The yelling and jeering from the living room reached a fever pitch, and Tim Mason sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in response.
“That’s bullshit!” came a young man’s voice in protest. “You’re just mashing random buttons, and you know it!”
Other voices hooted in mocking derision. “Maybe don’t stand so close to the edge, genius!” came another young man’s voice in reply. Howling laughter echoed the comment.
It was a Saturday night in May, just past graduation, and eighteen-year-old Matt Mason and his friends were currently holding an impromptu Super Smash Bros tournament in the Masons’ living room – much to the dismay of Matt’s father, Tim, who was trying to concentrate on a spreadsheet. Normally, the easygoing Tim wouldn’t have cared about teen boys yelling at a video game; indeed, there had been many times that he would have grabbed a controller and taken the guys to school, as it were. But he had a budget meeting Monday morning, and the stress of the proposal was making it harder than normal to drown out the noises of the combatants.
Tim’s wife April smiled and reached her hand across the kitchen table, laying it on top of her husband’s in a calm affirmation. “Matt leaves tomorrow,” she gently reminded him. “You’ll have all the quiet you need, then.”
Tim gave a tired smile and shook his head in response. “Oh, don’t think I have forgotten that,” he replied. “You’ll notice that I haven’t said a word; I don’t want to put a damper on them. Maybe I’ll just move to the bedroom, though – I really do need to concentrate.”
April stood up and tilted her head to the side, which shifted her wild mane of fiery curls with the motion. “Let me see if I can quiet them down without being a downer,” she offered. As she strode toward the living room, Tim found his eyes fixating on his wife’s round little ass – which was pretty much how he acted every time he saw her walking away.
“Quit staring at my ass, mister!” the redhead exclaimed in a light tone, apparently entirely aware of her husband’s actions without having to look to verify them. “You can’t complain that you need to work, then ignore that work to ogle me!”
Grinning, Tim looked back down at his spreadsheet. “Yes, dear,” he replied in mock chagrin as April exited the kitchen.
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April paused as she entered the living room. As she looked over the four boys in her house, she couldn’t help but smile; the diversity of Matt’s friend group made her happy.
Matt himself was a strapping young man with blonde hair and blue eyes; at six feet three inches, he was taller even than his father. Both Tim and April were athletic enough on their own, but Matt seemed to have inherited the best of both of their genes. He was muscular, handsome, popular, a real lady killer – and would be leaving the next day to begin summer conditioning for the D-1 baseball scholarship he had accepted.
Sprawled out next to him on the couch was Chance Roberts, a similarly handsome, athletic young man. More than Matt’s teammate, Chance had been a package deal on their baseball scholarships to university – he and Matt had insisted on finding a school that had room for both of them on the team. The two of them had cooked up a plan to take turns driving on their trip out to college to avoid some big emotional goodbye with their parents at the dorm. Chance came from a well-to-do family; the roguish young man never seemed to have a care in the world.
Slouching in an armchair was a short, portly kid named Eric Jacobs. In stark contrast with Matt and Chance, Eric was pasty, socially awkward, and lacked self-confidence. He had at least been to a lot of athletic events during his high school career – as a clarinet player. Eric had been Matt’s friend since before middle school, but April’s son had never cared about cliques or social levels; he liked Eric’s sense of humor, and Matt was so popular that it bought the chubby boy a great amount of social protection at school. April knew that Eric was set to attend an engineering program at a state school in the fall.
Rounding out the foursome was Malik Williams, a skinny black kid who lived a couple streets over. Malik wasn’t an athlete, wasn’t a musician, wasn’t popular or particularly notable in any way. His grades were decent, but not amazing. As far as April knew, Malik had few friends, nor did he enjoy much in the way of parental support. Somehow, despite their different social circles, he and Matt had become friends in freshman year; the shy young man had spent many an evening at her home since. The last April had heard, Malik was hoping to attend a smaller, all-black school, but she didn’t really know where he stood on that.
Peals of laughter echoed through the room as April stepped in. Matt seemed a little irritated; of course, he had been the one complaining so loudly. The four young men looked up as she entered.
“Hey, Mrs. M!” Eric called.
“Looking niiice!” Chance added with a crooked grin.
April rolled her eyes. “Hello, boys,” she greeted them. “Having fun?”
“You know it!” Malik exclaimed. “Though Matt is struggling right now.”
Matt frowned. “That’s because Chance is doing a bunch of button-mashing bullshit with King K. Rool! I’m getting sick of him ringing me out on cheap crap!”
At Matt’s pronouncement, the room broke into chaos, with a lot of grinning arguing back and forth among the boys. In other words, it was a completely typical session of Super Smash Bros.
April put one hand on her hip and held up the other. “Guys!” she exclaimed. “Chill for a sec.”
Chance smirked. “I’ve gotcha, Mrs. M. Are you here to tell us that Mister M has admitted that he can’t get the job done, and you need my help?”
Matt elbowed his buddy, hard. “Dude!” he exclaimed in a mock-angry tone.
April merely rolled her eyes. “Chance, what have I told you every single time you have offered that?” she asked in a no-nonsense tone.
The young man’s expression fell and he sighed. In a defeated voice, he answered. “Not a chance, Chance.”
Malik and Eric laughed, though Matt still shot his buddy dirty looks via side eye. As the laughter quieted, April spoke up.
“Look Guys – Tim has a big budget presentation Monday morning that he’s having to work on,” she spoke in a calm tone. “So I need for y’all to lower the volume just a bit, okay?”
A chorus of good-natured agreement echoed around the room. The guys had always liked both April and Tim, in no small part due to the respect that the Masons had always shown to them. If past experiences held true, April knew that she could count on them to do as they had promised.
She took a step towards the door, but paused for a moment. “And Matt?” she added in a questioning tone. “I have an idea for you on how to deal with Chance’s button mashing.”
Her son smiled widely and looked up from the screen. “Sure thing, mom,” he replied. “What have you got?”
A wicked grin stretched across April’s features. “You should…” she began, but then paused for a moment and glanced to each of the guys. After allowing all four of the boys to stare intently for several moments, waiting for the wisdom she would share, she spoke up in a snarky tone.
“You should get good, scrub!” she added triumphantly. Matt’s face fell comically, and the other three boys hooted and howled with laughter at April turning popular internet slang on her son like that in front of his friends. The redhead turned and walked away to the jeers and laughter and trash talk of the young men in the living room behind her.
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The Masons were a postcard photo of a happy suburban family. Tim and April had met in a literature class in college, dated for three years, and married right after graduation. A year after the wedding, Christy had come along; her brother Matt was born a year after that. Neither Tim nor April wanted a large family, so to prevent any further surprises, Tim got the snip when Matt was three.
Tim was a handsome man, with close-cropped sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, and a square jaw that his son had inherited. Not a short man by any means, Tim stood six feet one inch tall, although Matt had caught up to him by age fifteen and was now two inches taller than his dad. Tim had risen through the ranks of his accounting department to become the CFO of the distributing firm that he had worked at for the past ten years.
April was more than a bit of a looker, herself. Not a short women by any measure, April was five feet seven inches tall, with an hourglass figure, an athletic build, C-cup breasts, and a round ass that her husband could never seem to keep his eyes (or hands) off of. Her head was covered in ringlets of fiery red curls that hung to her shoulders, she had the pale ivory skin that so often came with being a true ginger, and she possessed emerald green eyes of her own. Her own work was in human resources for a large medical devices company; while she didn’t make as much money as Tim, April did quite well for herself.
As both of the Masons were successful in their careers, the family was relatively comfortable. They had a nice home in the suburbs, decent cars, were able to take family vacations. Christy was on an academic scholarship to a state university, while Matt’s schooling was covered by a half scholarship for baseball and a half scholarship for academics. The Masons did help their daughter with her books and board, but Matt’s scholarships meant that all he really needed was a little bit for books and a little spending money.
Christy had been moved out for the better part of a year; now, with Matt leaving home early for baseball conditioning, Tim and April were about to become empty nesters at the ripe old age of forty-two. They had talked about that, tried to mentally prepare for it – but neither of them was foolish enough to think that they wouldn’t be at least a little lonely. They had decided that one thing to do was to try to take their minds off of the situation – so they had planned a little week-long trip. The budget cycle at Tim’s work meant that he couldn’t leave immediately after Matt left for school, but he and April had agreed that a week and a half delay before they left town wouldn’t be that terrible.
Tonight, Tim was grilling burgers for the boys, who planned to mostly play video games all night. April wasn’t sure just how many times she had heard of a group of eighteen-year-old guys having what amounted to a sleepover, but the fact that they were still such fast friends warmed her heart. She and her husband were more than glad to play host to this sort of thing one more time; she tried to not focus on the idea that this was the last time that this would ever happen at her house.
Like most self-respecting dads, Tim took great pride in his grilling prowess. His burgers were really quite absurd; he diced jalapenos to mix with the burger meat, formed them into patties, grilled them to perfection, and then topped them with not one, not two, but three types of cheese – Swiss, sharp cheddar, and pepper jack. April baked some frozen seasoned fries from the grocery store to serve as a side dish, then made Matt’s favorite for dessert – cheesecake with cherries.
The meal was more than popular with the guys; April remained amazed at just how much food four eighteen-year-olds could manage to put away. Dinner was a lively affair, with a lot of upbeat discussion and back and forth among the boys. Eric was yammering about some new sci-fi series on Netflix, and once the group was done eating, Matt and his friends headed back to the living room to binge at least a few episodes. Tim went back outside to clean and put away the grill, while April headed to the kitchen to do the dishes.
It only took Tim ten minutes or so to finish his tasks, so he headed back inside to see if his wife needed a hand with her share of the chores. Just as he opened the back door, he heard a clattering clank come from the kitchen, followed by tinkling noise, and then an exclamation of profanity in a feminine voice. As he moved towards the source of the noise, he took in two aspects of a very interesting scene.
The first was his wife’s shapely ass, with her skirt ridden up and the very edge of some purple satin panties visible between her legs. More accurately, April was on her hands and knees under the dining room table, a towel in her hands as she scrubbed at something on the floor. The fact that her ass was so visible, that her skirt was out of place – this was a mere happy coincidence, as the redhead was clearly engrossed in her task and oblivious as to how she was positioned.
The second was the startling realization that he was not alone in enjoying the view of April’s assets. Tim realized with a start that Malik was standing at the edge of the kitchen, his attention completely locked in on the show that April was inadvertently presenting to the world. There could be no doubt as to what the young black man was doing – Malik was standing as still as a statue, with his intent gaze very obviously fixed on April’s upturned ass.
Tim frowned as took a step forward with a vague idea of intervening, of challenging Malik as to what the hell he thought that he was doing. But even as he took the step, some immediate understanding raced through Tim’s mind.
There was no question that if he spoke up, Malik would be embarrassed – and given her position, there was no chance that April would not feel the same way. Once he said something, Tim would cause an awkward scene; there was really no other way around it. But another epiphany hit Tim almost simultaneously – the blonde man grasped that instead of being jealous, or angry, or annoyed… he was actually excited by what he saw. In fact, Tim might have even been aroused by it.
Reluctant to break the spell, Tim froze in place and instead did nothing. April continued to scrub away at something beneath the table, Malik continued to stand there and greedily drink in the view… not that Tim could blame the young man. As he silently stood there, Tim became acutely aware of his racing pulse, his rapid breathing, the swirling in the pit of his stomach, and the hardening of his penis. He absolutely was aroused by what he was seeing – and that fact scared him more than a little bit.
Erotic as it was, the moment could not last forever; Malik shifted slightly, which brought Tim into his peripheral vision. With a start, the young black man turned his head and made eye contact with Tim. His eyes went wide, his mouth gaped; Tim expected him to offer some sort of flustered apology and beat a retreat.
But just as Malik opened his mouth to say something, he apparently processed the fact that Tim had been looking on as he spied on the redhead. A look of confusion crossed the young man’s face, and he glanced back to April for a moment before turning his gaze back to meet Tim’s. Tim didn’t really understand what came over him, but rather than say anything at all, he gave Malik a tiny nod and the ghost of a smile. Malik found himself grinning in response as he silently turned and walked away, which gave Tim the chance to announce his presence.
“Hey babe, is everything okay?” he asked with a slight hitch in his voice, struggling to ensure that his tone remained level.
“Oh, I knocked the damned jelly jar out of the fridge,” April explained. “I thought I was going to be lucky, as it didn’t break on impact, but it bounced across the floor and THEN broke under the table. What a mess!”
“Here, let me help you,” Tim offered as he grabbed some paper towels and got down on the floor beside his wife. As he worked to clean the sticky puddle – while being mindful of the few shards of glass – he internally debated on how to handle what he had just witnessed. He knew without a doubt that he needed to let April know what had happened; the very idea of keeping it quiet made him feel a little dirty and dishonest. But it seemed like it was the sort of thing that would require some tact, a proper situation to open a dialogue over. The last thing that he wanted was to create unnecessary awkwardness for April – or even for Malik, for that matter.
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The opportunity to share that information presented itself later that very night. Tim and April had retired to their bedroom; the layout of the house and a final admonition from the redhead to keep it down helped to ensure that the volume level didn’t bother the couple in their own room.
As was the typical situation, Tim turned on the fan as they started to get ready for bed. Both Tim and April were so accustomed to white noise when they slept that the idea of going to bed without a fan running seemed almost physically painful. Any time they went on a trip, they took their fan with them; they had discovered that the various white noise apps on their cell phones just did not cut it.
Of course, an extra benefit was that the fan helped drown out any noise in the rest of the house. Furthermore, it helped April to relax enough to have sex, even with the kids up and around in the house, as the fan masked noises from the bedroom, as well. Fortunately, April had never been loud during sex, and they had long ago established that when mom and dad closed the door and turned on the fan, they were not to be disturbed. Now, Matt just took it as second nature that it was time to stay in the other parts of the house and to keep the volume down a bit.
The redhead was standing near the entrance to the Masons’ bathroom when she dropped her skirt in the process of getting ready for bed. Seeing her satin-clad ass come into view, Tim let out a low whistle. “Damn, you are so sexy,” he offered in a lascivious tone.
April giggled in response. “Flatterer!” she replied. “I’m your wife, you have to say that kind of thing.”
As he shed his own shirt, Tim shook his head. “Number one, I don’t have to say anything. I don’t bullshit – if I didn’t think it, I wouldn’t say it,” he said. He then paused for a long moment before committing. “Besides,” he added, “this definitely isn’t just my opinion.”
As she discarded her blouse and began to climb into bed, April cocked an eyebrow at her husband. “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked, a note of confusion on her face.
“I have of course seen other guys check you out. You’re gorgeous,” he replied. “That’s just a basic fact.”
The redhead rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she offered dismissively. Clearly, April was unconvinced.
Tim took a breath before continuing.
“I saw it happen again today, as a matter of fact,” he asserted.
April looked at him with an expression of complete disbelief. “And when was that supposed to have happened?” she asked. “We’ve been home all day. Nobody has been here but the kids.” She paused, then smirked. “If you are talking about Chance, he doesn’t count. You and I both know that kid will catcall anything with boobs.”
The moment of truth had arrived. In for a penny…
“No, I don’t mean Chance,” Tim stated. “Malik was checking you out today – and it wasn’t just some quick glance. It was obvious that he liked what he saw.”
At first, April just laughed, but then she saw Tim’s face. “Wait, you’re serious?” she asked. “Malik? That doesn’t sound like him at all. When did this supposedly happen?” she pressed.
“When you dropped the jelly jar out of the fridge,” Tim explained. “While you were cleaning that up, you were on your hands and knees with your ass up in the air. Malik was behind you, and he just stood there and stared at you for a bit.”
The redhead’s face was a combination of confusion and annoyance. “So he was just standing there, checking my ass out, and you just… what, stood there and let him? What the hell, Tim?”
Tim tried to recover. “Look, I was outside. I heard the noise; I came to see what was wrong – and there you both were. He didn’t even know I was there to start with.”
April frowned. “I don’t understand. You stopped… and didn’t say anything? It didn’t bother you for him to ogle me like that?”
Tim swallowed and considered his words carefully. “Look, baby, I get it. But I didn’t want to make a scene and embarrass you. You would have gotten upset, he would have gotten upset, Matt probably would have gotten upset…” he paused for a moment, then grinned at his wife. “Besides, it’s not like I can blame him. That ass is pretty incredible, you had it stuck up there so nicely. What was he supposed to do?”
April’s mouth screwed into a twisted frown. “I guess that I get not wanting to start trouble on Matt’s last night home.” She tilted her head as if in thought as she continued. “But it still surprises me that you didn’t at least say something quietly to him, even if you didn’t try to stop him. I thought that guys were always territorial over their women or whatever.”
Tim felt like he was standing at the edge of a cliff. He was sure that could step back and walk away from the edge by giving April some noncommittal nonsense. But for some reason, he felt like he owed it to his wife to be transparent right now.
“Look, it’s not like some eighteen-year-old kid is a threat to me,” he explained. “I’m not worried that you’re going to be smitten by him and run away together. So if he enjoys the view a little… so what?” Heart racing, Tim took a breath, then stepped off of the edge of that cliff. “If I’m being totally honest,” he continued, “it was… well, it was a little bit of a turn-on to see him into you like that.”
April’s mouth opened for a moment, then closed, as if she were trying – and failing - to come up with a response. Her emerald eyes snapped with emotion that Tim couldn’t quite identify. Finally, she choked out a response. “Are… are you serious?” she asked.
For a moment, Tim strongly considered grinning and playing it all off as a joke. But no, he had committed – he wouldn’t chicken out now. “Yes, baby. I’m serious,” he admitted. “I know that it sounds… well, strange. But yes, it gave me a little thrill to see him just openly staring at you like that.” Tim kept his face neutral as he held his wife’s gaze. He moved closer to her, then reached out and put his arms around April. He lowered his voice as he continued. “It’s hot to know that my wife is sexy enough to turn heads, to make a guy just forget where he is just to watch her in that kind of way.”
April’s expression was still unreadable, but she had allowed her husband to pull her close. Tim decided to gamble and pressed on. “It’s hot to know that my wife is so desirable that another guy would wish that he could do this.” With that, Tim leaned in and kissed his wife.
At first, April was stiff, making it seem that Tim was trying to kiss a statue. Tim began to fear that he had overplayed his hand, that his wife was angry or upset, and that his kissing was making it worse. But suddenly, it was as if a dam had burst inside of her, and the redhead began to enthusiastically return her husband’s kisses. Soon, her tongue was in his mouth, hungrily seeking his own.
Tim’s hand slid down April’s bare back and traced across the satin-covered curve of her ass. As she leaned in, kissing him enthusiastically, Tim let his hand drift around her hip, down across the satiny purple fabric of her panties, lower… and then, he encountered a stunning amount of damp heat between the junction of her creamy legs. As April moaned into his mouth, Tim wormed a finger underneath the edge of her panties to discover that his wife’s vagina was a slippery mess.
As Tim felt himself falling into the taboo abyss beneath that cliff, it hit him that instead of being upset or offended, his wife was perhaps even more turned on by the black kid checking her out than he was himself.
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The next morning seemed to come very early for Tim and April. The fact that they had gone three full rounds of sex, with April seemingly egged on to a fever pitch by some dirty suggestions from Tim that his wife was imagining the black kid watching her, wanting her, and even more – what if he touched her, how would his hands feel, what would his body feel like against hers – meant that they got a good bit less sleep than normal. The dirty talk had driven the redhead nuts, causing her to fuck her husband like a wild, possessed woman. Normally quiet, April had made far more noise than usual; Tim hoped that between the fan and whatever video games the boys were up to, that they hadn’t noticed her moans and cries.
As they began moving about for the day, Tim chuckled. “My balls actually ache this morning, baby,” he declared. “I can’t remember the last time that you gave me that kind of workout!”
April smiled, but in an embarrassed way, and she didn’t really respond as she moved to get ready. Tim snuggled up behind her, asking if she was planning to wear anything to draw attention today, but his wife turned around and answered in a serious tone.
“Tim,” she began, “last night was fun. It was. But that was fantasy, dirty talk, that kind of thing. This is the real world; this is our son and his friends. So now, it’s time to let it go, okay?”
She didn’t seem angry, but April’s tone didn’t brook any argument. And frankly, she made sense. Tim smiled, forcing himself to appear relaxed. “Of course, baby,” he answered. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to make you upset. Let’s go make breakfast and help Matt finish loading the car.”
The redhead smiled, gratitude evident on her face. Tim sighed a little as he turned to grab his own clothes. While she was right, he hated to let the fantasies go – he couldn’t remember the last time that sex had been that good.
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Breakfast was a far more serious, subdued affair than dinner had been. Today, the guys all seemed to keenly feel the weight of their impending goodbyes. Of course they would connect online, of course they would try to see one another during breaks – but life would never again be the same. Tim found himself wistful as he looked at the four young men; he knew full well that the odds of them staying close friends much beyond the next few months or so were fairly remote.
As they ate, the boys all chatted about their respective summer plans. Matt and Chance would be starting conditioning for baseball right away, even if a great deal of the work was “voluntary” or “extra”. Of course, any D-1 athlete knew that coaches expect pretty much year-round work, despite the fact that NCAA rules limited the amount of time that they could work out in an organized manner under direct coach supervision. Instead, it was understood that each player would follow the team’s training regimen solo, or in small groups, “on their own”. Players who didn’t “choose” to work, could expect that next season, the coach would find guys who were more dedicated to reallocate their scholarships to. While Chance expected to just chill and familiarize himself with the campus, Matt was going ahead and picking up a single English class as a way to help ease himself into college classes.
Eric wouldn’t start school until the fall, but a family friend had helped him line up a summer internship with an engineering firm. The money was insulting, but it was the kind of thing that looked great on a future resume, and he was pretty excited to start off one step ahead.
Malik, on the other hand, was a little more morose than his friends. Yes, he had been accepted to the HBCU he had applied to, but his grades hadn’t been enough to earn more than a partial scholarship, and the federal Pell grant amounts were embarrassingly low – even though his family just didn’t have any money to devote to his education. He figured that he would lean on student loans to bridge the gap, but he hadn’t even picked out a major yet, so he was more than a little worried about his future financial picture. Also, he was really pushing for some summer employment to help put away some spending money for college and reduce the amount that he’d need to borrow, but he hadn’t been able to land anything more than part-time work at minimum wage.
This line of conversation put a bit of a damper on the entire mood of the room, and despite April’s attempts at other small talk, most of the meal went in relative silence. Tim found himself staring out the back window towards the back privacy fence. As he ate, he frowned; he still needed to fix that one section where a neighbor’s tree had blown down during a storm months ago and crushed one entire segment of the fence. The man had tacked up some plywood to patch it, but a week later, his house was in foreclosure… meaning that the Masons never did get made whole for the damage.
On top of that, the fence overall was getting pretty old. Tim and Matt had put the thing up a decade or so ago – well, Tim had mostly done the work, but little Matt had eagerly held boards, fetched nails, helped stir concrete in a wheelbarrow. Time and weather had started to rot some of the boards near the bottoms, but Tim had just never seemed to find the time or energy to fix the thing. If he didn’t make it a priority soon, however, the problem would get rapidly worse in a hurry.
Suddenly, an idea hit him, and the blonde man grinned. “Malik,” he declared, “I think that we can help one another out.”
The black teenager cocked his head in response. “What do you have in mind, mister M?” he asked.
Tim pointed out the back window. “See that fence? It needs some serious work. With a half acre fenced in, and the age of those boards, I’ll bet that there are at least a hundred of them rotted – if not twice that. Plus, there’s that one whole segment that our old neighbor never fixed after his tree fell on it. Surely some of the rails need replacing, too. It’s not complicated work, but there’s a lot of it, and I keep making excuses as to why I don’t have the time to fix it.”
Malik’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?” he questioned.
Tim grinned. “Look, we know that you are a hard worker – I remember that you used to help out your uncle when he had that construction company. What if we paid you to rip off the old boards and hammer new ones up? I have the tools. I can get the lumber and nails delivered from Lowe’s.” He glanced at April, whose expression was guarded. “We could pay you, say, fifteen dollars an hour, tax-free, to fix the fence. You could work around your other job, and you’d make a good bit more than you do for them. We get our fence fixed for way less than we’d pay a fencing company, you make a little money. It’s a win/win, right? Heck, if you do a good job, I bet I can find several things around here that desperately need doing that you might be able to help out with over the summer.”
Malik found himself grinning widely. “It’s a deal.”
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Tim’s offer seemed to help remove a lot of the damper from the group, and breakfast wrapped with more of the grins and joking that the four friends had been known for. As the guys headed outside to help Matt pack the last of his items into his car, Tim hung back with April to clear the table and handle the dishes.
As she scrubbed a skillet, the redhead shot her husband a sideways glance with an arched eyebrow. “Fence repair?” she offered mildly.
“What?” the taller man protested. “He needs the money, we have the money, but I don’t have the time to fix the damned thing. It’s good for everybody, isn’t it?”
April looked unconvinced as she put the pan up to dry, but Matt entered the kitchen and interrupted. Instead of his normal resting grin, the tall teen had a serious expression.
“Mom, Dad,” he offered. “I want to thank you both. That means a lot to Malik. He doesn’t get any help at all from home, he’s always worrying about money. This is a big deal for him.”
April smiled, and her entire demeanor changed. “It was your father’s idea, Matt,” she allowed, “but I can see that it’s a really good one. Like he said, it’s a win/win. We have always liked Malik; this helps him while it helps us, too.”
Tim rolled his eyes as he dried a plate. As usual, Matt had his wife wrapped around his finger – now that her baby boy was on board, Tim’s idea was suddenly genius. Still, Tim wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth – for April to come around without any deep discussion was a win, and he would take it.
Matt’s little grin returned. “Yeah, maybe so, but you aren’t fooling me – this is the two of you being good people, and we all know it.” The young man paused. “Thank you.”
When Mett left the room, Tim found that he was grinning from ear to ear, despite himself. When April saw her husband’s expression, it was her turn to roll her eyes – she knew good and well that he was silently gloating at her getting on board with his idea so easily. Even so, she found herself smiling in response.
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Goodbyes were said, Eric and Malik headed out – the latter only after giving Tim his cell number – and suddenly, the Mason house was oppressively empty. April declared that she needed to visit her mother, and Tim decided to head out to Lowe’s to go ahead and procure the supplies for the fence repair project.
Figuring that Lowe’s would send him more than a few uselessly warped or cracked boards, Tim purchased an extra thirty dog ear fence pickets on top of the two hundred he estimated that he’d need. He could always bring the bad ones back later, but he’d hate to delay the work for lack of good lumber. He threw in a dozen pressure-treated two by fours in case there were rails that needed replacing, then added two pounds of sixteen-penny nails for the rails and a fifteen pounds of eight-penny nails for the fence pickets themselves. He knew that it was a little overkill in terms of the nails, but again, he’d rather have extra than not enough.
When he made his way to the service desk, Tim got a pleasant surprise – they’d just had a cancellation, so they could deliver his materials the next day. After signing the paperwork, he punched in Malik’s number and texted the young man to let him know.
“Hey Malik, it’s Tim. Just wanted you to know that Lowe’s is delivering the lumber tomorrow at four. I’m going to clean out the garage so we can stack it there. I’ll have a hammer, pry bar, circle saw, and extension cord all there for you. There’s no rush, just text me when you are planning to come and start.”
After a short delay, the reply came. “Thanks, Mister M. I’m off my day shift at five. Let me go home and change, I’ll be there around six.”
The kid really was ready to work, Tim thought to himself. “Sounds good,” he replied.
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Monday was a blur. The budget meeting was long and tiresome, but Tim got it all worked out to the general approval of the important players. After the work day was finished, he pulled into the driveway around five thirty, narrowly beating April home. Sure enough, there was a stack of lumber in the drive – which he of course had to maneuver around, as naturally, the delivery driver had refused to bring it beyond where they could reach from the curb.
April came in as Tim was changing. They chatted about their experiences at work, and he told his wife about Malik coming to start on the fence.
“What are you planning to do about that wood in the drive?” April asked. “We can’t leave it there the whole time that Malik works on things. I don’t want to have to drive around it for the next couple of weeks or whatever.”
Tim nodded. “I know. I figure that he and I will move it into the garage; it will put it out of the way, and if it rains, we won’t have to worry as much about the wood warping before it gets put up.”
“Sounds like a plan,” April answered. “While you boys play construction, I’ll be in the garden.”
This was no surprise to Tim, as April had always enjoyed her flowers. Sure, she usually planted a small handful of vegetable plants for the fun of eating her own homegrown tomatoes or cucumbers or peppers, but she got her real satisfaction out of the splashes of color that she had located all over their property. As a result, the redhead spent a lot of time outside tinkering with this or that – usually in a wide-brimmed hat to help protect her pale skin from the sun until it got later in the evening to allow her to abandon it, most often with the company of a Bluetooth speaker playing 90s alternative rock while she worked.
April headed on outside while Tim tinkered around the house for a bit until a knock came at the door. He answered it to reveal Malik.
The young man was dressed in what were clearly old clothes and shoes, carrying a cooler – he was clearly prepared for the task. He flashed Tim a grin. “I’m ready to go, Mister M!”
Tim nodded. “I figure that the first thing we need to do is to move the lumber out of the driveway and into the garage,” he said. “It’s a bitch to drive around, and if it rains, I don’t want the wood warping before we get it nailed up.”
Malik shrugged. “You’re the boss! I’ll get started moving it.”
The bigger man shook his head. “I won’t make you move all of that alone. If we carry five or six boards at a time together, it will still be a job – but it won’t be the big deal that it would be to move all of that by yourself.”
Even being later in the day, it was nevertheless pretty warm outside – and carrying the boards in batches still took quite a bit longer to move the thirty feet or so to the garage than Tim had really thought that it would. By the time that they were done, Tim was parched; he went to head inside to grab a drink, but Malik shook off the offer of anything; pointing out that he had brought a cooler with his own beverages. Soon enough, Tim could hear the periodic noise of a hammer banging outside as the teenager began his task of working on the fence.
Some time later, Tim glanced up from his spreadsheets to see that close to an hour had passed. It occurred to him that he hadn’t heard any hammering for a few minutes; Malik was likely on a break, but Tim was concerned that perhaps the young man had run into a problem. There was really no sense in him wasting time figuring out something that Tim himself had likely unlocked the trick to years ago, so the taller man made his way outside to offer help if it was needed.
A quick glanced at the garage revealed a slightly depleted pile of lumber – with the first badly warped fence picket set to the side – but no Malik. So, Tim headed off down the perimeter of the fence to find the young man.
It didn’t take long; two fence segments into the work, Tim stepped around a large tree trunk on the outside of the fence line and found the teenager kneeling beside a gap in the boards that he had clearly made by pulling a couple of the rotten pickets off with the pry bar. Confused as to why Malik didn’t appear to be doing anything at all, Tim took a couple of steps closer. In doing so, he stepped on a twig and alerted the teenager to the older man’s presence; Malik hurriedly got to his feet and grabbed a fresh board for nailing back on. But those couple of steps were all that Tim needed to understand what was going on.
The gap in the fence gave a nice view of the Masons’ back yard. Maybe six to eight yards away – if that – April was working away sans hat, her flaming curls glistening in the evening sun as she labored on her hands and knees with her back to the fence. From the look of things, she was pulling weeds around some pink flowers, but the result was a view extremely similar to the one that the young black man had enjoyed two nights prior; when she bent over, April’s round ass was nicely displayed to anyone behind her… such as to a teenager on the other side of the fence. Tim felt his pulse race and his mouth go dry once he realized what had been going on.
Tim cleared his throat before speaking. “Everything okay?” he asked, trying to keep his voice even.
Malik flashed an awkward grin in response. “Yeah, Mister M. I’m good,” he replied in a shaky voice. “Replacing the boards ain’t hard, it just takes a little time is all.” The nervousness on the black kid’s face belied his attempt at nonchalance. When he tried to make eye contact with Tim, he glanced away almost immediately, then glanced back up as he tried to play it cool.
He knew that the older man had seen him ogling his wife. Again. There was a little bit of fear on Malik’s face, even as he tried to pretend that everything was normal.
“I tell you what,” Tim said. “Why don’t you grab those couple of old boards and follow me? I’ll show you where to stack them until we get a dumpster.”
Malik did as he was told, gathering up the boards he had pulled off of that segment of the fence as he followed the bigger man. Tim led him beside the garage, then gestured to a flat spot that adjoined both the driveway and the garage itself.
“Right there should work,” Tim explained. “That way, it won’t be an eyesore with boards scattered everywhere as you work.”
The teenager nodded and turned as if to return to work, when Tim put a hand on his shoulder. “Just a moment, Malik,” the older man requested.
The young black man froze. His expression was fearful as he turned to face the larger man.
Feeling lightheaded, Tim spoke. “Malik,” he started, “I understand that you are a regular guy, and that there are some… interesting things to look at here around my house. I can’t really blame you for looking, now can I?”
Dumbly, Malik shook his head. “Uh… I guess not?”
Tim nodded. “Right. But here’s the thing,” he added with a pause. “I can’t blame you for looking, but you have to be smart about it, okay?”
The teenager blinked slowly. “Oh… okay?” he fumbled.
The bigger man sighed. “Look, let me be plain,” he stated. “My wife is hot. You’re a red-blooded guy. You’re going to look, I get it. But you have to be careful when you do. You can’t just stare at her like that – I don’t want her uncomfortable, do you understand?”
Malike nodded. “Er… yes, sir. I understand.”
Tim rolled his eyes. “Maybe cut the sir. Anyway, get in your looks. But don’t just stand there forever leering. Be respectful, okay? And don’t forget – we are paying you to build the fence, not to ogle my wife, all right?” He added a grin with the last, hoping to set the younger man at ease.
The teenager began to visibly relax a bit, and gave a bit of a grin. “Thanks, Mister M. I don’t mean any disrespect, I really don’t – it’s just that your wife is so fine!”
Tim chuckled, not the least at the absurdity of actually having this conversation out loud. “She is, you’re right about that. Just be cool, okay?” he prompted.
Malik nodded vigorously. “You got it. I’ll be cool.”
Shaking his head, Tim went back inside.
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Tuesday found Tim having to work later than usual. He texted April to let her know, then dug in to get his tasks completed. He would be damned if he let work stack up and prevent the two of them from going out of town next week.
He rolled into the driveway around seven PM, knowing from texts that Malik had been there working for at least an hour or so while April gardened. A quick inspection revealed that the house was empty; Tim glanced out the back window and saw a splash of color – it was April, playing in the dirt as usual. He could hear the sound of hammering, so he knew that the teen was out there working away. April waved up at the house from her spot among the plants, and Tim returned it.
After he changed clothes, Tim decided to go out and check on Malik’s progress. When he first stepped out of the house, he could hear quiet sounds of April’s music in between echoing blows from a hammer, but while the music got louder as he passed the garage, the hammering sounds went silent. Tim headed off around the perimeter of the fence, observing the fact that the boards Malik had replaced seemed to have been done quite well – the teenager had maintained the proper slope at the top of the fence, the nails appeared to have been hammered in properly, the gaps between the boards were consistent. All in all, it was a quality start to the project.
Tim stepped around some Chinese privet and spotted Malik. The teenager was working where he had apparently opened up a small hole in the fence by removing three rotten boards; he had replacement pickets in his hands, which he leaned against the fence. As Tim watched, the young man picked up the hammer in his left hand – then paused to look through the fence.
As Tim stood silently watching, Malik stayed stock still, peering through the gap in the wood. The older man was quite sure as to what the teen had to be looking at; about thirty seconds later, Tim’s suspicions were confirmed as he observed the black teen reach down with his right hand and squeeze his crotch while continuing to look through the hole created by the missing boards.
Tim stood frozen in place, barely breathing, knowing that if Malik realized that he was there it would cause real awkwardness. Even so, he was caught off guard when he realized that Malik wasn’t just watching April through the fence – the young man’s right arm was moving slowly back and forth as he rubbed himself through his shorts. The realization that the teen wasn’t just idly watching Tim’s wife - that he was instead deriving some amount of sexual gratification from staring at her body - hit Tim like a bolt of electricity. He found his pulse racing at the idea, found that his breathing was fast and shallow… and with a start, realized that he himself was growing erect at the spectacle before him.
To his credit, Malik didn’t linger overly long. With a sigh, the young man switched the hammer to his right hand, grabbed a board, then positioned it at the gap. Tim took the opportunity to step back behind the bush; after the first hammer blows fell, he made a big production out of stepping out and calling Malik’s name.
The teen looked over at Tim and flashed him a grin. “How’s it going, Mister M?”
Tim nodded. “It’s good, Malik,” he answered. “I see that you’ve been busy – the work so far is looking good.” As he spoke, it hit Tim that he was still at least half hard; the knowledge left him flustered.
“Thanks, man,” Malik replied. “I want to do a good job, you know? You said that you might have more work, so I’ma be sure to do it right.”
Tim nodded in appreciation as he moved closer to the young man. “That’s great to hear,” he said. “Yes, if you do a good job on the fence, I’m sure that we will have other things for you to do.”
At the next step he took, Tim became lined up with the gap that the teen was working on, which granted him a view of the backyard – and more notably, of April. More specifically, of her ass.
The redhead was once again on her hands and knees, facing away from the fence as she pulled weeds. This time, she couldn’t have been more than five yards from the fence opening, and was positioned in a perfect way as to present her fantastic ass to anyone viewing from this angle. The short, tight teal shorts she wore left nothing at all to the imagination while she struggled with the unwanted plants. Tim could hear his wife humming along with her music, but that view was nearly hypnotic…
As he tore his gaze away from his wife, Tim made eye contact with Malik, who grinned broadly. “Right?” the young man offered.
Mild embarrassment washed over Tim – the shoe was now on the other foot, as he had been the one caught up in the scene, and the teen had been the witness to Tim’s own debauchery. Still, it wasn’t quite the same – April was his wife, after all. Even so, he found himself giving Malik a sheepish grin. “It does make for some nice scenery,” he offered.
A smiling Malik agreed. “For sure, Mister M! And don’t worry,” he explained as he gestured to the fence, “I’m getting a lot of work done. Sure, I look, but like you told me…” his voice changed to a conspirational tone, “I’m being cool.”
Tim had trouble processing the cocktail of emotions he was feeling – pride in his wife’s body, jealousy that this teenager was openly viewing her with such sexual thoughts, arousal at the taboo of the situation, nervousness at how April would react if she found out that he had given Malik his tacit approval. He did his best to force a grin. “Carry on,” he bade the teen. With that, the older man turned around and walked away.
