Training Day

The following weekend was torturous on multiple levels. For one, of course, I wanted to be back in Meredith Key hanging out with Sylvia, especially with my parents out of town. True, we hadn't been flirting nearly as much after the back room incident as we'd flirted before. But our fractured relationship had been renewed. We'd settled into that comfortable "be-yourself" territory again, we were friends and partners, and every moment spent together seemed to bring us closer.

On the other hand, I certainly didn't feel any closer to my parents after spending all those hours at the track with them. They both loved auto racing and everything about it. Even though I'd been brought up surrounded by that stuff, I still hated it. (See, told you I'm not a redneck.) Sitting in a hot, dusty, deafening infield for hours on end is NOT my idea of fun. At times like that, it was hard to believe I was their son.

So while my folks spent all day drinking beer and whooping and hollering at a pack of advertisement-covered cars going around in circles all day, I thought about things. I pondered Sylvia's café concept; would it work in Meredith Key? I had doubts – it just seemed too quirky and weird. But she was convinced that it would do OK, and I hoped she was right.

As a pubescent boy, tho, I have to admit that I spent most of my time in NASCAR purgatory reflecting on my relationship with Sylvia. I loved her – that was certain by then, and I was pretty sure that she knew my feelings. I also thought that she loved me, too. I found her very attractive, and it was pretty obvious that she liked how I looked, as well. So why had she stopped the heavy flirting, and why had she pulled back when we were about to make love?

You're probably thinking of the obvious legal issue: a 30 year-old woman hooking up with a 14 year-old boy is a felony in most states, including Florida. I realized that now, but being young and naïve, I dismissed it as a major obstacle - what's a little age difference when you're in love, right? I just couldn't accept that that was the only reason.

I missed Sylvia terribly by Monday morning and reported to work early. That was fortunate, because I found the woman of my dreams stretching precariously from the countertop trying to hang a big wooden menu board on the wall. I ran for the ladder and helped her out.

While getting the huge (and heavy) sign straight, I looked over the hand-painted menu choices: odd coffee concoctions, teas I'd never heard of, and sandwiches way more complicated than fried grouper or ham and cheese.

I asked if she was sure people were actually going to buy that stuff, and she looked at me like I was crazy. "Why not?" she asked. "It's all ripped off from the coffee shop I managed in Atlanta, and they did very well. We'll adjust it later if we need to, but I think it'll be just fine." I wasn't so sure, but we were set to open on Wednesday, so I trusted her judgment.

At that point the café was pretty much ready, so we split up and spent an hour or so hanging "Grand Opening!" handbills around town. A couple of my friends spotted me and finally discovered where I'd been hiding over the previous couple of weeks. They thought that my "secret" was very anticlimactic ... until I mentioned that I was making $10 an hour. "No," I told them, "we're not accepting applications."

For the rest of the day, Sylvia and I practiced using the café equipment to make items off the menu. She'd made them all in the past, but it'd been a while for some of them, so she refreshed her memory and taught them to me at the same time.

It was kinda fun, and we had some laughs making a few interesting mistakes. Sylvia's joy and enthusiasm were infectious, and I had the urge to give her a smooch more than once. But I held back, not wanting to mess up the good vibes.

Late in the afternoon, I finally did give her a hug. She squeezed me back like she had been waiting for me to do that all day. "Oh, Ben, this is going to be great!" she exclaimed, then tightened her embrace once more. This one was not so platonic; my hands roamed a bit over her back, and she did the same to me. We were a little out of breath when we released each other, and I grabbed both her hands and smiled as we said goodbye.

It's surprising that I never got pulled over for biking while intoxicated on one of my homeward rides. If the cops had tested me for illegal substances, the only thing they'd find in my system was love ... with a strong shot of lust, of course.

Tuesday was supposed to be more of the same. We took turns making different coffee drinks and tasting them to make sure they were done right. I was kinda surprised that I liked pretty much all of them. There were two side-effects to my rapid-fire java apprenticeship: I had to go the bathroom pretty often, and all that caffeine had me feeling pretty hyper.

That's probably why I was goofing around with an open carton of milk and it slipped out of my grasp, sending carton and milk flying through the air in Sylvia's general direction. The carton skidded to a sideways stop at her feet, sadly pouring out its remaining contents on the tile floor.

I felt like an idiot and was super apologetic. After a moment of shock, Sylvia laughed it off. "Just so you know, the customers don't get a free shower with every purchase," she joked, trying to dry herself off with a handful of napkins while I mopped the floor. "I'm going to have to change," she sighed after a minute. The mop froze in my hands.

I'd done some more pondering after the previous afternoon. I'd noticed that Sylvia had enthusiastically hugged me back after I'd hugged her, but only after I'd taken the initiative. Maybe she was reluctant to flirt (or do anything else non-platonic) if she felt like she was taking advantage of me, but she'd play along if I started it. That was my theory, anyways. I planned to test it.

Sylvia had been wearing jeans and t-shirts every day since we'd finished with the dirty work of the floor. Though it's been already established that I'm not a redneck, I did miss those overalls. I'd seen them, tho; she'd hung them up in a little closet in the kitchen (now re-dubbed the "back room" since we didn't plan on cooking anything in there). And the café was still private, as we'd decided to wait until opening day to remove the newspaper from the big plate-glass windows. It was time to make my move.

"You should rinse the milk out of your shirt or it's going to smell real nasty," I commented, trying hard to keep my voice calm and level. "The overalls are in the back; you could change into them while the shirt dries." I kept a poker face when she shot me a questioning look.

She eyed me suspiciously. "You'd like that, would you?"

"Just making a helpful suggestion," I replied mildly.

"Well, since we still have all the sandwiches to make and I don't feel like running all the way home, I guess that's what I'll have to do." She went to the kitchen, then stuck her head back through the doorway, her shoulders bare. "No peeking!" she warned, then disappeared again. I hadn't even considered voyeurism until she'd mentioned it, the tease. It took some serious self control to obey her order.

My theory looked good so far: I'd restarted the flirting, and she was playing along. I slipped off my t-shirt while she was gone, just to make things even.

She was visibly startled when she returned to the sight of me mopping shirtless. I pretended not to notice her reaction, and also pretended that I wasn't incredibly excited to see her wearing the outfit that had gotten such a rise out of me before: overalls with nothing underneath. She could have left her bra on, but she hadn't.

"Hot in here, is it?" she asked, wry smile on her face. The twinkle in her eyes flashed, but briefly.

"Well, it's only fair," I responded, not looking up from my task. "I was the spaz who messed up your shirt, so I should have to give up something, too."

"Oh. Well, sounds reasonable. Let me help you get this mess cleaned up so we get back to food practice." She grabbed a roll of paper towels and crouched down beside me to wipe the streams of milk from the side of the counter.

If you saw Sylvia wearing normal clothes, you'd think she had a light tan. But it really wasn't a tan - her skin all over was just a shade darker than you'd expect from her facial features. Guess it was her Filipina mom's genes. I had a great view of plenty of her skin standing there behind her. I liked the view. A lot.

Maybe it was my imagination, or maybe it was just that I was taking the opportunity to really stare instead of sneaking peeks like I had last time Sylvia was dressed like that, but it seemed as if she hadn't fastened the over-the-shoulder straps quite as tightly as she had before. Last time, the front panel had been pulled so securely against her body that her breasts had hardly moved an inch no matter what she did. They'd been squished out of the sides a bit, but they were unable to go much of anywhere.

Now, her wiping motion was creating a little space between the denim and her body. I strained my eyes trying to see as much of her boob as I could, but the shadows behind the counter made it maddingly difficult.

She stood up suddenly, and I discovered that I'd been leaning over so far to try to improve the viewing angle that I almost fell over. I would have toppled if not for the mop, which I used like a cane to steady myself as I feigned cleaning the same spot I'd been working on for 5 minutes.

"I think you got it all," she said with a slight smirk. "Let's get on those sandwiches." The return of the bulge in my shorts indicated that I'd rather get on something else, but I put away the mop and reported for duty behind the counter.

Somehow, we managed to make one of everything on the menu over the next couple of hours. Oh, I was distracted; plenty distracted. I stood beside Sylvia as she showed me the different items, but my eyes kept moving from the countertop to the exposed side of her breast and back again. And the bulge grew and subsided, grew and subsided as my attention wandered between Sylvia's hint-of-coffee skin and the food orders that she was trying to show me how to make.

At first she smiled a lot and seemed to enjoy the attention, but eventually she got annoyed. "Do you need to write this down?" she asked, a little exasperated as I asked her to repeat a step for the umpteenth time. "Why don't we go back through all the ingredients and you take whatever notes you need. We'll keep the cheat sheet in a plastic sleeve behind the counter for quick reference."

Feeling a bit chastised, I agreed that her idea was a good one and fetched a pencil and notebook from the back room. When I returned, Sylvia was wearing an apologetic smile. It was hard to focus on her facial expression, tho, since her right breast was hanging out around the side of its loose denim covering. Her areola was dark brown and very small (which explained why I'd seen so much of her breasts all day without it popping out) and her nipple jutted out a happy half inch. I didn't know what that stiffness meant at the time. Looking back, I'm sure that she'd purposely popped herself out by loosening her straps even more, and that doing so had turned her on.

"I'm sorry," she said, turning back to the counter. "I hope you don't think I was bossing you around. I'm just a little nervous about opening tomorrow, and I want to make sure you can handle any order that you get." She acted like she didn't know she was exposed.

"No problem," I stammered, trying not to stare too obviously. A subtle shift of her shoulders put her nip just barely back under cover. My bulge was bulging something fierce.

It calmed only a little as Sylvia ran through everything we'd made, making sure that I wrote down all the steps and ingredients. My handwriting looked like chicken scratch, and I hoped I'd be able to read it when I needed to. At that moment, tho, all I needed was Sylvia, yet she kept calmly talking about different types of humus spreads while her boobs played peek-a-boo.

My theory seemed to be confirmed. She wanted me to take the initiative to start any sexual play, but she wasn't going to go (much) farther than I directed. Seems like a great situation, right? Not really. Remember, I was a lovelorn but inexperienced 14 year old kid flirting dangerously with an attractive grown woman. It had felt more natural to me when she'd taken charge (like in her truck, for example). But now that I was supposed to call the tune, I couldn't decide what song to play.

Should I tear off her clothes and "do" her right there on the counter? Should I ignore her food prep instructions and silently unbutton her overall straps? Should I guide her hand to the front of my shorts? I just didn't know. So I suffered through a frustratingly insecure afternoon, trying to content myself with regular glimpses of her (usually) private parts while my eager little soldier was trapped in cramped solitary confinement.