by Joyia Marie
It was at soccer, he found out that Helen usually helped with practice. This involved running up around the field, moving the practice goal and retrieving far-flung balls. So, Harold had to take her place. Harold Sr. would throw a fit if he knew his son was out playing in a muddy field instead of at his desk at work. Harold groaned in bed as his muscles protested the abnormal movements.
This would have been fine if Harold had used his break between school and practice to change clothes but he hadn’t. Therefore, he got to run, move and retrieve in his suit. Harold looked at the suit lying limply over the back of the chair of Helen’s vanity and sighed. It would never be the same and Jillian really liked that suit.
Harold sat up at the thought. He hadn’t talked to Jillian all day. He wondered what was going on. Usually she stopped by his office two or three times a day somehow missing his father every time. Then he’d make his nightly phone call to tell Helen he was working late before following Jillian back to her apartment for a long evening of dinner and sex.
Harold looked at the phone and saw several missed calls from Jillian that he vaguely remembered getting during all the running around with the kids. A time or two, Tonya’s iron gaze fell on him as he looked at the phone and he slipped the phone back into his pocket without answering.
Harold started to call Jillian, but stopped. He knew nothing more than the day before, despite having talked to Helen. He did have the sinking suspicion Helen was serious and wasn’t coming back, but this wasn’t something he thought Jillian would want to hear. She was firm about her and him having some alone time before bringing the kids into the picture.
In addition, he couldn’t blame her, what 22 old woman wants to become the instant mom to twin 12 year olds. Jillian was mature for her age, but that was expecting too much. Harold was still amazed she wanted to become the wife of a 41-year-old man.
Harold allowed himself a long hearty pat on the back. He had bagged two women so far out of his stratosphere as to be creatures from another planet. Helen, with her tall, dark exotic beauty and then Jillian with her beach bunny innocence.
Harold grinned, that innocence was just for show. Helen tried to introduce some novelty into their sex life, but Jillian blew the doors off all the little tricks Helen tried to teach him. Jillian had some moves that would make a porn star envious.
Harold moaned as his cock hardened. It was used to having Jillian several times a day and this night was the first time in a long time he was going without her. Harold had taken to ‘going to his office’ on the weekends for him and Jillian to have a quickie.
He moaned again as he imagined her glove like tightness and the young taut body. The breasts that he loved to bury his face in, whether they were man-made or gifts from God. Harold hadn’t been in contact with enough breasts to make a definitive decision, and in the end, he didn’t care. They were beautiful, bountiful and all his.
Harold looked at the phone again, wondering if Jillian was up for a little phone sex. She did it one night when he was out of town on a trip and there was no graceful way for Harold to take her with him. He flushed as he remembered all the naughty things she said and promised.
Promises Jillian had kept the moment he returned. He went to her apartment from the airport and they had rocked her bed all night long. He told Helen he was coming back in the morning and going straight to the office. He was a little logy the next day, but a scrub brush couldn’t have removed his smile. This was one of the few times he had gotten to spend the night with Jillian.
That was a major deciding factor for him giving into Jillian’s increasingly strident demands. He had enjoyed waking up with Jillian cradled in his arms. Helen wasn’t a cuddler.
She believed each party should retire to their own separate corners when it was time to sleep. As quiet as she slept, there were times he woke up and wondered if he was in bed alone. Only the slight depression of the mattress, let him know his wife was still there.
Harold came back to the present when he found his hand in his boxers gripping his raging erection. Harold allowed himself a slight moment of pride as he always did when he looked at or felt his penis. He might not have covered himself in glory on the playing field but he never came up short in the locker room. Sometimes he thought it was God’s little reward to make up for his other physical deficiencies.
He pulled his hand out slightly embarrassed. He was too old to be jacking off, especially with an exciting woman like Jillian waiting for him. He’d wait until they could get together again and the waiting would make it that much more special.
Harold resolutely tucked his hands under his head and tried to will himself to sleep. He felt better about the coming day. The alarm was set, the coffee was awaiting him and he’d have a much better handle on things. He even thought he could make the carpool run without Tonya barking in his ear like she was a sled driver on the Iditarod and he was the lead husky.
He’d have to figure out how to explain to his father yet again, he’d be out of the office after school let out. His father hadn’t been too pleased with him vanishing yesterday from lunch on. When Harold called to say he wouldn’t be back, his father’s voice got that low grumble that promised another ‘sit-down’ talk the next day.
Harold put it out of his mind. Somehow, he’d figure something out. Maybe his mom could help with the after school running around. She was always begging for more time with her grandkids that she thought Helen was raising to be hippies like herself and her mother.
He had stopped trying to explain the difference between creative and hippy to his mother long ago. Gwendolyn Peterson knew what she knew. There were upstanding God-fearing people and hippies, on this earth. Therefore, if you weren’t an upstanding God-fearing person then you were a hippie.
Harold wasn’t sure about all that. He didn’t think Helen and her mother, Vivian were hippies. Actually, he didn’t think hippies existed anymore. They seem to die out after the sixties about the time he was born so he couldn’t think of a hippy he had seen in his lifetime.
As far as the God-fearing part, he wasn’t sure what Helen’s views were. Her mother was Wiccan which Harold thought meant she worshiped trees or beings that lived in trees or maybe it was the God or Goddess of trees. Vivian wasn’t around enough for him to get a clear view of what she believed.
Since she wasn’t trying to convert her grandchildren to her religion, he felt it better not to ask too many questions. Harold smiled as he tried to imagine explaining to his parents, staunch Baptists, why he now worshipped trees and so did their grandbabies. He wouldn’t have to wait for his father to retire, which he showed no inclination to do, he’d keel over dead with a heart attack.
Helen on the other hand, he thought sleepily, rubbing an absent hand over his rumbling stomach, was a bit closed mouth on the subject of religion. She attended church when she couldn’t get out of it, but she watched it like it was a Broadway production.
She didn’t object when his parents wanted to have the kids christened after their birth, but she drew the line at baptism. Her kids would get baptized when they understood what they were signing up for, she stated firmly and not amount of badgering from his mother changed that. So far, neither child had stepped forward for a dunking.
Harold had almost drifted off, his stomach still wrestling with dinner and his head still slightly aching when his eyes popped back open. He still hadn’t figured out what to tell Tonya. That thought sent a shudder through him and he lay awake a long time wondering what the next day held.
Chapter Eighteen: Jillian
Jillian stumbled into her apartment late. She left this morning well coifed and put together as always but that was a thing of the past. She brushed away her long blond hair was escaping from the bun she had put it in, with a weary hand. She moaned when she noticed a chipped nail, but that was par for the course for how the rest of her looked.
There was tendrils loose to keep it from looking too severe but now it just looked messy. Her red power suit that had
started the day crisp and clean was now wrinkled and sweaty. She looked rode hard and put up wet and not in a good way. That was fine, she thought, because that’s how she felt. She had never had such an aggravating day in her life.
She tossed her purse onto the couch, not bothering to look at her phone. Harold hadn’t called all day and the few times she had called him, he hadn’t picked up. Those times were few and far between, as she had spent more time on the road than a bus driver. She made a mental note to put in a voucher for mileage.
Normally she didn’t bother, as the sale would cover the few miles she drove to get it, but today had resulted in no sales just a whole bunch of driving. Jillian smirked. On the other hand, if she decided to pick up a second job as a taxi driver she was much better prepared than she was at the beginning of the day. She frowned as she thought she might have to do that if she didn’t get back into sales and make some money.
After lunch, Mrs. Fitzgerald had a new project for her, which involved going to the smaller outlets for the company and checking the displays. She didn’t understand. Her job was to get the stores to sell the products or up their orders, but after that, she was done.
She had started to protest, but the implacable gleam in Mrs. Fitzgerald’s eye made her humbly take the list and get back in her car. She went over the list and rearranged it so she wasn’t zipping back and forth across town like a deranged carrier pigeon but that was a mistake.
Mrs. Fitzgerald called her into her office when she returned to let her know that the sites were on the list the way they were to put Jillian at the store when the manager had time to talk to her. Jillian hadn’t managed to be in contact with all the managers, but she hadn’t known that was the purpose of her visits. She groaned as she remembered Mrs. Fitzgerald’s edict that she would be returning the next morning to talk to the managers.
Jillian slithered out of her clothes and fixed herself a drink. The clothes landed on the floor, but Jillian couldn’t care less right then. That outfit wouldn’t be fit to be worn again until it went to the cleaners anyway, so it could spend a night on the carpet.
Jillian padded around the apartment, enjoying her drink. The thought of dinner crossed her mind, but after her indulgences the night before, she knew she could afford to miss a meal. In fact, she needed to miss a meal to make sure ‘the product’, as she privately referred to her body, remained sales worthy. There was no such thing as a fat gold digger, her mother taught her growing up.
Jillian was ready to admit that her whisper campaign at the company might have been a mistake. She was also ready to admit Mrs. Fitzgerald had heard the whispers and didn’t approve of one of her salespeople diddling her boss’s son. What she wasn’t ready to admit was she was done. Tomorrow she would pin Harold down, make an impassioned speech about wanting to get to know his kids and get her plan back on schedule. She had no choice, her back was against the wall.
One of the things she did while she was out and about was drop by the bank to chat with her banker. It always paid to have a backup plan and if there was a way to get taken care of without having to take care of someone else’s brats, she was so all over that.
Jillian hissed and threw back the remainder of her drink and fixed another one. Her last of the evening. Too much alcohol made her look puffy and she had to be in top form for the end game, which would start tomorrow. She was down to one player on the field and she needed him to go all the way.
The banker, the 60 year old that she assumed was a manager or maybe a vice president of the branch was a teller. He just liked to dress nice. She had seen him manning a teller booth, but she thought it was just to help out. Who had ever heard of a 60-year-old man as a bank teller?
She couldn’t believe she had wasted all that time flirting with a man who made less money than she did. An old man at that. She shuddered to think it could have gone further if she hadn’t asked for his card and he admitted he didn’t have one because none of the tellers did.
Jillian carried her drink in the bedroom and walked into the bathroom. She put her drink on the vanity while she washed off her makeup. She looked up and noticed a slight crease under one eye. She hastily creamed it, but she knew that soon that wouldn’t be enough.
Her days of playing early twenties were ending and she had nothing to show for them except Harold, and an old bank teller. This was supposed to be her big break, her fresh start, but so far, it was as much of a bust as Houston her hometown was.
Jillian cursed herself for staying in Houston so long. She should have known her mother had mined that field too well for there to be anything left for her. Her mother had a reputation, and by extension so did she.
She frowned as she thought of the man that had prompted her move. She was seeing him for a while and he was very generous with the gifts and cash, but wasn’t coming up with the one piece of jewelry she wanted, an engagement ring.
Then he dropped the bomb on her. While he was willing to keep her as a mistress, he would never marry her. Her mother had broken up the marriage of a friend of his then married the man. Her boyfriend had gotten an up close, personal look at what a Reynolds woman could do with unfettered access to a man’s money, and he refused to put himself in the same position. Jillian had packed and move that weekend, much to her boyfriends disgruntlement.
Jillian looked down at the solitaire engagement ring still nestled in its box. Harold gave it to her, but she couldn’t wear it out. Not until he talked to Helen and now she wondered if she would ever wear it anywhere but in her apartment. She pushed away the thought. She would. Just as she had gotten Harold to buy her a ring, she’d get him to take her home to play mommy to his kids.
She didn’t see it taking all that long before Helen came running home to protect her babies from the big bad stepmother. She should have mentioned this last night and she might already be on her way in. She had driven by the family home couple of weeks ago, and the house would do as a starter home but Jillian would push to sell that one and buy something bigger as soon as possible.
The fact the house was right around the corner from his parents was a big selling point of getting out of dodge. She had met his parents and at first they were distantly cordial but as time when on and the rumors started flying, cordial morphed into cool, until at the last company function, Mrs. Peterson had treated Jillian like something to be scraped off her shoe.
Jillian hissed as she thought about the way the Peterson matriarch looked at her. Jillian blew it off. She had never gotten along with women. She barely got along with her mother. Her mother had groomed her and abdicated responsibility for her by age 16.
This was also when her mother’s beaus started looking at Jillian with an appreciative eye. Her mother pushed Jillian into the background not ready to deal with the completion and kicked Jillian out of the house the day she graduated high school.
Fortunately, Jillian had seen that coming and gotten a job in sales at 16. No way was she wearing a paper hat and manning a fryer at the local fast food joint. She was young and pretty and sales were tailor made for her. The job allowed her plenty of freedom and all she had to do was flutter her eyelashes and she had a signed contract in her hand.
Jillian hopped into the shower, and grabbed the highly fragranced soap she had bought as a last ditch effort to get Helen to confront Harold. When that didn’t work, she put the screws to him and got him to make the move.
Jillian wrinkled her nose at the strong smell and put the bar down. She reached under the vanity and got a bar of the old fragrance she used to wear. She smiled at the light floral fragrance. Less is more, her mother taught her and Jillian found she was right.
Jillian quickly finished, then washed her hair. She skipped blow-drying it. It made no sense if she was spending another day on the road. She’d tie it back in a low ponytail in the morning. Her hair was naturally wavy so by the morning it would be lying in smooth waves and look okay tied back.
Jillian slipped into bed and turned on the TV for company. It was str
ange being in bed alone on a weekday evening after Harold’s continual presence for the past few months. She really couldn’t believe how badly this was all going, but she wasn’t a quitter and tomorrow she’d fix this.
When she married Harold and he took over the company, another goal of hers, his dad was way past the time of being retired, she would make Harold fire Mrs. Fitzgerald. She fell asleep with a smile on her face as she pictured the old bat’s face as she carried her cardboard box of belongings out of the building.
Chapter Nineteen: Helen
I woke up to the beeping of my new alarm clock the next morning and the delightful smell of brewing coffee. Whoever invented a coffee machine with a timer on it deserves the Nobel Peace Prize in my books. It certainly was a peaceful day to start my day.
I got up, put up the linens, and returned the futon to its upright position before padding into the kitchen for my morning cup o’ Joe. I poured a huge amount in the travel cup I bought with the rest of the crap I got at Wally world. I doctored it with my favorite flavored creamer and prepared to enjoy my first sip. Coffee is not a drink for me, it’s a sacrament, and as such not to be rushed.
I breathed in the heavenly aroma before I took that first life-giving sip. I will freely admit I am addicted to caffeine, but show me a writer whose not. Why do you think so many of us hang out at Starbucks? It’s not for the ambiance, trust me, how much indie flute music does a person need to hear? Although I will admit, some of those baristas are cute.
As usual, I finished the first cup in the kitchen standing next to the machine and took the refill into the bathroom to prepare for my day. After a quick shower, I dressed in all black. It seemed appropriate for the day’s activities.
I needed to do a little sneaking into Casa Asshole to get my clothes, a little talking to my lawyer about my divorce, a little re-connecting with the art crowd to find a starving artist to draw some rudimentary plans for my place. Yep, black seemed to be the right call.