The Stinky Book Group

It wasn't a book group to begin with. It started as an excuse for him to get out of the house.

Leighton was an English teacher, and three years ago he had married a science teacher, Bryony. Bryony was a wonderful woman, so Leighton claimed. She and him were well suited, it wasn't only their profession that they had in common. She was just as scrupulous and exact as he was. However, she was also quite different from her husband in some respects. There were a few ways in which their standards differed, but there were two ways that were particularly significant. Leighton was partial to wine. He wasn't an alcoholic. But he did enjoy a glass or three of wine, maybe once or twice a week. Bryony, however, was a lifelong teetotaller. She could not bear to go into a pub or bar where people were drinking, and she did not like having alcohol in the house. She couldn't stand the taste of it, the smell of it, or even the sight of it. Leighton had stopped drinking at home when he realised how much it upset his wife. Leighton's other passion that his wife did not share was a love of ass. There was nothing Leighton craved more than women's rear ends. Sadly, his wife was particularly frigid on this point, not liking him to even touch her bum, let alone stare at it, sniff and kiss it, or put his finger up it.

So, Leighton was frustrated. And he remained so for the first three years of their marriage. Then it became too much for him, and he decided he had to do something about it. He didn't want to drink at home and hide it from Bryony, he was much too moral for that. And the thought of drinking in the streets was out of the question. So, he decided that once a week, on a Tuesday night, he would go to a nice quiet local pub and have a few glasses of wine and read a book. He didn't want to tell his wife that he was going out to drink alone. And he didn't have any friends he could go drinking with either. So, instead, he told a tiny white lie to Bryony. He said that there was a book group that met in the pub each Tuesday evening. He said that they were currently studying The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, and he intended to go along and take part. Bryony had no interest in going to a pub, and she had no interest in discussing Gibran's poetry with anyone, let alone reading one of his books. But she was more than happy to let Leighton go. So, once a week, Leighton took an old hardback copy of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, walked the half mile into town to the pub, asked for a bottle of Merlot, one glass and a bag of peanuts, and sat at a table by himself for two or three hours drinking. He did this for months, and everything was fine. He got out of the house, he got to have a drink, Bryony got the evening to herself, and she thought he had made some new friends. Everything was fine. There was no one else in the book group, of course, but Leighton never told his wife that. Why would he? What was the difference really? And she never asked. If she ever did have questions about the group, he would skilfully deflect them by telling her about the chapter of the book they had been reading that week, and she would soon lose interest.

So, things carried on like this for two months, and Leighton slowly made his way through the first eight chapters of The Prophet. He had a Tuesday night routine. After dinner, he would walk to the Royal Oak, taking his book, and an umbrella if it looked like it might rain. At the pub, he would order his wine and peanuts, and then sit at the same table in a quiet corner of the barroom. He would read a chapter of the book while drinking a glass of wine, then eat the peanuts while drinking the rest of the bottle and staring into space or watching the other patrons. It was a quiet pub and there were rarely many other people in there on a Tuesday evening. He came to recognise some of the other regulars, and they recognised him too, but he never spoke to them. After a few weeks of this routine, the bar staff came to know his order, he would not even have to specify what it was he wanted. As soon as he walked into the pub, the barman would fetch a bottle of Merlot, a glass, and a bag of peanuts. The barman had tried to make conversation with him at first, asking him about the book or talking about the weather, but Leighton was not a great conversationalist, friendly small talk was uninteresting to him. He just wanted to be left alone with his wine and his book. He would generally stay at the pub for about two hours, until after nine o'clock, then slowly make his way home.

One Tuesday evening, things changed very suddenly. He had finished reading and put the book on the table and was drinking a second glass of wine while staring out of the window at the traffic driving past outside, when an attractive young woman sat on the chair opposite him.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" she said politely, having already sat down. Her hair was long, red, and curly. She was younger than Leighton, maybe in her twenties. She wore a t-shirt that was very tight around her breasts. There was writing on the t-shirt. Although Leighton loved reading, he did not want to read that writing. He studiously made eye contact with the young woman and did not look down.

"Not at all," he responded, looking at her fine green eyes. She smiled at him and put her wine glass on the table.

"I've noticed you here before, reading your book, I thought I would come over and say hello. My name is Sarah."

Leighton recognised her as someone he had seen in the pub several times before. She had a lively, playful disposition, and delighted in anything ridiculous, and usually dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with a slogan written across the chest. She usually came in around eight o'clock, sometimes with another young woman and sometimes alone, had a glass of wine and then left. Leighton thought she was perhaps a hairdresser who came in for a drink after finishing her shift. He was correct.

"My name is Leighton, pleased to meet you," said Leighton, nodding at Sarah but careful not to let his gaze drop below eye level.

"What's the book you're reading?"

"It's The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran." He slid the book across the table to her, she picked it up and briefly examined it.

"Oh. Is it any good?"

"I don't know, really. I'm trying to start a book group to discuss it."

"OK. How many people are in the group?"

"Just me so far."

"Could I join?"

"If you like," said Leighton levelly, but he could feel his heart beating faster.

She put the book back down. "OK, I'll buy a copy. When is the group meeting next?"

"Next Tuesday, at seven o'clock."

"I can't be here before half past, is that OK?"

"That will be fine," he smiled, and she smiled back. His resolve broke, his gaze lowered, and he read the writing on the t-shirt across her full, round breasts. It read: "Me? Sarcastic? Never!" She grinned, and he looked back up, mortified. He could feel himself beginning to blush, and she grinned more widely. "We'll start on the first chapter, maybe try to read it before you get here so we can discuss it."

"I shall look forward to it, Leighton. I have to go now; I have a bus to catch."

She got up from the table, smiled at him, then turned and walked away.

"Goodbye now," he called after her, watching her small, perky buttocks rubbing against each other inside the tight denim of her jeans as she walked.

When he got home, Bryony asked him how book group was.

"Oh, good," he said vaguely. "We have a new member."

"Oh really, what's he called?"

"Sarah."

She didn't ask any further questions.

He was nervous in the run up to the following Tuesday's meeting of the Royal Oak Book Club's Kahlil Gibran Discussion Group. He had preferred it when it was just him in the group. Now that the membership had doubled, he felt unsure. He set off for the pub slightly later in the evening than he usually did. He didn't want to get there too early, and Sarah had said she could not get there before half past seven. He arrived at twenty past seven, and saw that Sarah was already sat at the same table the two of them had sat at the previous week. She had a paperback book on the table in front of her. Her red hair was scraped back into a ponytail, and she wore, as before, a t-shirt, jeans, and trainers. Leighton went over to the table and greeted her.

"Hello, good evening," he said a little uncertainly.

Sarah looked up from her book and grinned at him. He saw that the wine glass in front of her was empty, and she was on page eight of the book.

"Oh, hi," she said brightly. "I finished work a little bit early, my last appointment of the day cancelled, so I thought I would do a bit of revising before you got here. I've almost finished the first chapter."

"Oh, good," said Leighton. "Would you like a drink?"

"Chablis, please," said Sarah.

"I'll get us a bottle," said Leighton. He put his book down on the table and walked to the bar. The barman was a little surprised when Leighton asked for a bottle of white wine and two glasses, instead of his usual order of a bottle of red and one glass. Leighton also bought two bags of peanuts, then went back to the table where Sarah was sat.

"So, what do you think of it so far?" he said, nodding towards her copy of the book as he put the bottle, glasses, and nuts down on the table.

"It's OK, it's good. I got it out of the library, I don't think I can read it all before it's due to go back though. I'm a slow reader."

"That's OK, you can always renew it. We're only looking at one chapter a week in this group anyway, so we can digest it properly."

"What chapter are you on now?"

"Well, I had got up to chapter nine. But as you have joined now, I think we should restart at the beginning with chapter one."

"Oh, that's very kind. I don't mind catching you up."

"No, it's fine. I would rather start again at the beginning."

"What if someone else joins the group? Will we start again at the beginning for them as well?"

"Is anyone else likely to join?" he asked cynically.

"They might do," she said enthusiastically.

"Who?"

"I don't know. Other regulars in the pub might like to join in discussing literature."

Leighton looked around the barroom of the Royal Oak. The other patrons numbered five. Two sad-looking, middle-aged alcoholics and three drunken students.

Leighton noticed that Sarah was wearing a t-shirt with writing on the front again, but he carefully avoided the temptation to look at her chest in order to read it. Instead, he maintained eye contact, almost to the point of staring at her. She stared back at him, smiling happily. They drank wine together, and she asked him some questions about the book, what it was about, who the characters were, were there any plot twists, and he did his best to answer her. He got the impression that she was not terribly interested in the book, but she wanted to make conversation with him. He drank his first glass of wine too fast; he finished it within ten minutes and poured himself another, resolving to drink this one slower. After about three quarters of an hour the bottle was empty, and he was starting to feel drunk. She had hardly touched what he had poured for her. He decided to go to the toilets and buy another bottle of wine on the way back. In the gent's toilets, he spent a little time reading the crude graffiti while he urinated, and then stared thoughtfully at the condom machine while he washed his hands. He went back to the bar and bought a second bottle of Chablis, the barman nodded to him in a friendly way as he uncorked it and placed it on the bar. Wine was not the cheapest option for drinking in the Royal Oak, but Leighton never really drank beer or spirits, and Sarah seemed to only drink wine as well, so this was easiest. He was starting to feel quite tipsy when he sat back down at the table. Sarah had her library book open and was carefully studying a page. She read a couple of lines aloud, and Leighton did his best to explain what they meant. He poured them both another large glass of wine, toasted her good health and then drank his in one draught.

"Wow, you must have been thirsty," giggled Sarah.

"Oh, sorry," said Leighton.

"So, are you married?" said Sarah, pointing to his wedding ring and sipping her wine.

"Yes, to my wife," said Leighton absently.

"I see," said Sarah.

"How about you?"

"No," she smiled.

"Yes, you're probably a bit young for it. Boyfriend?"

"Nothing serious," she smiled more broadly and leaned across the table towards him.

He drank more of his wine, set the glass on the table, then found he was staring over the top of the glass at her firm, perky breasts. Today's t-shirt read: "Be Happy!"

At nine-thirty, after splitting three bottles of wine and discussing literature for two hours, they agreed to call it a night. Sarah said she had really enjoyed book group and she would look forward to their next meeting the following Tuesday. They left the pub together, and as they parted ways in front of the pub, she quite unexpectedly leaned in and pecked him on the cheek. It was only a light brush of her lips against the side of his face, effortlessly and naturally done, more friendly than romantic, but the significance Leighton attached to that gesture was immense.

She caught the bus home. Leighton bought a burger and chips from the takeaway opposite the pub, and ate them on the way home, hoping that eating some food would sober him up. It took him until half past ten to walk home, he still felt quite drunk when he went in through the front door. Bryony, who was watching TV on the sofa in the front room in her pyjamas, did not seem to notice that her husband was drunk.

"How was book group?" asked Bryony, without taking her eyes off the TV screen.

"Good, good," Leighton said, sitting down on the floor to untie his shoelaces.

Leighton had no contact with Sarah outside of the book group. But he thought about her constantly. She filled his thoughts in an unpleasant way. Her smile haunted him. He was terrified, infatuated, excited, and anxious. He had not felt this way about a woman for a long time. He had never felt this way about Bryony. He could not concentrate on the book because he associated it with her now. He got a hard-on just thinking about her, and he thought about her much too often.

Sarah very rarely thought about Leighton.

When Leighton arrived at the Royal Oak on Tuesday night for book club, he was a little surprised to see Sarah standing on the pavement outside. She was holding her copy of the book in both hands in front of her. Her face lit up when she saw Leighton approaching.

"Evening," he greeted her. "What's going on?"

"Hi there," she said cheerfully. "The pub's closed."

"Really? Why's that?" he asked.

"The sign they have put up says 'due to staff sickness'."

"They can't all be sick, surely?" said Leighton, studying the note that had been taped to the closed pub door. "Still, what do you want to do? Do you want to give it a miss this week or find somewhere else?"

"Let's go somewhere else."

"There's the Duke of Devonshire just round the corner, but I think it might be a bit rowdy for book group. We could go to a coffee shop if there is one still open."

"Let's just walk and find somewhere," said Sarah. The two of them walked together both holding their books. Leighton was excited to be walking next to Sarah. He had never been anywhere with her apart from the Royal Oak before. It was nice to be walking with her. People might think they were a couple. When this thought occurred to him, he began to worry. What if people did think they were a couple? What if one of his wife's friends saw him out in public with this young woman? They might think he was having an affair. But they were both carrying copies of The Prophet. Clearly, this was a book group meeting. He looked over at Sarah who was walking next to him. Her curly red hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was a lot shorter than him, maybe a foot shorter. He tried to judge the size of her breasts by looking at them sideways. "That's the salon I work at," she said brightly, pointing to a hairdressers' on the other side of the street.

They walked past several pubs, but none of them seemed suitable for a book group meeting. This was why book group was usually held at the Royal Oak. It was the ideal location. Now that it was closed it was very difficult to find anywhere else as good. They walked past some coffeeshops, but they were all closed. They had been walking for almost half an hour, when Sarah said, "You know, my flat is just round the corner, we could have book group there if you like?"

Leighton stopped in his tracks and didn't say anything.

Sarah stopped walking too and looked at her companion. "What do you think?"

"Um, I suppose we could," said Leighton.

"It's a bit of a mess, but we can sit on the sofa and read the book together. I think it will work fine."

They crossed the road together, and she showed him into the tower block she lived in. "Let's take the stairs, it's only six floors up. The lift always smells of wee."

Sarah jogged up the stairs, and Leighton followed after her, trying to keep up, and doing his best not to stare at her bum as she climbed the stairs in front of him.

Sarah's flat was small. It only had four rooms. It was a tiny flat with everything one person could need to live crammed into it. Every convenience a human being could want apart from space. The floor was laminate. The walls were magnolia. The furnishings were from Ikea. A rubber plant stood in one corner. There were African masks on the wall. A bookshelf with more nick-nacks and junk than books. A mirror with a crack in it. Clothes strewn about. The washing-up was piled up on the draining board.

There was a sofa, a small two-seater with a grey throw over it, that Leighton sat on. There was a small white coffee table in front of it that he put his book on. Sarah offered him a drink; she got a wine bottle from the fridge and two tumblers from the draining board and came and sat next to Leighton on the sofa. The sofa was small, so they had to sit close together. He sipped his wine then put the glass down on the table. His elbow brushed against her tit through the material of her t-shirt, and he was intensely aware of it. It felt soft and squishy against his hard elbow. She did not seem to notice or care. They both opened their books and turned to the second chapter. Leighton saw that when he looked down at his book, he could see the space between Sarah's boobs out of the corner of his eye. Sarah noticed that he was looking down her cleavage, and proudly pulled her shoulders back, pushing her large, soft breasts out to display them to him. Leighton thought he could see a nipple growing harder under the thin material of her t-shirt. He tried to concentrate on the book, looking for a particular sentence he wanted to read out to her, but he could not find it. He began to become flustered. Sarah was looking down at her own chest, staring at her bosoms in a maddening way that made Leighton want to look at them too. She moved her shoulders from side to side, making her knockers wobble. His cock was starting to stand up in his pants, and he tried to hide his growing erection under his copy of The Prophet. He was less and less interested in what Gibran had to say and more interested in Sarah's big boobies, the right one of which kept brushing against his arm as she wriggled about on the sofa next to him.

One of the bedroom doors suddenly opened and a stately, plump looking young woman swept into the living room. She was wearing a low-cut top and tight trousers, and her hair was carefully styled. She looked like she was preparing for a night out on the town. "Hi Sarah," she said hurriedly, as she rushed into the room and across to the kitchen counter, where she started searching in a drawer.