Chapter 10: A New Home

I asked the teens, “So, you want to continue to live just the way we have been?” I’m sure the elation and excitement showed in my tone.

Wendy smiled happily and confirmed, “Yes, with some minor changes. Just in case somebody checks, we need to fix up ‘our’ room so it looks like you live and sleep alone, and we live like BFFs would in a shared bedroom. Right now, anybody looking at your bedroom would know that a full-blown orgy happened in there this morning.”

I nodded, “And at the condo?”

“Same thing. For the next year-and-a-half, until we’re both eighteen, we need to look as though we’re living in very separate quarters. This is for your protection and ours. We don’t want to become wards of some foster family.”

Tracy added, “We need to think about the bathrooms, too. It’ll be inconvenient for a while, but then we can go back to living the way we want.” Their cosmetics were all over the counter in the master bath just off my bedroom.

I knew they were just keeping me out of that jail cell, so I didn’t argue.

I got a call just as the three of us got back to my car from our beach walk. An agent from ReMax wanted to show the house at three o’clock that afternoon. We raced back to the house, and cleaned, aired out, and straightened like crazy. We took a long walk around my neighborhood until we saw a strange car leave from in front of the house and then I got an ‘All Clear’ text from the agent. We could return home.

Alice Jordan called me about six p.m. and said that she had a full-price offer in hand. Penny had schooled me to say, “I’ll consider it and any other offers that come in.” I heard Alice snicker on the phone. She said, “Got it,” and we hung up.

There were three more showings on Sunday. We spent the day up at Penny’s condo – now renamed Tracy’s condo, and I made the decision to sell that place, too. Since we were staying together, we’d get something larger, with a private pool, and hopefully a water view of some kind.

Alice called me Monday at noon. I had just left a customer’s retail shop, getting things in the point-of-sale system back to normal. Alice sounded really cheery. “Matt, you have one offer that I think you should take. It’s for $800,000. That’s an astonishing $50,000 over your asking price. What with mortgage rates rising, I don’t think you’ll do any better.”

I said one word to her, “Sold!”

We talked about next steps. I ended up coming by Alice’s office and signing some papers accepting their offer. I then took her out for coffee to celebrate. We reminisced about Penny a bit, and then she told me that Penny’s estate would get about $10,000 since Penny had been the listing agent. I was shocked at the amount, and this was cash. I told her about making sure that Tracy got all of it.

That remark led to a longer discussion about my being the guardian of the teens. Alice looked intrigued, and I tried to not look like the pervert that I was with the two teenagers. I thought that I’d fooled her.

I took advantage of our coffee break to talk to Alice about what I’d like in our next house. She knew the right questions to ask, and drew a lot out of me that I hadn’t even realized. I asked her to come and interview Wendy and Tracy to get their opinions. I was especially curious about anything on our wish list for a home that was materially different from what I had stated.

Alice asked whether she could come out that evening, and I told her yes. She was hot to find us a new home. We talked about dinner, and I promised some good take out. I went about my business the rest of the afternoon, but did call in an order for Chinese food that I’d pick up on the way home.

Alice arrived at the house just after six p.m. By then, I’d had a chance to explain to the two teens about giving their specifications for a new home. I asked if I could listen in or whether I’d inhibit their responses. After some kisses, they told me I could listen in.

I sat and took notes, as did Alice when she interviewed Tracy and Wendy for an hour. To stimulate their thinking, she showed them some floor plans and pictures of other homes. I’d made sure to tell them that if they didn’t agree on something that they had to tell Alice, since I might be a tie breaker on some point or there might be some other great compromise.

Overall, we wanted a large house – probably five bedrooms or more since we wanted guests to stay with us from time to time, we wanted a media room where we could watch feature-length movies just like in a theater, a large well-appointed kitchen, a gym, a large back patio, and a large swimming pool where we could do laps and more than just take a dip. We didn’t mind having neighbors but didn’t want them able to look into our back yard, and we wanted a nice neighborhood. I had already talked about finding good ‘bones’ but buying a fixer upper.

Rolling the funds over from my house at $800,000 less the $40,000 selling commission (of which we got about $10,000 back!), and taking into account that we could sell Penny’s condo for about $600,000 cash (it was paid for), and allowing for a mortgage that wouldn’t break the camel’s back, we easily could spring for a house that would cost up to $2,300,000 without dipping into any of Penny’s investments or other real estate.

Given what I’d heard about real estate prices in our area, I suddenly had low expectations about what we could expect to find. I emphasized finding a ‘fixer-upper’ and maybe do a flip, as I was doing on my house, because I thought the price would be better for more house.

We had a nice dinner. Alice shared a lot of information with all of us, especially Tracy, about what her mother had been like as a high-end real estate agent. We didn’t know how she’d created that niche for herself, but it positioned her to sell some really nice homes for the agency and profit accordingly all while living modestly.

Alice looked longingly at the pool in my back yard after I’d turned on the lights in it. She said, “I wish I’d brought my swimsuit.”

Before I could say anything, Wendy said, “Oh, we all skinny-dip after dark. Come on, we want to swim, too. The water is really relaxing at the end of the day.”

Both Tracy and Wendy stood and walked to the patio door. There was a chair beside it, and they were stripping off their clothing and leaving it in the chair before either Alice or I could say anything.

I stood with some uncertainty about what I was going to do. Alice read the actions of the teens and me, inferring that we were all going swimming. Alice pulled her top over her head, revealing her functional bra, and then that disappeared, too; revealing a very nice matched set of breasts that immediately had appeal as they started to shimmy.

I shrugged to myself, resigned about what would happen and rehearsing how I’d behave with the nude girls. I removed my shirt, and then my slacks after I kicked off my loafers. Alice strolled past me naked on the way to the patio to join the teens. She had the bushiest pubic area that I’d ever seen, even with all the porn I’d watched. I followed seconds later with my tumescent cock swinging from side to side. Alice had a nice ass.

Alice used the steps to get into the pool. The teens were already swimming. I dove in at the deep end. Alice finally got in up to her neck. She came over near me, careful to not stand and reveal any more of herself to me than she already had. Despite the pool lights, no one could really see anything important under the surface of the water.

She said in a hushed tone, “What about the nudity and the teens?”

I said, “I treat them as adults. They know that I’ll answer any questions they have about anything, too. They know more about sex, sexuality, and love than I do, so none of this has ever been a question. Penny was very open with them. Their IQs are off the charts. You do know that they’re sixteen-years-old and halfway through college. We just treat the nudity as no big deal.” I spoke aloud so that the girls could hear and hopefully act accordingly. I also tried to sound casual and not at all like one of the three oversexed perverts that lived in the house.

We all paddled around in the small pool for ten minutes and talked about the small pool. Alice promised she’d find a house with a much larger pool for us so that we could do laps and really work up a head of steam.

Wendy got out and got towels for everybody. There was no trying to hide her feminine assets. Tracy got out, and both teens wrapped towels around their shoulders leaving their lower body parts to air dry as they sat in the shadows. I got out, rinsed off, dried, and tied my towel around my waist. Alice also got out. I aimed her at the pool shower that I’d put in so she could wash off the chlorinated pool water before drying. I noted that she made a slight production of the rinse cycle for me. Shit; she was showing her body off to me. She was turned on. I was always turned on. Damn; my towel tented.

It was early, and Alice soon redressed, bid us goodnight, and left. We’d promised her more swims in this pool or the ‘big’ one at our new house. [Laughter]

The buyers of my house wanted immediate occupancy. We told them that we could be out in two-weeks, and that was when we closed. By then, we’d pretty much moved into Penny’s condo, but we’d culled that of excess furniture and put everything we weren’t using in storage with the local moving company. We also put the condo on the market.

We’d estimated that Penny’s condo was worth about $600,000. I teased Alice about listing it for $750,000, and that’s what we did. Two days later we had a full price offer that I immediately accepted. Alice was elated. This was her first solo listing and completed sale where she wasn’t a ‘junior’ on the deal.

I told Wendy and Tracy that evening that we have just joined the ranks of the homeless. I’d sold every place that we had to live out from under us. Now, we’d be able to afford a home up to $2,500,000, plus whatever we wanted to take from Penny’s investment accounts.

Friday, Alice called me while I was at a customer site replacing the hard drive on their POS server. My theory was that somebody had gone to move the device and dropped it. Oh, well. This ended up being an all-morning job.

“Matt, I have a place that you might be interested in. It needs work – a lot of it. In essence it’s very dated and been abandoned for about ten years, and in this climate that’s bad news. It’s coming on the market tomorrow, but I could show you now since our deal with the sellers has been signed.”

“Where? When?” I asked. She told me and we arranged to meet.

I met Alice on the west side of Palm Key, a barrier island, at four o’clock. Even as I pulled into the circular driveway in front of the house, I could tell this would be a project with a capital ‘P’. The landscaping had run wild or had died off depending on where I looked. A fence on one side of the house had caved in years earlier. I could see a broken window patched from the outside with some cardboard and duct tape.

I looked around the neighborhood. The other homes must have been in the $5 to $10 million range. This one was obviously an eyesore that needed some serious attention, and I hadn’t even gone inside yet.

Walking into the house was like taking a time machine back to the 1970s. The kitchen appliances, if they worked, had seen better days. Fortunately, the water had been turned off and the AC had been left on; I didn’t smell a lot of mold.

The two-story, five-bedroom house was about 4,500 square feet and it had a three-car garage with an unfinished area above that could be converted into living space. It was roomy, but would require a lot of work – and money. Knowing what things cost, I estimated that we needed to rework almost every room back to the studs. A complete re-do of the kitchen and each bathroom were needed just for starters. There were some walls that I’d take down or re-jig in some way. The AC units at the side of the house probably needed replacement; while functional, they were terribly rusty and hadn’t been serviced in years. I took pictures of everything to show the girls.

There were some ‘pros’ about the house. It was available for immediate occupancy, and it was listed at $2,350,000. Alice thought I could offer less and maybe win the place. There was plenty of square footage – more than what we’d envisioned. The best feature was a near Olympic-size pool even though the water was green and thick with fuzzy pool algae. The place was right on Sarasota Bay and overlooked Lido Key about a half-mile away. It had a dock but I knew enough to not want a boat. I’d already done that and the second happiest day in my life was when I sold it.