In answer, I simply look down. And after Lily has done the same, she bursts out laughing. “Okay, extra small it is.” She doesn’t wait around for my reaction, shooting off through the trees before I’ve a chance.
“You’ll keep!” I yell after her, before following in her footsteps, a huge grin in place. There has to be something around this dump that’ll support the trailer enough to cope with everything I want to do to Lily.
This stops me in my tracks. No, that’s not right. It’ll need to cope with everything I want to do WITH Lily. She’s definitely a ‘with’ kinda gal, because if she’s got the nod of approval from Alice at the Rose Haven, then I need to treat her with respect.
To a degree, because as I watch her clamber into her car, my thoughts are disrespectful. No, make that disreputable.
EIGHT
LILY
It’s only after I’ve backed out onto the road, and put the car in drive, that the enormity of what just happened, makes itself at home in my brain.
If only my brain had been engaged earlier. A glance to the side and I see the very delectable Tyler standing in the middle of the driveway watching me.
In response to his bright smile and cheery wave, I give a weak one in return. He doesn’t appear to be having second thoughts, so why am I?
Could it be because I’ve known the guy for all of one day, and here I am on my way to buy condoms and a mattress? Yeah, that will give a woman pause. The mattress would be one thing, with me needing that anyway. But condoms?
Eyes back on the road, I drive slowly off, with a peek in the rear-view mirror enough to show Tyler is now out on the sidewalk. Another brief wave that I half-heartedly return, and he disappears up the driveway.
It’s only when I’m near the middle of town that something else hits me. The chances that I’ll know whoever is selling me those condoms is practically a given. My foot eases up on the accelerator, to the point I have to pull into the curb to avoid stopping in the middle of the road.
I can’t just waltz into the nearest pharmacy and pick up extra-large condoms. What will people think? The mere thought of asking for ‘extra-large’ has me reaching out and turning the air-conditioning up, the jet of cold air welcome.
The last time I bought condoms was years ago, and that was when I was living in San Francisco, where it was easier to do so incognito. It’ll be a different story buying them in Coogan’s Break.
Here, the chances I’ll have gone to school with the person selling me the protection are almost as high as the purchase getting back to Alice via the grapevine. I can’t do it, I just can’t.
* * *
It’s close to four in the afternoon before I return to the house in a state of high nerves and excitement. While there’s a vacuum-packed mattress jammed across the back seat of the car, there’s also a selection of condoms stuffed in my purse.
It had been both a blessing and a curse when none of the local furniture stores had a suitably sized mattress. They were all either too big, too small, or innerspring, resulting in a drive to Taylor’s Mistake, the nearest city of any size.
Only there was I able to find a roll-up style mattress that was close to perfect. It was also there I could safely buy condoms on the sly. It was for that reason I’d gone large with the purchase, in more ways than one.
Tyler wouldn’t be the first man to have an inflated sense of his own, ah, um. I’d therefore grabbed a variety of sizes, just to be on the safe side—pardon the pun—because I’d driven far enough today.
While Tyler’s truck is still out front, there’s no sign of the man himself. And I’ll need to find him because I can’t unload that mattress on my own. Despite being a solid tube of memory foam, it weighs a ton, and it’s awkward.
This sees me calling out to him at the backdoor of the house, but there’s no response. This tells me he must be down at the trailer, firming up the supports like he’d promised. Again, I have to fan my face as images of why this is necessary flood my mind.
Honestly, woman, get a grip. You’re an adult, he’s an adult, what you’re about to do isn’t against the law.No, but maybe it should be, because the effect that man had on my previously frigid body should be illegal.
There, I’ve admitted it. That orgasm earlier was the first I hadn’t had to fake in years. With Mitchell… I couldn’t. It was quicker to moan twice, cry out, and then stiffen briefly, than have him laboring away to the point it was boring. Literally.
I’m also not proud to admit that toward the end of our marriage, I was more interested in him coming than me. More interested in what his ‘Little Mitchies’, as he called them, could do for me, than the man himself.
In hindsight, it was a blessing I didn’t fall pregnant, because no baby, no matter how cherished, could have saved a marriage as dead as ours had been.
On this less-than cheery thought, I make my way over to the path through to the trailer, with that the only other place Tyler can be. Even if he’d been under the house, he would have heard me calling out to him.
I hear the music before I see the set-up, with the trailer effectively blocking my view of what Tyler has been up to. What I can see is that there are now substantial piles of bricks supporting the bed-end of the trailer.
And yet they pale compared to what I spy when I walk around the end of the trailer. Tyler is there, alright. And he looks to be ready for whatever I can throw at him.
Stretched out on a blanket next to the trailer, his body is on full display, the sun kissing his sculpted form exactly as I long to. Gone are all my misgivings about taking things too fast, gone in a flash of heat and lust.
