After my divorce, I moved back to my hometown. My parents were retired, so they only spent part of their year there - the rest in Arizona - but my sister and her family lived there. I needed family around me because the divorce was pretty traumatic.
I was in my late thirties and I'd always stayed in pretty good shape, but I joined a gym because someone told me that it was a good place to meet women. It wasn't, but I discovered that I like wearing myself out with the exercise and sleeping dreamlessly so I stuck with my workouts.
My sister's kids were both in high school when I moved home. It seemed like my niece blossomed from a gawky thirteen-year-old with a spray of freckles into an eighteen-year-old knockout overnight.
Kristie was a petite blond with a slender, athletic body. I assumed that the hair color came out of a bottle, but with her light skin it looked very natural. She was slender, but very shapely. Her legs were lean and athletic, but not stick thin. Her hips had filled out, giving her a perfect hourglass figure. I guessed that her breasts were in the 32 or 34B range. Maybe C cup, I'd never been a very good judge of that sort of thing. They looked like a little more than a handful, though.
I had to be careful not to stare at her for too long. There's a fine line between cool uncle and lecherous creep.
After Kristie graduated, she decided to go to college in the southern part of the state. She had saved all her money from Christmas, her eighteenth birthday, and graduation, but she was still hoping for some extra cash. However, she didn't want to lose out on her summer by getting a part-time job. Instead, she offered to mow the lawns in her neighborhood. When I saw her in a cut-off T-shirt and shorts mowing the lawn of one of the neighborhood bachelors, I figured that she would earn the money she wanted. I also asked her if she would be interested in mowing my lawn for me.
"It's all the way across town, Uncle Mike."
"You can use my mower. It's a big lawn, so I'll pay you twenty dollars." It wasn't that big a lawn, I just wanted to see more of her. Especially after she stretched up, exposing even more of her flat stomach and the bottom edge of a hot-pink bra.
"Okay. But not today, I'm going to the mall with some friends. Tomorrow."
"Deal."
* * * *
The next morning, I woke up with a high fever and a pounding headache. The last thing on my mind was my niece coming over to mow my lawn, so I was curious when the doorbell rang. I thought maybe it was UPS or something. I opened the door to find my niece in jeans and a T-shirt (it was cloudy and a little cooler). I was too ill to be disappointed.
"Uncle Mike, are you okay? You look all flushed."
"I've got a cold. I forgot you were coming over or I'd have taken the mower out of the garage."
"That's okay. Why don't you go lay down? You really don't look good." I would have laughed at her lack of tact if I didn't feel as bad as she made me sound.
"I'm going to go soak in the tub. The mower is right by the door, the gas can is on the shelf above it. The garage is unlocked, I think, otherwise the key is hanging by the back door."
"Okay. I'll check on you when I'm done."
"Thanks, Kris."
I was renting a split-level house from a guy that was living in Singapore for a year. It was in a neighborhood that I couldn't have afforded otherwise. The yard was surrounded by a privacy fence and the neighbors on one side of my yard were out of town. I hadn't met the lady on the other side, but I'd seen her out in her yard, puttering around in her flowerbed. It was my unprofessional opinion that if she hadn't been on Noah's ark, she would have drown. This lady wasn't just old, she was ancient. Strange things go through your mind when you have a fever, I thought, as I collected my thoughts.
I heard the mower start running as I got into the tub. The water felt great on my sore muscles and I drifted off. I was too sick to even fantasize about my sweet, little niece. The water was starting to get chilly when I woke up. I reached up with one toe and spun the hot water knob. My balls were itching, and I started to scratch them just as I heard my niece say, "Uncle Mike, you okay?"
The design of my house put my bathroom below ground level. The window looked out on the yard, but with the privacy fence, that wasn't a problem - unless your niece was looking in the window.
"Oh, oh, sorry," she said, and I saw her jumping back from the window.
"It's okay, Kristie, I'm fine," I said, hoping to minimize her embarrassment. Then it occurred to me what it must have looked like from her point of view. My hand moving quickly by my nether-regions. "Oh, shit," I muttered to myself. Now I was the one embarrassed. Why hadn't I closed the curtains?
"Um, I'm through mowing. Do you want me to use the weed-eater around the fence?" Her voice was coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the middle of the yard.
"That'd be great, Kris. I'm getting out of the tub, so I'll meet you out there in a few."
"No hurry." She sounded worried.
As I dried off and got dressed, I thought of how I could explain myself to her without making it any worse. I wasn't sure that I could, but if I ever wanted us to be able to look each other in the eye, I knew I'd have to try. I popped a few aspirin, a cold pill, and went into the kitchen. I grabbed us each a coke and went out onto the patio to wait for her to finish. It seemed to me like it took her an awfully long time to trash the weeds by the fence, but maybe that was just the medicine kicking in. Finally I saw her come around the corner of the house, equipment in tow. She put the mower, gas can, and weed-eater back into the garage, then walked toward me. Just as I'd thought, she wasn't making eye contact.
"Have a seat, Kris. Thanks for mowing."
She sat down, still not looking at me. Picking up her coke she said, "You're welcome."