Starting and Stopping

The weekend seemed to crawl by, and my thoughts were often elsewhere as I did some fishing and shot some hoops with my friends. Yet as much as I was looking forward to seeing Sylvia again, I still had a teenager's concept of "bright and early". The Meredith Key boat launch is pretty busy at 5AM – so I've heard. For me on vacation time, tho, "early" was right after I woke up, whenever that happened to be. So I rolled out of bed around 9AM Monday morning, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and was pedaling down Main Street by 9:30.

Sylvia was waiting by her pickup truck in the alley, wearing those overalls (with a shirt underneath, I frowned) and looking pissed. "Where have you been??? I thought I was going to have to leave without you!"

I had been thrilled to see her, but felt like a scolded puppy as I rolled to a stop. "I didn't know what time to be here; you never said..." I explained, probably too whinily. Then, trying to act like my feelings weren't hurt, "Where are we going, anyway?"

"To pick up the tiles!" she explained, still sounding exasperated. "The best price I could find is nearly to Tallahassee, so we've gotta get going if we're going to get the floor done. Didn't I tell you this???"

"No, you didn't." I wasn't liking the tone of this conversation at all, but continued to try not to let it show. "Could you unlock the door so I can put my bike inside?" She did, and we climbed into her creaky old truck and were off without saying a word.

The tall pine trees alongside the two-lane county road out of town flashed by our closed windows before Sylvia broke the uncomfortable silence. "Ben, I'm sorry; I was rude. It's just that I really want everything to be ready and it was really frustrating waiting for you."

"Don't worry about it," I responded, trying not to sound too relieved. "I'm sorry for showing up so late, but you really didn't tell me what time to come in. And you didn't say we'd be going anywhere, either."

"I guess I forgot," she admitted. "We were a bit distracted Friday afternoon, if you recall." She glanced over with a glint in her eye. I tried to keep my poker face, but couldn't help giving her a quick sideways smirk. Though she turned back to the road, her bright smile in response dispersed the clouds that lingered in the little truck cab.

"Actually, I meant to ask you about going, not tell you," she continued. "Your parents will be OK with you taking off like this?"

I snorted. "My parents don't care what I do, as long as I don't do anything that they'll have to deal with later. They were thrilled when I told them I'd found a summer job. They'd been talking about shipping me off to my cousin's place in North Carolina for a month or two."

I bit my tongue when I realized I'd referred to this as a "summer" job; Sylvia had only asked me to help set up the café, and that task would be completed in another week or so. But either she didn't catch what I said or she held the same assumption that I did; that we'd be a team for longer than that.

"That sounds familiar," she commented instead. "Mack was always so busy with the Galley and fishing charters that he was hardly ever around. And my mom had her own things..."

This was the first time Sylvia had really talked about her childhood. I waited, hoping she'd continue that line of conversation. But her voice trailed off and she just stared at the blacktop road shimmering straight as an arrow to the horizon in the hot morning sun.

So I stepped in. "My friends want to know where I've been, tho. They were looking for me all last week after school. I said I was 'working on something' and they're dying to know what it is. They think I've found a cave or a hidden fishing spot or something."

She grinned. "So that's why you always bring your bike inside?"

"Yep, keep 'em looking. Everybody's gotta have a hobby." She laughed, and my heart soared at the sound. We continued the playfully light chatting for the rest of the hour-long drive.

When we got to the tile place, tho, Sylvia had another reason to get upset. She'd arranged for her order to be ready for pickup, but the stack waiting for us was the wrong color. As they scurried to fix their mistake, Sylvia calmly but insistently complained to the manager that the delay was going to throw her off schedule, and she didn't stop until he offered make up for it with a 10% discount. She grudgingly accepted, with an added request that his employees load the tiles into the back of her truck to help make up the lost time. As they did so, she kept up her scowling and watch-checking, but gave me a wink when no one else was looking. I was impressed; Sylvia was obviously somebody you wanted as a friend, not an enemy.

The tile place was located in the outskirts of Tallahassee and was surrounded by the ugly suburban sprawl so common around Florida cities of any size. As we pulled out, Sylvia asked, "Are you hungry? That pizza place across the street is supposed to be pretty good. My treat!"

"Sounds good, but I thought we were in a hurry."

"Well, we've gotta keep up our strength. And with my hard-working handyman on the job, we'll get those tiles down in no time. Besides," she grinned, "We just saved a few hundred bucks by complaining." I grinned back, not noticing for a minute that she's used the word "we".

The pizza was pretty good and we took our time, enjoying a nice, relaxing lunch. It was only when we were leaving that I realized why it had been such a pleasant experience. Sylvia hadn't tried to order for me or tell me what to do or anything. For the first time, an adult was treating me like an equal. We'd definitely recovered from the rough start to the morning and were getting along great; talking and laughing and even flirting a bit. You could say it was my first real date.

It was almost 2 in the afternoon by the time we got back to the café. I knew that it was time to get down to business, and I was grateful that she didn't insult my intelligence by telling me so. We unloaded the tile and equipment into the kitchen, took a quick water break, and got to work on the floor. Sylvia put on a succession of grunge CDs (it was the mid-90s, after all), and we mortared and cut and placed tiles non-stop until the evening, by which time almost half of the seating area was laid out.

"How's that for an honest days' work?" she asked, wiping her brow after carefully adjusting a tile on the last patch of prepared floor.

"Not bad," I replied. The day and her company had been great, but I was too tired for small talk.

"'Not bad?' I never thought we'd get so much done in just a few hours! We'll finish tomorrow by lunchtime at this rate. But there's one more job to do today..." she pointed at the jagged hole in the ceiling behind the bar, the hole I'd been trying to enlarge on Friday when IT happened. I must have made a face, because she chided, "C'mon, I brought the reciprocating saw. It'll be a piece of cake now."

She pulled the ladder into place and held it as I climbed up. The installation was indeed a piece of cake now that we had the right tool for the job, but I was a bit distracted up there. Sylvia was staring up at me and didn't have to say a word to communicate what she was thinking; we were both remembering our no-shirt deal and my subsequent eruption with a mix of embarrassment and excitement. Her twinkling eyes and wry grin were enough to bring the bulge back again.

But I got off, um; I got down from the ladder without further incident. "Do you want a ride home?" she asked as she wiped the last bits of dried mortar off her hands.

"No, thanks, I've got my bike. Gotta keep my secrets in case my friends are watching,"

"Oh, right. Well, see you tomorrow? About 9, maybe?" "Nine sounds fine," I replied with a smile. She looked so adorable standing there in those overalls (I swear, I am not a redneck!), looking tired but real and oh so cute. I had a sudden urge to go over and give her a hug, or something. But after taking one awkward step forward, I decided against it, thinking that it'd be a little kid move. So "See ya," I said with a wave, and was gone.

On the way home, I kicked myself for not accepting a ride. What if she wanted to spend more time with me? What is she would've taken me back to her place first? That pleasant thought made me realize that I had no idea where she was staying in town. It was just something else I wanted to know about the woman with whom I was rapidly falling madly in love.

And the first thing I did when I got home? Set my alarm for 7 o'clock sharp.

I was there on time the following morning, and it was all business. Tiles have to sit for 24 hours before you can grout, so the earlier we were done, the more time we'd have to complete the floor and move on to other finishing touches on Wednesday.

So we laid tile like maniacs all through the morning. We didn't have to say much as we effortlessly functioned together as a team. It was like one of those musical montage scenes in a movie in which the characters sweat over some project, do some silly stuff along the way, and end up standing together looking over their completed handiwork by the end of the song.

Our vantage point for viewing the newly-covered floor was the doorway leading from the kitchen. And as we stood there side-by-side, Sylvia pulled me close and gave me a hug. "Wow, I can't believe we got it all done before lunchtime! You're awesome, Ben!"

I blushed and sideways-hugged her back. "Thanks..." was all I could think to say. Marlon Brando cool? Ha!

"Hey, do you wanna come shopping with me?" she suddenly asked. "Just some end tables and decorations; stuff like that. I was going to go over the weekend, but we really can't do anything here until tomorrow and I don't want to waste the rest of the day. We'll get something to eat along the way. What do you say?"

I could think of more interesting things to do in our free time (ahem), but quickly agreed to go along. She hugged me again, then gave me a verbal jolt. "I'm going to change," she said, letting me go and reaching for a duffel bag she kept in the corner. "Do you need anything?"

"I'm good," I replied, jaw slowly descending as Sylvia pulled a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a bra (Did she not wear one under the overalls??? I wondered) out of her bag.

She began to unbutton her overall strap, then paused and huffed in mock exasperation. "Can't a girl get a little privacy here?" she complained, but with that twinkle in her eye. Blushing even harder, I mumbled an apology and waited outside by the truck.

When Sylvia came out wearing her new outfit, I realized that I'd never seen her in "civilian" clothes. It was comforting to know that I wasn't just infatuated with those overalls. As I said, she was neither thin nor chubby, and she filled out her casual jeans and white button-down blouse just perfectly to my eyes.

She looked over at my sweaty self as we climbed in. "Sorry, we're going out of town again and you didn't know. If you want, we could swing by your house so you can change, too. Or ... you could just lay your shirt in the truck bed to dry along the way, if you'd rather."

I check her eyes: yep, the twinkle was back. With a significant look, I got climbed out and peeled off my shirt. It was pretty sweaty, and I bet more of that perspiration was added in the few minutes of Sylvia's removing-clothes crusade than in the previous few hours of tiling the air-conditioned café. She pulled a big metal toolbox out from behind the seats and laid it across the bottom edge of my shirt in the truck bed to hold it down before we took off. With the resulting adrenaline rush, it took a few minutes for me to notice that we were back on the road towards Tallahassee.

I was used to riding my bike shirtless, but I'd never done so in a motor vehicle. The shoulder belt chaffed my collarbone and the A/C blew cold on my bare chest, raising goosebumps.

Sylvia's gaze felt much warmer. We talked nonchalantly as she drove, but I noticed her eyes continuously drifting over to take quick peeks at my tanned torso. At the risk of sounding vain again, I already kinda knew that I was good looking. I still didn't have all that much self-confidence at the time, tho, and her obvious interest was quite flattering. It wasn't just my ego she was inflating – it was beginning to feel a little crowded in the front of my shorts, and the well-worn denim was slowly rising into a tell-tale little tent.

When I had an unprovoked teenaged boner in school (which was pretty often), I'd pull down my shirt or scoot a little farther under the desk until it subsided. In that truck, I had no shirt and no desk, and the seatbelt across my hips only accentuated the protrusion.

Meanwhile, me and Sylvia kept up our mindless chitchat. Though she tried to be slick about it, I noticed her eyes continuously flitting down to my lap. Her interest only worsened the problem. I was soon fully activated, and my attempts to subtly shift around to make my condition less obvious only drew more attention to my predicament.

"Are you ok there, Ben?" she finally asked during an over-long lull. Her voice sounded different; husky. Oh my god, I thought, she's getting turned on looking at me!

I didn't know how to respond. Should I make a suggestive joke? Or say something bold and seductive? Or act innocent and pretend like nothing was happening?

While I hesitated, she opted for her own bold option. "If you need to take care of it, I wouldn't mind..." she said softly, looking purposefully down at my fly and then up into my eyes for a long moment before turning back to the road.

Oh my god, I thought, she want me to come in my shorts again! I hesitantly brushed my right index finger along the ridge of the bulge in my shorts. It leapt at the touch, and I rubbed myself a little more though the denim until Sylvia tapped my idle left hand on the seat between us. I comically jumped at her touch; she thankfully pretended not to notice. "Don't mess up your shorts; we won't be back home for a while," she said in that same husky voice. Oh my god, I thought, she wants me to whip it out!

I nervously surveyed our surroundings. The two-lane country highway cut straight as an arrow through dense stands of longleaf pines broken by an occasional empty field. Everything was so still in the bright June sunshine that the scene seemed unreal, like we were rolling through a huge pastoral painting. The only movements outside the truck were the slow progression of puffy white clouds drifting over the trees and the mirror-like shimmer of heat on the blacktop.

"Don't worry," said Sylvia, as if she could read my mind, "nobody's out here, especially on weekdays." Her voice dropped to an even lustier register. "It's just me ... and you." Her tone, plus the dreamlike surrealness of the situation, was enough to push my inhibitions aside.