Your mom was never much of a homemaker—couldn’t cook, hated housecleaning, didn’t like having people over to visit. It wasn’t that she grew up having someone to do for her the way rich people do, but she acted like she had. Just like her mother, your dad used to say.

Wasn’t any good in bed, either, if listening to your dad yell at her when they were still together, drinking, was anything to go by. Got that from her mother, too.

He’d yell that she didn’t know the first thing about pleasing a real man, and she’d yell back she wasn’t going to suck that thing and swallow that slimy shit like trailer trash. He could put it where the Almighty meant for it to go, she’d say, but there was no way in hell she’d let him stick that thing down her throat.

They didn’t bother keeping their voices down. You heard everything. So did the neighbors, but too genteel to complain.

The one thing she was good at—the one thing you found out for yourself—was to hit a moving target, in bad light, using a handgun.

You were at the Big A, a mini-mart on the other side of town, late, buying liquor with a fake ID. There was only the one night clerk working the whole store, a woman named Darleen, and she called you on it.

She was about the same age as your mom, but looked harder used, probably not married, and her voice like something you’d hear out of women partial to cigarettes and vodka shots. Her hair was grayish, maybe, and reaching down to her shoulders—which she kept back off her face with a large claw clip.

The kind of woman who favored the night, coming alive in the starry darkness where you don’t see the strain of it on her.

Waggling the ID like she was drying a wet Polaroid photo just out of the camera, she gave you a choice—she could call the cops, or you could go “have a smoke” with her. You like smoking, don’t you, she asked.

Your mom’d shit bricks if she found out you were buying liquor for your buddies. She wasn’t against you drinking, she was against you getting picked up by the police for anything.

You weren’t much of a smoker, but you could do a tolerable impression if the situation required it.

So, you said a cigarette’d taste pretty good right now, and she laughed, handing the fake ID back to you.

Darleen shucked the gray uniform smock and clocked out for her break. She led you off to where she’d parked her truck, away from the security lights but leaving her a clear view of the store front.

She opened the door on the passenger side, the hinge giving a metal-on-metal screech. She turned off the dome light, skipped the cigarette and got down to business.

She pulled off your sneakers, undid your pants and slid them off you, flipping everything into the bed of the truck behind the cab.

This was way more than you expected, but you felt you had to go along. She could pull up the security footage anytime she wanted.

She peeled your briefs down to your ankles.

“Up, up,” she said, and you lifted first one foot then the other as she slid the briefs off, flipping them into the bed, too. She squatted down on her haunches, massaging your cock into action.

You’d never been attracted to older women. Like much older. Maybe senior girls when you were a freshman. College girls now that you were a senior in high school. But, like, women your mom’s age? You didn’t usually give them a thought. Maybe you’d notice the ones trying too hard to get attention. But you’d see those gray roots of an expiring dye job, or the creases of loose flesh over her breastbone when her tits where mashed together, or the bluish veins stretched under heavily-tanned and freckled skin of large breasts and your attention would wander off.

This was different.

It wasn’t just the smell of whatever shampoo Darleen used, the stale smoke that clung to her, the loose collar of her blouse giving you a good look down at her breasts cradled in the dark maroon bra. It was the peculiar electricity of standing naked in a dark parking lot, made vivid by the buzz of the katydids, the smell and feel of still-warm asphalt under your bare feet, the coolish breeze stroking your skin, and the passing cars, any one of them choosing to turn in and light you up, leaving you nowhere to hide.

And inches from your balls, a woman’s face you didn’t know—a face you wanted to press your cock up against and come all over.

You got hard. Hard to the point of discomfort, pulsing slightly with the beat of your heart.

With a sly grin up at you, she settled her mouth onto your cock, taking your entire length in, until her face pressed into your belly. She gave a shake of her head, the back of her throat working the tip of your dick, her nose tickling your skin.

Looking down on her squatting there, you watched her face slowly sliding back and then in again all the way to the root of your cock, savoring you with each stroke, like something she hadn’t tasted in a long while. At least something as fresh as you.

The jangling fizz whirling around the base of your crank, streaking outward, warned you there would come a warm jet if you let yourself sink into the sensations swirling through your middle.

You wanted to make her work for it, a little payback for holding you hostage. You clenched yourself, trying to shut off all feeling from your crank, as if you might unhitch your nervous system, leaving her to suck air through a fleshy tube—leaving you to admire her skill and appreciate her effort from a safe distance. But you couldn’t. It was so, so—delicious.

You gripped the doorframe to keep yourself from being inhaled right out of your skin. Your head back and eyes squeezed shut, you tried to force this whirling hurricane in your guts to slow down, let you feel the deep reach of it. Then, as it flowed upward from way, way down, you clenched your buttocks, and lifted up on the balls of your feet, to put yourself out ahead of the crashing wave as it surged, straining against your will.

But she was so very much more skilled, and she drew you downward, into the miry pit of excitement, as if she’d suck your asshole through from the other side, until at last you lost the tug-of-war and you jetted your load with a long, gut-punch groaning cough, your dick contracting and releasing, her mouth unrelenting.

The contractions spewed jizz down her throat as she pushed her face into your belly, taking it all, sucking to clean you out, to leave nothing but empty balls and a dry dick.

When she slipped off, tonguing the hole, the tasty lip of a long-neck beer bottle, licking the last drop, you finally relaxed, settled on your heels and slumped against the edge of the truck’s seat.

Rocking back a bit, she studied your crank, pleased at her handiwork.

“Okay,” she said. “There you go.” Her face held back something. Her taking you this way, wasn’t passion or even affection. It was something else. Hunger, maybe. A performance. Showing you—something?

You couldn’t tell what was expected. Tell her thanks? Tell her good job? Tell her it was the finest you ever had?

What you wanted to do was weave your fingers into her hair and pull her forward again, mashing her face into your crotch. Like she was one of those women at the Blizzard Inn, done up in their Sunday hats and gloves, buying ice cream sodas, and clicking their tongues at the college boys skipping church. Watch your dick fill up the painted “O” of their mouths, smearing their lipstick.

Darleen rose up, lit her cigarette, drew a breath, and thumbed a spot from her upper lip.

Looking at you the way she did, like she was done with you, made your skin prickle, like she’d bested you, owned you. Did that mean it wasn’t enough? She wasn’t saying.

“So,” you asked, “we even?”

She reached out, hefting your flaccid pecker, something about it making her smile. Not a smile with pleasure, more of a smile with a plan. Like she had designs on it but was still figuring how best to make use of it.

Then, lifting her eyes, hooded by the shadows, she said, “You can meet me here tomorrow when I get off work. Midnight.”

She left you standing, naked, by the truck as she went back inside the store. You took your time getting dressed, savoring the outlaw feeling of public nakedness, a plaything for a woman you didn’t know, and the satisfying load you left in her mouth. Dazzled by the smell of her freshly lit cigarette mingling with the smell of her hair, and the odor of your own sweaty crotch and spew, made you crave that cigarette she promised.