She narrowed her eyes at him. Unsurprising, perhaps, to know that Mac had spent a little time on Google and was probably up to speed on Avalon and GradYouAte.
“What happened, Mac? Did you lose a bet? Get drunk and enlist? Flee a paternity claim?”
“Is all of the above an option?” he suggested.
She didn’t answer that, because more naked people were filing down the road.
Avalon cleared her throat. “Okay, now, while I’m not remotely a prude...” she began brightly.
Morty’s and Helen’s smiles evolved into something indulgent and sympathetic, a touch cynical. Which was when Avalon realized nothing made a person sound more like a prude than saying “I’m not a prude.”
“Pretty uninhibited, are you?” Mac said idly, flipping through his mail as though he was looking for something in particular.
They all waited politely and with apparent benign interest for her answer.
Mac finally looked up, raising his eyebrows coaxingly. His face was solemn but his eyes were full of wicked, insufferable glints.
She cleared her throat. “I think I’m pretty open-minded and accepting. I mean, I went to the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco and I saw a guy leading around another guy who was wearing a leather harness, like a pony. No biggie.”
Now they wereallstudying her a little skeptically, as if Avalon might be an actual perv. Skeptically, and a little pityingly.
“Oh, honey,” Helen said warmly, “that sort of thing is a little outside of our experience. We just take our clothes off. It’s not much more complicated than that. We don’t put on leather harnesses or anything that might go up our heinies or in our mouths and the like. I imagine they would chafe quite a bit.” Helen rotated her shoulder, apparently imagining it. “We’re not crazy about chafing, as you can imagine, which is one of the points of going clothing optional. But to each his own,” she added magnanimously, laying a gently placating hand briefly on Avalon’s shoulder.
Avalon wasn’t crazy about chafing, either. And her nerves were chafing big-time right now. These naked people were very nice. Even though their presence could spell disaster for her plans to sell the house to Rachel.
“Once the renovations on the house are completed, corporate retreats will be held here, and visiting executives may find nude strollers and swimmers a little startling. Perhaps a bit counter to the image they’d like to be cultivating,” she explained, with as much diplomacy as she could manage.
“I imagine you’ll work something out with Mac about that sort of thing. You seem like a bright, competent young woman.”
Helen was probably a retired schoolteacher. She clearly had an “accentuate the positive” approach to life.
“That’s kind of you to say,” was all Avalon could manage for now. She studiously did not meet Mac’s eyes. She didn’t need to. She could practically feel the rays of his wickedly amused triumph from where she stood.
“I wish Mac would join us. He’s always good for a laugh,” Morty volunteered.
“Me, I’m a little shy,” Mac said. “I’m not uninhibited like Avalon here.”
Avalon shot him a look that by rights ought to have singed his hair.
He gazed back at her with limpid hazel eyes.
Morty gave Mac a little back thump. “Someday you’ll be my age and you won’t give a crap about what anyone thinks you look like. And that, my dear boy, is called being comfortable in your own skin. Maybe it’s why our skin gets looser as we age. It’s metaphorical. It gets roomier outside because we all feel roomier inside.”
And with that philosophical gem he winked at Avalon and gave Mac another chummy back thump and trundled unconcernedly on down the path, Helen alongside him. She called, “Lovely to meet you, Avalon,” over her shoulder, and Avalon was pretty sure she meant it.
“See you at the meeting, Mac!” Morty called.
What meeting? Smartasses Anonymous?
Avalon watched them until they disappeared around the bend in the road that led to the rock.
Morty’s butt was broad and perfectly square, like the cushions on her parents’ living room sofa, and traced by curly hair all around, like Christmas tinsel around a window. It was a sort of Almond Sunrise. Or Winter Blossom. Helen’s butt was reminiscent of a pair of empty, medium-sized handbags hung side-by-side. Morning Latte, she’d call the color. Or maybe Misty Mocha.
They looped their arms around each other and Helen tipped her head against his shoulder and she laughed at something Morty murmured.
Dozens of conflicting emotions assailed Avalon then. Oddly, the most piercing was envy. And if envy was a stab, then yearning was a pull. She knew she was witnessing happiness and comfort and abiding love and two people clearly meant for each other.
And as she watched them stroll off, she was 100 percent certain she’d never known that kind of love as an adult.
