A pink Something

Saturday.

The mower handle vibrated against my palms, the kind of bone-deep buzz that lingered long after the engine cut. Ninety-seven degrees. Maybe higher. My shirt had come off twenty minutes in, balled up and tossed near the hedge, and the sun lay across my shoulders like a heated blanket I couldn’t kick off. Sweat traced channels through the dust on my chest, darkening the hair there, pooling at the waistband of my shorts.

Rita had taken the car about two hours ago, to buy some groceries and stuff. Normally it took her no more than an hour or so. Maybe she met some friend or the shop was more crowded than usual. Whatever she'd be back any time now.

I’d done the front. The back was slower, more turns, the slope near the fence, that one patch where the St. Augustine never took. The mower chewed through it anyway, spitting clippings against my shins.

The side gate creaked. I didn’t look up immediately. The mower was at the far end of its arc, and by the time I swung it around, she was already stretched out on the lounge chair.

Rita in a bikini, the color of a blood orange. Two triangles of fabric up top, tied behind her neck, and bottoms that sat low on her hips. The tablet was propped on her stomach. Her sunglasses hid her eyes, but her mouth was curved in a small, private smile.

She hadn’t called out. Hadn’t announced herself. Just settled in like she’d been there all afternoon.

I killed the mower. The silence rushed in, filled immediately by the buzz of cicadas and the distant whine of a neighbor’s air conditioner.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey yourself.” She didn’t look up from the screen.

I wiped my forehead with the back of my arm and walked over. The grass clippings stuck to my shoes. Five feet away, I stopped.

Her right hand was cupping her left breast. Not idly. The thumb moved in slow circles over the fabric, tracing the outline of her nipple through the thin material.

“What are you reading?”

She tilted the screen so I could see. The banner at the top read 'Sensual Escapes' in a looping, feminine font. Below it: “Her breath caught as his fingers traced the inside of her thigh, higher and higher until ...”

“I found this site,” Rita said. Her voice had a texture to it, a thickness I recognized. “Erotic stories. Hundreds of them. This one’s about a woman who gets seduced by her yoga instructor.”

Her thumb kept circling. Her hips shifted on the lounge chair.

“It makes me hot,” she said. “Really hot. The way they describe things …” She let the sentence hang. Her free hand dropped from the tablet and landed on her stomach, then lower, her index finger hooking just under the waistband of her bikini bottoms. Not pushing inside. Just resting there. Teasing.

“Need help?” I asked.

Her smile widened. “No. Thanks for now.”

She didn’t look at me when she said it. Her attention was back on the screen, back on whatever scene was unspooling there - the yoga instructor, the woman, the fingers tracing higher.

I stood there another couple of seconds. Then I walked back to the mower, yanked the cord, and let the engine drown out the sound of my own pulse.

A while. Long enough for the back lawn to get its haircut. When I killed the mower this time, Rita was gone. Her lounge chair sat empty, the cushion still dented from her body. The tablet was gone too.

I put the mower away in the shed, hung my cap on the hook by the door, and headed inside. The house was cool. Dark. The blinds were drawn in the living room, the kitchen empty but for a grocery bag still sitting on the counter - she hadn’t even put the food away.

Upstairs. The bedroom door was open six inches. Light spilled through the gap, the golden late-afternoon light that came through the west-facing windows. And a sound. Rhythmic. Wet.

I stopped breathing.

My palm flattened against the door and pushed it open - two more inches, maybe four. Enough.

The bed faced the door. Rita was on it, on her back, no bikini, completely naked. Her hair fanned across the pillow. Her legs were bent at the knee, feet planted on the mattress, thighs splayed wide. Her left hand was on her breast, squeezing, releasing, her fingers pinching the nipple the way her thumb had done through the bikini fabric outside. Her right hand was on the tablet which lay beside her - moving on the screen without looking.

Her eyes were on me.

She’d known I was coming up. She’d left the door open on purpose. Her gaze held mine through the gap, and she didn’t stop, didn’t flinch, didn’t cover herself, didn’t even slow down. The smile on her face was the same smile she’d worn outside. Private. Knowing.

Something pink between her legs. Something peeking out from between her legs, out of her pussy.

The tablet lay beside her on the bed, her thumb idly brushed the surface. But her attention was on me.

Her back arched suddenly. Her mouth opened. Her right hand moved between her legs and on her clit, and the pink thing, whatever it was, buzzed deep inside her vagina. Her hips bucked once, twice ... a third time. She made a sound that was half gasp and half laugh, the laugh of someone who’d just discovered something too good to believe.

She reached for the tablet. Tapped the screen. The faint whirring sound cut off.

Her hand gripped the pink thing. She pulled. It emerged slowly, glistening, shaped like an egg, connected to a thin silicone string. She held it up so I could see.

“I bought this today,” she said. Her voice was breathy but clear. “There’s a sex shop on Maple. I walked past it three times before I got the nerve to go in. The woman behind the counter was so nice. No judgment at all. She showed me how the app works.” She waggled the egg. “Bluetooth, connected to the tablet. I can control the intensity, the pattern, everything. I could let the story control it. This site - the stories have these interactive settings. The toy syncs with the text. When the character feels something intense, so do I. But I don't know yet how to use that.”

She dropped the egg onto the bedspread. It left a dark, damp circle on the fabric.

“I could get addicted, I can tell you that!” she said.

My throat worked. “You never … I’ve never seen you satisfy yourself.”

“I never did.” She stretched, languid, her arms over her head. The movement lifted her breasts, and the afternoon light caught the sheen of sweat between them. “Maybe at fifteen. Seventeen, a few times. But I was taught it wasn’t right. You know that. Alex said I should love my body. Seek orgasm. Touch myself.” She quoted him with a lilt in her voice, almost playful. “So I’m touching myself.”

“You do look beautiful when you’re ecstatic.”

She blinked. The playfulness softened into something deeper. Warmer. “Say that again.”

“You look beautiful. Ecstatic. Both.”

She held my gaze another moment, smiled and said: "I love you honey."

"I love you too, babe ... I must take a shower because of all that dust and grass ... and sweat. Don't go away ... stay like this ... I'll hurry."

I went into the bathroom and washed that sweat and dirt off of me. After about 10 minutes I returned into our bedroom.

Rita was sleeping in the same position as I had left her just minutes before. Legs spread wide, pussy gaping a bit and still glistening. The hairy triangle caught my eyes ... we had talked about shaving all through the years - but she deeply rejected it every time I brought it up.

An idea was taking shape in my mind … what about the trigger … maybe I could use it to … should I?

I pulled the top sheet up over her body, tucking it gently under her chin. I grabbed a pair of shorts from the dresser, and headed back downstairs.

The beer was cold and the terrace was in shade. I sat in the chair closest to the railing, bottle balanced on my knee, and let the quiet settle around me. Inside my chest, my heart was still beating too fast. I never in my life would have expected a hypnosis having such an impact.

Tom appeared five minutes later. He was in his own backyard, fiddling with a sprinkler head that seemed to be spraying more water sideways than forward. When he saw me, he straightened.

“Sean. Hot one.”

“Brutal. Beer?”

He didn’t hesitate. I grabbed a second bottle from the fridge and handed it over as he came through the gate. We sat in the two chairs, the small table between us, and talked about nothing - the heat, the Mariners' bullpen, the pothole on Maple that the city had been ignoring since spring. Tom was a solidly built man, gray at the temples, with a relaxed posture that always made him look like he’d just woken from a nap. His eyes roved. They always did. I’d noticed it before, at barbecues and block parties - the way he tracked women across the room, the way his gaze lingered a beat too long.

I didn’t hold it against him. Mostly.

Half an hour passed. The sun dropped below the roofline. Then the sliding glass door opened.

Tom’s sentence died halfway through.

Rita stepped onto the terrace wearing nothing but the apron she’d cooked dinner in last week. The one with the cherry print. It covered her breasts - barely - the ties straining behind her back, the fabric draping over her chest in a way that suggested rather than concealed. The apron’s hem ended just above her knees.

Tom’s mouth was slightly open. He closed it.

“Nice apron,” he managed.

She smiled. “I guessed you’d both like it.”

“You bet.”

She had a beer in her hand. She settled into the chair beside me, crossing her legs with a casualness that made Tom’s eyes flicker downward before he could stop them. I took a long pull from my bottle and tried to remember how to look normal.

We talked. The weather again - a safer topic, though Tom’s contributions were noticeably less coherent than they’d been before Rita’s entrance. She joined in easily, laughing at something he said about the neighbor’s dog, leaning forward to set her bottle on the table in a way that made the apron gape.

“I’ll get some chips,” she said, standing.

As she turned around, it showed her bare back and her bare behind. An unbroken line from the nape of her neck to the curve of her ankles. The apron strings crossed just below her shoulder blades, then cinched at the waist, leaving everything below completely exposed. The dip of her spine. The flare of her hips. The way her ass swayed as she walked, deliberate, a little exaggerated, a performance she wanted us to watch.

I gulped.

Tom gulped.

“Rita is quite a stunner,” Tom said, very quietly.

I didn’t answer. What was I supposed to say?

Rita returned with a bowl of tortilla chips and set it on the table. She was still smiling. Still naked beneath the apron. She sat back down, closer to me this time.

The front gate creaked. Dana’s voice floated over the fence before she appeared: “Hi, you. Hey, Tom. Forgot the time? Dinner’s ready.”

She came through the gate and stopped. Her eyes took in the scene - Rita in the apron, showing some parts of her benefits. To her credit, her expression didn’t change. Her smile stayed in place. But something flickered behind it, something that might have been surprise or envy or just a tired recognition of the kind of woman her husband was looking at.

“Oh yes, I got carried away ... we should go,” Tom said, standing quickly. He set his half-finished beer on the table. “Dana, we just had a cold beer together and Rita was just serving some tortilla chips ”

“Come on. Dinner’s getting cold.” Dana said, smiled and winked at us. "Well, have a nice evening you two."

They left. Tom’s hand found Dana’s lower back as they walked through the gate, and she leaned into him despite herself. A complicated marriage. I’d known that for a while.

The gate clicked shut.

Rita turned to me. Her eyes glittered in the dying light. “You know what I’d like for dinner?”

“I think I have an idea. How about Ellen? When will she be back?”

“Never mind,” she said. “She’ll probably be back later.”