Lake Therapy

It was probably the best therapy I knew. I could sit here all day and do this, and I probably would. Click, aim, cast, retrieve, search the next spot, repeat. It seems mindless; but, it's anything but. It's a battle between the fish's natural tendencies and wariness, and a fishermen's ability to coax them into hitting an artificial piece of plastic, as if it were their next great meal. Each cast was made with the next two or three already planned. The shoreline is searched for the right spot, the one where the fish will be expected to be sitting. Not in front of the bush, not behind the bush, but in that little slit between the branches that gives them protection from both larger predators, as well as cover from their dinner seeing them. Each cast had to be perfect. A few inches short and you wouldn't entice the fish to go after the bait. A few inches to either side or too long and you're hung in a bush and chasing away all the fish for the next fifty feet, while you recover your five-dollar bait. It's a mind game. Sure, you're smarter than the fish, but you're playing on their home turf, and sometimes that's all the advantage they need.

I'd been here, doing this, for almost three hours. The sun was getting high, or at least would be, if not for the quickly approaching cloud bank. It's mid-summer. These are to be expected. They usually don't last long, but they can be harsh. Violent winds whipping the waves to a froth, blowing over trees, slashing rain, as cold as liquid ice. Not fun. But no worries. I know I have my rain suit in the storage compartment, and if it gets bad enough, I can put up the canvas cover. If it gets even worse, I can totally enclose the passenger cockpit of my heavily modified runabout to make it storm proof, or mostly so. Once erected, the rubberized canvas and clear plastic flexible windows create a warm, dry and quite cozy respite from the rain and wind. It was an option that I had never regretted purchasing when I bought the boat. I've had to use it many times in the past to deal with the fast moving storms. Pull into the back of a small bay to get some shelter from the wind, point the nose towards the storm, drop the anchors to hold the boat in place and then put all the canvas up. Sitting out these short lived storms was always a perfect time for a short nap. The sound of the rain, even hard rain, seemed to be soothing, when it was hitting the soft canvas roof. It often got a little stuffy, so I'd ditch the rain suit, and if I had to sit long enough to ride out the storm, a good portion of my clothes. My wife always used to complain, that I did it just to get her out of her clothes. She was partly right. I did enjoy getting her out of her clothes in the boat, or in the woods, or in the lake or anywhere else I could, with difficulty, coax her to take some or all of her clothes off. Sure, it ended up in sex. What fun would it be if it didn't?

I sat, floating, the electric motor off, the rod in my hand, staring at the shoreline. Why did I have to think about that? I was out here so I could get away from all the reminders that she wasn't here anymore. I took a deep breath and halfheartedly made the next cast. It was short, but I wasn't surprised. My concentration had been broken. I swiveled in my chair to look at the back of the boat, the spot my wife liked to fish from. For thirty years she'd put up with my frequent fishing trips. I liked to think she eventually learned to enjoy them. It was one of several things we did together. She liked hunting better, so I learned to hunt, just to have more time alone with her. In thirty years, you would have thought that I'd have had more than enough time with her, but you'd be wrong. I'd trade all the fishing I could do in all the future years for just one more day with her. But that wasn't going to happen. That ship had sailed, now it was time, as my kids told me, to find a way to move forward.

My daughter was always telling me that mom wouldn't want me to be alone. I'm not a very good bachelor. Oh, I can cook, I can do my own laundry, but housekeeping? If I hadn't hired a maid, by now the house would look like a major disaster area. But finding another woman to be with? I wasn't really interested. It hadn't even been six months yet, but it felt like an eternity.

I shook my head and took the next cast and the next and the next. My head was getting back in the game, searching, finding that perfect spot, coaxing the fish to respond and hit my bait. Three fish and several dozen casts later, I glanced up at the sky again, the sound of thunder pulling my attention away from the water. A sharp crash of thunder following very closely after the bright flash told me all I needed to know. It was going to be bad and it was coming in a lot bigger hurry than I expected. I considered the rain suit, but with the lightning, continuing to fish until it passed was a stupid idea. As much as I hated being alone, intentionally risking getting hit by lightning, wasn't something I would do. I was more intelligent than that, not to mention that she'd be totally pissed at me for giving up that way. I'd never given up on anything in my whole life. Giving up on life would be dishonoring her memory, not to mention a cheat way out.

I looked at the sky again and put my rod down. It only took five minutes to put up the canvas. I even put the clear zipper side windows on to keep the rain out when it came. I'd zip the last piece, between the roof and the stern, into place after I found an anchorage. And I was going to have to do that damn soon. The wind was already picking up fast, and where the wind was blowing me right now wasn't nearly as protected as I wanted. I could see that the waves outside the cove I was in, that were only a few inches high a few minutes ago, were now foot high windswept white caps. The tops of the waves breaking over and the spray blowing off each broken crest. I looked up and down the shoreline. I was already partly protected, but if the wind shifted, and it was sure to, I'd be in a rough spot. I needed protection on three sides. I needed a much smaller cove to slip into. I'd fished one earlier that would do nicely. But I'd have to hit those whitecaps I was protected from, right now. to get there. Oh well, that's what the canvas was for, right?

I stored my rods, pulled up the electric tolling motor and then ducked down into the driver's seat under the canvas. I fired the big i/o and eased away from the shoreline before giving it more throttle. It wasn't the fastest boat on the lake, but it had been designed for the big waves or the great lakes, so the foot high whitecaps were nothing for the deep V hull to split. True, it bounced the nose pretty high in the air at this speed, but I didn't feel like pounding myself to death. I eased around the point at a comfortable fifteen miles an hour as the rain started to hit the windshield. Huge wet drops splatted, making it harder to see what was ahead. Not to worry, in this weather there wouldn't be too much traffic.

The rain picked up in intensity. Slashing would almost describe it. I could barely see fifty feet in front of me. Both shorelines were lost to me in the deluge. The GPS map in front of me kept me heading in the right direction, but the bigger worry was someone doing the same thing I was, trying to find shelter. I could easily run into another boat. I throttled back a little more, dropping my speed enough that the bow now soared higher in the air with each wave and then slammed down again. Up and back down with a solid thud that sent water cascading out both sides from under the bow as the deep fiberglass hull cleaved into the water. Up and down, up and down. I could sense the wind was changing direction. I knew it would. I could feel the change in the waves as it began to turn a little more out of the west. Never a good sign, that. It usually meant that it was going to last longer.

Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Up and "HOLY SHIT!" I swore, as the bow came down, this time barely ten feet from a small green kayak that I hadn't been able to see through the rain until now. "What the hell are you doing out here!" I hollered, more at myself for not seeing it before I almost hit it. My boat slid barely five feet from its bow, narrowly missing running it over. I shook my head and turned around, taking the waves broadside for a moment, causing some serious rolling. Now I understood. She was hanging on for dear life, her paddle apparently lost. She looked like a drowned rat, her blond hair hanging down over and around her face while the slashing rain pelting her mercilessly. The waves were rolling her side to side so badly that I wondered how she hadn't already capsized. I pulled around her, pulling up broadside. It didn't take more than a second for her to realize that she was safer in a bigger boat and was grabbing for the hand rail. I barely had time to throw the engine in neutral before I ducked down under the canvas and darted out into the rain.

"OH FUCK!" I grunted at the feeling of the icy drops pelting my face and exposed skin, quickly soaking into my clothes. In seconds I felt like I'd had a bucket of ice water dropped on me. I grabbed hold of her as she tried to claw her way into the boat, and pulled her bodily up and in as she kicked free of the small kayak. It wasn't graceful, but it worked. She came over the side as I pulled, tumbling backwards to the floor, my head thumping hard against the other side of the boat. "OH FUCK!" I swore again, at the sudden pain in the back of my head. At least I got her into the boat. I could feel the boat rocking wildly in the waves as the wind pushed it around broadside. I didn't waste a lot of time. I half lifted, half pushed her off of me, onto one of the rear facing seats under the canvas cover, and then crawled, still rubbing my head, to the driver's seat. I grabbed the throttle without even getting into the seat, stuffing it roughly in gear as I spun the steering wheel to put us bow on into the wind just as one of the waves washed over the stern corner. I wasn't worried about the water, too much, the automatic bilge pump was designed to take care of this kind of thing. I'd taken whole waves over the bow before without incident, and this one was a lot less water.

"What about my Kayak?" I heard the woman call to me over the sound of the engine and pounding rain.

"We'll get it after the storm. No way in this wind!" I called back to her as she huddled against the slashing rain. I looked back where she sat, still partly exposed due to where the canvas roof ended. "Come up here. Get out of the rain!" I called to her as I slipped into the driver seat, keeping the boat now pointed into the wind. I throttled up a little, making more headway, even though the bow was still rising and falling like a demented bucking bronco. I saw her out of the corner of my eye, as she crawled along the short aisle to the forward-facing passenger seat, from the rearward facing starboard side seat behind me. She slipped into the passenger seat and held onto the dashboard as the boat lifted high in the air and slammed down again. I frowned, hating for my boat to take that kind of beating, and pushed the throttle forward a bit more. The ride was choppier, but it didn't take long for me to find the sweet spot where the hull cut from the top of one wave to the other with a lot less butt pounding bouncing.

The deep V did its job the way it was intended and in only a few minutes I was driving toward the far shore and the small cove, the waves falling off quickly as we approached the lee shore. I throttled back and eased into the cove. The rain was still coming down hard, not quite the slashing storm it had been, but it was still hard. I opened the split windshield section and stepped into the open bow with the fishing seat still in place, and dug out the anchor. I tossed it over, threw out the right amount of line and the tied it off. I ducked back under the canvas top, closed the windshield behind me and then moved to the stern. It took two full minutes of standing in the pouring rain before I had the stern anchor set and the stern cover zipped into place and snapped down. Other than one small area below the windshield, we were now effectively a tent on the water.

The design of the boat was that the side seats were a pair of forward and backward facing seats, they could be folded down to make a six foot long bench seat. I did that now for the starboard, driver's side, seat to give us more room and then plopped down on it, completely soaked to the skin. I pulled my t-shirt off and wrung the water out of, getting what seemed like half a gallon from it, before I hung it over the steering wheel. I looked at my guest, taking in a good look for the first time as she pulled the soaked flop hat off her head, her life jacket already laying on the deck between the seats.

She was maybe forty or so, long blondish hair with some gray streaks in it, the shirt she had on was plastered to her body with water, a string bikini top visible through the soaking wet material. She had long slender legs that looked like she must walk or exercise quite a bit, and from what I could tell, an otherwise nicely proportioned body.

"I want to thank you for pulling me out of there." She said, with a pleasant smile. "It was beginning to wonder if I was going to make it out there."

"What in the world were you even doing out there in a storm like this?" I asked a little incredulously, trying hard not to let the "what a stupid thing to do" tone of voice creep into what I said.

"I suppose you must think I'm a complete flake, but to be honest, I didn't want to be there either. I was trying to make for shelter when a wave rolled me. I managed to get righted and then I lost my paddle. After that I was at the mercy of the wind." I shook my head, actually feeling sorry for her. I could only imagine how helpless she must have felt in that wind, just hanging on without any control. She must have seen it on my face and nodded. "Yeah. Me too. Thank you again."

"We can go after your boat when this storm quits." I said, grabbing hold of the leg of my shorts and trying to wring some of the water out of it.

"I'm sorry you had to get soaked."

"It all dries." I answered.

She nodded. "You don't mind if I wring some water out too, do you?"

"Help yourself." I nodded.

She pulled the t-shirt up and off, twisting it to squeeze water out of it into the aisle like I had. She hung it over the back of her seat and then wiggled her shorts off, leaving her in just a small, pale yellow string bikini. She had a very good-looking body, modest sized breasts, maybe a thirty-two C or so, as I suspected, a firm flat stomach and nicely shaped hips and legs. She squeezed the water out of the shorts and hung them over the seat as well. "At least I have a swim suit under my clothes."

"Not quite as lucky on my end. I brought one, but never got it put on."

"Oh. Well, I guess, if you don't mind me being here, I can close my eyes, if you want to change. Since you rescued me and everything."

I chuckled. "You sure you want a strange man getting naked in front of you? I might be a rapist or something."

"If you were, I'm sure I wouldn't still have this suit on. No, I think I can trust you that much."

"I appreciate that." I answered, trying to figure out my next step. "But my suit is a little revealing."

"So? My daughter talked me into this silly bikini. I mean, look at it, how much more can it possibly show?"

I chuckled. "You'd be surprised. Just for the record, I think it looks pretty damn good."

"Oh, well," She said, blushing a little. "Weren't you going to put on your suit?"

"I'd love to put it on for you, but you're kinda sitting on it." I answered her, pointing to the seat she was sitting on. "Under there."

"Oh.. OH! I get it." She slipped off the seat and stood in the aisle, bent over, her butt sticking out at me. I could make out the shape of her outer lips as her bikini bottom pulled snugly against her sex, making my dick twitch in my soaked briefs. It took her a moment to figure out that she could lift the front of the seat and expose a storage compartment beneath it. She pulled out several items and put them back in. "I don't see one."

"It's there. Red one." I said, wondering if she was going to appreciate what I had for a suit. It was a suit my wife gave to me, more as a prank than anything, however I wore it every time we were alone at the lake, embarrassing her and making her blush, when I took my shorts off and that was all I was wearing, which was usually less than she had on.

"Oh, here!" She said, pulling the small red men's bikini suit out of the compartment. She held it up as she turned back around and sat down. "Interesting." She said holding it up with two fingers. "Not much to it, is there? I bet your wife loves you in this." I reached out and took the suit from her fingers, the smile disappearing from my face. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No." I answered quietly. "If you just close your eyes, that'll be fine."

"Right. Close my eyes." She sat there, her eyes closed while I started to take my shorts and briefs off. "I feel silly, sitting here like this."

"Okay." I answered, agreeing that she probably did feel silly. I was on my knees, trying to work the tiny, stretch material, suit up my thighs.

"OH! I'm sorry!" She gasped, as she quickly pulled her hands over her eyes. "I didn't mean to. I mean you said okay, so I thought."

"Um. Yeah." I answered, blushing a little as I tried to tuck my mostly hard dick into the thin little suit. "Not that the suit doesn't show almost as much. There. You can look now."

"You sure?" She said, her hands still over her eyes, her face, neck and ears beet red.

"Yeah. I'm covered." I answered, rolling back to sit on the seat again, the thin stretchy material of the little suit outlining my hardon so snugly that I could even see the shape of my mushroom head through it. "It's a little thin. I used to wear it for my wife."

She pulled her hands down and if anything, her face got even more red as she looked at the shape of my dick in the thin suit. "I'm sure she enjoyed every moment of it."

"Actually, it was a bit of a gag gift, because I was always trying to get her to wear smaller bikinis. But I kinda turned the tables on her and wore it out here, whenever we were alone. Or at least I used to."

She looked at me. "I'm sorry. I guess I don't mean to pry, but it seems like that wound is pretty fresh."

I looked up at her for a few seconds, before I realized what she meant. "Yeah. A little over six months."

"Three years for me. Car accident. Yours?"

"Pancreatic cancer."

"Ouch. That's tough."

"Yeah. My daughters want me to start dating, but I don't much feel like it."

"They want you to date so soon?"

"I'm a horrible bachelor."

"Can't cook?"

"Oh, I can cook just fine. I can even do my own laundry. But housework? I can't even use the words in public that my daughters use for my housekeeping abilities. If I dust once a year that should be enough, right?"

She laughed. "By the way. I'm Dana. Thought you might want to know who you were getting naked in front of."

"Daniel," I answered. "Glad to meet you, Dana."

"I didn't mean to look."

"I know." I answered before going quiet. We sat, listening to the rain pound down on the canvas roof, kind of staring at each other without looking like we were. I couldn't help notice that her nipples had gotten hard, and not because of cold, since it was getting quite warm inside our little enclosure. The engine heat seeped in through the engine housing cover, along with our body heat and breathing. So, no, it wasn't because of cold. The more obvious her nipples, the harder my dick got, and of course, the more it threatened to push right out of the waistband.