From The Seduction of Emy and Other Stories

Copyright 2023 A. R. Gregory

 

The Season

I’d gone over it so many times, I thought my head would split. Johnny just standing there in my driveway last night when I got home from work? So dejected, something about some girl at school, he said? As soon as I gave him a half-concerned look, he hugged me till I awkwardly hugged him back. A teenage boy’s ploy to feel up an adult woman? I shook my head, took another deep breath. Nothing made any sense.

All night I woke up sweating and panting, as Alan snoozed next to me like a baby. Alan, my lover throughout grad school, my loving husband for the past four years. Yet I couldn’t get Johnny out of my mind, out of my dreams. Johnny, the boy from across the street, the thirteen-year-old kid? I could still smell his shaggy hair, feel his warm, moist breath on my neck, his bony young chest pressed against my breasts. And the things I kept imagining! What was wrong with me? I was an accountant, a no-nonsense professional, not one of those pathetic teachers or nannies who get sick sexual cravings for a child and end up in the news, even prison. I hardly knew Johnny....