Chapter 3

It was something every nudie had to do eventually, Aaron knew this and yet it still felt odd.

As he loaded his clothing into a garbage bag he felt oddly nostalgic, he wasn’t sure why, it was just a bunch of old sweaters and pairs of underwear with holes in the crotches.

He had barely been a nudie for 15 hours up to that point, but to be fair a lot had happened up to that point.

When he found out that his mother was officially cancer free out of the blue like that emotion overwhelmed him. Completely forgetting about his mother’s other condition and giving his mother the biggest hug of either of their lives.

Before of course she got overwhelmed by his odour and pushed him into the pool while she went to toss out his half-melted swim trunks.

Clark then came out to their shared backyard to investigate all the noise and was surprised to find Aaron as naked as his mother with such a gleeful look on his face.

After the good news was explained to him he hung around for a minute to share a celebratory drink with them but quickly retreated back into his house, increasingly uncomfortable being the odd man out amongst the nudies.

The next morning Rashida woke up Aaron early before work and announced that they would be disposing of their now useless clothing before handing him a handful of trash bags and telling him to “have fun”.

Perhaps it wasn’t nostalgia he was feeling but a wish he could turn back time.

It wasn’t that he regretted his split-second decision to hug his mother, far from it, and it wasn’t as if he was dreading the nudity all that much either. He had witnessed his mom power through it the last couple of days and he felt as if he had no right to do any less.

What he was dreading was the attention, the wide-eyed look everyone he knew would have upon seeing his new wardrobe for the first time, the textiles asking why, the nudies congratulating him as if it was some big achievement. He almost wished he could just go on autopilot until everyone got their reactions over and done with and could look past him as if nothing was unusual.

His train of thought was derailed as Rashida pounded on his door.

“Let’s not take all day hon, move your naked butt,” she shouted through the door.

Oddly enough Aaron and Rashida weren’t awkward around each other at all now.

Aaron was a little at first, even trying to escape up to his bedroom while it was still light out. Rashida however insisted upon ordering a pizza and watching a movie. Her tone of voice suggested this was a decree from on high and not a simple wish.

He hid behind the couch as the pizza arrived and he watched Rashida give the gangly twenty-something pizza guy the surprise of his life, causing him to stammer a few words before sprinting back to his car without even accepting payment.

They had a good chuckle over that before sitting down to watch the movie.

Now Aaron and his mother had wildly different movie tastes. She was a die-hard fanatic of the hallmark channel while he preferred more esoteric sci-fi films, a genre Rashida couldn’t stand, while Aaron could typically stomach a standard rom-com on occasion. So whenever they watched television together Rashida ended up picking what they watched.

That day’s feature was a film called “Laid Bare,” about a rather closed-off woman moving back to her hometown after a breakup, only to be reunited with her childhood best friend who was now a nudie.

For most of the movie, they flirted and danced around each other and had some third-act misunderstanding that was typical for this type of movie.

The only real surprise was at the end of the film where the girl, in an effort to earn the guy’s forgiveness infected herself on screen, leading to a long take where the camera hung on her as her clothes fell off her body.

A quick Google search revealed that while the actor playing the guy was infected through happenstance, the actress playing the girl allowed herself to be infected for the sake of the movie and that the long take required no special effects.

Apparently, this was the right decision for the actress who off the back of this film secured the role of Aphrodite in some big-time adaptation of the Iliad.

Despite its unique subject matter, the movie was laughably bad.

By the forty-five-minute mark, the two of them were laughing so hard that all potential awkwardness from their nudity went out the window before either could notice it, which made it very easy for Aaron to walk down the stairs with three trash bags in hand no matter how much his dick was swinging back and forth.

“That’s it?” Rashida asked in disbelief, surrounded by at least three times as many clothes piled by the front door.

“That’s it?” Aaron repeated, marvelled that she was asking that question, “Why do you have so much, how big is your closet?”

“It’s a walk-in,” Rashida answered, “And that’s only like a week’s worth of clothes.”

“Yeah,” Aaron agreed, “Do a load every week and I’m fine.”

“Okay,” Rashida paused, “You don’t do laundry every week. You can’t fool me. It’s not that big a house I can smell you.”

“Luckily that’s not a problem anymore,” Aaron said, shaking the trash bag of his clothes to make his point, “Let’s just get in the car, I gotta get to work soon.”

“Alright fine,” Rashida sighed, “Why don’t you get this all in the back of the car while I go finish making you boys lunches.”

“I’m supposed to do all this by myself?” Aaron questioned, motioning to the dozen or so bags surrounding him.

“I still gotta get some muscle mass before I go doing something like that,” Rashida explained, doing her best to flex a muscle in her drained, skinny arm, “I gotta be careful or I’m gonna hurt myself. Thank the lord that I have my lifter to help me.”

She smiled and disappeared into the kitchen, ending the conversation.

Aaron sighed and got to work, grabbing the bags two at a time and taking them outside, throwing them into the trunk of his mom’s van.

“Hey,” Aaron called out as he came back inside for his sixth and final trip, “If I’m gonna be at work how the hell are you going to get these out of the van when you get to the drop-off?”

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Rashida assured him coming out of the kitchen with two lunch bags in hand, “I’ve got a volunteer helper today.”

She paused to check she had everything she needed to go out.

“Let’s see ... phone, wallet ... keys!” She remembered, “Where the hell did I put those things? God I miss pockets.”

She ran up the stairs to go find them.

Aaron shrugged and took the remaining bags out to the car, tossing them in and reaching up to close the back hatch shut.

“Beautiful morning isn’t it?” A voice asked, sneaking up on him.

His eyes shot to the side to see Chloe’s winning smile shining in the morning sun.

It occurred to him finally that he was outside in public view for the first time.

Up until that point he had been hidden by the relative safety of his house and the fenced-off backyard, only seen by his mother and by Clark, both of whom were close family members.

Well, technically Clark was only like family.

But this was his first time being seen in the buff by someone who hadn’t changed his diaper as a baby and worst of all it was Chloe. To paraphrase Spider-Man, “The girl he had liked before he had even liked girls.”

This could present a problem, here she was standing before him, naked, sun-kissed and beautiful, and here he was, equally as naked, surging with unrestricted hormones brought on by a new spell infection and doing all in his power to keep an erection from forming short of closing his hand in the car door.

It didn’t help matters that he could feel her gaze burn against his skin, her eyes glancing downwards for only a second but whatever she saw left her smile quiver ever so slightly.

His eyes also flashed down her body before he caught himself, remembering his mother’s recent uncomfortableness with being stared at, he locked his eyes on her face and waited for fury that never came, her smile remained firm.

“Hey Chloe...” he said, realizing how long it had taken him to respond to her, “Yep, great weather lots of sun.”

“Good time to be a nudie,” she nodded, “Hope it holds out the rest of the day.”

“One can only hope,” Aaron agreed.

‘Come on just say something about it already,’ he thought to himself, ‘Just get it over with, rip the band-aid off, you know you want to.’

“So what’s up,” He asked leaning against the van in a pitiful attempt to appear cool and relaxed as well as perhaps aggravate the elephant in the room.

“Oh, I’m helping your mom get rid of her clothes,” Chloe explained, “And yours too I guess.”

‘That’s it,’ his inner monologue pushed, ‘You broached the subject, just get it over with already!’

“So you’re the volunteer mom mentioned,” Aaron surmised.

“Oh, well, voluntold,” Chloe joked, “You know how moms are. Speaking of which, Clark ask out your mom yet?”

“No, not yet,” Aaron smiled, relieved to be back to familiar territory, “Something tells me he has a new ... obstacle in his way if you catch my drift.”

“Really?” Chloe questioned, “Seems to me there’s now one less obstacle in his way if you know what I mean.”

She raised her eyebrows suggestively.

“Who doesn’t have an obstacle?” Rashida asked as she came down the stairs with keys in hand.

At that very moment, Clark emerged from his front door whistling cheerfully.

“I ... uh...” Chloe stammered as Rashida and Clark stared at her.

“Me,” Aaron interrupted, coming to Chloe’s rescue, “Now I can finally get that tan I wanted.”

“Oh,” Rashida accepted without a second thought, “I guess we both can now, alrighty then, we should hit the road Chlo.”

She handed Aaron and Clark their lunches, planted a kiss on Aaron’s cheek and walked over to the driver’s side door, unlocking the passenger side door for Chloe.

“Oh hold on,” Chloe remembered before she climbed in, “Aaron you wanna come to a party tonight?”

“Sure he does!” Rashida answered, perhaps a little too loudly judging by how the dog next door started barking.

“She was asking me, Mom,” Aaron said dryly.

“Yeah ... I know,” Rashida stammered, taking down her tone, “But you don’t have to worry about leaving me without a babysitter. Clark can keep an eye on me, right Clark?”

“I can do what now?” Clark asked, clearly checking his phone rather than paying attention.

“You can come over tonight while the kids are out partying,” Rashida explained, “I’ll make you dinner.”

Three sets of expectant eyes stared at Clark.

“Sureeee...” Clark eventually said, feeling the pressure.

“Great, so it’s settled,” Rashida grinned, climbing back into the car before another word could be spoken.

“I’ll see you in the truck,” Clark said, giving Chloe and Aaron a moment alone.

“So do you wanna come?” Chloe asked, chuckling that it took so long to get a direct answer.

“Sure,” Aaron nodded, laughing along with her.

“Great!” Chloe smiled, “We’re getting a ride from a friend of mine. Meet me in my driveway at five?”

“Sounds good,” Aaron agreed, “See you then.”

With an unrestricted smile, Chloe climbed into the passenger seat, the two waved at each other as Rashida pulled out of the driveway and down the street.

Aaron could’ve sworn he saw his mother wink at him as he drove away.

He was pulled back out of his head when Clark slammed his hand down on the horn.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Aaron sighed.

It was somehow even hotter than it was the day before as Aaron and Clark continued their work on the fence.

At least that’s what Aaron observed watching Clark sweat and change a very deep colour of red as the day went by.

Aaron himself felt perfectly comfortable, sweating more from exertion as they placed fence posts in the previously dug holes than the heat of the sun beating against his neck. In some ways he was more comfortable now than he had ever been his entire life.

In other ways, he was perhaps the most terrified he had ever been.

Being naked in front of his family was one thing.

In front of Chloe was another.

But naked on the job, at a client’s house, there were so many ways for that to go wrong.

Clark knew this, of course, the two arriving an hour late to the job on purpose so as to miss everyone on the street heading to work.

But that still left the complication of the homeowner Maddie still inside. Despite the show she had given them the other day she might not have been jazzed that a sweaty naked man was working on her property, but if she was she hadn’t come outside to voice her displeasure.

When Clark decided it was time for the two of them to break for lunch Aaron finally allowed himself to breathe and stop looking over his shoulder for the incoming rolling pin.

“So...” Clark began as he began to eat his sandwich, “You excited for tonight?”

“I guess so,” Aaron shrugged, poking through his own lunch as the two sat on the back of the truck bed.

“Right, right, play it cool,” Clark laughed.

“Like you are?” Aaron asked, his tone playful despite the stoic reaction he drew from Clark.

“Look, you know nothing’s happening between me and your mom right?” Clark said in a voice that Aaron sensed was almost meant to be reassuring.

“We both know that’s not true,” Aaron said, “You have a freakin date with her tonight, dude.”

“It’s not a date,” Clark refuted, “It’s just dinner, we’ve had dinner before.”

“You mean those times you went out to nice restaurants where Mom spent an hour getting all dressed up?” Aaron asked rhetorically, “Yeah you’re right, this is totally different ... beyond the fact that mom does not need to dress up anymore. That kinda kills my sarcasm.”

“Yeah I’m heartbroken for you,” Clark said dryly, “Hey look.”

He put down his sandwich and breathed deeply, taking a moment to consider his words.

“You know I care about you and your mom,” He began, “And I know it’s this big complicated thing with you two and your dad and I ... look I never set out to replace him in any way or make you feel uncomfortable about anything that may or may not be happening between me and your mom ... am I making any sense?”

“Not really,” Aaron shrugged.

“I’m not going to overstep boundaries,” Clark simplified, “That’s what I’m saying.”

“Hey, don’t worry about me,” Aaron assured him, “And as for my dad ... I don’t know my dad. I doubt he knows about me. He’s probably out there living his life blissfully unaware I even exist on the other side of the country. You were there when I was born, you taught me how to shave, you gave me the whole birds and the bees talk.”

Clark chuckled at the disastrous memory.

“You were there for Mom when no one else was,” Aaron continued, “If I trust anyone with her it’s you, if you want it you have my blessing, so there...”

A moment of awkward silence fell upon the two men.

“Well thank you,” Clark said, breaking said silence, “If you’re done eating let’s get back to work.”

“Oh thank god,” Aaron breathed a sigh of relief.

When Aaron came back downstairs, fresh from taking a shower after work, he found his mother where he had been consistently finding her the last handful of days, that being in the kitchen.

“Clark likes chicken masala right,” She asked, a vaguely panicked look on her face.

“I’m sure he’ll like whatever you make him,” Aaron answered in full honesty.

“You’re no help,” Rashida frowned, lifting a spoonful to taste before her eyes grew wide and she nearly sprinted over to the cupboard.

“He’s never disliked anything you’ve made before,” Aaron assured her, “Even stayed quiet during the meatloaf incident of ‘09. I doubt he’ll start critiquing in the middle of a date.”

“Not a date,” Rashida immediately rejected.

“Oh no, of course not,” He faux agreed, “Just two adults sharing an intimate dinner while one of them is completely naked, how could I be so mistaken?”

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Rashida said in a dry tone, nodding at the wall clock.

“Shit, you’re right,” Aaron realized, grabbing his backpack containing his wallet, keys, a towel to sit on and other essentials and throwing it over his shoulder.

He paused.

“You know if it is a date,” Aaron said, “That’s okay with me.”

Rashida gave her son a strange look.

“If that’s what you were worried about,” he continued, “I want you to be happy, whatever that looks like.”

Rashida chuckled.

“For the record I am happy,” she smiled, “But soon or later Chloe’s not going to be, move your naked ass.”

“Alright, fine fine, Aaron surrendered, opening the door to step outside, “You have tomato on your boob by the way.”

As Rashida looked down Aaron stepped outside, nearly crashing into Clark as he approached the front door.

“Oop, that could’ve been bad,” Clark chuckled as the two men leapt away from each other.

“Hey, at least then you’d be down with the dress code,” Aaron joked as he ran down the stairs.

Chloe was standing across the street in front of the same car he had seen her climb into the other night having a conversation with the driver, her face broke into a smile upon seeing him.

“Aaron!” She said cheerfully, tightly hugging him.

“Sorry I’m late,” he apologized, thanking the lord that he was able to get through the hug without humiliating himself in front of her.

“No, you’re good,” Chloe assured him, “They were early.”

“No, we weren’t” the driver’s voice interrupted, “Will you two hurry up, We’re burning daylight!”

Chloe sighed as Aaron opened the rear door of the car for her.

“Aaron, you remember Freddie,” she sighed as she climbed into the backseat and shuffled to the opposite side to allow Aaron to enter.

“Four-eyed Freddie?” Aaron asked without thinking as he climbed inside.

The petite girl in the passenger seat giggled as a pair of the thickest glasses anyone had ever seen stared back at Aaron with very clear annoyance.

Aaron and Chloe had gone to high school with Freddy, where he grew well known for his ‘Clark Kent style’ of thick horn-rimmed glasses on a guy built like a tank, six foot five and muscles honed from carrying around crates of fruit at his dad’s grocery store.

As you may expect those glasses were the only thing he was wearing.

“Sorry Fred,” Aaron apologized as the car pulled onto the road, “Wasn’t thinking.”

“Don’t worry about it,” The girl in the passenger seat whom Aaron recognized as Chloe’s friend from high school Maria assured him, seemingly speaking on behalf of Fred, “Freddie just pretends he hates the nickname, don’t you four eyes?”

Freddie grunted.

Aaron hadn’t seen Maria since graduation, in high school she was the uber-popular party girl who seemed to lift a room’s spirits just by smiling.

Aaron was a little caught off guard to see that smile attached to her now nude body, still just under five feet tall and skinny as a twig contrasting heavily with Freddie’s large frame.

“Aaron it’s been a hot minute,” Maria greeted, “How’ve you been? I heard about your mom, that’s a tough break.”

“Ah well she’s tougher,” Aaron joked, “So what’s this party we’re going to?”

“Chloe didn’t tell you?” Maria asked, glancing over to her friend in the back seat suspiciously.

“Must’ve slipped my mind,” Chloe remarked, staring at Maria with a certain amount of evident subtext, “Well it’s called the burning, basically it’s just a bunch of nudies getting together to support one another. Sometimes it can feel a little isolating being the only one permanently naked so this is a great way to see you’re not alone. You get to hang out with old veterans like Freddie, Maria and me, other newbie nudies like yourself, or even a couple of people psyching themselves up to toss those old clothes of theirs in the campfire. There’s drinks, music, dancing, it’s a great time.”

“Sounds like fun,” Aaron said, smiling at Chloe who smiled back.

“Okay,” Maria interrupted, her body now fully facing the back seat despite how dangerous it was in a moving vehicle, “Being a newbie you’re going to get asked this a ton, so let me be the first. How’d it happen?”

“How did I get infected?” Aaron asked, Maria nodded, “Oh y’know, mom got infected, small house, it was inevitable I guess.”

“Boo,” Maria sighed, “Heard that story a million times, it’s boring.”

“I’m sorry his life bores you Maria,” Chloe laughed, “Tell him yours, you gotta give if you wanna get.”

“Fair enough,” Maria grinned, “You remember my ex-boyfriend from high school right? Carl?”

“The stoner you dumped before graduation?” Aaron remembered.

“He wasn’t a stoner,” Maria said defensively.

“Trust me, honey,” Chloe argued, “He was a stoner.”

“Freddie?” Maria begged, looking over to the driver.

Fred just awkwardly smiled and nodded his head.

“Huh ... damn,” Maria sighed, “Anyway, apparently he got infected with the spell at a really unfortunate rebound hook-up after graduation. Lost his job because of it, really pissed him off. So anyway, I had run down to Freddie’s family grocery store to pick up a few things and I was deciding which type of ketchup to buy when Carl walked buck naked into the condiment aisle. He had clearly been crying and by the smell of him- oh my god he was a stoner!”

Maria paused for a moment to take it all in.

“Whatever,” She shrugged, “Anyway, he basically tackles me, starts ripping off my clothes, swearing under his breath, when Freddie walks into the isle, sees what’s happening, pulls Carl off me and knocks him out in one punch, so heroically getting himself infected to protect me. Then after the police came, took Carl away, and took our statements, we made love in the back of this very car.”