Pool Boy Summer

The pool filter hums like a trapped insect. Sarah watches from the kitchen window as the boy—not a boy, she corrects herself, a man—circles the deep end with a long-handled net. He moves with the unhurried confidence of someone who has done this ten thousand times. His shoulders roll under a faded navy t-shirt. His forearms are corded, sun-browned. He doesn't look up at the house. He never does.

The clock on the stove reads 10:07. Her husband's coffee mug is still in the sink, a ring of cold espresso at the bottom. He left at 7:40, same as always, a kiss on her cheek that landed somewhere near her ear because he was already thinking about the traffic on the interstate. Now the house is hers. The silence is hers. The view is hers.

She pours a second cup of coffee she doesn't need.

For three weeks, she's watched him from this window. Three weeks of pretending to read on the patio while he skims leaves from the surface. Three weeks of inventing errands that take her past the side gate where he parks his truck. He is, she has decided, almost aggressively ordinary. He wears the same three shirts in rotation. He says "ma'am" and "yes, ma'am" and "have a good one." When her husband is home—rare, but it happens, a Saturday morning here and there—the man becomes a piece of furniture. He discusses pH levels and chlorine tabs with the flat affect of a DMV clerk. He does not flirt. He does not linger. He does not let his eyes drop to her legs when she walks out in a sundress.

The moment her husband's car pulls out of the driveway, though. The moment the taillights disappear around the cul-de-sac's single curve. Something shifts. It's small. A quarter-inch of a smile. A tilt of his head that says I see you seeing me.

Today, she decides, she'll stop watching from behind glass.

---

The patio stones are hot through her sandals. She carries a glass of iced tea—for him, she tells herself, because it's August and he must be dying out here. A perfectly normal, neighborly gesture. The kind of thing a wife does for the man who keeps her pool from turning green.

He's at the skimmer now, back to her, crouched low. The muscles in his thighs press against his shorts. She stops six feet away and waits. He doesn't turn around.

"Tea," she says.

He looks over his shoulder. Up at her. His eyes are a flat, unremarkable brown, but there's something behind them that she can't name. He takes the glass. His fingers brush hers—dry, warm, callused. He drinks half of it in one swallow.

"Thanks, ma'am."

"You can call me Sarah."

He nods, slow, like he's filing that away. "Sarah."

She should go back inside. That's the script. Hand over the tea, exchange pleasantries, retreat to the air conditioning. Instead, she sits on the edge of a lounge chair and crosses her legs. Her sundress rides up an inch. She doesn't adjust it.

"Been doing this long?" she asks.

"Five years."

"You like it?"

He looks at the pool, then back at her. "It's quiet. Nobody bothers me."

A laugh escapes her, short and surprised. "Except for iced tea deliveries."

"Yes, ma'am." The smile again, just a flicker at the corner of his mouth. "Except those."

He finishes the tea and sets the glass on the patio table. Then he picks up the net and goes back to work. Dismissed. She sits there for a full minute, watching the muscles in his back shift under the thin cotton, feeling the heat crawl up her neck. When she stands, he speaks without turning around.

"Same time tomorrow?"

Her heart does something complicated in her chest. "I don't know. Maybe."

---

Tommorow comes. She spends the morning in a state of agitated distraction, reorganizing the pantry, deleting emails she's already read. At 10:04, she hears the truck door slam. At 10:06, a knock at the back slider.

He's wearing a different shirt—still faded, still navy—and he smells like chlorine and clean sweat. She takes the glass. Their fingers touch again, deliberate this time, and she feels the contact all the way to her molars.

"Pool looks good," she says, because she has to say something.

"I'm not here for the pool." He steps past her into the kitchen, uninvited, and she lets him. He walks to the counter and leans against it, arms crossed, watching her with that flat, patient gaze. "You want to ask me something."

"I—what?"

"You've been watching me for three weeks. You bring me tea. You sit on the patio in that dress. You want to ask me something, and you're working up to it."

The bluntness of it steals her breath. She sets her glass down. Her hand is trembling, just slightly. "That's presumptuous."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Stop calling me that."

"Yes, Sarah."

The silence stretches. The refrigerator kicks on with a rattle. Outside, a lawnmower starts up three houses down, a distant drone. She can hear her own pulse in her ears. This is the moment, she thinks. This is where I either step back or—

"Ask me," he says.

She meets his eyes. They're not unremarkable. They're dark and steady and they don't blink. "Do you want to fuck me?"

The words hang in the air, crude and enormous. She's never said anything like that out loud. Not to her husband, not to anyone. Her face burns. She's about to laugh it off, to pretend it was a joke, when he uncrosses his arms and steps toward her.

"I've wanted to fuck you since the first day," he says. "I was just waiting for you to want it, too."

His hand finds her waist. The touch is light, almost casual, but it sends a jolt through her entire body. She gasps. He pulls her closer, and she goes, her feet moving without permission. Up close, he smells like sun and sweat and something faintly chemical. His lips find the side of her neck. Not a kiss—a drag of his mouth, slow, tasting her skin.

"Tell me to stop," he murmurs against her throat.

"I won't."

"Say it anyway."

She closes her eyes. "Don't stop."

His hands slide down to her hips, gripping hard, pulling her flush against him. She feels the length of him through his shorts—already hard, pressing into her belly—and a sound escapes her, something between a whimper and a sigh. He walks her backward until her spine hits the kitchen island. The granite is cold through her dress. He lifts her onto it like she weighs nothing.

"Sit."

She sits. He pushes her knees apart and steps between them. This is happening. This is actually happening. She grips the edge of the counter as he hooks his fingers under the hem of her dress and pulls it up over her hips. The air hits her thighs, her stomach, the damp cotton of her underwear. He looks down at her and she watches his expression shift—the flatness gone, replaced by something hungry and focused.

"Been thinking about this," he says. "Every time I'm out there skimming leaves. You in here, watching me."

"Every time," she admits. "Yes."

He pulls her underwear to the side, not bothering to take them off. Two fingers slide through her, spreading her open. She's wet—so wet she can hear it, a soft, slick sound as he circles her clit. Her hips jerk. A moan tears out of her before she can stop it.

"Quiet street," he says. "Neighbors home."

She bites her lip. He keeps circling, slow and deliberate, watching her face. The pressure builds behind her eyes, in her throat, in the soles of her feet. She tries to hold still. She can't. Her thighs close around his hand and he pushes them back open, pinning her knees against the granite.

"Stay."

His thumb replaces his fingers on her clit. His middle finger slides inside her. Then a second. The stretch is sudden and perfect. She arches back, palms flat on the counter, the cold bite of stone against her shoulder blades. He curls his fingers, finding that spot that makes her see white, and she hears herself saying please over and over, a word she doesn't use.

He stops.

"No," she gasps.

"Ask me for it."

"You're inside me. You're already—"

"Ask me for it."

She looks at him—really looks—and sees that he's not teasing. He wants the words. He wants her to say it out loud, in her own kitchen, at ten in the morning, with her husband's coffee mug still in the sink.

"Please fuck me," she says. "Please. Now."

He pulls his fingers out. She hears the clink of his belt buckle, the rasp of his zipper. He spits into his palm—a crude, effective gesture—and strokes himself once. Twice. Then the blunt head of his cock presses against her opening, hot and impossibly hard, and he pushes in.

The first stroke steals her breath. The second makes her cry out. He's thicker than she expected, filling her so completely that she feels split open, and he doesn't stop until his hips meet hers, until he's buried to the root. For a moment he just stands there, breathing hard, his hands gripping her hips.

"Look at me," he says.

She opens her eyes. His face is fierce, jaw tight. He pulls back almost all the way—she feels the drag of him, every inch—and slams home. The counter rattles. A glass rolls off the counter and shatters on the floor. Neither of them looks at it.

He fucks her with a rhythm that builds from hard to punishing, each stroke bottoming out, each pull-back slow enough that she feels every ridge and vein. Her hands scramble for purchase on the smooth stone. She's making noises she's never made before, high and broken. Sweat gathers under her breasts. The sundress is bunched around her waist, useless.

"Harder," she gasps.

He obliges. His thumb finds her clit again, rough and insistent, and the combination of fullness and friction tips her over. The orgasm hits like a slap—sudden, bright, wringing a scream from her that she muffles with her own hand. Her cunt clenches around him, rhythmic and violent, and she feels him swell inside her, feels his rhythm stutter.

"Not yet," he says through gritted teeth. "Not yet."

He pulls out. The emptiness is a physical pain. He spins her around—the counter is cold on her nipples through the thin fabric—and bends her over. One hand presses her shoulder down. The other guides himself back inside, and the angle is different, deeper, and she moans into the granite.

"Now," he says. "Now."

He drives into her with short, brutal strokes, his hips slapping against her ass, and she feels the orgasm building again—impossible, too soon, but there it is. She's going to come again. She's going to come while bent over her kitchen island with a shattered glass on the floor and her husband's mug in the sink—

He groans. His hips stutter. She feels him pulse inside her, hot and thick, and the feeling of it—of him coming, of being filled—pushes her over the edge a second time. She clenches around him and rides it out, grinding back against him until she has nothing left.

For a long moment, neither of them moves. Then he pulls out. She hears him tuck himself away, fix his shorts, buckle his belt. She stays bent over the counter, breathing, her legs trembling.

"Same time Thursday?" he says.

She laughs—a real laugh, surprised and raw. She turns her head to look at him. He's already at the slider, hand on the frame, ready to walk out like nothing happened. Like he didn't just fuck her senseless on her own kitchen counter.

"Thursday," she says.

He nods. Then he's gone. The slider clicks shut. The truck engine starts. She listens to it fade down the cul-de-sac.

She pushes herself upright. Her knees nearly give out. She's still wearing her sundress. Her underwear is somewhere on the floor. The shattered glass catches the light, a dozen tiny prisms scattered across the tile.

She should clean up. She should shower. She should feel guilty.

Instead, she picks up her phone and texts her best friend, Danielle, who lives four houses down.

You still using that pool guy? The one with the navy shirts?

Three dots appear almost immediately.

Danielle: God yes. Why?

Sarah smiles at the screen. Her thumb hovers over the keyboard.

Sarah: No reason. Just wondering.