Dedication

 

 

 

To Patricia, for putting up with me for over fifty years. Many thanks, many apologies!

 

 

 

Chapter 1 - The Bridge Club

“Cullie, can you set up the bridge table? Thank you. You’re a dear!”

Cullum Doyle rolled his eyes at his mother’s request. Alison Doyle hadn’t really been asking. It had been more of a very polite order. It was the third Friday of the month, and it was her night to host the bridge club. She was running late, as always, and needed the living room set up.

Alison left her nineteen-year-old son in their living room and headed into her bedroom to change. He knew the routine from previous bridge matches. Cullie pulled the folding table from the back of the guest closet, unfolded it in the living room, and then followed with four folding chairs. Those got seat cushions because his Aunt Amanda had said, “We need cushions for our cushions!” That had gotten a fair bit of laughter, but Cullie figured it was because the women had all been drinking punch at the time.

A second folding table came out for snacks and punch. He went to the kitchen and pulled out the makings of rum punch. It was simple and powerful, orange juice, pineapple juice, grenadine, Seven-Up, and a bottle of rum. He sampled it and found it acceptable, and then began filling some large bowls with chips, crackers, and cheesy poofs. He took it all out to the living room, just in time for the doorbell to ring and the door to open.

Party Prep

“Hi, Cullie. Where’s your mom?” It was ‘Aunt’ June Howard, his mother’s oldest and closest friend. She wasn’t one to wait for the door to be opened. June was forty-one, the same age as Alison, but much smaller. She was barely five-foot-one and slender, with short brown hair and blue eyes. That was a marked contrast to Alison, who was five-foot-six, blonde and blue-eyed, and was at least thirty pounds heavier. June was wearing skin-tight slacks and a bright red top.

Cullie hooked a thumb towards the master bedroom. “Mom’s running late.”

“Alison was probably born late, too,” replied June. “I’ll go roust her out.” She went towards the bedroom and barged in, eliciting a squeal of outrage that made Cullie laugh.

Alison And June

The next two members of the bridge club arrived together. The doorbell rang and Cullie opened it to find Janet Baker and Amanda Winslow standing there. Cullie looked in the driveway and only saw four cars, his, his mother’s, Aunt June’s, and a fourth. “Come on in. Whose car is that?”

“Mine,” said Janet. “I just picked it up on Monday and gave Amanda a lift.”

“Cool.”

Both women kissed his cheek as they passed through. Janet was forty-two, five-foot-five, with shoulder-length blonde hair, brown eyes, and a very nicely shaped body that she had admitted to the club was courtesy of plastic surgery. Her husband had paid for it all but spent almost all his time traveling for business. Amanda was his actual aunt, his mother’s younger sister, thirty-eight, with auburn hair and brown eyes, and was the tallest of the group at five-foot-seven. She was also nicely shaped, though she swore her figure was still original equipment. Both women were wearing skinny jeans and tank tops.

Janet And Amanda

Alison followed June into the living room. She had changed from the old shorts and t-shirt she had cleaned the house in into a tight pair of slacks and a sleeveless cardigan that was also tight. “Cullie! Thank you! Everything looks wonderful!”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Are you sticking around or were you going out?”

“Nothing planned. Maybe once school starts, and I can meet some new people.”

“Excellent! We have our slave labor for the night!” exclaimed Amanda.

“You make that so appealing,” the teen replied.

That just got him some laughs. He excused himself and went up to his room to retrieve his laptop. He took it downstairs and stashed himself in a corner of the living room.

The Doyles lived in what had begun as a two-bedroom Cape Cod house with an attached garage in Guilderland. Cape Cods were a popular style in upstate New York since the steep roof shed heavy snow efficiently. Like most such homes, the public rooms - the living room, kitchen, dining room, laundry, and a half-bath - were downstairs; upstairs were the private rooms - two bedrooms and a full bath. Five years ago, Alison and her husband Joe had done an extensive remodeling of the house. The garage, attached at the gable end off the kitchen and laundry room, was gutted and converted to a master suite, with a large bedroom and a deluxe master bath.

When they moved down to the master suite, they decided to convert the upstairs into an apartment. Cullie was fourteen and would be going off to college in a few years. Even if he went to Albany State and lived at home, four years later he would be graduating and moving out. Then they could rent out the upstairs, or if they sold the house, they could sell it as a duplex. Their old bedroom was converted to a small living-room/dining-room/kitchenette combo. They even had a covered set of stairs built up the gable end of the house to allow entrance without going through the house. Some of the changes weren’t done with a building permit or zoning approval, but none of the residents planned to call the codes officer to mention it.

With his parents now living downstairs and with a private entrance to his apartment Cullie had a lot more privacy than his fellow high school classmates. That became very useful when he began dating. Joe and Alison told him they would allow guests, but no parties, and bad behavior would cancel the privilege. Then Joe took him down to the local Walgreens and purchased a box of condoms and said, “You can buy your own from now on.”

Cullie struggled to keep the grin off his face, and simply said, “Yes, sir.”

“And use them, too. Your mother and I don’t want to hear from either doctors or shotgun-toting fathers, understand?”

“Understood!”

Cullie was a good-looking kid, a jock at nearby Guilderland High School, on the cross-country team in the fall and the lacrosse team in the spring. He was big, too, standing six-foot-two and packing 195 pounds onto a frame that was slender except for his wide-set shoulders. He had dirty blonde hair and blue eyes that more than a few cheerleaders liked. Cullie got to test drive his new condoms a couple of weeks later when Kerry Browning invited herself over and deflowered her latest conquest. Cullie was an eager student to this new form of sex education and worked hard at learning as many lessons as he could. Once he got his driver’s license and could borrow his mother’s minivan, he had a place to take girls that didn’t involve finding a deserted place to park. The girls appreciated this immensely, especially after he upgraded his bed from a twin to a queen.

Part of what made him popular with the girls was an extensive theoretical knowledge of what was involved. While Kerry had introduced him to the wonderful practicalities, before that he had learned quite a bit from his parents. They had married young, and he had been born when they were only twenty-two, and Joe and Alison were enthusiastic in their pursuit of carnal pleasure with each other. It was a rare evening when they didn’t have sex, and they weren’t silent about it, either. Their bedroom door had a latch that frequently came open, and Cullie saw his parents screwing on more than one occasion when he headed to the bathroom.

Alison And Joe

In theory, when they moved to the downstairs bedroom, the problem should have been taken care of. Instead, they now had an entire first floor to fool around in, and a couple of times Cullie came down the back stairs to the kitchen for a snack and heard his parents getting nasty in the living room. They also had an extensive collection of porn DVDs, including a few they had made of themselves, and Cullie had snuck a few up to his room and copied them to blank DVDs. Once Kerry showed him exactly what two people could accomplish, Cullie put his theoretical knowledge to work, and his female classmates appreciated it.

The Doyles had an almost idyllic life, at least until 2020 arrived. Beginning in January, rumors of a new disease, a Chinese flu, began to sound. Within a few months the rumors of something called Covid-19 became true, and by the end of March much of New York was shut down. It had been difficult for the family, like for every other family. Cullie had to finish his senior year online, which was a disaster, but he graduated. Joe’s sales business all but collapsed. Alison still had her job in the Registrar’s office at Albany State, even though all the students were online.

Joe’s business became a moot point in mid-April when he contracted the virus. Within two days of the initial fever and cough, hazmat-suited medical people were taking him to Albany Medical Center in an ambulance. That was bad enough, but the worst was yet to come. Joe was directed to the Intensive Care Unit; two days later he was on a ventilator. Family members weren’t allowed to see him or talk to him or be with him, not even if they suited up in heavy gear. A week later Joe Doyle died in the middle of the night without even a nurse holding his hand. He was buried without any family attending.

It was devastating to the family. Joe and Alison had never been able to have any other children, so it was just Alison and Cullie. Alison went into a severe depression for several months. Cullie helped as much as possible, but it took her until August to get out of her funk and become completely functional. Cullie skipped a year of college rather than trying to attend online. When vaccines were first readily available to their age group in late April of 2021, both Alison and Cullie signed up for them.

It was now mid-August of 2021, and Cullie was scheduled for the fall semester, a year after he originally planned to attend Albany State. It was barely fifteen minutes from home, so he didn’t need to live in a dorm. He had planned to try out for the cross-country team, but any hopes of a scholarship were dashed by the coronavirus. He needed to live at home, drive his father’s Corolla, and save some money. Still, having his own apartment only fifteen minutes from college wouldn’t hurt if he managed to talk a girl into a date. Given the choice between kicking a roommate out or visiting a nicely furnished apartment with a bed twice the size of the standard college dorm bed, it was a no-brainer. Then throw in that Cullie had learned how to cook, and it was Seduction Central! All he needed to do was get to school and meet a few girls.

Cullie grabbed a glass of punch and took it back to his corner of the living room. As long as he didn’t get drunk, Alison wouldn’t ride his ass on it. He only half-listened to the women, but it always amazed him the stuff they would talk about. He had thought guys in locker rooms were bad, but nothing beat a hen party for being downright dirty. At least that was what his father had once told him, and he had taken refuge in his son’s apartment on occasion.

Playing Bridge

“Meet anybody interesting?” asked June.

Cullie listened idly, though the bridge table was slightly around a corner and not in view. It was Amanda who answered, “I wish! I am so horny the students are starting to look good!”

Alison snorted. “That’s a good way to get fired, Sis!”

“Screw that! Before I’d let him get anywhere, I’d just call over to the Registrar’s Office and check on his age, and you can tell me how old he is.” All four women worked as clerks and administrators at Albany State, Alison and June in the Registrar’s Office, and Janet and Amanda working in the Bookstore and Life Science’s Office, respectively.

“Don’t get us involved in your depravity,” Alison replied.

“Don’t be so critical,” said June. “Once you’ve used them up, send them my way. I’ll be happy to nurse them back to life. One heart.”

The four women cackled at that. The next question, from Janet, was “So, how long has it been? Pass.”

“Good Lord, I don’t remember what an erection looks like!” answered June. “Three years? Rob hadn’t fucked me for six months before the divorce, and that was a year before the lockdown. One spade.”

“Nothing since then? Pass,” asked Alison.

“I am not about to do a virtual date on Zoom! What’s next? Horny-forty-somethings-dot-com? Virtual sex with virtual vibrators? Forget it!” June said.

Amanda admitted, “Two years. Ken and I divorced six months before the pandemic, and we weren’t sleeping together by then anyway. I’m not doing the Internet thing, either. What? Horny-thirty-somethings-dot-com? No way? Two hearts.”

Janet complained, “Bitch! Pass! What do you have, bitch?”

June laughed and said, “Something more than you two have. Four hearts! What about your sex life You’re still married. Pass.”

Janet snorted at that. “It doesn’t help much when he spends all his time on the road. What good do these do without somebody to play with them?” She cupped and lifted her tits.

Alison also passed, and nobody doubled, so June became the dummy and got up to refresh everybody’s drinks. The conversation continued where it had left off, with the women complaining about their lack of romance. June admitted she had made a few phone calls to some guys she knew after she had gotten the vaccine, but one guy never called her back, one said he had gotten back together with his ex, and the third wasn’t interested anymore. She had gone without for at least seventeen months, “…and the pocket rocket just ain’t cutting it these days!”

“We need to do a girl’s night out instead of playing bridge,” said Amanda.

June and Janet agreed, but it was silent after that. Then Amanda said, “Honey, you have to get back on the horse.”

Cullie’s eyes popped when he heard his mother say, “I know, but it’s just so hard. I haven’t dated since freshman year when I met Joe. I wouldn’t know how to start. I am not doing this online!”

“You ready to start over again?” asked Janet.

“It’s been eighteen months, and Mister Majestic isn’t cutting the mustard anymore. Joe might have been Mister Right, but I could do with Mister Right Now!”

Cullie rolled his eyes. The four women kept discussing their nonexistent love lives as if he wasn’t present. They also kept drinking, and the only time they acknowledged his presence was when his mother asked him to make another batch of rum punch. For whatever reason, the four women were drinking heavier than usual that night, and he could tell by the bidding. As the evening proceeded, doubles and redoubles began to be called, and contracts began to be missed. He didn’t know who was winning, and it sounded like they weren’t completely sure either.

It was after eleven when the game broke up, and Cullie still wasn’t sure who was winning. The last couple of hands had been a bit slurred, and several corrections had been called during the bidding. Alison said, “No way are you guys driving home. I am taking your keys away!”

Amanda and Janet agreed, saying they would crash on the couch and the recliner. Only June complained, saying she was fine to drive. There was the sound of a scramble and Cullie looked around the corner of his cubbyhole to see June dancing around and holding her keys up. “I won! I won! I am driving! I am driving!”

“This is not a good idea!” argued Alison.

June gave her a raspberry and Alison grabbed for the keys, but June pulled them back again. She played keep-away until she stumbled and dropped them. It was a scramble, but she got the keys back though she was swaying as she did.

Cullie rolled his eyes. Other than the two punches he had drunk early on, he had drunk Cokes the rest of the night. He stood and moved behind June and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to face him, and he grabbed her by the waist. Bending down, he easily lifted her and threw her over his shoulder. “Congratulations. You both win. Mom, give me the keys and I’ll drive Aunt June home.”

Cullie Carrying June Home

“No fair!” protested June. She struggled but Cullie easily kept her in place on his shoulder. He was over a foot taller and almost a hundred pounds heavier, and that hundred pounds was pure muscle.

“Time to go home, Aunt June. I’ll drive you home and bring your car back in the morning.” He turned to face his mother. “Give me her keys and her purse.”

Alison laughed and pulled the keys from her friend’s fingers. She handed them to her son and grabbed June’s purse from the coffee table. She led the way to the front door and opened it for them, then waved as Cullie carried June down to her car. He set her upright at the passenger-side front door and held her in place while he unlocked her car and opened the door. It took him a couple of minutes to load her in and buckle her in, and then went around to the driver’s side. June was out of it by then; he doubted she would have been able to get to the end of the block without killing herself. Ten minutes later he was parking in front of her townhouse.

“Wakey, wakey, Aunt June. Time to go home.” He gave her a shake and got out of the car. He had to help her out of the car and then carried her to the front door. This time he kept her over his shoulder as he fumbled through the keys to unlock her front door. He carried her inside and dropped her on the couch before going back out to retrieve her purse and lock the car.

Cullie found June trying to get to her feet. “I don’t feel so good,” she said.

“I bet you don’t,” he commented. “Let’s get you to bed.” He went to her and pulled her to her feet.

That didn’t work out so well. June’s feet almost went out from under her, and Cullie put an arm around her shoulders and held her upright. He’d been to her townhouse several times but never been upstairs. He helped her up the stairs to the bedroom level and was on the verge of putting her in her bedroom when she gurgled out an “Oh shit!” and put her hand to her mouth.

Cullie dragged her into the bathroom just as June’s stomach gave way. Vomitus spewed from her mouth, a seemingly endless font of nastiness that sprayed across the vanity and toilet as well as the both of them. He got her to the toilet, but the lid was down and more sprayed out before he had the lid up. She continued vomiting for several seconds more and then she groaned, and an awful stench filled the room. “Oh shit is right,” he said.

Cullie left June praying to the porcelain god and stood. He looked around and decided to use the shower to clean her up. He stripped his shirt and shoes off and turned on the hot water. After adjusting it he turned back to June, before stopping and taking his pants off. June was now dry heaving, and he helped her to her feet. She was almost unconscious, but he stripped her naked and led her into the shower. There was nothing sexual about his actions as he cleaned her up. He tried to dry her off, but that wasn’t working, so he carried her to bed and dropped her on top of the bedspread. He went back to the bathroom to grab a towel and roughly dry her off. He finished by rolling her under the covers. Then he looked back at the disaster of the bathroom and shook his head.

He called his mother, but the phone rang and then went to voicemail. He left a message that he got Aunt June home but that she was pretty sick, and he was sleeping over to keep an eye on her. It took him half an hour to clean the bathroom and get the laundry started. Then he lounged around the townhouse naked until he could switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer. He finished by checking on June, who snored away. He went into the spare bedroom and crawled naked under the sheets. It had been a long day.

Chapter 2 - Recuperation

June Howard woke when the sun coming through her bedroom window burned through her eyelids. She rolled over, turning away from the window, only to feel the pain in her head explode. “Oh, shit!” she groaned. Her stomach cramped and she crawled to the edge of the bed, where she found a trash can. Her stomach heaved but nothing came up. Groaning, she stumbled to the bathroom and cleaned up. When she got out of the shower, she pulled on an oversized terry robe and swallowed half a dozen Tylenols. Then she went to the kitchen for some orange juice…

…And stopped at the door to the second bedroom. She normally left it open, but it was closed. She opened the door and looked in, astonished to find a man in bed, face down. “Who are you?”

Cullie Doyle rolled over and sat up. Janet’s eyes widened when she saw his body. Even though the sheet covered him from the waist down, what she could see was mouthwatering. She knew her ‘nephew’ was a good-looking young man, but whoa! Without a shirt on she could see his broad shoulders, his well-defined abs, and his muscular arms. Even his day-old beard looked masculine. “Morning, Aunt June.”

Cullie In Bed

“Cullie?”

“If you come closer, I might not be so bleary.”

“Cullie, what are you doing here?”

He gave her a lopsided smile. “I brought you here last night. Don’t you remember? You had a few rum punches too many.”

“What? Did I?” June tried to think back to the night before and recollection began to return. “You brought me home?”

Cullie snorted out a laugh. “You could say that.”

June suddenly remembered how she was naked when she woke up. “What happened, Cullie? What did you do to me?” she asked sharply.

“I got you home and got you cleaned up is what I did.”

“What do you mean, you cleaned me up?”

“Pardon my language, but you are a sloppy drunk, Aunt June. You puked all over yourself, all over me, and all over the bathroom, and then you got even worse.”

“What do you mean, worse?” she asked.

“You shit your britches, Aunt June,” Cullie told her.

June turned beet red at that and clutched her robe around her. “So, you were the one who cleaned me up?”

He nodded. “Nobody else was volunteering.”

“Oh my God!” She looked at him, seeing him not just as the son of her best friend but as a virile young man naked from the waist up. “Just how clean…”

“I got you undressed and into the shower, Aunt June.”

“And you saw…” Cullie didn’t answer, but it was obvious he remembered. Despite her drunken state, June Howard was a damn fine-looking woman. She had firm B-cup breasts that looked large on her small frame and were capped with sharply pointed dark coral nipples, a slim waist with a deep navel, and womanly hips with a trimmed triangle of brown pubic hair. “Shit!”

Cullie asked, “Any chance you can find something for me to wear? I put our stuff through the wash, but I don’t know if it’s dry yet.”

“You could always get out of bed and return the favor, but I think some of my ex-husband’s stuff is in the spare dresser.” She moved around the bed and pulled open a few drawers and then tossed him a pair of old cut-offs. “I don’t know why I haven’t thrown out all his old stuff yet.”

Cullie eyed the shorts. “Nothing else?”

“Nothing that would fit you, Sweetie.” She smiled at him and looked him up and down. “Let’s just say that Willie’s clothes would be a little small on you. Those might be a little tight, but they’d only need to stay on until we can check the laundry.” She laughed and left the room. June continued down to the kitchen where she drank a large glass of orange juice before returning to her bedroom to get dressed. On the way back to her bedroom, she passed Cullie coming out of the spare bedroom dressed in the cut-offs. “Darling, they look better on you than they ever did on Willie!” The shorts were skintight and short, and exposed his muscular legs.

The Morning After

“I looked through the rest of his stuff and nothing else came close to fitting.”

June shook her head. “I think those came from a pair of jeans right before we got divorced. He was never as big in the chest as you are, but his waistline was growing by leaps and bounds.”

“Let’s check on the laundry.”

“Give me a few minutes. I need to get dressed.” June went to her bedroom and pulled on some underwear, shorts, and a t-shirt. Then she went to the laundry room, where she found Cullie talking on his cell phone.

“I’m fine, Mom…Hold on, here’s Aunt June.” He handed the phone to June. “Here, talk to her. I left the phone in the laundry room, and she got worried when she called, and I didn’t answer.”

June rolled her eyes and took the phone. The two women chatted for five minutes before June ended the call and handed the phone back to Cullie. She opened the door to the dryer and pulled the clothing out and into a laundry basket. “Well, it’s not perfect, but it will do. Have you had your breakfast yet?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m not ready for anything resembling food. You go make something for yourself and I am going to lie down for a few minutes.”

Cullie shook his head. He grabbed his clothing and changed into it as soon as June left the laundry room. Then he scrounged up some cereal and ate breakfast. When he finished, he went in search of June. He found her asleep in her bedroom, dressed and covered with a blanket. He went back to the living room and turned on the television.

It was late afternoon when June stirred and came out of the bedroom. She found Cullie napping in the recliner in front of the television. She tried to keep quiet, but he stretched and came alive. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were sleeping.”

Cullie stretched again and shook himself awake. “No biggie. Feeling any better?”

“Some. Not completely, but some. How about you?”

“I only had two drinks last night. I’m not the one who tried to solve the rum import problem facing America.”

June gave him a guilty look and said, “Now you’re exaggerating.” Cullie just gave her a dry look, and she added, “Okay, I had a few too many. It’s your fault and Alison’s fault anyway. You should have stopped me!”

Cullie just started laughing. “You want to try to sell that one to my mother?”

“Oh, please! Who do you think taught me how to party when we were freshmen? Serve me a few more drinks and I’ll tell you all of her secrets!” She looked around and asked, “Did you have lunch yet?”

Cullie shook his head. “I wasn’t all that hungry.”

“Give me a few minutes. I’ll clean up and change, and we can go out for a late lunch for you and an early dinner for me. I’ll run you home after that.”

“Sounds like a plan,” agreed Cullie.

June turned and went back down the hall. Twenty minutes later she returned in a different outfit, a pair of tight short shorts and a tank top. Cullie noticed she had skipped the bra and idly wondered if she was commando for the panties. Not his business, though. June said, “I needed another shower. Ready?”

“Let’s go. If you’re dressed up, do I need to go home first, to dress up, too?” he laughed.

“Give me a break.” June grabbed her purse and headed out, Cullie in tow. Ten minutes later they were at a Chinese buffet. After they were seated, they headed off to the buffet and then went back to their table. “So, Cullie, how’s your love life these days?”

Feeling Better

Cullie shrugged. “Didn’t you ask me that the other night?”

“Not that I recall. So? Getting any?”

“Aunt June!”

“Give!”

Cullie shrugged. “Not much lately. The pandemic pretty much killed that off. It’s pretty hard to meet new people when everybody has to wear masks and be socially distant and anyplace that is fun is closed down.”

“I hear you. It’s no different for me.”

“So I heard last night.”

June looked at him and slowly blushed. “You heard that? Oh my God!”

Cullie laughed and nodded. “You guys talk about everything!”

June sighed. “Not that I suppose it matters. What surprised you the most, that we’re horny or that your mother is beginning to get over your father’s death?”

“That’s blunt enough, isn’t it?” Cullie shook his head and shrugged. “I guess I’m glad that Mom is thinking about that sort of thing again. I mean, it’s been a year, a year and a half, almost. What’s the official mourning period for Covid?”

“Theoretically, the mourning period for almost anything is a year, but that is more a matter of tradition than anything else. Be glad this isn’t India. The tradition there was something called sati, where the widow was expected to burn herself to death on her husband’s funeral pyre.”

“Holy shit! For real?”

“Yep. Your mom dating again has to beat jumping on a funeral pyre.”