Eric was bent over the kettle grill, with a silver canister rising out of it like a wide chimney, topped up with charcoal, and was inserting thin twists of old newsprint through holes around the base, twists that resembled nothing if not hand-rolled joints, and then setting them on fire with a long-necked lighter, attempting to set the bottom-most coals alight. One of the French doors behind him opened and Eric, blind to it, assumed it was his wife Carol, freshly inseminated and her thickish body wrapped in a silk kimono, which barely covered her panty if she was even wearing one.
"What do YOU want?" Eric thought, but did not say, as he flicked the trigger yet again.
Click. Click. Silence, as the long fingers of a hand slid between his thighs and encompassed his pantied balls. Eric's body stiffened. He froze.
"How's the fire coming?" a male voice, one all too familiar to him, asked.
"What...are you doing?" his reply.
"Don't you worry about your neighbors seeing you out here in your little panty?"
Eric swallowed. "Carol will see you."
"No she won't," Jake told him, while giving the balls a surprisingly gentle, sympathetic fondle. "She's in the kitchen. Blinds are closed. But what about your neighbors?"
Saliva had filled Eric's mouth, and once again he swallowed. "We're up high. They can't see..."
"I can see HER. Over there, past the hedge, by the pool. Not bad-looking either. Forty-something? If I can see her she can see you."
Eric felt his body relax. A little. "They'll think it's a Speedo," he said. And Jake let out a one-note laugh.
"Yeah, right! A Speedo covered with flowers."
"I don't care what they see. Or think."
"You feel nice in the silk," Jake said, giving Eric's balls a fresh fondle. It was a false appraisal: the narrow crotch, like the rest of the panty, was mere microfiber. "Bigger than I thought..."
Thought? Jake had seen Eric dressed like this for weeks and months now. What was there to be surprised about? And Jake's brown eyes, glassy and wide and seemingly lost, could often be seen, while the three of them sipped Cava in the kitchen, say, both before or after sex, staring at Eric's colorful crotch.
Is he bi? Eric had sometimes wondered.
"She's not looking at us," Jake now informed him. And Eric's body again stiffened.
"Carol?"
"No. The woman nextdoor. You know her? What's her name?"
"I...'m not sure."
"You never met her?"
"Once. She and her husband. Her dog got in our yard."
"I don't see a dog...," Jake, his hand still giving its gentle, pleasurable massage, said.
"I think they got rid of it," Eric informed him, in a rush of words. "Too..."
