weekends!"
As she said the words "clean up", she ran her fingers across her shirt, starting above her left breast and tracing a line down and between them. She was grinning at me because she knew I would know exactly what she was referencing. I was immediately aroused as I remembered watching her walking back into the homecoming dance with a mess in the middle of her cleavage that I had helped to make. She spent the rest of the night with my dried seed on her chest for everyone to see. It was an image that I replayed in my head all the time. But now she was just staring at me, with her head cocked to one side and a single eyebrow raised. She had apparently asked me some sort of question or said something that should have resulted in a response from me and I had totally missed it.
"Wait. What? Uh, what was the question?" I stammered.
"I said, how have you been? I didn't see you on the trip to the recycling center."
That was true, I did not help to chaperon the earth sciences class trip to the local recycling processing center. After the events at homecoming, I thought it might be best to stay away before anybody caught on. When the teacher texted me to ask if I was available, I made up an excuse about needing to go into the office that day
"Oh! I've been okay. I, uh, just couldn't get out of work that day."
"Well, I was very disappointed!"
A couple that was seated at a booth a couple yards away started waving at her while the man cleared his throat loudly to get her attention. She noticed them, gave a quick nod, and turned back to me.
"You want me to get you something to drink? I've got to get them their check."
"Sure, how about a cup of coffee?"
"Cream?" she asked while tracing her finger down the front of her polo shirt again, her eyes twinkling at me.
"Ah, no," I was stammering again. "Just black is fine."
She gave me a wink and turned to take care of the other patrons. I watched her walk away, admiring how tight her jeans were as mine seemed to be getting tighter as well. For the rest of my lunch, I was able to keep my cool and she was busy enough with her tables that she didn't have a chance to pause for long at my table. When she came back to take my order, I asked her what her favorite menu item was and ordered one of those. It turns out that the place did a pretty good buffalo chicken sandwich and before long, my plate was clear and my cup of coffee was empty. Jenna reappeared with the little black padded folder that contained the bill and slid it onto the table.
"It was good to see you, Mr. Landrum. I can't wait until the winter formal next month!" She lowered her voice to almost a whisper. "I picked out a dress that I think you're going to love."
"Oh, Jenna, I don't know if I'm going to be able to help out with that one. I might have to be out of town," I lied.
"What?" she pouted. "No, you just have to be there! Homecoming was such a great time, didn't you think?"
I noticed when she said "homecoming", she put a definite emphasis on the second part of the word. But I knew that it was mostly dumb luck that no one had caught on to what we were doing a month and a half ago, and it was way too risky. Before this encounter, I was afraid it would be a little awkward; now I was convinced that if I showed up she was going to see to it that we wound up exactly where we were last time. Not that I didn't want that, too, of course. Sure, she was a high school student, but she was 18. That part of it was actually kind of a dark thrill for me. If anyone caught wind of it, though, the grapevine in the town wouldn't take a very kind view of it. As much as my other head was insisting that it would be just fine, the one on my shoulders remained in control for once. I apologized for my tough work schedule, told her that I'd certainly see her later, left a pretty generous tip, and got myself out of there.
Back home, I spent the afternoon repairing the fire pit and getting some firewood split up. It was going to be a pretty pleasant evening and I wanted to sit in the backyard with a fire and a book. The work wasn't difficult, but it was definitely work so when it was all finished, I rewarded myself with a long shower and some reheated leftovers for dinner. As the sun set, I gathered up everything I needed to start a fire, drink some bourbon, smoke a cigar, and read a book and headed into the backyard. Soon the fire was going, a glass of bourbon had disappeared, my feet were up, and I had wrapped up a couple chapters of my book. Looking up at the clear night sky, I sighed a relaxed sigh and reveled in the peacefulness of the night.
"Mr. Landrum?" called a woman's voice from the other side of the backyard. Not just any woman's voice. That sounded like Jenna's voice. How was that possible?
