Guilty Pleasures Ch. 09

Wanda stepped on that quickly, declaring loudly that Monica was moving in with them. The guest room that never had any guests in it was now hers until she chose to leave. Monica tried to refuse that, but Yancey ganged up with Wanda and they browbeat her into accepting an asylum that she clearly desperately wanted.

I stood around for a while, clearly useless under the circumstances. I had done my job already, and received covert glances of thanks from Wanda. She wasn't going to have to bail Yancey out of jail that night. After about a half hour, as I was about to excuse myself, but then I had an idea.

"Monica, you need to call in sick tomorrow," I said firmly. "Or you can explain what's actually going on. I don't care. Do what's best."

"Absolutely," Wanda agreed vehemently. "You are in no shape to be going to work tomorrow."

"More to the point," I said, breaking back in, "Yancey and I are going to find a way out of work ourselves, at least for the morning. The three of us, and Wanda if she can, are going over to your house once Stain goes to work and take everything of value that is incontestably yours, and bring it back here."

"Stain?" Monica snorted.

"Oh shit, I mean Stan."

"No," the frazzled woman laughed. "From now on, he is Stain to me." I should have liked to hear her laugh, but there was still an edge of hysteria that I found worrying.

*

The 'liberation' went off without a hitch. Turns out, it was an even better idea than I had surmised, as Monica apparently had stashed away a little over nine thousand dollars in cash that Stan... I mean The Stain, knew nothing about, but which had not been that well hidden.

Sure enough, the human dogshit bag had locked their bank account in the middle of the night. Now, with that cash, Monica could live with Wanda and Yancey without being financially dependent upon them. That was, I sensed, an important thing to her.

I finally got into work after lunch, and Thalia actually dropped by my office shortly thereafter.

Shit. She had on that new suit, the one she looked killer in. "When I asked management to be a little showy about work-life balance to get the vacation account down, I didn't expect you of all people, Clark, to be so... enthusiastic about being out of the office," she said tartly.

I told her what had happened, and what I had been doing that morning... minus the nine grand.

"Oh shit! I'm sorry, Clark," exclaimed Thalia, who never swore in any way. "If you... you know that if you need to help her out in any way, just let us know, maybe in advance if possible, and we will cover for you."

I grimaced and told her I'd try to keep things down to a dull roar.

Thalia just squeezed my shoulder in apology for coming in hot on me, a squeeze that trailed off much slower than I was prepared for, then she wafted out of the room.

Since when did Thalia 'waft'?

I got home close to on time, and was perusing my delivery Thai food menus, when my daughter burst into the house at full steam. "Dad! How come you didn't tell me?"

"What?"

"About Mrs. Ashburn! When Mary called her mom to check in and heard, we both hopped in her car and rushed right over!"

"But... you barely know Monica," I said slowly, confused at the furor.

"We can help! We want to help! It is summer, we have more free time right now than you guys do," Becca insisted.

She had more free time than me even during exams I briefly and irritably reflected. But worse, she, and apparently Mary, wanted to White Knight the situation. That was supposed to be my job...

I was not sure that Monica really needed two mother hens too young to drink, but I supposed all well-wishers, no matter how transient, would help.

"You and I are going over there right now, and Mary and I are cooking dinner," Becca announced, as if Wanda wanted or needed a couple of invaders in her kitchen.

"It is already almost seven!" I objected. "Have you even thought about a grocery list?"

"The Franklin's always have good stuff to cook," Becca waved airily. "Oh, and I'm raiding your freezer for some good venison."

Great. Now I was cooking. There was no way I was trusting my good stuff to their inexpert hands.

*

Sunday, the gang arrived at my back yard for the usual pool-centric good times. Lo and behold, Mary and Becca had even dragged poor Monica along for the afternoon. Apparently, she had retrieved some of her swimsuits during our liberation of her stuff. The one she wore was a nice, black one-piece. It even had a little cleavage...

I was happy to see her out and not hiding in my friends' basement. I expected to have to entertain her for most of the afternoon, however. Except, that didn't happen. Sure, we chatted a bit about how she was settling in as a boarder, and the extremely strong support she was getting from her boss and co-workers at her job, but she actually spent most of the afternoon hanging out with Becca and the hellions, who seemed determined to keep her laughing and relaxed. Maybe my daughter and her friends were going to be better at this than I had expected.

And Becca and the Hellions would make a great name for a band...

I actually managed to get a little work done for a bit, but then Stephanie showed up, almost an hour after the rest of the gang.

"Where have you been?" I heard Becca ask her as the cheerleader slid around the side of the house with an idle wave. "I thought you were blowing us off today."

"Booster Club Brunch," Stephanie replied easily. "Hey Mark," she idly greeted one young guy who had risen at her arrival, as if to speak to her. But she slid on by him politely, not giving him the chance to make her blow him off. "They wanted an Appearance from us," she went on to Becca.

"Of course," my daughter sauced back drily. "Booster Club is all about the students, after all."

"Ha! Yeah. The basketball players all stood around and looked awkward, and the members got to say they met all of them. Meanwhile, we cheerleaders do a routine, and otherwise stand around for show."

"Sure! Nice of them to invite the players, to cover for the central idea," Anne said drily.

"Aw, they are just a bunch of horny old geezers," Stephanie said good-naturedly.

"It's not fair," Carol put in. "My team has done two of those brunches, and we never get a cheerleader side-party."

Stephanie just looked at Carol askance for a moment. The softball player was draped over a chaise, drinking in the sun in one of the same bikinis she had brought on the cruise back in June. It wasn't quite the border-line inappropriate number that Stephanie was rocking, but it was leaving little to my experience-fueled imagination, either. "Yeah," said the blonde. "I can't imagine why we weren't required."

There it was again with Stephanie. She was trying to be complimentary, I'm sure. She was being complimentary. But she just somehow sounded catty doing it. It was hard to tell if it was inadvertent or not.

Becca introduced Monica to Stephanie, whose body language upon hearing her name told me that the story of Monica's midnight Bid For Freedom had reached her before then. Monica appeared to be a UNC legend already. They spoke for a moment or two, before Stephanie decided that the next item of her checklist was... me.

She really upped her game this time. First, she dove into the pool, swimming in a circle beneath the surface, then popped up and walked up the steps right toward me. I swear she did it in slow-motion, and it was like the fucking water dripping off of her body complied with the illusion.

Phoebe Cates had nothing... nothing on what came out of that pool at me.

Her eyes locked onto mine as she made her way toward me, with a definitely enhanced sway in her hips. I sighed and just let myself give her a good looking over. After all, I guessed I was a horny old geezer too, as far as she was concerned. She wore the same suit as the prior week. The bits of exposed tan-line were filling in nicely.

Instead of taking her by now de rigueur White Claw, she draped herself onto a seat near me and settled in on her side. Her arm languidly hung down across her stomach, the upper arm helpfully mashing her really unreasonably good tits together, threatening once more to squeeze them out of the bikini top like toothpaste.

"Do you always work on weekends, Mr. Howard?" she asked with what sounded like genuine curiosity. "Aren't they for lying out by the pool when the weather is good?"

"I am sitting out by the pool," I pointed out mildly.

"With your laptop... doing, what is that, spreadsheets?"

"Work has to get done," I said with a smile. If she was going to make me stare at her body, and do not mistake me, I did kind of have to stare at her body with her laying there like that, at least I could get in a little Clark Howard School of Life instruction. "If they hired someone else to make it so I only worked 40 hours, they'd have to pay me half as much."

"Still..." Stephanie mused, getting what I said, but not buying it. "How much do you make?"

"Just like a gentleman never asks a lady how old she is, you don't ask a man, or woman, what they make."

"You asked me my age," she pounced. "You even made me provide proof," she added, her fingers not remotely subconsciously rising to caress the inner curve of her breast where she had tucked her ID on one of her early gambits to torture me."

"You show me your age if you want alcohol," I shrugged. "I show the bank my income if I want to buy a bigger house."

"You want a bigger house than this one?" Stephanie asked in genuine surprise. I shrugged again.

Not really. I liked this house and where it was.

She sat there for a bit, keeping me from working remotely productively, before asking, "Think I might have a black cherry this time?" she asked sweetly. I sighed and leaned over to get a can out. She leaned further over too, you know, to watch. Uh huh.

I handed it to her, unopened this time.

"Oh, could you open it for me," she said, ready for my tiny attempt at pushback. "Fingernails, remember?" She waggled her long, elegant fingers at me. Her nails were indeed perfect. Of course. But they were not long enough to be a problem opening a can. She had to hold, and help lift and catch teammates, after all. I cracked the can, and handed it to her.

As a 'reward', she did the slightly suggestive hold and slurp, before finally having enough. Bouncing to her feet, she ran off toward some other kids, calling over her shoulder, "Thanks a lot, Howie. Don't work too hard!"

When the Hell did my last name become her nickname for me?

*

I was grocery shopping on a Thursday, and trying not to consider again turning my pineapple upside down in the cart. My quest for ideas on how to improve, well, create a dating life for myself was going pretty much as badly as it had been before things got weird. The fact remained that I was a middle-aged, divorced workaholic, whose friends were all either borderline children, or married people whom I had long ago trained not to try to set me up.

My momentarily sour mood in what was truthfully a great life was not improved when I turned onto the cereal aisle. Who should I find myself bumping into than...

"Stain! Uh... sorry, Stan! How are you?" I said politely, despite the rough start.

"Clark," he said smarmily. He wasn't being hostile. He was just always like that. "I'm doing good," he went on, clearly unfamiliar with the concept that 'How are you' is traditionally a rhetorical question... "In fact, life is treating me pretty well," he went on. "I even have had a date already. Got another one scheduled for this weekend, now that I don't have shit like Bridge parties to waste my time."

Or a wife you are supposed to be with, asshole.

"Both girls are young, too," he said snottily. I raised an eyebrow at that. "Yeah, mid-late-twenties, both of 'em. Guess you missed that train, buddy," the thirty-seven year-old product of Summer's Eve smirked superiorly.

Fuck you, Stain. I just had a threesome with two girls whose combined age barely equal yours, let alone mine.

"I'll live," I said out loud, in what sounded like good humor. Or was meant to.

"I'm looking at apartments this weekend," he added thoughtfully, looking like he was straining his brain deciding between Post and Kellogg's raisin brans. "Going to have to sell the house pretty quick though," he went on, as if sad.

"Monica doesn't want to keep it?" I asked carefully.

"Don't really have a choice, do we?" Stain replied offhandedly. "She apparently wants separate lives now. So be it. But we've got an adjustable rate mortgage, and the way things are right now, there's no way to keep it, now. Better to get out from under it quickly and split what equity we have."

The worst of it was, I knew he was probably right. But I also knew he really just wanted to make sure that Monica could not stay in her home, in the neighborhood where all her friends were.

It was already pretty clear that our entire subdivision was pretty much Team Monica in the situation.

"She will be scrambling," I suggested. At least until there was a settlement, his income probably dwarfed hers, or so I assumed.

"Eh, she's got a pretty sweet deal, holed up with the Franklins. I've seen what she is claiming she is paying in rent to them. She's taking them to the cleaners with her sob stories," Stain said dismissively. Then he leaned in with a leer, "Unless Yancey is collecting some other form of rent, maybe?"

Fuck you, Stain. I'm going to give you a bloody nose, then pour that entire box of raisin bran down into your lungs.

"Wanda would murder him," I said out loud. "But I have to run." I'd hate to kill you right here in the grocery store, on camera. "I have lots of errands to run."

"Yeah. Sucks to have to do all the domestic stuff on your own when they leave you high and dry, doesn't it," he replied, clearly leaning in on the fact that I'd been on my own for five years. The sumbitch was actually looking to establish some camaraderie with me...

It had to have been worth the night of terrified hysterics for Monica to get away from this sack of used cat litter.

*

Since I had not hosted a neighborhood do for a while, I had volunteered to have the crowd over by the pool before the weather started to turn. We are all mostly around my age or older in our neighborhood, so my pool is pretty much only an excuse to spend the evening outside. People wore suits if it was really hot, but only a few ever ventured in the water. Honestly, attendance was usually down when I hosted, so I didn't do it often. But I was doing it that week.

I really don't need help setting up for the evenings I host. They are after-dinner, so it is mostly just setting out packaged snacks and desserts, chilling beer and wine, and picking up a few bags of ice. But Wanda apparently decided that I needed help this time around, by which I mean she wanted Monica to get out of the house a little bit more. So an hour or so before things began, I had Monica, Yancey, and Wanda in my kitchen, 'helping'. Mostly we jawboned, and I took the opportunity to see how Monica was doing.

The long and short of it was, she was calm and moderately happy... or moderately relieved might be a better way of saying it. I could tell she was still fragile, but I knew that she'd get a lot of friendly support this week, since it was the first time most of the neighbors would see her in person since her midnight ride.

"It is too bad Stain won't be here tonight," Monica said in an excess of sincerity. "He loves these crackers."

"I've got others, if you'd rather," I said hastily.

"Ha! He had to love them because I like them so much," Monica said quickly. "Leave them out here!"

"I ran into The Stain at the grocery store yesterday," I said, still irritated by the encounter.

"You didn't punch him out without me," Yancey asked warily.

"No. I left his features un-rearranged. But you can be sure," I said firmly, "that I cherished and nurtured the mental image of doing so in my mind at multiple points in the conversation." Wanda laughed more heartily than Yancey.

Monica gave me a look that was hard to read.

I left the housing-related portion of the discussion for another time when we were not all about to have a nice evening. But I was still steamed about the conversation, and all things Stan in general. "He's such a tool, Monica. I'm sorry, but why did you put up with him so long?"

I was regretting asking that question while the words were still coming out of my mouth. It was inconsiderate of me to ask it. And I really did not want to hear my darkest suspicion confirmed, which was that he had a nine-inch cock and knew how to use it. How else could he have kept this lovely woman under his thumb? I searched for any way to deflect a direct answer.

"I'll bet he's cheated on you, too," I essayed.

Shit. That was not the best of questions, especially in present company, since the three of us had all lost our stones to throw on that front. Before I could babble any more, Monica illustrated why it was such a bad question.

"No, I really don't think so," Monica said, as if she wished that he had. "Stain is manipulative, boorish, and has pushed me around for years, but he's not a monster."

Ouch.

Yancey winced at that. Hard. Wanda and I winced a little as well.

"Why do you think he cheated, Clark?" Monica asked idly.

"Oh... I, uh... If he didn't cheat while you were under the same roof, he's making up for lost time now," I said, other irritations still under my saddle. "He told me that he's already been on a date! And has another scheduled."

"What?" Wanda asked, turning toward me with a dangerous look in her eye.

But Monica just waved a hand tiredly. "He might be feeling a little emasculated right now, you know."

"Quit making excuses for the Stain, Monica," I grumped. "He was even bragging about how young these women are. Like I'm supposed to be belittled by the fact that he's going out with a couple of late-twenty-somethings."

Both Wanda and Yancey snorted in restrained laughter at that. Monica didn't know what the Hell they thought was so funny.

"Well, maybe you are just more mature than he is, Clark," Monica replied tentatively. I could tell she was eager get a dig in on Stan while seeming to be the bigger person.

Yancey, meanwhile, rolled his eyes. Wanda almost lost it.

"Monica, help me carry out a couple of these twelve-packs to the coolers outside," I said hastily, before she could ask Wanda what the fuck she was laughing about so hard.

The party was a success. I think a few more folks came, even though it was just a pool hangout, than otherwise might, just to say hi to Monica. That, and to enjoy an un-Stained evening.

I dialed back my flirting, since I was hosting, and since I had made my point the prior couple of get-togethers. I could go back to flirting with Wanda, making her smile, and making Yancey look smug. Meanwhile, our other divorcee, Peter, must have decided in the interim to take up the torch for himself, and he was in fine form. He even managed to draw a scandalized yelp of laughter from stick-in-the-mud Hannah that drew most everyone's gaze. She was blushing profusely and trying to hide her grin with her hand. Who knew she had it in her... I'd always had her down as Church Lady to the bone.

*

Becca chose to bring round the crew on Saturday that weekend, and even chose to tell me in advance! I loved it, because it meant I barely needed to clean up after everybody left my backyard the night before, and didn't have to put anything away at all, just reload the coolers.

I did wake up bolt upright at about 7:30 the next morning when I realized that I had left half a case of beer in the soda coolers. Leaving it out there might have given some people the wrong idea.