Revelations to Lessons

I'd known Josh Drake since 4th grade, and all the kids in the neighborhood were happy when his parents obliterated most of their backyard and replaced it with a big swimming pool. I spent lots of my middle school summer days and occasional nights in that pool. His parents even let us use it when Josh and his sister Kate weren't around, as long as there was some adult around to make sure no one drowned.

The pool was where I first realized that girls had interesting bodies, worth watching as they jumped or dived back into the water, and where I first got to enjoy some random (and not so random) collisions with them. It was a crazy place to be for a lot of reasons. Josh's parents seemed uptight and conservative, but Josh knew where his father's stash of Playboys was, and we always marveled that he even had a subscription.

I had no hope of finding a girlfriend back then, as I was (probably still am) a truly hopeless geek, but wow - girls were interesting. Somehow I could see the connections between the girls in the pools and the girls in the magazines, and the combination gave me a lot more to think about than school and science fiction. It was just thinking, though.

Sometime around the beginning of high school, though, Josh got mean, not a lot of fun to be around. After a fight, he disappeared to a private school for a while, and then came back for his senior year of high school. Fortunately, he was calmer, and we all started hanging out again, even enjoying that pool during a sweltering summer.

Celeste and I spent a lot of time there, especially the summer after graduation. Celeste was my girlfriend, sort of, for a while, but she was going to a college far away from where I was going. Even though I hoped we could stay together, she shattered any illusions I had on that score, telling me two weeks before we were both leaving that she was happy we'd never gone beyond a simple kiss.

Why?

Something to do with looking forward to the delights of a women's college.

I was pretty pissed off, and didn't feel like going home. My parents were away for the weekend, and I'd had some high hopes for the weekend, all of which were shot. Even my little brother was off with friends. Instead of being an exciting lovenest it would just be dark, empty, and annoying.

I drove kind of aimlessly until it was just about sunset, and finally decided to see if there might be anything going on at Josh's, maybe a pool party of random friends. That'd be better than sitting home alone, and even if I wound up crying again, a pool would be an easy place to hide it. Tears disappear and everyone's eyes are a little red.

The pool lights were on, and I rang the doorbell. Mrs. Drake answered it, wearing a thick terry robe over her suit. She was on the phone, this giant tan brick of a cordless she used so she could talk in the pool.

She opened the door, covered the phone's mouthpiece, and said, "Come on in. Your bathing suit and Celeste's are down in the laundry room." Then she wandered off again, talking about a long-ago wedding or something.

Down in the laundry room there was a pile of bathing suits. Mine was off to the side, with Celeste's blue bikini on top of it. I picked up the bikini top, wishing it was on the floor of my bedroom instead. The tag inside read "S". Small. Small but perfect, small but exactly what I'd dreamed of for months. Probably years, actually. I gave the top one last sad squeeze and grabbed my suit, heading to the bathroom to change.

The pool was empty when I got out there. I'd figured Josh would be there, but maybe he was just late getting home. Or maybe Mrs. Drake just saw my car and figured Celeste and I had come by for a weekend swim. Whatever. I could swim for a while and see if anyone showed up, and it was better than going home.

I dived in off the board, swimming up to the stairs in the shallow end. I hadn't been alone in this pool for a long long time, and it was kind of weird. I never quite figured out why Mrs. Drake was content to hang around all day in it, in the water or in a floating chair. During those middle school summers she'd been our perpetual lifeguard, leaving only to bring us all food and drinks, but she was in the pool even when we weren't.

It was nice, though. The water was warm, and the air was finally cooling off, with a breeze kicking up. I swam some laps, played on the diving board, and kept wondering how the tiny slide by the side of the pool had once seemed so big.

Floating around, I couldn't stop thinking about more recent things. Playing with Celeste's bikini had been a big mistake. I hadn't ever seen underneath it, but I knew what was there, and that I wanted to touch. More than wanted to touch - I wanted to kiss, fondle, play - and hear Celeste going wild. Just thinking about what she might sound like made me crazy. Angry, too - but I couldn't do anything about that.

Bathing suits do a lousy job of hiding a hard-on, and it was getting just plain crazy swimming around. I stopped by the steps into the water and sat for a minute, letting the jets of water bounce off my back. Then I remembered something about how I'd liked those jets way back when.

I looked around - nobody was there. The lights blazed from the house, over the pool fence, but it was quiet, except for the breeze. I turned around, making it look like I was going to pull myself out of the pool, but quietly dropped the front of my suit. It felt good, even though it wasn't Celeste. I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the warm water at just the right distance and

SPLASH! I pulled away from the wall a bit and looked behind me. Mrs. Drake was walking into the pool, still holding the phone next to her ear but looking at me a little strangely. I squashed down into the water and kicked away, hoping to get my suit better adjusted before she realized what I'd been up to.

When I'd reached the middle of the pool, suit on and treading water, I looked back. She was sitting on the stairs, still talking.

"That's okay Kate, just be home by your curfew.... Eleven, dear, yes, eleven... I know, I know, but your father and I agree. No, he's at the trauma ward tonight. Okay, then, see you later." She hung up the phone and rested it on the side of the pool, then dived in and started swimming.

Should I flee? Had I just shown a lot more of myself than was forgivable? Had she actually seen anything? Would leaving be even weirder? She was just swimming along the side of the pool, nothing unusual so far.

She came up to the surface, leaned against the the side, and looked over at me.

"How are you tonight, David? Where's Celeste?"

I sputtered a bit, finally coughing up "She's at a film festival."

She nodded. "Is everything okay? You don't usually come here alone."

"I was thinking Josh might be around."

"He would have been, except that he's off helping Bill Jenkins move into his new apartment in New York. Bill's father had to cancel at the last minute, but I suspect Josh just wanted to go down there and meet girls."

I smiled, relaxing a bit. "Probably," I said. "He seems to enjoy that."

"He's always with someone new. It worries me, but I guess he's eighteen. You, on the other hand, seem to be pretty steadily around Celeste."

My face fell. The wind was blowing harder now, and I felt a chill, but she knew that wasn't the problem.

"Sorry - I didn't realize..."

"No, that's okay. You couldn't know. We just broke up this afternoon."

"Really? I'm - I'm sorry about that."

"Thanks," I said. "It was a good summer, I guess."

She thought for a minute, still looking at me, and left the side of the pool, treading water a bit further out.

"You're going to college in a couple weeks, right?"

"Yeah, about a week before Josh goes."

"How long do you think you'll remember Celeste with all of those other girls to turn your head?"

"I don't know. She still wants to be friends, said she'd write."

"I like Celeste, but it sounds like she did the breaking up. Is she really going to write?"

I kind of shrugged, not sure what to say. The wind was stronger and it was getting darker, faster than the usual sunset. I looked over to the west and there were dark clouds.

"I think your dark clouds for the day already came through," she said. "That's just a storm, but we probably don't want to be in the pool if there's lightning."

It wasn't even raining yet, and I didn't feel like getting out of the warm water into the colder air quite yet. My hard-on had come back, more than I felt comfortable about, so I nodded, and swam around a bit collecting things while watching the clouds, and Mrs. Drake. She got out and started gathering all the stuff around the pool, getting it into the shed before the wind picked it up.

"Could you help bring these things to the shed?" she asked.

Waiting for my hard-on to go away hadn't helped - actually it was probably worse now, but I couldn't really hide. I picked a spot at the side of the pool by a big float and pulled myself out, lifting the float to cover myself.

We managed to get everything in as the wind got worse and the first raindrops were falling. She hadn't seemed to notice my suit or my embarrassment, and as we were locking up the pool she turned to me.

"Have anywhere to go tonight?" she asked.

"No, not exactly."

"Why don't you come in for a drink. It's not great to be alone when you just lost a relationship."

-----

Inside, she handed me a robe and put on her own.

"I think the storm will blow by quickly," she said. "No point in changing and then changing back again."

We walked up to her kitchen. "Have a seat and I'll make us a snack."

Cheese, crackers, grape juice. Well, I had the grape juice, and she had a glass of red wine.

"That's not fair," I joked.

"It's not fair that you get to be eighteen and I'm not any more," she snapped back. "Besides, it's probably not a taste you'd appreciate. You seem to drink gallons of grape juice and soda."

I put my grape juice down. "Could I try a sip?"

She looked shocked, absolutely shocked, and put her hand to her mouth. Her golden brown hair shimmered a bit under the table light.

"Amazing," she said. "What people ask for these days. Okay. You can try mine."

She handed me the glass, holding on to it for a second before letting me taking it. I took a sip, trying hard not to let my face show that it wasn't quite my favorite taste.

"And?"

"I think - I think I could get used to that."

She took the glass back. "Don't get too used to it. It's expensive. Well, more than grape juice, anyway."

Outside, the rain was coming down harder, and lightning flashed occasionally, a classic end-of-summer storm.

"So if you don't mind my asking," she started.

I turned red, wondering what the next question might be, and feeling a jump in my pants.

"What happened with Celeste?"

I sighed. It was relief, but she seemed to take it as depression.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "Teenage girls have all kinds of ideas, and sometimes they come back to something better."

"I don't think she'll be coming back," I said. "There's a problem."

"A problem?" she asked. "But you always got along so well."

I wasn't sure how to put it. "Yeah, we did. But she - well, she noticed that I'm male."

"And she hadn't before - oh, I see what you mean."

"I don't know. It's not like she doesn't like me, just not like that. But I like her, and... I don't know. It's all strange. I don't think she's even kissed a girl."

"So she's off at a film festival?"

"Yeah, something to do with strong female images."

"I see." She got up and walked over to the counter, getting another glass and the bottle of wine. She put the glass on the table in front of me and poured.

"Don't tell anyone," she said, "but that kind of news is worth a drink. Not a lot of drinks, but a drink."

"Really? I never thought..."

"It's okay. One glass might calm you down a bit. You seem to have had a lot of... excitement today."

"Thanks." I took a sip. It seemed a little better than it had the first time.

"People do the craziest things," she said, "and don't notice who they hurt."

I wasn't sure where this was going. Hopefully not to a lecture about pool hygiene. I looked back at her.

She took another sip, and took her time before saying anything more.

"Can I trust you?" she asked.

I jumped a bit, nearly spitting out the sip of wine I'd been taking. I thought for a second, and then said "Yes."

She smiled, a broader smile than I remembered seeing from her before. She leaned back in her chair, looked out at the lightning, and said "I thought I could. I've watched you all for a long time, and never saw you hurt anyone."

I nodded a bit. "I try not to."

"You had a lot of friends who tried," she said. "But never mind them. I've wanted to talk to someone for years, but never found the chance."

"Why - why me? About what?"

"Oh, about frustration," she said. "I think you understand that."

I nodded.

"I know you all found Derrick's Playboy magazines," she said. My eyes widened a lot, but I nodded. "Josh didn't know Derrick kept them in the closet precisely so they'd get found. I didn't approve, but as with all things Derrick, I didn't manage to change anything."

"Your husband, Mr. Drake - uh, why?"

"He's not - he's not easy to understand. He was a lot like Josh when he was a kid, and didn't really settle down until medical school took away all his time. I found him again then, and mistook that settled down man for the real Derrick. We got married, I helped put him through med school, and we had two lovely children."

She paused, taking a sip of wine and looking away, out the window. The lightning was less frequent, the rain slowing.

She turned to me again slowly.

"Can I trust you?"

I thought again. "Yes - you can."

She leaned back, letting the robe fall open a bit, playing with her hands in her lap.

"Derrick isn't my husband - any more," she said. "We divorced three years ago, and never told anyone."

Suddenly my indiscretions in her pool seemed pretty minor.

"Not even Josh and Kate?"

"Not even them. We will tell them - we will - once they're settled in the world."

I sat back and took a larger sip of wine, wondering what to say. Finally I asked the obvious but impolite question: "What happened?"

"He cheated," she said. "He cheated constantly, even flagrantly."

I nodded, and she looked down at the table.

"I should have known," she said bitterly. "Looking back, I think he may have been cheating even while he was first dating me. He was in med school, though, so sudden or long absences didn't seem surprising. Then residency, and internship, and then surgery, a job with long hours and no schedule."

"How did you - I mean, when..."

"I don't exactly know. He seemed perfect when he was courting me, a young gentleman who'd never think of having sex before marriage. Then we were married and it was sex, sex, sex. Amazing sex, actually. But even that wasn't enough for him. I think he needed variety, and my pregancy gave him an excuse to wander."

"Um...."

"You look shocked. I shouldn't be telling you this, I"

"No, no, don't worry. It's just a lot. Go on." I was a bit shocked by the idea of Mr. Drake chasing women, but I was actually more in shock from the thought of Mrs. Drake having sex. I mean, I knew she had children, so she had to have had it - I'm not that stupid - but I never expected to hear her say she'd had amazing sex.

"I caught him when I was pregnant with Kate," she said. "I'd left my purse in his office, and realized it an hour later. I went back to get it, let myself in, and heard some unusual noises. I opened the door of an exam room, and he was standing there, oh, giving it to a little blonde coed from behind. She was standing on a stool, leaning on the bed, to make it work, and he didn't stop when he saw me, just smiled."

I shook my head.

"He told me later that she'd really really wanted to thank him for saving her boyfriend's life, but she didn't have any money - the story got weirder and weirder. Then he said I was better at - oh well - at giving head than she was, and so he..."

My eyes were pretty wide, and my suit was pretty stretched again. She finished her glass of wine, and poured herself another.

"Are you sure you want to hear this?" she asked.

"Sure," I said.

She refilled my glass and wandered over to the counter with her own glass. Her robe was open now, showing her brown one-piece suit and a body that had always interested me, but which suddenly had a different life to it.

"He was doing this all the time, apparently. Lots of 'charity' work, done at a discount or for free, accepting favors from the grateful recipients. He was making enough money that it didn't make a noticeable difference that way."

"We moved into separate bedrooms after that. Fortunately, he snores incredibly loudly, so it wasn't hard to explain to the kids when they wondered what was going on. He never quite apologized, though he spent a lot of time and money making sure I'd stay around, to keep the kids happy."

"The pool?"

"Yes, the pool was part of it, and the vacations, and he even came along and was on his best behavior. I don't think the kids even realized anything was wrong. He helped out with a lot of my church work, too."

"So, why - why the secret divorce?"

"I caught him again, and it was just too much."

I nodded.

"Kate and Josh were at summer camp, and I'd been spending most of my days out on a community improvement project. I guess I'd written it down on the calendar, but one day I got it wrong and came home. I got quite a surprise."

"A surprise?"

"Yes. Actually - come over here with me. It was right in the livingroom."

I picked up my glass and followed her, taking yet another sip. My head was spinning a bit already, but fortunately she was walking ahead of me and couldn't see me stuffing my hard-on further down into my suit.

In the livingroom, I sat down quickly. She put her wineglass on a table and went to the door.

"I came in here," she said, "took off my coat, and put it in the closet." She took off her robe and put it in the closet. Then she walked out around the corner and turned to the sofa.

"Right there, on that couch, my husband was holding hands with a woman - a woman who looked kind of like Jodie Foster."

"Was it Jodie Foster?"

She laughed. "Of course not. Derrick's not that smart or that lucky."

"They were just holding hands?"

"Well, yes - but they were both naked."

My dick jumped a bit and I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees to hide it.

"They were naked, and there were two other naked women, kneeling on the floor right here, in front of them."

"I, uh, I see."

"The other two women were Mrs. Pinkton and Mrs. Williams - remember them?"

"Wow. Wow." Mrs. Pinkton had been gorgeous - tall, brown haired, with enormous tits and a bright smile. Mrs. Williams was blonde, a bit older, but still nothing to complain about. I started to lean back, remembered the tent I was hiding, and shook my head.

"Derrick and 'Jodie' had their eyes closed, obviously in ecstasy. I watched for a moment and then screamed. Apparently Mrs. Williams hurt Derrick when she jumped, but I didn't really mind. They all kind of looked at me like I was the crazy one, and I stormed out."

Her face was red, her chest was heaving. She looked away, out the window, where a last bit of red sunset peeked through the departing storm clouds. She looked back at me.

"I need to get out of this room," she said. "Let's go back to the pool."

I nooded. She picked up her glass and the bottle, and I walked carefully behind her, trying not to disturb my pole. For the first time I took a closer, admiring, look at her ass. Kind of big, but firm, beautiful. That made it an even more painful walk, though, and the robe didn't help any.