I was out for a hot Saturday afternoon run in July when I saw her. She was walking a dog in the field adjacent to where the jogging trail passed by the playground. She wore white shorts and a sleeveless red top. She was still a fox and her body was still fine, just like it was back when we used to be a couple.

Her name was Helen and she had been one of the prettier girls in my high school. She had long brown hair, deep brown eyes and a body that turned heads. She was a very nice and considerate person, but she intimidated a lot of guys in those days, including me, partially because of her exquisite looks, but mostly because her mother was an English teacher at our school. In the spring of our senior year, Helen and I acted in a school play together and we hit it off. I found her very easy to talk to with a great sense of humor. She was hot, but she didn’t act like it. We dated the last several months of our senior year and through our first year of college. She went to a different school to get her nursing degree so we ended up going our separate ways. We were by this time in our mid-twenties, and it had been over five years since I’d seen her.

“Helen? Helen, is that you?” I asked as I coasted to a stop a few feet away from her. The dog leaped toward me but she yanked back on the leash.

“Down, Babs,” Helen said. “Will? Holy smoke, I can’t believe it!”

We shared a brief, sweaty hug and the dog was jumping up almost to my shoulders.

“This is Babs,” Helen said. “She’s a Jack Russell Terrorist. And not too well trained, I’m afraid.”

“Is she your dog?” I asked.

“No, she belongs to my mother. Mom lives right over there,” she said, pointing to the entrance to The Ridge, an upscale subdivision of nice homes on fairly large lots.

Her mother was Connie, my old English teacher. She was also a knockout, at least back in high school she had been. I guess she was still in her thirties then, with a slim athletic body, tight ass, firm titties and a beautiful smile. Most of the boys in school thought she was hot, and they all fantasized about her, and that helped make Helen seem hands-off to many of them.

“How’s Mrs. Connie doing?” I asked.

“Okay, I guess. But it’s Miss Connie now. She and my father split up a couple years ago, but she’s doing fine, just hates men nowadays. He was messing around with some little harlot at his work and got caught. So she nailed his ass in the divorce and bought a nice house with a pool and a hot tub!”

“Is she still teaching?”

“Oh yeah,” she said, laughing. “Still in the same old classroom, same old syllabus, and still setting adolescent boys’ hearts a-flutter!”

“Well, you look good, Helen,” I said. “Where are you living these days?”

“All over the place,” she said. “I’m a travelling nurse. I go to work at places where there are severe nurse shortages, get paid well and get to see the world. I just got back from Alaska a couple of weeks ago; I was there for six months. I’m staying with Mom for a few weeks now, and then I’m off to South America!”

“South America! Wow.”

“Yep, Venezuela. I’ve been brushing up on my Spanish. How about you? Where are you living? What are you up to?”

“Been selling medical equipment. It’s been going pretty well. I bought a townhouse overlooking the park, about a mile from here.”

“Oh, nice, we’re practically neighbors! We should get together while I’m here. And I’m sure Mom would love to see you.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. When I’d taken her classes, she seemed to like me a lot as a student and enjoyed my comments and humor. But after I started dating Helen she’d seemed to act colder toward me.

“Sounds like a great idea,” I said, “I’d love to. It will be fun to catch up and see Miss Connie again!”

She told me the phone number and I repeated it a few times so I wouldn’t forget. She said to call the next day and I promised I would.

----

When I called the next day Connie answered the phone.

“Well, if it isn’t the sparkling wit of Franklin High!” she laughed. “Helen said you might be calling. How are you doing, Will?”

I gave her the brief update and then she told me that Helen was out but they wanted to invite me over for a cookout by the pool.

“How about Thursday evening?” she asked. “Would that work for you?”

“That would be fine,” I said.

“Okay, then we’re all set. Come over around six. We’ll grill out by the pool, have some drinks, catch up on everything and then we’ll have a pop quiz on Antigone!”

“Ugh,” I groaned, laughing.

“Okay, maybe not Antigone. How about Stevie Ray Vaughan?” she laughed.

She had a nice laugh. It was cool that she remembered that I was into the Blues. And any coolness I had detected from her in the past was nonexistent.

----

On Thursday at six p.m., I was knocking on their door. I held a twelve-pack of beer in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, which made hugging awkward when Helen and Connie saw me in. So I put down the merchandise, gave them each a hug and thanked them for having me over.

They both looked ravishing. Helen’s hair was in a ponytail and she wore short denim cutoffs and a tight, white t-shirt, her tanned arms and legs glowing in contrast and the lace of her bra contoured through the thin cotton of her shirt. Connie was foxier than ever, and even though she had to be in her mid-forties she didn’t look a day older than she had when I’d taken her classes eight and nine years before. Her dirty blond hair was shorter and slightly frizzed. She wore a flowery summer dress hemmed above the knees, and her long legs and arms were beautifully toned and tanned.

I followed them through the house to the pool area out back. I put the beer on ice and grabbed one for myself. They each already had a glass of wine.

“You two look great!” I said, as we took seats on the patio. “And Miss Connie, you don’t look a day older than when I was in high school.”

“Oh, please,” she blushed. “And, it’s just Connie, now. We’re not in school anymore!”

“Okay, Connie. But, I’m serious, you look great. You must be working out, you look in fabulous shape.”

“Pilates, aerobics, I swim a little and I’ve gotten into running. Helen said she bumped into you when you were running Saturday, so obviously you are still at it.”

I had run cross country in high school and college, and kept it up after graduation, running races, marathons, and even a couple ultra-marathons.

“Yes, I’m still at it. My positive addiction, I guess. It helps me justify my beer drinking!” I laughed, raising my bottle.

“You ran a few marathons if I remember correctly,” Connie said.

“I have,” I answered. “I ran New York last year. None in the plans right now, though.”

“I think that would just be an incredible accomplishment,” she said. “I’ve run a few 10Ks, but I don’t think I could ever run twenty-six miles!”

“Oh, if you can do a 10K,” I said, “you could do a marathon. It’s all just a matter of committing to the training. There aren’t any short cuts!”

“Maybe one of these days I’ll try it.”

“You can do it. Like I said, it’s really a matter of planning and training and not rushing it.”

The night progressed with easy conversation between the three of us, burgers and chicken on the grill, potato salad and corn on the cob. It was all delicious and I washed it down with a number of beers. At about a quarter till ten, Connie said she was going to turn in and said her goodnights. She disappeared behind the French doors that led into her master bedroom. Babs, who had been floating on a raft in the pool for most of the evening, was right behind her.

Then it was Helen and me alone. We’d all been reminiscing throughout the night and we continued along those lines, talking about the times we’d shared. We caught each other up on our personal lives and various gossip. I told her I hadn’t been serious with anyone for over a year; she was vague and just said that relationships wouldn’t fit too well into her current life as a travel nurse.

“You want to take a swim?” Helen asked me.

“I didn’t bring my trunks,” I said.

“You still wear boxers?” she asked.

I told her I did.

“You wearing them now?”

I told her I was.

“That’ll work!” she said. “Go on, get in. I’ll be back in a jiffy!” and she bounced into the house.

I took off my shirt and pants and shoes and dove in. In about sixty seconds Helen reappeared through the door to the living room in a black bikini, strutted to the edge of the pool and walked down the steps into the shallow end. Her suit didn’t leave much to my imagination. She had a killer body and I admired every inch of it. On this hot summer night, the water was cool against my skin, but I still felt a warm tingle down below. After a few minutes of playful splashing around, we sat on the pool steps and continued our catching up. We sat close but we weren’t touching.

“Remember the first time we went swimming together?” she said.

“How could I ever forget?” I said. “You were so bad!”

I had dived into the pool at school and the rush of water had yanked my swim trunks right off of me. Helen grabbed them and had gotten out of the pool before I even came up for air. She pranced around with my trunks laughing and I couldn’t get out of the pool for half an hour.

“You made up for it later, though. I forgave you.”

“I remember,” she said, smiling. That night she gave me a blowjob in the woods near the fourth fairway at the public golf course.

“Remember when you wanted to be a stripper?” I said.

She laughed. “Yeah, thank God that didn’t work out!”

“I think it worked out just fine,” I said.

This was right after we started dating. We were drinking at a party and were kidding around and talking about what we wanted to do for a living when we got older, and somehow she said she thought it would be fun to be a stripper. I told her that sounded great, I’d like to watch her practice. So we went back to my house and down to the basement…my parents were out at some social event…and I put on some music. Soon Helen was swaying to the music and soon her blouse came off, and then her skirt as she ground to the groove. Then she tossed her bra aside and was wearing nothing but her panties, and my dick was hard as nails. Once she slid out of her panties I couldn’t control myself any longer and I slid in front of her on my knees and started eating her hairy bush. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing but by that time we were both so horny it didn’t matter, and soon I was fucking her brains out, our first time together.

“Maybe for you!” she said. “But I was in mortal fear until I had my next period!”

“So was I!” I replied. We laughed about it. But it wasn’t funny back then.

Soon we got out of the pool. Helen went to change and I got out of my wet boxers and into my dry shorts. As we were saying goodnight I asked her if she wanted to get together and go out on Saturday night.

“Will,” she said. “You need to know, I’m really not interested in getting into a relationship. And I’m only going to be here a couple more weeks…”

“I know that,” I said. “Relax. But while you’re here, why not? Tonight was fun, don’t you think?”

She smiled and said yes, it was.

We agreed that I’d pick her up at seven and we’d figure out something to do.

----

We went out Saturday and just winged it. We went to a local joint and had pizza and beer and talked, then hung out and listened to a guitar and bass duo play a set out on the patio. When I took her home it was a tad awkward when I dropped her off.

“I don’t know what to do!” I said, as we said goodnight.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Should I try to kiss you or not?”

She burst out laughing. “What do you want to do?”

“Seems like a kiss would be appropriate,” I said.

“Okay, go ahead, Romeo!” she said, puckered her lips, closed her eyes and posed.

I laughed and pecked her on the corner of her mouth.

----

A couple days later I was out running in the same area where I had encountered Helen when she was walking Babs. While I was in my typical mid-run dissociative daydream I noticed another runner approaching me from the opposite direction. It was an attractive woman, slim and athletic with a smooth, even stride. She was dressed in yellow running shorts that clung to her upper legs and crotch and a white singlet that was sweat-plastered to her firm tits and waist. It was Connie.

She didn’t recognize me as we closed in on one another so I ran off a few yards to the right and circled back around behind her. I caught up and started running beside her on her right.

“So Connie, you’ve started your marathon training already, I see!” I said.

She was startled and looked over at me and laughed.

“Oh, Will!” she said, “I didn’t see you come up. But uh, no, just out for a jog.”

We chatted as we ran together for a couple miles. She asked me if Helen and I had had a good time when we went out the other night.

“Oh, sure,” I said. “We spent the night catching up and reminiscing and laughing about it all.”

“So you won’t be getting back together I take it,” she replied.

“Oh no, nothing like that. It would be hard to try to have a relationship on two different continents!”

“Yes, I believe it would. And Helen hasn’t had a steady guy for several years and I think she prefers it that way.”

As we ran, the topic of discussion became running. I asked if she was serious about running a marathon.

“I’m not sure. Do you really think I could?”

“Sure,” I averred. “Why not? Many people in not nearly the shape you’re in have done it. As I said before, it’s all about the training. If you plan it right, and do it right, you’ll be prepared and be fine. And when you actually do it, you’ll not only be in the best shape of your life, but you will have done something that ninety-nine percent of the people on Earth couldn’t do!”

“What’s the training like? How long is it?” she asked.

“Three or four months. The key is you have to get a long run in once a week.”

“How long?”

“You want to get it up to at least twenty miles.”

“Ugh,” she groaned. “Twenty miles? In the summer?”

“You don’t start with that, you build up to it. You can do 10Ks, that’s a good base. Start with a long one of eight or nine miles and build from there. In a couple of months, you’ll be doing twenty-plus.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sounds complicated.”

“It’s a lot simpler than Antigone!” I said, and she burst out laughing. “But you can do it if you really want to,” I went on. “You just have to commit to it and stick to it. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it for the feeling you’ll have afterwards. If you want to do it, I’ll help you. I’ll train with you.”

“You would do that?”

“Yeah, I’d be happy to. It will be fun.”

By that time we had looped around the whole massive neighborhood to where I would cut off and head back toward my place. I told her to think about it and we said our goodbyes and jogged off in opposite directions.

----

The time was nearing when Helen would be flying off to Venezuela. I called her and asked if she’d like to get together once more before she took off. She said she couldn’t because she was swamped with preparations and had agreed to meet with an old girlfriend Friday night before she flew out on Saturday. She suggested that maybe I could come along with her and her mother to the airport Saturday morning. I agreed and she said to be at her mother’s house at around 7:00 am to ride along.

----

I stayed in Friday evening listening to some music and catching up on some reading. The phone rang and I didn’t bother to pick it up. It happened several times but no message was left. I figured it was after-dinner telemarketers looking for a sucker. Then at around 8:30, my doorbell rang; imagine my surprise when I flipped on the porch light and opened the door and saw Helen standing there!

“Helen!” I exclaimed.

“May I come in?” she asked.

“Sure,” I replied, pulling the door open wide. “Is everything all right?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just need someone to talk to, I guess.”

She came into my living room and sat on the sofa. I asked her if she’d like something to drink and she asked if I had any wine. I’m not a wine drinker but I told her I had a cheap bottle of something for use in a pinch. She said that would be fine, so I went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of merlot for her and a beer for myself.

“So, I thought you were going out with a friend tonight,” I said.

“I was…I did. It didn’t go very well so I left. I called you but you didn’t answer. When I drove by here I saw your car so I rang your bell. I’m sorry to barge in…” She took a healthy swig of her wine.

“It’s okay.”

“I’m glad I didn’t interrupt anything!”

We sipped our drinks and sat through a thorny silence.

“Can I tell you something, Will?”

“Sure. We could always say whatever we wanted to each other, you know that.”

“I know. But there’s something I never told you that I should have.”

“Okay…”

“I don’t want you to be mad, but remember when I was in nursing school and our relationship kind of petered out all of the sudden?” I nodded. “Well, I kind of was involved with somebody else.”

“Ah,” I said. As if it all made sense now, which of course it didn’t.

“It’s not what you think, Will. I wasn’t running around on you or anything. It just sort of happened naturally. It was with one of my classmates. Her name is Geri. That’s who I met with tonight.”

There was another dicey silence as I digested this news update.

“Anyway, we became lovers. I’d never had sex with another girl before. Geri had, but I hadn’t, it was all new to me, and I couldn’t get enough. We lived together, worked together, played together, studied together, slept together. It made everything else in life better; I thought, so this is who I am! Then after almost three years, she dumped me for a man! I caught her fucking him in our apartment.”

“Oh, I’m sorry…”

“That’s when I went into travel nursing. To get far away from it…from her. But it only helped to a certain extent. I just couldn’t quite get over the hurt…the betrayal…the insult!”

I reached over and put my hand on hers. She gripped my hand and squeezed tight.

“I’m sorry to dump all this on you, Will.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“Anyway, that’s who I met with tonight: Geri. I ran into her last week at the gym where Mom works out. It was awkward…really weird…but we chatted for a minute or two and she suggested we meet for a drink. So I thought okay, bury the hatchet and let bygones be bygones and all that, and I’m leaving tomorrow anyway but maybe I could finally reach some kind of closure and move on.”

“So, what happened?” I asked.

She took another gulp of wine and her glass was almost empty. I took her glass to the kitchen and returned with it refilled.

“So,” she continued, and took a deep breath. “She’s now married to the guy. Then she starts talking about how her husband really wants to watch her doing another chick, and since I was the last chick she was with, maybe I’d like to join them in the sack. And she said that she wouldn’t mind seeing Hubby fucking another woman either, so what did I think, am I up for it, it would be fun. I mean, can you believe that?”

“Oh, wow!” I said. “What did you say to that?”

She let out with a nervous laugh. “Well, I’m not proud of what I did, but I can’t say I’m sorry about it either. I mean shit, she made me feel so dirty, so cheap; like some monkey in the zoo that they can watch and get themselves off!” She shivered and took another anxious sip of wine. “I called her a fucking cunt, threw my drink in her face and got up and walked out!”

“You did?”

“I did!”

“All right, you go girl! Touché!”

“I’m over that bitch!”

Another pregnant pause ensued as we held hands and sipped drinks. Then Helen put her drink on the table and turned her body to face me more directly.

“Thank you for listening to me rant, Will,” she said with liquid eyes.

“You’re welcome, you know that,” I said, “Anytime.” I squeezed her hand again and she squeezed right back.

“Want a blow job?” she said.

I almost fell off the couch when I heard that.

“What?” I asked incredulously.

Helen started laughing. “Bet you weren’t expecting that!”

I told her I sure as hell wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, Will, but I need to get laid! When I left Geri tonight I was half-crazy! She made me so damn mad…that she could be so damn smug after what she’d done to me and what I’d done to be with her! I need to be with a man again, need to feel a man’s dick again. I’ve wasted enough time pouting and running away. So, it’s either go peddle my ass on the street, or come to you—you’re about the only man I know I can trust.”

“But, Helen, you’re leaving in the morning.”

“I know, I know,” she said, “but I really need to get laid tonight.” She ran her hand up along my thigh and found my penis. “It can be my going-away present.”

“What has gotten into you?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, then she stroked my hardening cock, and added, “But I want to get this into me!”

I think I was in a minor shock, and I wasn’t sure if it was right, perhaps she was too vulnerable, but I also knew I couldn’t turn this down.

I wasn’t wearing a belt so she unsnapped my jeans and unzipped me with minimal effort.

“Ooh, no underwear…” she cooed.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting company,” I croaked.

“It’s serendipity!” she said. “You were the last man I had, and now you’ll be the next. Then she went down on me.

She took my cock into her mouth and my balls into her hand. She wasn’t the most experienced cocksucker from what I could remember, but the familiar feel of her mouth and lips and tongue and fingers swelled me to the max. I held her hair between my fingers as she gave me head like she was bobbing for apples.

After several minutes she removed her mouth from my swollen member and raised her head to mine and kissed me. For the first time in five years, I felt her silky tongue in my mouth. She savagely sucked my tongue and clutched my cock in her hand. She was an Alpha girl, unlike the Helen I remembered.

“Show me your bedroom!” she whispered.

All of my pent-up emotions had me pretty horny too. I couldn’t remember ever being so totally, completely, erotically seduced. In my bedroom, she whipped off her tops and bottoms and pulled my pants off as I unbuttoned my shirt. Then she lay on the bed and pulled me on top of her. She had my cock in her hand and yanked it to the entrance of her shaved pussy. She had red rose petals tattooed around her navel and a silver stud within.

“God, I’m wet!” she wheezed. “God, I need to come!”

“No foreplay?” I asked playfully, tickling her.

“Five years without is all the foreplay I need!” she said.

I slid into her with zero resistance and felt her once-familiar wet warmth surrounding my engorged cock.

“Fuck me, Will! Fuck me hard! I need to have an orgasm and it’s going to be a whopper!”

I pounded her like there was no tomorrow. I hadn’t been with a woman for a while so I was ready to erupt in about a minute and a half. She was milking me with her pussy walls as I drove my cock into her. Soon I could feel my rising tide of cum searching for release, seeking the path that led out. I grunted like a wounded croc when my semen rose through my steely shaft and blasted off inside Helen, rope after oily rope. I gradually slowed my rhythm as I emptied, easing into a gentler groove.

“Keep fucking!” Helen hissed.

With the taut, blood-hard skin of my cock now less stressed, it slid easily in and out of Helen’s slimy bliss. Her hands clutched my ass and her groin smacked into me trying to coax a climax.

“Keep fucking me, Will!”

I started banging her harder, then harder, then harder still, and my cock returned to the approximate firmness of tempered steel. We were reelin’ and rockin’ and the bedposts a-knockin’! We kept this up for a while, each expelling guttural groans with each hard thrust. Then I felt myself nearing my second coming. My tongue was fucking Helen’s mouth and my finger was in her ass, and I could feel the sweat on her face so I knew she was getting close. I could feel another healthy dose of my cum preparing for liftoff, and soon it rose up and out of me, not as big as the first, but four or five solid strings leapt deep into Helen’s juicy twat. Within seconds she let out a high-pitched scream and started shaking and her warm rapids flowed downstream and out of her, soaking my spent dick and the bed beneath us. I rolled to her side and collapsed beside her with her tongue in my mouth and her vagina surrounding my cock and we stayed that way for a few long minutes as I gradually went limp inside her.

We must have nodded off for a while. When I came to it was around 11:30 and Helen was getting dressed. As she made her finishing touches and pulled on her shoes, she noticed I was watching her and came over to the bed.

“Thanks, Sailor!” she said, “You have no idea how much I needed that!” She bent down and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. “Goodnight; see you in the morning.” Then she was out the door.

I lay in my bed, ruminating about my unexpected night. What the hell had happened? I asked myself, ‘Did I just fuck a lesbian?’

----

I was right on time the next morning. Connie greeted me with a big smile when she opened her door. She asked me into the kitchen for coffee while we waited; she said Helen had gotten in kind of late and was moving kind of slow this morning.

We chatted briefly and then I noticed Helen’s bags were packed and stacked in the dining room. I offered to take them out to the garage and pack the car. I was just finishing up when they both emerged from the house.

“Morning, Will,” Helen said coolly, barely making eye contact. She got into the front passenger seat, Connie was behind the wheel and I climbed into the back.

Not much was said in the car, but Helen kept stifling one yawn after another.

“You tired, Helen?” I asked.

“Yes, I am. I didn’t sleep too well,” she said.

“Maybe you can catch some Z’s on the plane,” I added. She said she hoped so. It was good to see that her category-five orgasm the night before hadn’t taken too much out of her.

At the airport, we checked Helen’s bags and then went as far as we could before saying our goodbyes. Helen and Connie hugged and kissed and exchanged I-love-yous. Then Helen turned to me.

“Goodbye, Will. It’s been nice seeing you again. Thanks for coming.” I wasn’t sure if she meant coming to the airport, or coming the night before. She kissed me on the cheek and turned, waved, and entered the line to security.

We walked back out of the terminal and found the shuttle to take us back to Connie’s car. On the ride home, she told me that she’d thought it over and would like to take me up on my offer to coach her through marathon training if I was still up for it. I told her, Absolutely, I was looking forward to it. And I’d not only be helping her, it would motivate me to train and to run another marathon too.

When we got back to her house, Connie took a calendar off the wall and we sat down at the kitchen table and I wrote out a training schedule. I spread her usual weekly mileage throughout the weekdays, and added a long run for each weekend, increasing the distance gradually week-to-week, to get her prepared for a big race in November. The race was in the city about an hour away.

At this point it was the end of July, so I mapped out a fifteen-week plan peaking with runs of 20, 20 and 21 miles in weeks 11, 12 and 13.

“What do I do the last two weeks?” Connie asked.

“Eat, drink and rest!” I said. “You don’t want to overtrain. If you’re not ready by then, it’s too late.”

We would start the next morning with an eight-miler.

----

Connie was a pretty good runner and had no trouble with the early training. We would run side by side, and because her natural pace was slower than mine, occasionally I would move out faster for a half-mile or so and then double back and fall back in beside her. The second week we did nine miles, the third week almost eleven. Our ritual soon became we would run together, all the while talking about just about anything that popped into our minds, then after the run a jump in her pool, then often she would make us lunch.

As two people running many miles together, side by side, we covered many topics of conversation. I found Connie very easy to talk to. Our minds seemed to work the same way. I could say almost anything to her, no matter how esoteric or how ‘out there’ it would seem, and she would follow and be right there with me. And the same went for her, wherever her conversation went, whatever tangents she went off on, I was there.

I mentioned once that it puzzled me that when I had taken her classes in high school she was always warm and friendly toward me, but when I was dating Helen she seemed cold and aloof. She admitted I was right and that it was her problem, not mine. She told me that was about the time her marital problems were starting to happen, and also she didn’t like the idea of any guy screwing her daughter.

For some reason, I didn’t expect my old English teacher to talk like that, but when she did, I got a kick out of it. As we became more and more comfortable with each other, I looked more and more forward to our workouts.

She talked about Helen too, of course. She mentioned Helen’s same-sex relationships (plural! I only knew about the one with Geri) and how that took some getting used to at first. She said she didn’t think Helen was gay, just open to things, and when a bunch of nurses went to school together, things could happen. She told me also that she wondered if something might happen between Helen and me while she was home. I figured if Helen wanted her to know about our last night together she could tell Connie herself.

After about three or four weeks of training together our comfort level had reached a point of total ease. Connie would sometimes touch me when she spoke, and I became less hesitant to touch her as well. When she completed the twelve-miler, she was exuberant and gave me a big hug and kissed my lips. After that our normal greetings and goodbyes included a hug and a kiss. When we ate together her eyes would linger on mine and her coy smile would give my stomach butterflies. My loins got butterflies too, despite our twenty-year age difference.

That week I had used her bathroom off the pool after taking a swim and noticed her toilet had a leak and would keep running off and on. I told Connie I would fix it for her; I just needed to go to the hardware store and get the replacement parts. She was very appreciative and started to dig into her purse and I told her not to worry about it, it would not be expensive and was an easy fix. She said maybe I would get a free dinner out of the deal, then.

That afternoon I went to the hardware store to buy the kit and took it back to her house. By this time knocking on the door had become an unnecessary formality, so I walked in and found her in the kitchen.

“I’m cooking your dinner, Will, so I hope you don’t have plans! Lasagna! Got to carbo-load!” she called as I entered the room.

I swear she was trying to drive me crazy. She was wearing short frayed cut-offs and an untucked white t-shirt with no bra! The cotton fabric hugged her nipples like wet tissue and drew my eyes like magnets. I know she caught me looking and I went off to fix the toilet with half a hard-on.

In the bathroom, I got down to work. It was a small room and I had to contort myself in different shapes and forms but I removed the guts of the toilet tank. But Babs wanted to help and was getting in the way, so I had to lock her out so I could get the new parts installed. She whimpered for a couple minutes but then must have smelled lasagna because she sauntered off. In another fifteen minutes I was done, and when I turned the water back on and flushed a couple of times, with minor adjustments it was working like new.

I went back to the kitchen and the lasagna was in the oven and Connie had mixed a pitcher of vodka martinis. We went to sit by the pool with our drinks. Babs hopped onto her raft.

We sipped and chatted for the next hour or so. We talked about running, about books, about her teaching and the problems with kids these days. We ate delicious lasagna and green salad, then had a nightcap by the pool. After a while, I felt I should leave, and not overstay my welcome, even though I didn’t want to. As we sat in the soft light, I looked at Connie’s profile and the subtle rising and falling of her breasts with each breath, her sublime bare nipples snug within her shirt, and the beauty of her tanned, crossed legs, and I swear the thought of her being twenty years older might as well have been twenty days, because I believe I was falling in love.

Connie saw me to the door to say goodnight.

“Thank you for fixing the commode, Will,” she said. “I had no idea you were such a handyman!”

“Oh, I’m okay in the bathroom!” I said. “But I’m better in some of the other rooms around the house!”

In the dim light, I could see a twinkle in her eye and a sly curl to her lip.

“Oh, you are, are you?” she said.

“I think so. If you have any other chores that need attention, just let me know.”

We stared at each other for a bit. I knew she was feeling something too, I just didn’t know what. I leaned to her and kissed her full on her mouth. I sensed a brief resistance, but I put my arm behind her back and pulled her to me. My lips parted, and although she hesitated, soon hers did the same and our tongues frolicked and I tasted her for the first time. She was kissing me too, and enjoying it, but her arms stayed by her side. When we finally parted I kept arms around her waist.

“Uh, oh,” Connie said. “What was that?”

“Something I’ve wanted to do for a while,” I said.

“Will, we shouldn’t…you were a student of mine…”

“That was a long time ago.”

“But you’re the same age as my daughter!”

“So what? You deserve a little young stuff!” I said, and performed a little shuffle dance in front of her.

She laughed and shook her head.

I kissed her again and her lips didn’t delay as much this time, our mouths meshed and our tongues twirled in a sexy ballet, a long one, and I felt her arms around me.

When we broke the kiss our eyes were locked as we said goodnight.

‘No woman could kiss a man like that and not feel something!’ I thought to myself.