“It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.”
Angelou, Maya. (1978). “Phenomenal Woman.” And Still I Rise. Random House.
__________
Jamie beamed a happy smile as Max pulled into the driveway of their familiar, happy home. She was really so lucky to have such a great husband, such a nice job, such a beautiful house … such a great life, really! Reflecting back on her conversation with Emily, Jamie found herself thinking more and more like a surrogate big sister to the girl. She hoped the kid would find happiness as well someday.
Just as Max was about to open the car door, Jamie leaned over and gave him a spontaneous big, wet kiss on the cheek.
“What was that for?” asked the bemused man.
“Just because I love you,” grinned Jamie. “You make me feel like the luckiest woman on earth.”
“You're buttering me up for something!” laughed Max as the happily married couple exited the car and went inside.
It had been a long, tiring day, and so Jamie headed straight for the bedroom, eager to change into more comfortable attire. Max, it seemed, was lingering behind in the kitchen, fixing himself a pre-dinner snack. Typical, thought Jamie with a smile. That man never stops eating, and yet he never seems to gain a pound. And here's poor Jamie herself, counting calories and practicing portion control with every meal. She'd done well, of course. Gained a few pounds in college, but it was all in just the usual places: thighs, hips, and breasts (though if Jamie had her druthers the order would have been inverted!) No, she still looked good. But a part of her couldn't help but still be envious of the male metabolism that made it so easy to shed the sort of weight women always seemed to retain.
Jamie shook her head to clear her thoughts. Waves of long, silky black hair echoed the motion of her head, tickling the back of her neck.
She sat down atop her and Max's king size bed and pulled off her tall, brown boots, then peeled away her soft, fuzzy grey Fair Isle patterned socks. Wiggling her freed toes in the air, she reflected the glossy coating of cherry red polish on her toenails still looked pretty sharp. A pity! She'd have welcomed the excuse of worn, eroded nail polish on her toes to justify trying out a new color. Maybe sangria or mulberry? But as things stood, her toes and fingers still matched perfectly and looked pretty darn sharp, she had to admit.
Standing up, Jamie removed her camel colored cardigan first, then followed by pulling free the sleeveless, silky claret top she'd been wearing below the sweater. Then Jamie did something she hadn't done since high school or maybe even middle school – she stared down at her bathykolpian cleavage, ogling her own breasts, still constrained behind the veneer of the thin, lacy white fabric of her bra. Why was she so transfixed by the sight of her own generously sized, round, firm mammary glands? She saw “the girls” every day when dressing, undressing, and showering. Why couldn't she take her eyes off them now? They certainly were a beautiful pair. Max loved them, that was undeniably certain! But as a heterosexual woman, Jamie had never been aroused by breasts before; and to suddenly be so utterly fascinated by her own boobs was beyond bizarre.
Again, Jamie had to shake her head to clear these alien thoughts from her mind.
“That was weird,” she muttered to herself. “I must be more exhausted than I'd thought. Maybe I'll have a glass of wine and just do nothing the rest of the evening. We should still have a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, I think.”
Jamie continued whispering her sotto voce monologue as she stripped off her dark, denim skinny jeans. While she stood there, bending over and deshabille in nothing but her bra, matching lacy white panties, and tight jeans still stubbornly clinging to her sural region, into the bedroom walked Max Hutchinson. He silently stood in the doorway and watched his wife, her back to him, struggling to remove her snug-fitting jeans. Max smiled, admiring the smooth, concave ensellure of his wife's beautiful body: the word “Believe” was tattooed in florid, calligraphic letters across her lower back with a bit of ornamental flourishes on either side of the blue-black letters.
Then, just as Max was about to lick his lips, something truly disturbing happened: the enticing image of his half-nude wife suddenly flickered and wavered, like the special effect in a film. Briefly – for only the most minuscule fraction of a second – Jamie's adult, female body was replaced by the shape of a chubby, pasty skinned teenage boy with scraggly body hair and patches of body acne. He was posed just as Jamie had been, wearing her clothes and even sporting her tattoo! But as Max blinked in shock, the fat, adolescent boy disappeared and was replaced by a very ordinary, normal looking Jamie Hutchinson.
Max must have let slip an audible sigh of surprise (and perhaps relief after the phantasmagorical nightmare had passed), for Jamie now turned around and smiled warmly at him, seemingly unaware of the surreal, incongruous apparition that had momentarily supplanted her. Finally free of her tenaciously taut trousers, she arose fully erect and moved invitingly towards her husband.
Max found himself reflexively stepping backwards, trying to avoid the warm, osculant embrace of his wife, who seemed to mistake his hesitance for a display of coy, “hard-to-get” foreplay.
“Come here, tiger!” Jamie whispered seductively, in what she hoped was an alluring, sultry vocal fry. “I'm all yours, Hutch.”
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