Do Over

My meditations lately had settled upon the female form, the gentle curve of the breast, the roundness of the hip flowing into the buttock. My sensei would say that I was allowing my body to direct my meditation. I personally would say that I was horny. That was my dilemma.

I had moved to the north woods because I was too caught up in the material things of this world and I had worked hard to quell those desires. Unfortunately, I had brought my body with me, and it had its own agenda.

She pulled up in a nondescript SUV on a cool August morning as robins hopped about the lawn and a woodpecker hammered from a white pine.

Perhaps she was the vanguard of a family getting ready to spend a few weeks in the north woods. I watched from my gazebo.

The opening windows traced her path from front to back through her house. She emerged from the rear door with an armful of blankets that she threw over a clothesline to air out. The slender brunette intended to stay there a while with or without company.

I tried to resume my meditation, but the spell had been broken. I am still at the shallow end of the meditation pool.

My solitary life was going to change. I would have to wear clothing when I stepped outside.

My home faced my neighbor's home fifty yards away across an inlet off a small lake. No other cabins sat around that lake because it is part of the Huron National Forest, and there is nothing but white pine and cedar swamp. For the past year, I had been the only soul except for the occasional fisherman who launched his canoe and paddled around the lake casting for pike. Even he did not enter the inlet where my house and the other sat.

The day passed as it normally did. The laughing call of the loons floated from across the lake, and cicadas buzzed high up in the trees.

My new neighbor frequently walked outside to talk on her cell phone. Her reception was as bad as mine. She waved to me in the afternoon when she wandered down to the water's edge. I waved back unsure if she could tell I was naked on my patio.

That evening as shadows deepened into night, the woman screamed for help from the cedar swamp. I knew immediately what had happened, as I raced across my lawn to the dense stand of cedars where the inlet's water flowed into a swamp that drained into Lower Turtle Lake.

Dodging low branches and blackberry canes, I pushed into the forbidding darkness.

"Where are you?" I called into the gloom.

"Follow my voice and please hurry. I'm sinking," the urgency in her voice hovered on the edge of panic.

I spied her through a tangle of dead branches. She had fallen into the slough that had nearly claimed me a couple weeks before, and was fighting to get out of the waist deep muck. During the dry summer, the mud crusted over that seep and sparse grass grew in the leaf litter that fell onto it. It looked like firm ground until you stepped on it and fell into mud the consistency of oatmeal that was so cold it took your breath away.

I pushed through the dead branches and knelt down on the last bit of firm ground.

"Can you reach my hand?"

She shook her head. "Please hurry. I keep sinking lower."

"I'll be right back."

I walked back into the woods and found a dead sapling that was still standing. I pushed it over and then dragged it to the pool and slid it out to her. "Grab this, and I'll pull you closer."

She gripped it for dear life, but it slid through her hands when I pulled.

"The suction of the mud was too strong," panic shrilled her voice.

"All right, I'm coming in."

I waded into the muck shuddering as the spring fed water chilled me. I held onto the sapling with one hand and extended my other to her. "Grab my hand."

She did and I slowly tugged her to me against the resistance of the clinging mud. While I was supporting my weight and hers, the sapling slipped a little further into the muck, but it held for now. We needed to get out of this before this quagmire trapped both of us.

"I'm going to push you onto solid ground."

I grabbed her by the waist and in stages moved her along the sapling closer to the shore. "I've got a toehold on a root. Get ready, I'm going to hoist you onto firm ground."

I slid my arm between her legs up to my elbow, and lifted her with all my might throwing her toward the tangled roots of a cedar. She lay panting on ground barely firm enough to hold her.

"Now grab those roots in front of you and use it to pull your legs out of the muck."

"I can't," she gasped, "I'm afraid I'll slide back in if I move."

"Wait a minute." I pulled myself closer to the shore until my head was squarely between her legs. I leaned my head into her mud covered crotch and braced her ass against my forehead.

"Okay, grab that bush. I'll keep you from sliding back."

She gasped when she slid back, but I braced her with my face, and with a little work, she managed to crawl away from the swamp's edge.

"How are you going to get out? I can't pull you out." She sat on the roots of a cedar tree covered in a muck that refused to be wiped off.

I pointed to the sapling. "I want you to stand on it, and try to anchor it to the ground while I work myself out."

She did and a few minutes later I lay gasping at the edge of the muck covered from chest down in thick clinging mud.

She sat down next to me laughing. "That's a hell of a way to meet your new neighbor by having him shove his head up your ass." She wiped mud off her face. "It looked like solid ground. I thought I was going to die. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I need to catch my breath."

"I came over to see if you knew how to start my well pump. Every time I turn it on, it kicks off again. I was going to drive over, but it looked like I had to go five miles around the lake to get to your house. Then I saw the woods and thought I'd cut through." She looked down at her clothes. "Now look at me."

I stood. "Let's go down by the water, and wash this mud off."

She cocked an eyebrow at me. "You want me to take off my clothes in front of you?"

"What else are you going to do? You have no water at your house, and I don't want all that mud dragged into my house. Rinse yourself off, and then you can take a shower at my house. I'll give you a bathrobe to wear."

She followed me down to the water in the gathering gloom. I waded in and submerged myself scrubbing to get the mud off me. She waded in a modest ten yards away, and scraped at the mud on her blouse without taking it off.

"This isn't working," she muttered.

She waded deeper. I thought she was going to swim back to her house, but she stopped when the water was up to her shoulders, removed her blouse and wrung it.

"My blouse is still too muddy to wear. Every time I wring it out, I get more mud."

With a mumbled curse, she threw the wadded blouse up onto the bank.

"I think I'll just dog paddle my way back to my house, and I'll pick up my blouse tomorrow."

"You don't have water, how are you going to get clean?"

That stopped her.

"Come up to my house. You can take a warm shower, and then I can take you home with some water so you can brew coffee in the morning."

"Let me see what I can do with these pants."

I watched her bob back and forth struggling to get out of her pants in the water. When the white pants floated to the surface she eyed them critically. "They're worse than my top." She cursed under her breath, and threw them onto the shore too.

"I think I will accept your kind offer," she sighed with a touch of resignation in her voice.

With that she waded out of the water wearing a mud stained bra and pantie set.

"I don't even know your name, and now you see me in all my glory." She curtsied.

She was tall and had a nice trim figure. I estimated she was in her late thirties or early forties. The muscle tone in the arms and legs told me that she spent time in the gym. She had taken care of herself over the years.

I waded out of the water.

She put her hand to her mouth. "You're naked!"

I nodded. "I've been since you called for help." I held out my hand. "Hi, neighbor. My name is Dave."

She gave me a firm hand shake while riveting her eyes to mine. "I'm Loren. Were you in the shower when you heard me calling?"

"Not exactly, but we can talk about that when we get to the house."

I led her into the house and showed her where the bathroom was. She pretended not to peek at me, but her eyes wandered over my body when she thought I wasn't looking.

When the bathroom door closed, I grabbed a bar of soap, a towel and headed back down the lawn to the water where I washed myself as thoroughly as I could in the near total darkness, dried myself, and finally threw Loren's clothes over a line to dry.

When she opened the door to the bathroom looking undersized in my bathrobe, she stopped. "You're still naked?"

I smiled up at her from the table where I was sitting. "It's what I wear around the house."

She cocked her head. "You're a nudist?"

"I guess. I never really thought about it."

If she was going to bolt, it would be now. Instead, she walked over to the table and sat across from me being careful that her bathrobe did not gap out when she leaned forward to sit. Her fatigue was visible in her face.

Her combed out, but still wet chestnut hair touched her shoulders. She had a pleasant face that looked radiant when she smiled. I really noticed her green eyes, her slightly turned up nose, and full lips. I had scored pretty high in the good looking neighbor category.

"Why don't you wear clothes?"

I shrugged. "I spent years as the owner of an engineering firm that designed paint shops for car companies. The last few years have been tough. First I lost my wife of thirty years, and I just didn't want to work anymore. I had built my career for the 'us' that no longer existed. I sold the business to a competitor, and moved up here. I needed to get away from the constant reminders of what I had lost."

I watched myself babble away, and couldn't stop it. Perhaps I'd been away from people too long. If I was serving up too much information, she didn't show it. I rattled on.

"The first morning I got up, I started to get dressed, and realized that I had no idea what I should wear."

She still looked interested so I plunged on.

"I had a closet full of suits and business wear. I had plenty of golfing clothes, I even had some grubbies to wear when I was doing chores. None of it reflected the person I now was. I vowed to not get dressed until I knew who I was or until it got cold. I spent last winter fully dressed, I'm not crazy. Then this spring, I lost the clothes again as the weather got nice."

"That's it? You don't know who you are so you can't get dressed?" Her robe kept slipping off her perfect shoulders. The only thing keeping her modest was the hand full of robe that she clenched over her cleavage.

"That was the start, then I realized how delicious it was to go without clothing. It's so much cooler on the really hot days. I enjoy wading into the water anytime I get too hot." I smiled at her. "You should try it. A cool breeze across exposed skin is exquisite." I changed the subject. "What about you? Why are you here?"

She sat back. "I recently got divorced. My husband got the cool condo in Ann Arbor, and I got the vacation home with the busted well pump." I got up and pulled out the blender. "You look like you could use a Margarita."

"You're not trying to seduce me, are you?" I took her comment as an attempt to talk out her anxiety about her current situation.

I held up my hand. "Swear to God, I'm not. Although now that I think about it, you probably should spend the night. I've got a guest bedroom ready to go. You have no water, that means no toilet. If you go home tonight, bathroom calls are out in the woods."

She shrugged. "I'm a big girl, I can take it."

The whine of the blender drowned out all conversation. When it was done, I placed a margarita in front of her.

She took a sip and nodded. "That is amazing." She sat back. "What's your secret?"

"I make them from scratch with fresh ingredients."

She took another sip. "I discovered my husband was having an affair about six months back."

I winced. "Ouch, that must have hurt."

She nodded. "I know, right? Here's the kicker. The affair was with another man."

She took a rather big gulp of margarita. "Look at me, what do you see?"

"I see a woman who's taken care of herself. You've kept your figure, and you'd be a knockout in a little black dress. I wouldn't mind seeing you in a bikini either."

She leaned forward forgetting that the robe gapped when she did. "I look pretty darn good. I held up my end of the bargain. I became the good corporate wife. I sacrificed my career as a journalist for his, and now I find after twenty years of marriage that I was a damn stage prop. He needed to show the corporation that he was a good, solid, hetero citizen." She drummed her nails on the table. "I want a do over."

"A what?"

"A do over. Remember when you were a kid playing baseball and you swung and whiffed. You'd call 'do over' and make them pitch the ball to you again? Well, I'm calling a do over. I'm erasing the last twenty years, and starting again."

She ran her fingers through her hair, and drained the margarita glass. "Now I find myself out in the middle of no where living in a house that requires a well pump to be livable. I'm two hundred miles from friends and family sitting in a borrowed bathrobe while relying on the good will of my naked neighbor. I am living proof that God has a sense of humor."

She grabbed the pitcher and poured herself a second margarita. "I spent the day fighting my way up here through road work every other mile, the first thing I discover is that the house is not livable, then I nearly drown myself in a swamp. I've had better days."

She drank half of the margarita in one gulp. "The best thing that's happened to me today is this margarita." She held the glass up to me in toast. "You may be naked as a jay bird, but you make one hell of a margarita."

She looked at me with the critical eye of a horse trader. "How old are you?

"I'm fifty."

"You know, you're in good shape. You have a hairy back. I don't like hairy backs." She wrinkled her nose.

She drained her second margarita, and reached for the pitcher.

"You're drinking those pretty fast. Would you like me to make you a sandwich?"

She let go of the robe to hold both hands in front of her. "I can handle my booze. You don't have to worry about me. I could party all night before I got married."

She had nice, firm, tan-line free breasts that would fit perfectly in my hands. They weren't huge, but I don't like huge. I like the ones compact enough to look as good at forty as they did at twenty. The robe had slid off her back and down onto the chair without her noticing. After putting down her glass, she glanced down and frowned like she was trying to remember something important, but could not figure out what it was. She returned her attention to me.

"I can't figure out if you're a weirdo or not. You walk around naked, but other than that you seem like a nice guy."

I had to smile considering her current state of dress. "Relax. I'm fairly well off. If I wanted female companionship, I could find plenty of volunteers. I don't need to lure beautiful women into my den of iniquity."

She set down the margarita glass, and half of her third glass was gone. "You think I'm beautiful?"

"Of course I do."

She frowned. "Where did my robe go? What did you do with it?"

"It slid down onto your chair when you let go of it."

She looked down, then looked up and shrugged. "Well, you're naked too. I guess we're a matched set."

She looked down at herself. "You don't think my breasts are too small?"

"Why would anyone think that?"

She shrugged. "My husband wanted me to get a boob job."

"Your former husband is an idiot."

She gave me a fifty thousand watt smile. "You like them?"

"They're perky and they seem to like me looking at them."

She examined them closely. "My nipples are all crinkled up, aren't they?"

She licked her lips and frowned. "I need to go to the bathroom." She stood leaving my bathrobe on the chair and tottered through the kitchen to the bathroom.

She had a firm ass with nice hips. I like hips on a woman. The last thing I want is a skinny woman shaped like a boy.

I put all naughty thoughts out of my mind. She was a neighbor, and a damsel in distress. I, for better or worse, was an old school gentleman. What she needed was a little sympathy and a little help.

When she came back, she sat down and laid her head on the table. "I was cold and scared when I was up to my neck in that swamp now I'm so tired," she mumbled and drifted off to sleep.

I got up and turned down the bed in the guest room. Then picked her up and carried her to the bed. I did take a moment to ogle her luscious body, I am human, after all. I cleaned up and then went to the bed myself. It had been one hell of a Friday.

I had completed my morning meditation when Loren stumbled out of the bedroom wrapped in a sheet. I drew her a glass of water and placed two ibuprofen on the counter beside it.

"You're dehydrated and you need a pain killer. You'll feel better in an hour or two."

She took the tablets and drained the glass. "What happened?"

"You were exhausted, then you drank too many margaritas on an empty stomach. When you fell asleep at the table, I put you to bed."

"Why am I naked?"

"You abandoned my robe when you got drunk."

She sat down at the kitchen table and covered her face with her hands. "What must you think of me?"

"I think you had a brutal drive, a busted well pump, a drowning scare, then you drank on an empty stomach but you got through it with a little help from a neighbor who was looking out for your best interests."

She winced. "I am so sorry."

She looked like a refugee with her crazy hair, hung over frown, and bed sheet.

"Think nothing of it. You would do the same for me." I handed her a Hawaiian shirt. "This is the longest shirt I have. Put it on, then sit down for breakfast.

The shirt covered what it needed to, but just barely. Her butt cheeks still peeked out in a charming manner from time to time, but she seemed happy with it.

I tried not to stare at her breasts, but I wanted to. They looked positively perky considering her age, and quite frankly, it had been a while since I had enjoyed female companionship.

I gave her a plate of dry whole wheat toast along with a jar of strawberry jelly, and a cup of coffee. She ate while I sipped my coffee.

"I figure after breakfast, I'll take you back to your house by canoe. While you gather a few things, I'll take a look at your well pump. If I can't fix it, come back to the house. You can call the well guy on Monday."

"I feel like I'm imposing. I can stay at my house. I'll drive into town and purchase water."

"Actually, I enjoy having you around. It does get quiet around here. I've lived alone since my wife died, and I think it's time I got back to living my life."

That elicited a smile. "I still think you're crazy wandering around here naked, but I also think you're a nice guy." She looked around at my furniture. "Besides, it's a well known fact that ax murderers never employ interior decorators. You didn't do this by yourself."

"You like it?"

She nodded. "I do, but it needs a woman's touch."

"What would that include?"

She wrinkled her nose. "A few throw pillows wouldn't hurt, and you could use drapes on your windows."

I nodded. "I can see that."

The trip by canoe across the bay was short. When she got out of the canoe, she caught me admiring the view. "Are you looking at my ass?" She didn't seem upset about it.

I grinned as she pulled the shirt down over her hips.