Dark Meat for the Family Ch. 01

Sarah was maybe three sips into her glass of scotch when the front door opened and she heard Hunter enter. She checked her watch. It had barely been ten minutes since she drove past him at the bottom of the hill.

"Back here in the living room!" she called.

Sarah had only gotten the briefest look at Hunter the night before, when he and Tony had arrived back home from school. They'd said their hellos to Sarah and Vince, and then almost immediately headed out to the party. She had a better opportunity now. He was predictably tall as someone who was on the basketball team. Sarah guessed either 6'4 or 6'5. His dreadlocks, which were done up in a vertical bun, made him look even taller. His face was young, with no facial hair to speak of. He had thick lips, big brown eyes, and a relatively small and narrow nose. It was hard to tell much else, as he was dressed in a baggy sweatshirt and athletic shorts.

"That was fast. How'd it go?" Sarah asked, looking up with a bemused smile from her scotch.

"Not as well as it's going for you obviously," Hunter said, somewhat out of breath and gesturing at Sarah.

"Oh this? This is just a normal Wednesday night when I'm home alone." she said with a laugh.

"Well you're not home alone this time!"

"You're right. You want one? I have a big collection."

"What is that whiskey?" Hunter asked, peering at the bar cart that stood against the back wall of the room. "Usually if a friend's mom is offering me her whiskey, I'd immediately say yes. But I'm sweaty and exhausted from that run. You weren't kidding about that hill. I was going to go take a shower. Maybe afterwards?"

"Sure thing. Do you know where the guest bathroom is? Since you weren't here last night I didn't know if anyone actually showed you around." Sarah said with a smirk.

Hunter stared sheepishly at the ground for a second.

"Ha, sorry about that Mrs. B. These things kind of happen I guess."

"Oh they just kind of happen?"

"I mean..." Hunter mumbled. His face flushed and he laughed awkwardly to fill the void of not knowing what to say.

"It's ok," Sarah interjected before Hunter felt too embarrassed. "I'm just giving you a hard time. The guest bathroom is in the middle of the main hallway on the second floor, it's right next to where your room is. When you're done, come down and we'll order dinner. I was kind of thinking Indian. Does that sound good to you or do you want something else?"

"That sounds great to me, Mrs. B. And thanks. Sorry for any inconvenience."

"No inconvenience. Enjoy the shower."

The two shared a smile before Hunter turned out of the living room and then headed up the stairs. Sarah took a deep drink from her scotch, smiling as she listened to the creak of the stairs as Hunter ascended. After only two brief conversations with him, she could understand why this "happened all the time." A tall, black athlete who was disarmingly charming without really trying to be. The exact opposite of so many guys who try too hard and end up being off-putting. Many of the junior associates in her firm jumped to mind.

Sarah finished off her glass of scotch and, feeling indulgent, poured herself one more. She didn't usually have two glasses before dinner but today seemed different. It didn't take her long to feel the difference either. The warmth in her empty stomach and the lightness in her head were more pronounced than usual.

Without meaning to, Sarah's thoughts began to wander in a more lurid direction. She recalled the thrill of her own freshman year at college. She'd gone to a much smaller (and better) school than Tony and Hunter's, but even so, she and her roommate Stephanie had managed to have quite a bit of fun their first year. Sarah had quickly developed a reputation as the girl who would intellectually demolish you during class, but then go out and party with you afterward.

Taking another long sip of her scotch, Sarah tried to recall the first boy she brought back to her dorm. She could remember his face like it was yesterday. He was a big, square-headed, preppy New Englander. He had broad shoulders and a big chest from being on the rowing team. The problem was that there were a dozen guys who looked exactly like him on campus. Sarah probably ended up sleeping with half of them. Was his name Connor? Carter? No, no. There was no one named Carter or Connor on the rowing team. Cooper. That was it. Cooper Byrne. A predictably preppy New England name. Sarah remembered the night like it was yesterday. Cooper had been too drunk and underperformed. He'd got it up and in and managed to get himself off but that was about it. Sarah never fucked him again. But just thinking about the rush of bringing him back to her room for the first time made her breath come quicker.

"Mrs. B!"

Sarah's college reminiscences were interrupted by the loud call of Hunter's voice.

"Yeah, Hunter? What's up?" she yelled back, somewhat feebly, in response.

"This is embarrassing but there are no towels!" he yelled back downstairs.

"Oh shit! Hang on!"

Sarah got up and hustled upstairs. When she reached the landing she turned right and saw Hunter's head and his dreadlocks sticking out of the bathroom door. Steam and light poured out with them into the darkness of the hallway.

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. B. I'd go get them myself but didn't want to be wandering naked and wet all around your house without knowing where I was going."

"That would've been quite a sight." Sarah said with a laugh. "It's alright. Hang on."

Heading to the opposite end of the hall, Sarah opened the closet across from the master bedroom and pulled out two fluffy white towels, then proceeded back down the hall to Hunter and the bathroom.

Approaching the door, Sarah and Hunter exchanged a smile.

"Ok how do you want to do this?" she asked awkwardly.

"What do you mean?" Hunter responded, looking taken aback.

"How do you want to handle this exchange of towels? What did you think I was asking?"

"Oh sorry. I don't know Mrs. B. Uh, just hand them to me I guess?" Hunter laughed. "Here, I can reach."

Hunter opened the door wider and as he did so, stuck out his long torso and extended his arm. The bottom half of his body stayed awkwardly behind the closing door.

"I guess we're lucky you're a basketball player and have such long arms or else I would've had to come in there, huh?"

Hunter didn't respond, he just took the towels and smiled at Sarah as he did so.

"Thanks Mrs. B," he said as he closed the door.

Sarah smiled and shook her head.

"Or else I would've had to come in there. What are you doing? What are you saying?" she mumbled to herself as she headed back downstairs towards the fire, dropping herself down onto the large couch parallel to the fireplace instead of her armchair.

Cooper Byrne was now firmly gone from Sarah's head. Replacing him was the short glimpse she'd gotten of Hunter Allen's shirtless torso.

Hunter had massive pecs. Far bigger than Sarah had been expecting. He also had a shredded six pack. But he wasn't bulky. Far from it. He had defined biceps and triceps. Sarah had noticed them on his arms when he reached out for the towels. But they looked rather small on his tall and lanky frame that was only enlarged by his broad shoulders. He was thin but muscular; sinewy strong.

And then there were his tattoos. Normally Sarah wasn't attracted to tattoos at all. But Hunter was different. He only had a few tattoos and they intrigued her rather than turned her off. His biggest tattoo was on his right pectoral. It was a large Sagittarius figure that was inked in exquisite detail. The Sagitarrius's muscles were strained as it pulled back on the string of its bow, firing an arrow into a field of stars. Hunter's other tattoo was more modest, but thematically similar. He had a ring of tightly drawn arrows that looped around his upper right bicep. She'd only glimpsed them for a few seconds but they felt seared into her brain.

A few minutes later, as Sarah was aimlessly scrolling through the Doordash app trying to figure out what to order for dinner, Hunter came back downstairs. He was in a baggy white tee shirt that hid most of his body and black athletic shorts.

"Sorry about the towel mixup Mrs. B. Thanks for bailing me out." Hunter said as he plopped onto the opposite end of the couch from Sarah.

"No worries. It happens. I told Vince to make sure there were towels in the bathroom, but he must've forgotten when he got called away."

"Yeah, where is he? Tony mentioned that he probably wouldn't be around till Thanksgiving dinner?"

"Some railroad bridge went out in a small town about 2 hours north of here. He's a district engineering supervisor so his job is to go help with these things whenever they crop up. He's gone a lot."

"That seems hard." Hunter said with sympathy.

"It is. It's a lot of traveling for him and long shifts. Sometimes 24 hours. They work around the clock with emergency teams to get the railways back up and running as fast as possible."

"I meant for you, Mrs. B." Hunter said, sweetly. "Can't be fun to have your husband gone a lot, not knowing when it'll happen or when exactly he'll be back."

Sarah smiled softly at him.

"You're right. I work a lot too, so I don't think about it very much. Our lives have changed now that both of the kids have moved out for school. So I guess I've gotten used to it. But it's not exactly an ideal situation."

The pair shared a small smile for a second before Sarah got up from the couch.

"Here," she said, tossing Hunter her phone. "I already ordered. My food is in the shopping cart. Just add whatever else looks good to you. Go crazy. You still want some scotch?"

"Yeah, if you're offering Mrs. B! I have to admit, we don't really drink a lot of scotch at school. It's mostly whatever bottom shelf whiskey we can find like Evan Williams or Jack Daniels."

"Well this is much better stuff than Evan Williams or Jack Daniels." Sarah said laughing. "Let me start you off with something a little lighter that'll help you ease into it, rather than giving you the straight diesel fuel first thing. This should do the trick," she said, grabbing a bottle of Macallan 12 and pouring him a glass.

"I'll even put in an ice cube to make it a little easier for you. Even though I take my scotch neat," she said, throwing a smile over her shoulder at Hunter on the couch.

"Whatever you say, Mrs. B. You're the expert, I trust you! By the way, if I've put my order in, should I just send it? Or do you want to check first?"

"Oh no, just send it. I trust you too, Hunter."

Hunter clicked through the final screens on the app as Sarah walked back over to the couch, two glasses of scotch in hand. She passed one to Hunter and then sat down in the middle of the couch, closer to him than she'd been before.

"Well what should we cheers to?" she asked.

"I don't know. Thanksgiving? Family?"

"That's not very original." Sarah said with a hint of mischievousness. "Come on. We can think of something better."

Hunter furrowed his brow, then smiled back at Sarah with a matching mischievous grin.

"How about: to drinking with your roommate's mom?"

Sarah laughed and clinked her glass against Hunter's.

"To drinking with your son's roommate."

The two sipped their scotch in companionable silence. Sarah was impressed how easily Hunter drank it. Scotch wasn't an easy thing to drink for first timers.

"So," she said, curling up her legs underneath her torso on the couch, and leaning in towards Hunter. "We have some time to kill before dinner gets here. Tell me about yourself, Hunter Allen. Tony's told me barely anything about you except that you're on the basketball team. Where are you from? What do your parents do? What do you want to do?"

"Big questions Mrs. B!" Hunter said, stretching his arm along the top edge of the couch and turning to face Sarah. "I'm from Houston. I got a scholarship to come up here and play basketball which is how I ended up in the Northeast. This has been my first time away from home for more than like, 2 weeks. It's pretty wild. I have two sisters, one older, one younger. My dad was a maintenance guy at our school district for a long time. But a few years back he became a contractor and now he runs his own business. My mom left just after my little sister was born, when I was 3. So I don't really remember her. And as to school and all that? I don't know man. Just playing ball right now and we'll see what happens. Did that cover it?"

Sarah's eyes enlarged in surprise as she listened to Hunter.

"Wow, I think we could talk all night about any one single detail in there," she said, taking her glasses off and setting them on the coffee table in front of the couch.

"Well which one do you want to talk about then, Mrs. B?"

"Can I ask you a dumb question?" she said sheepishly.

"Of course, though I don't think any question you'll have for me will be dumb."

"I want to know about your tattoos."

"Oh yeah? You like them?"

"I thought they were interesting. Why'd you get them?"

Hunter laughed. This time it was his turn to be slightly embarrassed.

"Now it's me who's going to sound dumb, talking to a high powered lawyer and shit. But I'm really into astrology and all that. I don't know if I totally believe it but I think it's cool. And my birthday is December 1st, so I'm a Sagitarrius. My name is Hunter, I thought the Sagittarius guy looked cool, so I went for it.

"Cool," Sarah said, taking a sip of her scotch. "I appreciated how you didn't have a lot of tattoos. Just a few. I feel like you don't see that a lot. It's either all or nothing with people."

"Yeah I don't know. I feel like you should get one if it'll mean something to you, but don't get one just to get one. Maybe I'll get more but I'm just going to wait for the idea and the impulse to come to me, you know?"

"I'm not much of a tattoo person myself, so I don't think I can say 'I know' but I do get it, yeah. Sounds like a good philosophy."

"Thanks Mrs. B. That means a lot coming from someone as smart as you."

Sarah scoffed.

"Smart. I don't know about that. Smart enough to get by, but then again most people are. The big difference is I just work harder. Which is fine, but it also takes its toll."

Hunter smiled at her before looking down at his glass and taking another sip of his scotch.

"You know, my freshman year of high school they told me I wasn't good enough to keep playing basketball. I was too small, didn't have a good ball handle, wasn't good enough of a shooter. Everything basically. I remember going home and crying the night they posted the rosters and I was a backup on the freshman team. Wasn't even close to sniffing varsity. So the next year I started working out like crazy. Everyday I either spent hours in the weightroom or a few hours on a run working on my endurance. Then made sure I was putting up a thousand shots a day, and did dribble drills every morning and every night. It was pretty ridiculous really. Definitely hurt my grades. But that next summer I had a growth spurt. Grew to how tall I am now, and made the varsity team at fall tryouts. Now I'm a scholarship player at a D1 university. So I respect the hustle."

​​"That's more hustle than I've ever done by a long shot," Sara said, masking an impressed smile by taking a drink.

"No way Mrs. B. Law school. Then the bar exam. Then your job? Couldn't have been easy."

"It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that hard either."

"Goes back to my original point: you're just that smart." Hunter retorted.

Sarah couldn't help herself. She threw her head back and had a full throated laugh.

"That was a good one."

"It wasn't a joke!" Hunter said with playful indignity.

"Fine, fine. I'm brilliant. What else do you want to know?" Sarah said.

"Ok, now it's my turn for a stupid question. Are you ready?"

"Born ready." Sarah said, staring at him with mock seriousness.

"Aight, aight," Hunter said with a nervous excitement in his voice. "Our group chat will lose their shit if they heard that I was drinking scotch with Tony's mom. I've got to send them a selfie with you or else they'll never believe me."

Sarah laughed again.

"How will Tony feel about this?" Sarah asked.

"Oh he'll hate it for sure." Hunter responded with a laugh.

Sarah pursed her lips and shook her head.

"Come on Mrs. B. You know it's just harmless fun."

"Ok, ok." Sarah said relentingly with a coy smile. "How do you want to do this?"

"Stay there, Mrs. B." Hunter said with directorial confidence.

While still sitting on the couch, Hunter turned to face away from her. Holding his glass of scotch in his right hand, he extended his phone out with his left hand. Sarah looked up and saw them both reflected in the camera. She was just behind him on the couch.

"Mrs. B, hold your glass up and say cheers!"

"Scotch!" Sarah said with a big smile, holding her glass up towards the phone as Hunter dictated. He did the same and she heard the click of the phone camera.

"Let's do one more where we're both drinking." he said.

"Don't have to tell me twice to drink scotch, young man."

"That's the spirit Mrs. B!"

She heard the click of the camera as Hunter snapped a picture of them both drinking their scotch. There wasn't much left in Sarah's glass and she finished it off.

"Here I have an idea for one more." she said as Hunter pulled his phone down and began looking at the pictures.

"Oh yeah?" he said, looking over his shoulder at her.

"Yeah, stay there." Sarah said with a mischievous grin.

Crawling over to the end of the couch where Hunter sat, Sarah draped her arms around Hunter's shoulder's.

"Get one like this." she commanded.

"My pleasure, Mrs. B." Hunter said with some surprise, as he stuck his phone out and they both smiled for the selfie.

"Ok now do one where you bring your glass of scotch up to my mouth. I finished all of mine already and need some more."

Hunter did as he was commanded and Sarah heard the snap of the camera capture the moment once again.

"Ok, last one. Are you ready?"

"Yeah, what's it gonna be?"

Running her left hand up through Hunter's dreadlocks, she wrapped her right hand around his left cheek, stabilizing his head as she gave him a big kiss on his right cheek.

"Did you get that?" she whispered into his ear, while pushing her breasts against his muscular back.

"Yeah I did, Mrs B." Hunter said, glancing at her with some surprise in his eyes. "You want to see?"

"Of course."

As Hunter pulled the pictures up on his phone, Sarah straightened her back and crawled up on her knees. She leaned over Hunter to look at the pictures, her breasts now tangled ear his head.

"Damn, we look good." she said, placing both her hands on Hunter's shoulders.

"If you don't mind me saying, Mrs. B, you look really good."

"I don't mind at all," she whispered into his ear, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "How do I compare to the girl you met last night?"

"Oh there's no comparison. She was just some college sorority girl back home for Thanksgiving looking for a hookup. I've met dozens of girls like her. I've never met a woman like you."

Sarah's right hand drifted down from Hunter's shoulders to his chest, rubbing his pecs through his shirt.

"I'd like to take a closer look at those tattoos again, if you wouldn't mind." she whispered, nuzzling his neck with her nose.

Hunter needed no more persuading. He immediately began to pull his shirt off and Sarah helped him. As soon as it was off, he spun around to face her. Without any hesitation he pushed her down so she lay flat on the couch and pounced on her.

Sarah laughed in delight as this 18 year old college athlete began to enthusiastically attack her body. Hunter grabbed her waist with one hand and began to untuck her sweater from her skirt. His other hand grabbed her breast through her sweater. When their mouths finally met, neither had the time nor the inclination for a slow kiss. It immediately escalated into an open-mouthed french kiss as their tongues explored one another's throats.