Kimmy and Devlin and Josh tomorrow!

 So sorry, folks! I had a Devil chapter ready to go and it went super long, so now it's two chapters. Both of them aren't completely edited and I'd planned to post them tonight but now they're not read [img]sadface.jpg[/img]. But! There'll be two over the next three days, and for fun I'm posting up the first chapter of the One Of The Gang novella for your perusal. I'd love to hear what you think so far about Ethan and Nikki . . . 

Late August, a perfect summer morning where the light’s deep and orange and threatening autumn, falling now on Nikki’s bare legs where they showed under the hem of her untied cotton robe. The cotton of the robe was thick and plucky, a rich-dyed emerald, stark but complimentary against the tawniness of his young wife’s summer-tanned skin. The orange light slashed downward below the half-drawn blind on their bedroom window, falling across the oval woven cottage rug and Nikki’s legs and feet as she searched the drawers of her dresser. It would have been a wonderful, first-thing-in-the-morning, romantic sight if he were still laying in bed, watching his wife get ready for work. No, Ethan was sitting on the toilet and peeping at his young and spanky wife through the crack in the bathroom door, watching her as she got herself together for a breakfast-brunch-lunch shift at the Admiral Ocean Resort where she worked as a waitress in the big dining room overlooking the Atlantic.

They were at that point in their marriage where comfort and familiarity melded to hot passion, the two incongruous things existing simultaneously, obverse realities as one ecosystem. Like how he could sit here watching Nikki, thinking about how hot her legs look and how he’d like to be back in bed with her right now, and at the same time be mid-turd, naked on the throne.

But that’s the way it was—after all, he’d known Nikki a long time. Ever since first year at U of D, when he was a lacrosse Fightin’ Blue Hen, and Nikki played girls’ tennis. He’d see her around the UD Athletic Center, then out at some parties. And that was it—that was all it took. He started talking to her and just never stopped. They’d been dating since first year. Her tennis career had fallen to the side—by her sophomore year, she wasn’t in athletics at all anymore, just a full-time sociology student.

Now she was his wife, plucking around the bedroom getting ready for work in an open robe, loose cotton shorts, and a tank top. She’d already showered and dried her hair, leaving him in bed. His hand had felt around for her as the sun came up, thinking he might have a shot at a quickie before she had to get in the shower, but he’d already missed her. They were going on an eight-day dry spell that had a lot to do with his and Nikki’s often opposing schedules—like last night Nikki not coming home till one in the morning, working the late shift at The Admiral. But seeing her long shaggy mane of blonde hair dance on the back of her robe, and the flex of her bare calves, had him wishing he’d set the alarm this morning.

Toilet flushed, hands washed, teeth brushed, he crept up behind her now, even though she would spot him in the small circular mirror on its stand on top of the dresser where she stood applying her eye makeup. She preferred standing here to being in the bathroom. Their bedroom windows faced north, but angled slightly eastward, and she liked the natural light over the artificial in the windowless bathroom. So their bedroom dresser was scattered with her collection of cosmetics. He grabbed her sides and tickled her, moving quietly, even though her ghostly gray eyes were on his the whole time, watching him in the mirror’s reflection. She jumped, complained: “Do-on’t.”

He hugged her, put both arms around her chest and put his face in her freshly blowdried hair. Now she said, “Get off me,” and elbowed him.

“So grumpy this morning,” he said.

“I’m just jealous,” she said. “Wish I had a normal Saturday.”

He laughed, went and sat at the foot of the bed, yawned and stretched. Nikki’d worked six of the last seven days, and today would be her seventh work day in a row. Nikki might complain about working too much, but she rarely turned down a shift. She liked making money.

Right from the very start there was an immediate comfort with this girl. Yeah, he’d been sexually interested in her right away, but what grew faster than their love affair was their friendship. There was a time at the end of first year and summer was coming he was more worried about losing her companionship than her heart. Thank God she felt the same.

Wasn’t long before Nikki was a constant feature in his life that could be plugged in to any situation. Want to go do something active? Sure . . . Want to come to this dumb event thing I have to go to for my sister? Sure . . . Want to study? Sure . . . Go see a movie? Sure . . . Hang out with my obnoxious friends? Sure . . . In fact even now he thought of her more as a best friend and a companion than his wife and lover. They were married now for a year and two months. Post-graduation, he got hooked up at a great insurance job here in Delaware, working as an account executive for Hagar Insurance of Bethany Beach. And, as luck would have it, his aunt rented them one-half of the big side-split she owned two streets down from the beach, a cedar shingle-sided manse with white trim split into two street-level apartments.

Back when he was in college, his aunt—who lived near his mom, her sister, back in Wilmington—would rent it to him and his then-girlfriend Nikki, and they’d come out here for a week during the summer. Then in third year, they would spend the whole summer here, his aunt renting the place to him for the season, Nikki getting a job at the swanky Admiral as a waitress, and he’d worked at the golf course. So did his lacrosse friends, Brody and Jace. So over the last two summers at college, Bethany Beach had become their hang. Now it was their home.

He and Nikki rented his aunt’s apartment now as their permanent address. And Brody and Jace were still around, even their buddy, Dawson, too. Jace and Brody he knew from lacrosse, and Dawson was also a Fightin’ Blue Hen, playing D1 football. Nikki still worked summers at the Admiral (where they adored her). After they’d married, she had a job working for a graphic design company up in Annapolis, but she’d hated it. So she went back to college after only two months in the workforce. Back to UD for a Masters in Strategic Communication. So just like they were in that weird mix of love-lust-passion versus familiar companionship, they were also in this weird juxtaposition of professional lives. Both just recent college graduates, newlyweds, him starting out in the workforce and finding his way, her searching around in the dark as well, and now heading back to do classes. So while they were married, full-blown husband-and-wife, sometimes it still felt like back when they were just students, hanging out for the summer in Bethany Beach. Take today for example: a Saturday, Nikki headed in for the morning shift, him with the day off with all his college buddies to do whatever they wanted, hanging around the beach.

Leaned toward the mirror, eyelids narrow, drawing black lines on her lashes, Nikki said, “What are you doing today?”

He finished stretching, said, “Don’t know yet for sure—I’m going to meet Brody for coffee before we go to the gym. Then I think Jace and Dawson are coming down, Dawson was up in Philly last night. We’ll probably go down to The Aardvark for brunch on the patio. Maybe play some frisbee on the beach . . . I don’t know, it looks nice now but I think it’s supposed to rain . . .”

“Yeah,” she said, snapping closed a makeup clamshell and then unscrewing a lipstick. “It’s supposed to rain. Right when I get off shift, which is absolutely fucking perfect.”

“You going out with Sheila tonight?”

“I’m supposed to. We’re all going out to the winery in Linkwood because it’s Sheila’s cousin’s birthday, and Sheila wants me there to make sure her cousin doesn’t fall off the wagon. She just went through a break-up . . .”

“Who—Sierra?”

“No, Rachel. Rachel’s the one who does the pottery, you know?”

“Have I ever met her?”

She paused to think, putting a lipstick down, resting her hands on the dresser top, then looking at the ceiling. “I think you did . . . she’s all artsy—she went to UD . . .”

“Sure made an impression on me,” he said, rising to stand again. “Want me to whip you up some breakfast?” He spanked her robe-covered bottom.

“I’ll eat at The Admiral,” she said.

“Coffee?”

“I’ll grab coffee at work.”

“Not as good as mine,” he said, turning her around and pinning her to the dresser, slipping his hands inside her open robe.

She caressed his chest, his stomach, and kissed his mouth carefully, minding not to muss her lipstick.

“I hate all those old tourists get to spend time with you, looking all hot, then you’re gone tonight . . .” His voice descended to low and lusty.

“Stop talking like that when I’m about to walk out the door,” she said, closing her robe tightly with his hands still underneath, smoothing palms on the cotton T-shirt clinging to her lean body.

“Maybe I wouldn’t be so horny if you didn’t work till closing or fell asleep on the couch at, like, nine o’clock.”

“Excuse me,” she said, “I’m exhausted.” She turned and walked to the closet, and with her robe still on, donned her black polyester waitressing slacks.

“Too bad you gotta go out tonight. We should go have some fun.”

“I’ll have fun with Sheila.”

He sucked his cheek and hummed a disappointed sound. “I just miss you.”

She hung up her robe and he watched her pull off her T-shirt then put her arms into a white dress shirt. “We’ve got Sunday, baby.”

“Are you going to be here for dinner tonight?”

“I might be,” she said, buttoning up, then tucking and checking the fit, standing so she could see the mirror in the bathroom. “Aren’t you going to be out with the gang?”

“Not if it rains . . .”

“I’ll eat if you’re here when I get off shift,” she said.

“You’d have way more fun with us guys anyway. C’mon, we’ll go out, go up to the Blues for some barbecue and bourbon.”

“That’s a guys thing.”

“No, it’s not—and you fit in with us better anyway—what do you want to do, go to the la-dee-da winery or hang with me and Brody and the guys, ribs, bourbon, chill on the beach, play volleyball . . .?”

She met his gaze for a long time, a small smile tugging on her perfect lips. The smile grew.

“I think you’re seeing it my way . . . you get along way better with us than Sheila and all her hens . . .”

She rolled away from him, grumbling, knowing he was right. “I like the Blue Hens, but I have to go with Sheila’s hens, baby . . .”

“Whatever—your loss . . .”

She walked from the bedroom and he followed her though the family room and into the hall where she snagged her clear rain slicker and folded it over an arm. She reached out to tap the tip of his nose with an index finger. “It’s going to rain, Ethan. What am I going to do?—hang out here and watch you guys play video games?”

He showed her a skeptical expression. “Like you don’t like doing that . . .”

“Bye, Ethan,” she said, laughing, leaning for a kiss on the cheek.

He escorted her to the door, she slipped her black sneakers on, trotted down the three steps off the deck, hauled out her beach cruiser from where it leaned on the cedar shingles, then walked it out of their garden, swinging open the white picket gate and throwing a leg over the bike. He watched her long legs pump the pedals, getting the bike to speed, checking traffic, going one-handed with her slicker tucked under an arm, turning left onto Atlantic and getting the old bike into the bike lane. She chanced a look his way, smiling, blowing a kiss, then gone . . .