Chapter 2: The steamy hot tub becomes a classroom of sensual exploration as Beverly turns Mikey's innocent dip into a hands-on anatomy lesson with her own body as the teaching aid.
The pink guest room smelled permanently of her. Mikey had lain awake for hours, the cloying vanilla-cherry scent embedded in the quilt, listening to the unfamiliar hum of the grand piano’s silent amplifier downstairs. He’d texted Derek: You won’t believe this. She looks like a cartoon. Derek had replied with a series of crying-laughing emojis and then gone offline, probably hiking some pristine mountain trail. Mikey felt marooned on an alien, pastel planet.
A soft knock came just past ten. “Mikey? Honey, you awake?”
Before he could answer, the door swung open. Beverly stood silhouetted against the hall light, and Mikey’s brain stuttered again. She wore a short, silk robe the color of cotton candy, held closed by a single tie. The plunging neckline revealed the stark, spherical tops of her breasts, their engineered roundness looking almost polished.
“I’m running the hot tub,” she announced, as if this were a normal Wednesday. “It’s a beautiful night. Come keep me company.”
“Oh, I’m kinda tired, and I—”
“Nonsense! You’ve been cooped up all day. It’ll loosen you up.” Her tone brooked no argument. It was a cheerful command. “Meet you out back in five. Don’t make me wait!”
The backyard was a jungle of overgrown roses and gardenias, strung with fairy lights. The hot tub, a bulbous white pod, glowed from within with a cycling spectrum of LED colors—pink, blue, green. Inflatable pink flamingos drifted on the churning surface.
Beverly was already in the water.
Mikey stopped dead, his towel clutched to his chest. She was wearing a bikini, if it could be called that. It was two tiny triangles of shimmering fabric struggling to contain her. The bottoms were a narrow strip that vanished between the massive, shelf-like hemispheres of her buttocks. From the back, he could see the full, alarming topography: each implanted cheek was a perfect, overtaxed globe, the skin stretched taut and shiny where it met the dark cleft between them. The bikini bottom cut deep into the side of each ass cheek, and in the front, a scant patch of fabric did little to conceal the prominent bulge of her pubic mound. The top was a catastrophic failure of engineering. Her breasts, buoyant and unnaturally firm, floated on the water’s surface like two pale islands, the nipples barely covered by the slipping triangles of material. The chlorinated water sloshed against their undersides.
“Mikey! Get in, the jets are wonderful on the lower back.”
He moved robotically, dropping his towel and slipping into the hot water as far from her as possible, in the corner opposite the controls. The heat did nothing to unclench his muscles.
“So,” she said, tilting her head. The colored lights played over her glossy lips. “Tell me everything. How’s school? Any special girls?”
He stared at a floating flamingo. “School was fine. No. No girls.”
“What?” she squealed, causing a wave to slap against him. “A handsome, smart boy like you? That’s a tragedy.”
“It’s not a tragedy,” he mumbled. “I just… haven’t met anyone.”
“Haven’t met anyone, or haven’t tried?” Her voice softened into a conspiratorial purr. The jets throbbed. “It’s okay to be nervous. Intimacy can be scary. But it’s the most beautiful thing in the world, Mikey. Connection. Touch.” She sighed, a performance of wistfulness. “Your grandfather, God rest him, was a wonderful man, but conservative. Took me decades to understand my own… appetites. Now I make up for lost time.”
She shifted, and the water displaced around her enormous form. One of her breasts bobbed, the edge of the areola flashing pale in the pink light before the fabric, soaked and translucent, slid back into a precarious position.
“You must be so lonely,” she continued, her eyes fixed on him with a disconcerting intensity. “All those thoughts bottled up in that big brain. A young man has needs. Physical needs. It’s not healthy to ignore them.”
“I’m okay, really,” he said, his voice tight. He focused on a gardenia bush, its scent lost under chlorine and her perfume.
“You’re not okay. You’re tense as a bowstring.” She began moving through the bubbling water toward him. It was a slow, purposeful drift. Her massive breasts parted the water like the prow of a fleshy ship. “Let me help.”
“Grandma—Bev—I don’t need…”
She was beside him now. The heat of her body radiated through the water. He could see every pore on her inflated lips, the clumped mascara on her lashes. The smell of her perfume, mixed with the steamy chlorine, was dizzying.
“Shhh,” she whispered. “It’s just affection. It’s what family does.”
Her hand, adorned with long, pointed nails, came up out of the water and cupped his cheek. It was a wet, possessive touch. Then she leaned in.
He thought, for a heart-stopping second, she was aiming for his mouth. He froze, utterly paralyzed. But she turned her head at the last moment and planted a kiss on his cheek. It wasn’t like the brief peck at the door. This was a slow, moist, deliberate press. He felt the full, pillowy give of her injected lips, the sticky gloss, the warmth of her breath. She held it there for three full seconds before pulling back, leaving a cold, slick patch on his skin.
“See?” she breathed, her face inches from his. Her pupils were wide in the low light. “That’s not so bad, is it? This whole summer, I’m going to give you so much love. So much… attention. We’re going to break you out of that shell, Mikey-boy.”
She settled back into the water next to him, her shoulder pressing against his. One of her hands drifted below the surface and came to rest on his thigh, just above the knee. It was a heavy, weighted anchor.
“Just relax,” she murmured, as the jets pulsed and the lights cycled from pink to a deep, sickly green. “Just relax and let Bev take care of everything.”
He sat there, rigid, staring at the pulsating water, feeling the imprint of her lips on his face and the heat of her hand burning through the water onto his leg. The humid night air pressed down. The floating flamingos bobbed in the agitated water, their silly smiles suddenly grotesque. He didn’t move a muscle. The only sound was the gurgle of the tub and the distant, frantic chirping of crickets in the dark.