Guilty Pleasures Ch. 11

"Monica?" I snorted. Bingo. "No. She's a neighbor, but she's as much Becca's friend as mine these days. I've been helping her through a rough divorce recently, so we are close, but no. No. Way."

"Really?" he asked, conscious bewilderment and subconscious hope mixing in his voice.

"We've shared too much difficult weirdness lately to make me think that way." I shrugged. It was true enough. "She's in a good place though, these days" I added, as if thinking aloud. "Not ready for a relationship, I don't think. But I'm glad to see that she definitely doesn't hate men. At all," I snorted that last as if to myself.

Charlie just nodded, eyes still on Monica.

I clapped him on the shoulder. "Nice to meet you, but now that Monica made me get out of my chair, I guess I better go see how many other kids have been visiting my house that I've never noticed before.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Howard."

I wandered off, and damned if there weren't two more kids that I didn't recognize who were repeat offenders. I needed to be more observant.

Observant like Stephanie...

I checked my watch and wandered over to the hellions.

"So when do we get asked out on dates, Mister H?" Carol demanded immediately upon my approach.

"Right after your fathers, especially Mary's, move to Mars," I said.

They all looked hurt. Not acting hurt... hurt.

"Come on guys," I said, apology in my voice, because I was damned if I was going to apologize out loud. "Do any of you really want to actually date me? I am extremely certain we have all had this conversation."

Carol snorted. Mary giggled. Anne looked thoughtful. Anne was always the dangerous one...

"Mary, we do have a kitchen date. You are sous chef today," I said, pointing at my watch to change the subject. Please, God, change the fucking subject.

"Aw, come on!" she objected merrily.

"It's what you get for being good at it."

"Where's Stephanie when we need her," Mary grumbled.

Things settled down after that into the usual routine. Mary was, as always, very good at helping out and things went smoothly the rest of the afternoon.

When I cleaned up after the party that night, God damn it if there wasn't a wad of balled up sheets from my guest bedroom sitting on top of the washer!

I whipped out my phone.

ME: You just left them on the washer? You couldn't start the machine?

MONICA: [Thumbs-up emoji] [Thanks emoji] [eggplant emoji]

The fucking eggplant emoji?!?

MONICA: Seriously, sorry. I couldn't find the detergent.

ME: I guess I better teach you its location out of self-defense! Do I want to smell those sheets?

MONICA: I don't know. Do you?

*

The next Tuesday, I got a text right before lunchtime.

MONICA: I am driving back from a meeting and will pass by your company's galactic headquarters. Care to buy me lunch in your famed five-star eatery? I have a present for you...

I was intrigued. And eating with Monica meant I would not have to eat with any of my team, and thus would not have to endure whatever whiny begging they had on tap currently.

Monica sailed in our front door, looking fabulous in her trim business suit. I was waiting there for her, to get her past Security. Our crack Security team consisted of Mel, a long retired school teacher, who mostly snoozed at his desk and largely just kept out salespeople. Monica carried a frigging brown paper grocery bag in her hands, which she presented to me extravagantly.

I looked inside.

"Tide Pods?" I said incredulously. "The extra large package?"

I don't use Tide Pods.

"I feel I should contribute," Monica laughed.

"Come eat," I sighed.

As we walked through the building toward our commissary, which, while certainly not five stars, actually was pretty damned good, we ran into Tasha, heading in the same direction. She looked at Monica curiously.

"Tasha, this is Monica Ash... Monica Whitney. Right Monica?" She had made a name change part of her post divorce agenda. The two women greeted each other. I could tell that Tasha, who misses very little, was already surmising that Monica was the friend who had endured the bad breakup.

"Monica was just dropping off some supplies she owes me," I went on. Inspiration struck. "Why don't you have lunch with us, Tasha? With Monica there you won't have to listen to me grovel about my budget request." With Tasha joining us, I would not be tempted to do any teasing about Charlie. I would rather keep that powder dry for Wednesday night, so I could distract Yancey when Monica started in on me about Stephanie.

My brilliant plan backfired when Monica and Tasha spent half the lunch talking about corporate accounting. I reminded myself that I was fortunate I was already in a place financially that meant I'd never have to again in my life work anywhere but startups. God save me from large corporate bureaucracies.

At least the scenery was nice as I ate my sandwich and cringed at the idea of all the reports Monica and Tasha thought we really should be producing in a perfect world. Tasha was wearing the best of her new, form-flattering suits, and even had on a new blouse that was worn open at the neck. No cleavage of course, this was Tasha after all, but it too flattered her form. And Monica... was Monica.

Tasha biffed off early, as she had a scheduled conference call with our VC partners in New York.

Monica watched her go, quietly. "You boss is hot," she observed.

"What?"

"I'm sorry, Clark," she said turning to me completely earnestly. "I wasn't sure. Was I supposed to be wing-manning for you today?"

"With Tasha?" I gulped. "Oh good God, no."

"She looks at you, you know."

No no no. Nononono. No.

Tasha?

*

The next month, encompassing the end of Summer, was both a blur and largely uneventful.

Yancey and Wanda were both upset with me for letting 'that Stephanie girl' slip through my fingers. Wanda was pissed partly because she was tired of me not having someone regular in my life, but mostly because she is evil and a shit disturber, and had wanted to see me bring that particular girl to Bridge Night so she could watch the heads explode. Yancey had just wanted to see more of her on general principals...

I only found one more load of bedsheets in my washing machine, and I had no idea who Monica had messed them up with...

Stephanie was nowhere in evidence.

Becca's end-of-summer boyfriend did not keep his status into the beginning of the fall semester. She was not broken up about breaking up in the least, and I fretted that I was somehow giving her the idea that relationships were disposable. But I didn't fret that much, because that boy had needed disposing of.

Carol kept her boyfriend, and Mary got a new one. Anne replaced me as Monica's go-to to see movies with. I worried that my older friend was putting ideas into the head of my younger one that were even more disastrous than merely fucking her best buddy's father.

Monica respected Bro Space for the most part and only crashed Yancey's and my happy hour once, but she and I became quite religious about watching the Braves every week at BW3 as the season went into the stretch.

It was a calming respite from a summer of sexual madness.

Well, for the most part.

I did have to travel to Vietnam for several days with Tasha.

The sex there was amazing, but not with Tasha. No, thank God! But an associate of one of our vendors there and I hit it off well. Really well. Two long nights well.

*

The week after Tasha and I returned was consumed with work. I do a lot of work while I am at my house, so I don't generally work terribly late at the office. That week, I did. Every night, virtually every employee was in the office until well after dark, and I saw almost no friends. Rain wiped out the whole weekend for pool hangouts.

Finally, I insisted on bailing from the office in time to watch what was looking like a crucial Braves game, and Monica was the first non-work companion I had had since before going to Vietnam. She sidled up to the bar stool next to me.

"How ya doing, Stranger? How was 'Nam, man?" she added in a hippie-sounding voice. "Will you be haunted for life by your time in the jungle?"

"Well, I will certainly remember it," I said with a smile.

"Oh? Did you and Hot Boss hook up?"

"No, idiot. That is not happening. Ever. Are you trying to get me fired just before all my stock options become worth something?"

"Then why the memories?" Monica asked, her eyes on the TV screen where our pitcher had gotten himself in a bit of a pickle in the top of the second.

"A junior executive with one of our vendors and I found some common ground," I said into my beer with a grin.

"Describe this junior executive," Monica said interestedly.

I looked at her for a moment. "Hypnotizing eyes. Bad teeth. Legs that should be continued on the next girl." Take that, curious kitty.

"So how'd those legs feel wrapped around your waist?" Monica asked, poking at her celery.

"Oh, you want to go there, do you?" I chuckled. I could play chicken too.

"Curiosity," Monica said, turning to look at me seriously, "dictates."

I looked at her. She looked at me.

So be it.

"We had a drink at my hotel after having dinner separately. She mentioned that my hotel was notoriously luxurious. I agreed and offered to show my room as an example. Said legs were wrapped around me in just a few minutes after we walked through my door. No foreplay beyond taking each other's clothes off." I looked at Monica, who seemed to be listening with just mild interest.

Her nipples, visible against the fabric of her dress, were less mildly interested. So, I was entertaining her...

"Turns out the wet bar in my room was just the right height to set her little ass on," I went on. "We made a mess of it, but I still was able to make us a drink after, before I bent her over the bottom of the bed and we went again. Did you know, Monica that a lady with long legs makes for all sorts of lovely opportunities and angles?" I asked innocently.

Monica, for all her multifarious virtues, is not long-legged.

"I have learned lately that a guy with long legs presents a remarkable scope of options," Monica replied blandly.

Stan, her ex-husband, is not at all long-legged. Honesty dictates my saying that my legs are not remarkably long either.

"The third time..."

"Third time?" Monica interrupted. "Impressive, for a casual tour of your hotel room."

"I was motivated. The third time was almost conventional. I was a little tuckered, but she was insistent, and obliged me by doing all the work."

"Wow."

"Not one stitch of foreplay the whole time, Monica," I said, surprised at how much I was enjoying telling the tale, even to a female friend. "It was just pure power injection from the word go."

"Sounds fun. Was it?"

"Honestly? It was amazing. But ultimately kind of weird, you know?"

"Sounds like a good trip."

"That was not all," I smirked. "Two nights later, I called her and offered her a nightcap."

"Eager boy!"

"She didn't even bother with an excuse. She just finished her drink, stood, looked at me, and headed for my room."

"You know, I honestly enjoy a little oral sometimes," Monica said, shaking her head.

Oh wow, did Monica enjoy some oral, I remembered briefly.

"So does she. I made sure to start with that, and once I got my face between her legs, my cock had no hope of following along there."

"What?"

"Our second night was all oral, all night," I grinned. "Turns out, that's fun too."

Monica just lifted her beer to me and we clinked glasses.

The Braves had men on second and third, one out. We watched as a double drove in both.

"You never once said a word about her boobs," Monica observed.

"Eh," I said, making a wavering gesture with my hand.

A walk was followed by a double-play. So much for the inning.

"Well, rampaging Vietnamese sexaholics can't have everything," Monica snorted. "Unlike your boss. She's got it going on all over the place."

"I am not hitting on Tasha. What the hell is it with you with her?"

"She's hot. You're my friend."

"You think she's so hot, you go hook up with her," I snorted.

"Maybe I will," Monica said silkily.

I looked at her balefully. "If you decide you are going to spread your sapphic wings, please leave my boss out of it. I like my job."

"Who says I have not already spread my wings?" Monica said with a glint in her eye. "We haven't talked in two weeks."

I looked at her. I also shifted in my seat to relieve some pressure. "Who? Where? What happened?"

She chuckled. "Who says I have, either?"

"I told you about my far east adventures," I sad hotly.

"A woman likes a little mystery," Monica said. I grimaced at her. "Tell you what Clark," she said, as if making a concession, "Instead, I will give you a blow-by-blow of how I took Salvatore Gomez, who works in our sales division, up to the roof garden at our HQ and sucked his dick at one in the afternoon, under the wisteria."

I had wanted to confirm for sure that her whole other woman schtick was bullshit, like I suspected, but a public BJ at her place of employment sounded like a good tale too...

*

College football had started, and so had school. That meant Saturdays were no longer an option for Becca to bring friends over--any friends, not just Stephanie, who wasn't coming back anyway. Right?

But Sunday was very warm, and gloriously sunny. I had a pack of kids in my back yard again.

It felt good.

My pool was not heated, and any day the weather could turn, then I would have no more crowds of kids to guard my beer from, and, like most other parents, I would not see my daughter much for the rest of the semester.

I loved these hangouts.

I would also, I reflected as I stared over toward the poolside at Anne, Mary, and Carol, very much miss looking at those three wearing next to nothing.

Already, the fall was having an effect. Mary and Anne wore jeans shorts instead of bikini bottoms. Carol, God bless her, still hung in there, and her magnificent, athletic ass, and powerful thighs remained almost entirely bare in her tiny bikini bottom. Thank you Carol. Somebody still cares about me...

Monica also cared about me. She, at this late stage in the season, had gone out and bought yet another new bikini. Again, it was not the most revealing, but the sky blue and white pattern, and its perfect fit on her lovely bod were utterly striking. Unfortunately (Fortunately?), she actually did not care about me. The suit seemed to have been purchased for young guys like the three she was talking-to, and low-key flirting with, pretty much from the start of the afternoon.

She had an evaluative look on her face, and I readied myself to find a bundle of sheets in my washer.

She was just going to give one a try, right? At least, just one at a time?

Those worries were interrupted by another bundle of worries in the delicious shape of Anne, who had come back over to sit with me. "We all forgive you for not asking us out," she said, without preamble.

"Thank you," I said drily, but meaning it.

"Well... let's just say that we understand why," she corrected herself. "And in understanding lies the seed of eventual forgiveness," she chirped with a grin.

"Careful," I said. "Maybe I am just trying to manipulate you guys into asking me out!"

Anne needed to be careful? Quit flirting with the smoking hot twenty year old with the unhealthy attraction toward you, Clark!

Fortunately, she greeted my sally with a sarcastic smirk that contained a comfortingly small amount of speculation.

"I mean, you three are so easy to manipulate," I added, setting the bait for something I'd wanted to tease all of them about.

"Oh we are?" Anne challenged.

"Yes. Stephanie and I were talking, and..."

"Wait, the two of you actually talked?" Anne interrupted merrily.

"Yes," I went on mildly. "She wanted to make sure that I was appropriately grateful for the way she manipulated the three of you into flirting with me all the time this summer."

"What?" Anne laughed.

"That's the way she saw it," I grinned.

In a bound, Anne was gone, heading for Mary and Carol. Two short barks of laughter greeted her arrival, and all three were on their way back toward me.

Carol took the seat next to me, turning all the way around in front of me before she did so, making sure that I got a full and complete view of that lovely, mostly exposed ass before she sat on it. Anne and Mary both stood over her shoulders, Mary with a pronounced lean forward in my direction...

"See?" I said, grinning at them, both in amusement of their antics, and in appreciation of my sudden view. "She's still got you doing it."

"On what planet does Stephanie have anything to do with how we act?" Carol asked.

I shrugged. "She's pretty smart... Possibly the smartest of all of us."

That was greeted with general skepticism. But Anne thought for a second longer and gave Stephanie some props. "I don't know that she is smarter then any of us," she mused, meaning the three of them. It seemed an unspoken given that I was not as smart as any of them. "She works harder, for sure. And she is a really good student. But smarter?"

"Look," I said, having fun with this, "Stephanie observed some phenomena. She formed an hypothesis. Then she set up an experimental protocol to test her hypothesis, which yielded the results she expected and desired."

"We did the same," Mary said, a little hotly. "Only we knew that she was the lab rat, and she only thought we were."

"Really?" I observed, sticking the knife in. "There were three of you... I mean four, no, five if you count Becca, cooking up your scheme, and only one of her. She might have been missing some revelatory predicate data that you were all in possession of, but hey, that's science."

Carol, to her credit, was the least resistant to my somewhat tendentious idea. "Well, Mister H, I hope you at least thanked her for her efforts."

Before I could stop myself, I said, "Oh yes. Repeatedly, and at length."

I was greeted by three pairs of glittering eyes.

Quit flirting with the disaster squad, Clark.

Then Carol, demonstrating that she is indeed smarter than me, as advertised, sprang her trap. "So when do we all get our thanks?" she asked sweetly. All three of them hunched their shoulders forward and leaned in together toward me at that.

I buried my head in my hands. Partly it was shame at being hoist on my own petard. Mostly it was to act as a circuit-breaker to protect my brain from barely-covered boob overload.

Before I could dare pull my face back up, the three all ran off, laughing.

I shook my head. Even trying to tease them was just a bad idea. They had bailed for now, but each was now thinking about being 'thanked' at some point. If they all pursued that agenda individually, I might have a chance. If they plotted together, I was done for. If they wanted to be thanked together...

Monica was rubbing off on me.

Where was Monica anyway? Oh shit. Cleans sheets here we come.

No, she was now sitting on the edge of the pool, leaning over toward her three dudes, who were in the water.

Again, no. Only two were the same. The original third had given up or been dismissed, and a new candidate had entered the group.

And why shouldn't I emulate Monica?

Becca had stopped freaking out about the prospect. Her only requirement these days about what I got up to was that she not have to hear about it. She'd actually encouraged her buddies to not just hit, but hammer on me, just to get me to hook up with another of her friends.

I'd never meet either Carol or Anne's parents. Hopefully.

Even Yancey was more eye-rolls than restrained punches these days. And Wanda was damned near... permissive?