Chapter Eight: Ryder
My cellphone buzzing across the nightstand jarred me awake. I lifted my head from the pillow my face was buried in and looked around for a moment. It took me a minute to remember where I was. I wasn’t in Mosul. I was home.
I pushed up onto my elbows and gave the phone a hateful look, as if I could scare it into silence. It continued to buzz unabated. I could see Quinn’s smiling image on the screen’s caller ID. I squinted at the digital clock on the dresser. It was 2:48 and the sun was shining brightly through the window. I had either been asleep six hours or thirty hours. Either way, it felt more like six minutes. All the sleep had managed to do was set the exhaustion even deeper into my bones.
My fingers fumbled with the phone and I rolled to my over to my back to answer it. “Ryder,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“Hey, it’s Quinn,” he said. “You get any sleep?”
“Yeah, some. What’s up?”
“I thought I’d pick you up in an hour and go with you to make the arrangements.”
“Arrangements?”
Quinn hesitated. “The funeral arrangements?”
“Fuck,” I sighed. “I’m sorry, man. My brain’s not firing on all cylinders.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “You’ve been though a lot. I understand. Do you want me to handle it for you? I mean, I can take care of everything if that helps.”
“No, you’re a good friend, but that’s my job,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”
“Do you know what her last wishes were?”
“Her last wishes?” Maybe I was being overly sensitive, but Quinn made it sound like Bethany had gotten three wishes from a fucking magic lamp and still had one to go. If that was the case, I was pretty sure her last wish would be to still be alive.
“Yes, did she want a formal service and burial in the cemetery where her folks are, or in a mausoleum or…”
“Fuck, dude, I don’t know. We never really talked about it,” I said with a heavy sigh. “Look, let me shower and shave, then I’ll call you back.” It hit me that I didn’t even know where Bethany’s body was. “Shit, I don’t even know where she is.”
“It’s okay, man,” Quinn said in that reassuring tone he used to calm his SEAL team when things weren’t going according to plan. “I spoke to Emily earlier and she asked me to have her taken to a funeral home in Falls Church near where her folks are buried. They’re waiting on you to let them know how to proceed.”
“Okay, I appreciate that,” I said. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and rested my elbows on my knees. I felt just slightly more human than I did when I went to bed earlier in the day. “I need to call Emily to let her know that I’m home. I’ll go by and pick up Cody after I make the arrangements.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked. “Really. I don’t mind.”
“No, this is something I need to alone,” I said. “Just text me the funeral home’s number and I’ll take care of it myself.”
* * *
I called Bethany’s sister Emily and told her that I was back in town and would be by to pick Cody up after I left the funeral home. She sounded cold and distant, which was to be expected given that her only sister was dead, I supposed. Emily and I had never been huge fans of one another. She always thought that her sister could have done much better in the husband department (no argument there) and I thought she was a meddling Jesus freak that couldn’t keep her nose out of our business. It wasn’t really her fault. I knew that Bethany shared every detail of our troubled marriage with her, so I could only imagine how low I had sunk in Emily’s eyes. I wondered if Bethany shared her other secrets with her sister. I didn’t want to bring up the pregnancy over the phone. That could wait until we were face to face.
Emily told me to take my time and hung up the phone.
I went downstairs to retrieve my duffel bag from the foyer. I set the duffel on the bed and pulled out my shaving kit and carried it into the master bathroom to take a shower. I stood in the door and looked around for a minute. It was just as I remembered: neat, orderly, uncluttered, clean, spotless, smelling of potpourri and soap and Lysol. Bethany was a clean freak. She cleaned the bathroom every day and bitched about what a messy pig I was. Now that she was gone I could only imagine what this bathroom would look like in a couple of weeks.
I stripped off my underwear and kicked them away, then stood naked at the sink to unpacked my shaving kit. I leaned in and frowned at the man in the mirror. I turned my head from side to side. It didn’t help. One side looked just as bad as the other. My hair was plastered to my head with three days’ worth of sweat. I had dark circles under my bloodshot eyes and I needed a shave. My lips were dry and cracked. I went through a ton of ChapStick in Iraq. I turned on the hot water in the sink and was pulling the razor from my kit when I heard music coming from outside the window.
I moved to the window that overlooked the side of the house and used one finger to slide the curtain aside. What I saw made the breath catch in my throat.
The music was coming from an iPhone in a dock sitting on a small glass table next to the neighbor’s pool. I had never been the neighborly type and when I was home, did my best to ignore them. I tried to remember the neighbor who lived in that house. Single mom, I thought, nice looking woman my age or a little older. Great tits and legs. Wore tight sweaters and miniskirts a lot. Cindy or Sandy, I think was her name. She had a daughter: Lois or Lolita or Lulu, something like that. The last time I’d seen the daughter was probably two or three years ago when she was a teenager. I remembered a cute blonde girl with big tits and a tight ass washing the car in the driveway wearing a red string bikini. Every guy in the neighborhood drove slowly by to gawk at her hot and soapy body as she got on her toes and leaned over to soap up the hood. She was a sexy little thing, too young for a guy my age to be staring at. I didn’t know how old she would be now, but she had to be at least nineteen or twenty. Regardless of her age, she had one of the best sets of tits I’d seen in a long time. I knew this because they were on full display in the pool down below.
She was lying on an inflatable raft with her top off and her hands behind her head. Her long blonde hair was pushed up and over the top edge of the raft. She was wearing a yellow bikini bottom and dark glasses that hid her eyes. Her brown body glistened in the sun, as if it were covered with oil. Despite the exhaustion that was still lingering in my bones and muscles like a cancer, my blood started to boil, pooling in my crotch. I looked down to find my cock getting hard. I wrapped my fingers around it and started slowly tugging it back and forth.
“Damn…” I said, my eyes drifting slowly over her magnificent body. She was long and lean, with toned arms and legs and abs that looked like they were the product of hours in the gym or amazing DNA. My eyes settled on her tits, big fleshy globes with dark areolas the size of golf balls and nipples like little brown thimbles. I wished like hell I had my binoculars handy, but it was okay. I could see well enough to get the job done.
My cock sprang to life, growing hard and stiff as a rock in my hand. I turned toward the sink for a moment. Bethany kept a bottle of lotion there. I pumped my hand full, then slathered the lotion around my cock and balls and went back to the window.
I was careful not to move the curtain too much. I was sure she couldn’t see me from down there, but I didn’t want to take any chances. God forbid I get busted for jacking off to a teenager. I peered through the break in the curtains and slowly stroked my cock back and forth, back and forth, rubbing in the lotion, causing my cock and balls to heat up like they were on fire.
What happened next could only be called coincidence or fate. Or very shrewd planning. The girl leaned her head up and looked toward her house, like she was looking to see if someone was there. Then she lifted her ass off the raft and wiggled the bikini bottoms down her long legs and tossed them to the side of the pool. Then she lay back and rubbed her hands down her stomach to lube them up with sweat and oil, then spread her thighs and started massaging the suntan oil into her clit. I nearly came on my hand.
Her pubes were as blonde as the hair on her head. She held them back with two fingers of one hand as she rubbed her clit with the other hand. The speed at which I was stroking my cock matched the speed of her fingers rubbing her pussy.
“Holy fucking shit…” I said, my hand furiously sliding up and down the length of my ten-inch shaft. My cock was so hard it felt like it was going to burst. The head was purple as a plum. My mouth was hanging open. I was literally panting like a dog.
“Yeah, baby, that’s it… play with that beautiful pussy… yeah... rub that clit, baby… fucking rub that clit and make yourself cum for daddy… that’s it… yeah…”
I watched as she brought up her knees and spread her legs wide. She slid two fingers inside her pussy. I saw her gasp when the fingers slid in up to the knuckles. She plunged the fingers in and out, in and out, deep as she could go. She lifted her ass off the raft and bit her bottom lip. Her left hand went to her left tit. She took the nipple between her thumb and forefinger and tugged on it until it turned dark purple.
“Fuck…” I moaned, my hand jackhammering up and down my cock as I watched her finger fucking herself to orgasm. When she started bucking her pussy into her hand my cock exploded, shooting long white ropes all over my hand, the wall, and floor beneath the window. Our bodies shuddered together as we came. I fell against the wall and bit into my lip to keep from screaming.
“Damn…” I said, struggling to catch my breath. My cock and hand were covered in jizz. It was everywhere. I took a deep breath and peered back through the crack in the curtains.
She was still on the raft and still naked and still rubbing her pussy, although slowly now, enjoying the after burn. But now the dark glasses were pushed back to the top of her head. She was looking up at me with a devious smile on her face.
“Fuck…” I said, though I didn’t pull away from the window. I could feel my heart beating through my cock, which was still gripped tightly in my hand.
She brought up the two fingers from her pussy and held them up to her mouth. As I watched in fucking awe, she stuck out her tongue and licked and sucked her fingers clean.
It was the sexiest fucking thing I had ever seen.
The thought of it would be with me the rest of the day.