Rough Friend by Rapier69
A true bit of my history, Carol and I were Navy wives who met when our husbands served together. A couple of years prior to this reunion she and my husband had a drunk fuck in the back of the car I was driving but I was not the jealous type. , I was feeling rather low when a call came out of the blue from Carol, she was coming back to town for a few days and wanted to hook up. I went better and invited her to stay, I was alone in the big house we had bought cheap from the Navy and any company would be welcome.
I drove to the station to meet her, and did not recognise her at first, Carol had always what I privately thought as a power dresser, but Mark unkindly referred to her style as “Redneck”; today though she was in a flowing print dress complete with a stylish floppy hat, she was even wearing heels, although if there is one woman in Britain who did not need heels it was lanky Carol.
“Get you!” I greeted as we hugged, I was a bit breathless, she was really putting some muscle into the hug, I felt more like I was being arrested.
She let me go and touched the hat self-consciously, smiled apologetically. “You don’t like it?”
“I love it,” I lied, noticing her nails were manicured and painted, I bunched my fists to hide my nibbled ones. She took my arm, startling me, the last person who linked arms with me and been my mother when I was twelve.
“So, you did not mention why you are back?” I broke what was proving an awkward silence as we walked toward the car, her suitcase rumbling along behind us.
“I left Tom,” she said bluntly.
The awkward silence got even awkwarder and stretched until we got to the car.
“When you say left…” I ventured.
“I mean for good!” She snapped, hoisting her case into the back. “Sorry, my head is a mess, it was a toss up, kill him or leave him, and I hear prison food is crap.”
We climbed into the car, I kept quiet, Carol looked mad enough to kill me as a surrogate.
I saw her start to relax as she took in the old sights, Carol had been a “Local” meaning born and raised in Portsmouth, and married Tom after meeting him at the base hop, not quite an Officer and a Gentleman story, but close enough for a Pompey tart.
“You know you can stay as long as you want,” I ventured.
“Thanks,” she retorted shortly. “But just a few days would really help, my Dad is going to help me find a flat, he already has a short list. I nodded and wondered why she was not staying with her parents, she read my mind. “I need to get ready for all the I told you so’s from my mother.”
“Ah,” I said lamely, thinking of her mother and her disapproving snarky remarks at my expense, I did not need some softy southerner reminding me I was a miner’s brat, I had a husband who did that.
“You are kidding me!” She exclaimed as I pulled into the drive. “You bought this? Mark been selling torpedoes to the Russians?”
“We got it cheap,” I admitted. “Navy is selling off old married quarters.”
“Back in the day you and I lived in cardboard flats, this is a married quarter?”
“I am told an admiral lived here,” by the neighbours, many times. I did not mention we had had to take a second, larger, mortgage to make the place habitable, the admiral probably fought at Trafalgar.
I gave her the expected tour, trying hard not to gloat, it was an incredible house with five bedrooms and a dining room as well as a living room, imagine that! A big jump from the two-bedroom flat in Rowner we had previously.
We fetched up on the breakfast bar – yep, I had a breakfast bar! How is that for a miner’s brat from Grimethorpe? I offered coffee and she pulled a face so I uncorked a bottle of fine wine. Oh okay, I twisted the top off a bottle of Blue Nun. The white wine gobbled into a pair of big glasses, Carol held hers by the stem between both hands, moodily twisting it from side to side. I twitched with the urge to grab it back, that was real crystal.
“What will you do?” I asked finally. “I mean work wise?”
“Go back to teaching,” she shrugged. I should point out when Carol says teaching she is unlikely to be talking about Fareham High School, she had been a history teacher at a private college when Tom found her slumming it down the strip. She took a long pull of wine and looked around the kitchen. “You have done alright for yourself.” For a miner’s brat.
I took a modest sip. “We are doing okay.” Oops! The “WE” had to have hit home. “I am working for British Nuclear Fuels, Mark got rated up.”
She showed no interest, sparing me having to admit I was actually just a secretary at BNF.
Sitting on the stool with her long legs crossed I could not help but notice Carol had lost weight, where it counted, her top end was just as magnificent as ever, I am no flat chest at 38C but Carol cashed in at a man catching 40E, she once described her bra as two buckets on a rope. She had lost the slight spare at her waist and her broad hips gave her a classic hour glass shape held up by legs that went all the way to floor when she stood up. She had doubled as a gym teacher and it showed in the muscle tone of her stilt legs. I refilled her glass as she moodily gulped it down.
Without the hat the dress caught the eye and it flattered her Junoesque figure, clinging to the good bits and forming smooth curves in-between, it was knee length but slit, sitting as she was it revealed she was wearing holdup stockings, another change, when she caught me wearing stockings one night we were out she accused me of pandering to male ideas of eye candy.
“Was it an affair?” I asked delicately. Tom had made plenty of passes at me, and I doubt I was unique, Mark usually referred to him as a Fanny Rat.
Carol sighed. “Like he never had one! Two faced bastard!”
I blinked and suddenly the change in her dress sense made perfect sense. “Oh!”
She drained the second glass and helped herself to the next, emptying the bottle and shaking it like ketchup. “Oh!” She mimicked. “Don’t you judge me as well!”
“I am hardly in a position to criticise!” I pointed out. “You know that!”
“I am talking about an affair, not some one-night stand,” she remarked. I was not sure how that made such a difference but held my tongue. “He did not marry a nun,” she continued after a pause. “He knew that, I have needs and with him away so much…” She realised she was preaching to the choir and stopped. “We were not hurting anyone; Tom had my full attention when he was in port.”
I got another bottle out of the chiller, oh, I did not mention the wine chiller, did I? Built into the fitted kitchen, nice.
“So it had been going on for a while?”
“A year,” she sighed.
“And Tom found out?”
“Walked in on us,” Carol admitted. Ship came in early.
I winced, that was my nightmare ever since Mark’s mother caught us on her precious rug, she made such a fuss, even burning the rug, think she would have burned me too if we lived in earlier times. “Was it bad?”
“Bad?” She blinked at me.
“Well, a major scene, or did he just walk back out?”
Carol shook her head and her bronze curls wagged over her broad shoulders. “No he wanted to join in.”
“Tom?” I gasped. “I never thought he was that way inclined.”
“Oh get real,” she disparaged. “All men are. But Susan was having none of it and he got the hump on.”
“Sir – sir – Susan?” I stammered.
“Susan Trent,” She amplified. “You remember her?”
My head was reeling, of course I knew Susan Trent, she had been one of the gang when the boys were doing their – well whatever it was they did when they were all at Collingwood. “But she is married!” I objected.
Carol threw her head back and laughed, a real roar of mirth. “Oh you are priceless Sal! I tell you I was having a lesbian affair and that is your objection? She is married? So am I, and you, what the hell does that matter?”
I could not help but try to picture them together, it was like trying to jam a jigsaw bit to another wrong bit. Susan was a tiny elf of a woman, delicate, shy and utterly under the thumb of her bully of a husband, she and mighty Carol getting sweaty together? Nah!
“I never suspected,” I admitted, meaning Susan, but Carol thought otherwise.
“That I was bi? Not something I broadcast, puts other women off, they get jumpy, scared I might make a pass at them. Nice skirt by the way, shows off your legs.” I twitched the hem down and she howled laughter again. “See what I mean? Relax, I am not going to try and jump you!”
I felt myself blushing hard and tried to cool it with a long drink of the cold wine.
“So Tom, what? Threw you out?”
“No, he sulked, and told Susan’s husband, then she would not see me anymore so I fucked him off, I might have married him but he does not own me.” She fell into a moody silence, I got myself trying to tug my skirt down again, why the hell did I wear the short leather one today? Oh yeah, to impress Carol, our friendship had always been like that, when we went out I checked myself in the mirror to see what some potential man might see, but if Carol would approve. Got it wrong occasionally, like the stockings. I glanced at hers in plain sight. Two faced bitch!
To my horror I saw her glance down also and smile knowingly, crap! I did not know where to put my eyes, I fixed on her hair, she reached up and combed her locks with her fingers.
“So Tom had no idea about your…” Er…
“Proclivities? No, look it is not what you think, I like men, but sometimes I see a girl and I think, wow, I like that, I do not go prowling around looking for a willing girl.”
I hesitated but the wine was loosening my tongue. “So how did you and Susan….?”
“I was getting a bit porky,” she smoothed her hands down her stomach, drawing my eyes. “I started going to aerobics and there was Susan, taking the class.”
“Susan teaches aerobics? She kept that quiet.”
Carol smiled at her memories. “She kept everything quiet, We got to having a juice afterwards and talking about the Collingwood days, then one day she suggested we get a sauna to relax, the towels were the first thing to relax and – well – it just or happened.
I shivered at the image, except Carol was not peeling the towel off Susan, it was off me. What would I have done? Slapped her hand away? Not likely, her size and strength intimidated me, even more her towering self-confidence, would I have just let her undress me and touch me? My cheeks were burning red hot and I scrambled in my mind for some other image. I found myself slipping off the stool and grabbed the table to push myself back, the second bottle was empty, I slipped a third and picked up my part full glass. “Let’s go sit down.”