Lyric’s Tale: A Maple Ferry Story

Author’s Note:

Please note that all characters are over eighteen. This is a work of fiction, of my own making, and all resemblances to real people or situations are purely circumstantial.

I hope you enjoy Lyric’s Tale and your first trip to Maple Ferry.

— The Antipodean

Lyric felt the cold slowly creep through his black jeans and up to his thighs as he sat holding his knees to his chest, back bowed slightly, underneath the cedar hedge that separated his back yard from Evelyn's. Evelyn had moved in five years ago, when Lyric had just been starting high school, and he had never shaken that puppy-dog stupor that teen boys get when an attractive woman steps into their world. Evelyn wasn't supermodel hot, but she was certainly Maple Ferry hot. Meaning that in the pool of accessible, engaging, and single women that lived in Maple Ferry, Evelyn was not the hardest on the eyes.

The spot where Lyric now sat, hidden amongst the evergreen branches, had been a favourite retreat of his since well before Evelyn arrived. Over the years, starting as a small boy, Lyric had created his own little hideaway in the hedge, a place where he could avoid his chores, read comic books in peace, and sit quietly with his ear pods in to escape people. It was only after Evelyn had moved in, and Lyric had become a little older, that his hiding spot began to offer certain other advantages.

Lyric struggled with relating to other people at the best of times. At school he had been a loner, the tall skinny kid who wore clothes that were too baggy, shoes that were too worn and torn, and whose hair was too long to be tidy but too short to be edgy. It wasn't that he was disliked or bullied or hated on, Maple Ferry was too small a town for that kind of behaviour to go on without there being noise in the community. But, perhaps, worst of all was that at school, Lyric was just disregarded. He was one of the silent ones, the kids who came to school, did okay, stayed heads-down and then left.

So, with not much direction from his parents and zero support or even interest from the school's guidance department, he was lucky to have limped out of his senior year with a solid B average and no chance at local colleges or universities until he'd finished at least one semester, if not a full year, at Maple Ferry Community College. Leaving him in the situation where, while his cousins Trevor and Stacey were comparing their dorm assignments and class schedules for their freshman year at the big State university, Lyric was looking to move to full time hours at the local cafe, and scanning the MFCC class listings to see what he could take that might be remotely interesting enough to get him to focus, so he could transfer out to State in the Spring of the following year.

Head still resting on his knees, Lyric looked up at the dark, quiet house. Through the evergreen boughs he could see the reflection of his hedge in the blackened windows of Evelyn's lounge, the sliding doors that entered her kitchen from the backyard, and the bedroom window straight ahead of him. She wasn't home. The house was too dark, the building too quiet. Lyric's mind wandered back through tonight's events. His last shift at the cafe had ended in disaster.

While not the most popular barista in the cafe, not by a longshot, Lyric was inarguably the best skilled. Lyric cared about the drinks he made, he made sure the equipment on the bar in the cafe was gleaming at the end of his shift and put just as much effort into fine-tuning the grinders and espresso machine when he walked onto the bar. The customers of The Sugarshack had taken note of Lyric's savant-like approach to drink creation, and so had the management. Tips on Lyric's shifts were 20% higher than any other shift in the cafe, no matter what time of day he was working, and sales shifted staggeringly from brewed coffee to espresso beverages when he was working the bar. In short, Lyric was a cash cow for the shop, and the staff who worked along-side him.

Which made it so much more difficult for Lyric to process what had happened after closing the cafe.

At 10:55pm, as was the standard practice of the cafe closers, Chelsea, his closing partner, had put the "Closed" sign up in the window as she began sweeping and mopping the front of house.

Lyric was putting the final buff and polish on the chrome of the espresso machine, having cleaned the grinders, group-heads and porta-filters a few minutes prior.

The last of the clientele, noticing the shift in energy and earnestness in the staff, had downed their drinks or asked to have them put in paper cups to go. At 11:01 the last customer stepped into the darkness beyond the brightly lit section of sidewalk in front of the Shack.

Lyric turned the deadbolt and locked the front door, before turning up the lights in the cafe and switching the music from plastic Latin-dance-world-beat that the Shack's owners liked to the plastic 80s stuff that he knew Chelsea enjoyed.

The sound of a car turning the corner onto Lyric's street interrupted his mental replay of the night's events.

Was it?

It sounded like it.

The car was slowing down at the right place aaaaand, there it was.

The sound of the tires moving off the street and onto the driveway giving a satisfying thunk before the engine was silenced and was replaced by the bing bing bing of an alarm telling the driver that her key was still in the ignition when she opened her door.

Soon, that sound was also gone. Replaced by the solid kathunk of the driver’s side door being shut firmly, only to be followed by the sound of a monstrous key chain being rattled while a key was fitted into a lock.

Lyric began to count down in his head, "3, 2, 1, and," the light from Evelyn's foyer spilled out the sliding doors from the kitchen into her backyard.

The hallway light illuminating her bedroom slightly, allowing Lyric to see into the house and clearly see the hallway.

Any minute now Evelyn was going to step into the bedroom and, "Fuck." Lyric swore to himself as he watched the mass of brown hair, turtleneck and jeans, move hastily past the open bedroom door and straight into the room at the end of the hallway. The room which Lyric knew was the bathroom. This could be a while.

Lyric put his head back down on his knees and went back to rerunning the events of earlier in the evening through his head.

He had just made it back behind the counter and was about to open and cash out the registers when he heard a sharp rapping on the glass of the front door. Keeping his hands down, and leaving the registers in place, Lyric looked up and out the front door.

He hated this part of the evening, the lights of The Sugarshack made the cafe feel more like a fishbowl after dark. Anyone outside the cafe could clearly see into the shop, exactly who was working, where they were, and what they were doing. The only thing in the shop that wasn't visible from the sidewalk, or the street, was the cash registers.

Staring back at Lyric from behind the locked front door was the goofy grin of Eric, Chelsea's boyfriend.

Eric pointed at the lock on the front door and made an opening movement with his hand. Lyric looked around the cafe for Chelsea, but she wasn't in the front of the shop. She must be in the back cleaning bathrooms or getting ready to restock the bar, Lyric thought in the moment.

Lyric looked at Eric and shook his head, indicating the lock.

Lyric held up his hands showing all ten fingers, "Ten minutes." Lyric mouthed, clearly.

Eric's face went from goofy to pissed off in seconds. He then said, loudly, "C'mon man! It's freezing!"

Now, it wasn’t freezing. It was unseasonably chilly for late August in lake country, but it was still well above freezing. Lyric noted that Eric was only wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but that was a lifestyle choice and not something Lyric could control.

Darcy, the owner of The Sugarshack had made closing rules absolute. "No one may be allowed into the cafe, after the doors have been locked, and the cash registers have been opened for cash-out."

Darcy was pretty chill, but this was a hard and fast rule.

Lyric just looked at Eric and mouthed, "Sorry," before going back to his job and preparing the deposit from the night's sales and putting it into the drop-safe bolted to the floor behind the counter.

About the time he had finished with the tills, Chelsea sauntered back to the front from the stockroom.

"Wow!" He hadn't meant to say it out loud, but sometimes Lyric's inside voice had a mind of its own.

"Do you approve?" Chelsea asked flirtatiously, as she put a little bounce in her step and rounded the corner of the bar area.

Chelsea had clearly not just been cleaning the bathrooms or prepping for re-stocking. While she always looked good, tonight she looked put together.

Her hair, normally pulled back into a pony for working in the cafe, was now down and dropping auburn waves over her shoulders and down her back.

She had touched up her makeup wearing more than Lyric was used to seeing, which gave her eyes a sultry and playful look.

Gone was the staff-approved collared white button-down shirt, replaced by a scoop necked number under a peach-coloured cardigan, both of which gave Chelsea's breasts the freedom to move that Lyric had until now never seen. It wasn't just her step that was bouncing.

The magic spell of her sudden appearance was shattered by the force of the now pounding on the front door as Eric was clearly unhappy at being left outside in the "cold".

"What's he doing out there?" Chelsea asked.

"You know what Darcy says about having people in the cafe after closing, Chelsea," Lyric answered, "He showed up after I had locked up and I had the tills open."

"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell him about that," she said vapidly, before turning eyes on Eric and walking towards the front door.

As she got closer, her eyes narrowed a little, "I see YOU dressed up for tonight," Chelsea said to Eric pointedly.

"Baaaaabe, open up! It's freezing!" Eric whined.

Lyric, still watching Chelsea from behind, was startled when she turned around a little fiercely and said to him, "You're okay to finish closing from here, right?"

Lyric just nodded, embarrassed at having been caught checking out how well Chelsea's ass filled out her white jeans.

"Yup," he said, "Have a good night," and with that Chelsea unlocked the front door and pushed out onto the sidewalk, grabbing Eric by the hand and walking away towards the car park.

At the last minute, Eric stuck his hand out and caught the cafe door, sticking his head back in he looked Lyric straight in the eyes and hissed, "Fuck you man! Fuck you for not letting me in." Before Lyric could stammer a response Eric added, "Fucking get you for this," before the door slid closed.

Lyric, dumbly, moved up and locked up again from the inside, before turning around and shutting down the house lights and arming the alarm on his way out through the back.

It wasn't until he heard the safety bar engage on the back door, that Lyric moved off into the darkness towards the riverside walkway that ran behind all the shops in Maple Ferry. His route back to his neighbourhood and home.

Lyric was nearly home when his phone vibrated in his pocket. Not expecting a text from anyone, he pulled the phone from his jacket and turned it over. The notification showed a text from Darcy.

"Lyric. Very concerned about your actions tonight. Please do not attend your shift at the Shack tomorrow. I will return from the cottage on Monday. Please come to meet me at 2:00pm. Please do not come to the Shack before this time."

Lyric froze in his tracks.

Nothing tracked.

This didn't make sense.

He quickly typed out a reply, "Darcy I don't know what you are talking about. Close went smoothly. Sales were good, and customers left happy. Chelsea was picked up by boyfriend. Nothing happened."

In seconds there was another buzz in his hand and the phone face lit up with a reply text, "The only reason I'm not calling the police right now is because she made me swear I wouldn't. Don't go to the Shack until we meet on Monday. You're not welcome. Don't contact Chelsea. Don't text me again. The results won't be good."

The sudden blast of light brightness from Evelyn's bedroom light, startled Lyric from his brooding.

Lifting his head, he looked up and was greeted by Evelyn, resplendent in a fluffy pink bathrobe with hair up in a towel as she came into the bedroom from the hallway.

Evelyn was taller than most of the women Lyric knew, probably coming in around 5' 8" and with a swimmer's build. She had broad shoulders that, he knew from history, tapered to a narrow waist before kicking out again into strong butt, thighs and quads.

The fluffy bathrobe just made her look like some beautiful thing trying to crawl its way out of a pink Muppet.

Reaching up, Evelyn unwound the towel holding her hair and gave her locks one last vigorous rub dry.

How long had she been in the bath? Lyric wondered. How long had he been out here? Careful not to let his watch cast light towards the house, Lyric checked the time. 12:04am.

He had been in his secret spot for a little under 40 minutes. His back was going to be sore tomorrow. Finishing with her hair, Evelyn hung the towel from a hook on the back of the bedroom door.

"She keeps the blinds open but closes the bedroom door in a house she lives in alone," Lyric thought to himself, "I'll never understand that."

Now approaching the tall boy dresser and mirror that she had placed at the foot of her bed, Evelyn reached up to one ear, and then the other, removing her earrings and placing them down and out of sight from Lyric's point of view. In a similar movement, she then pulled her hair up and back and reached to the top of her neck to unclasp her necklace, removing it and placing it down where the earrings had disappeared. Hands still out of sight, she stepped back and then pulled out a piece of clothing from the tall boy, placing it over her shoulder before turning around and stepping back towards the dresser, "Closing a drawer," Lyric assumed.

Throwing the item of clothing from her shoulder to the bed, it made a bright white splash over the royal purple of the duvet that it landed on. Evelyn walked back towards the bedroom door and reaching down, she untied her robe, before pulling it off and placing it on the hook next to her hair towel.

It didn't matter to Lyric how many times he had witnessed this routine play out, it was always new, and seeing this woman, Evelyn, naked and free in front of him was always a rush.

He felt invigorated, like he had just had two espresso shots back-to-back.

He felt privileged, as if he was the only person in the world to be told a secret.

He felt emboldened, like Evelyn was presenting herself to him, and him alone.

What was, at first, only a glance of side boob and butt cheek became full frontal almost immediately as Evelyn turned around to walk back into the bedroom.

Her beautiful brown hair, still damp from her bath, hung in loose tresses behind her shoulders held off her face by almost elfin ears. Blazing blue eyes seeming to cut the room with their clarity as she looked straight out the bedroom window into the darkness, straight at Lyric, or straight through him, into the black.

Her breasts were medium sized, maybe a 32C, but they were still defying gravity and were beautifully formed, with dusky pink areolae perfectly surrounding nipples which when hardened, like they were now, looked to be about twice the size of a pencil eraser. Her tummy was tight, and her hips flared out nicely before tapering back to strong quads and thighs which framed her well-trimmed bush.

There was no waifish Instagram model thigh-gap here. Evelyn's legs and ass and core were built for business. They needed to be.

Evelyn ran the security team at one of the larger manufacturing plants out at the Maple Ferry Industrial Park. She and her team oversaw the site security for the largest employer in the valley, and while Evelyn's job was definitely management, she made no bones about the fact that she could outrun, outplay and outlast almost every member of her team.

She might not deadlift as much as the biggest beefcake, or sprint faster than the youngest ex-track star on the team, but she was definitely the team's best all-rounder. Right now, though? Right now, it looked like there was only going to be one event, and she was the only entrant.

Evelyn stepped back to the dresser and grabbed a small tube of something from a bowl on top, loosening the cap she squeezed a small amount of what was in the tube onto her hands and then rubbed it in, before running both hands quickly over her face. She replaced the tube and then, turning to face the bed, jumped into the middle of her duvet before scrambling over to her bedside table and opening the top drawer.

Watching her move like that gave Lyric goosebumps, watching her body tense and leap and land and roll on her bed, the whole act seeming playful and effortless, it was carefree. Lyric could feel himself hardening in his pants, sitting with his knees up was becoming very uncomfortable.

Lyric, however, had been in this situation before, many times, and knew that now was the time that he needed to readjust. While Evelyn was getting herself ready, he would too.

A flash of movement caught his eye as he saw Evelyn reach her right hand over her body towards the bedside table on the left side of her bed to open the drawer.

Lyric smiled.

From inside, Evelyn removed two items, one was a medium sized pink dildo (one that Lyric felt reasonably confident that he was at least as big as when hard), and the other being a small plastic bottle with a white lid, which Lyric now knew contained lube.

Lyric, slowly, sat up straighter and then began to ever so slowly stretch his legs out and then down until he was sitting cross legged with his back against the trunk of the cedar hedge, he was hiding under.

Leaning back on his left hand, Lyric lifted his pelvis slightly, reaching down with his right hand. He popped the top button on his jeans, and then slid his hand into his boxers to readjust his stiffening cock laying it down to run along his left thigh.

"Fuck!" Swearing to himself in his own head Lyric noticed that he had missed Evelyn putting on the oversized night shirt, which she had thrown onto the bed earlier.

That was one of Lyric's favourite parts of this dance, watching Evelyn grab the shirt from the bottom and then hold it up over her head with both hands, back arched and reaching up, up, up through the arm holes, before letting the shirt shimmy down her body.

At least Lyric would be able to sit comfortably now as he watched the rest of the show.

Evelyn popped up out of bed again, moving towards the bedroom door she reached out a hand, and the room plunged into darkness, the only light the thin lines that squeaked around the bedroom door from the hallway behind.

The first time this had happened Lyric had gone soft instantly, and his heart had fallen. But now, five years into his voyeurism, five years into his habit, he knew what to expect and was anticipating it when the room was illuminated by soft white-yellow LED strip light that ran around the wall at the ceiling above Evelyn's dresser, directly over her mirror.

How pleased was Lyric when he learned that Evelyn also liked to watch herself?

By now she had propped up the big square euro pillows that were the backbone of the pillow mountain which filled the head of her bed. Evelyn was leaning back comfortably, her left hand working itself down below the hem of her nightshirt and tickling and pulling lightly on the curly dark-brown pubic hair which crowned her pussy, while her right hand moved slowly up from her right thigh to cup her right breast with the thumb gently rolling her shirt material over her nipple.