Boots Off at Midnight

The shift had been garbage from the third hour on. I'd spent nine hours mostly sitting in the ranger truck at the north overlook, watching a parking lot that stayed empty, drinking bad coffee, and thinking about how my life had turned into a loop of the same five days. Forty-four years old, never married, and my big Friday night plan was the meatloaf special at the Last Ditch.

So when I pulled into the diner lot at ten past midnight and saw Garth leaning by the dumpster with a cigarette, I figured the universe was finally throwing me a bone.

Garth moved in on County Road 6 about five years back. Feed store clerk, forty-one, built like he actually uses his back for a living. Quiet. Always said hello over the fence, never lingered. I'd caught him looking at me once or twice and he'd never pretended he wasn't.

I shut the truck off and got out. The lot smelled like hay and diesel, and the cicadas were going crazy out by the church fairgrounds. One streetlight buzzed over everything, giving the whole scene a bad TV glow.

"Garth," I called across the lot. "Get over here."

He didn't hesitate. That was the first thing I noticed. He dropped the cigarette, ground it out with his boot, and crossed the gravel at a normal walk, like women flagged him down outside diners every night of the week.

"Evening, Astrid." His voice was low and even. "Long shift?"

"Too long. Nine hours of nothing." I stood maybe two feet from him, close enough to smell the smoke on his jacket. I'd planned what I was going to say on the drive over, and I wasn't going to dress it up. That's not who I am and he wasn't going to get anything out of me dressed up. "Here's the deal. I want you on your knees, taking off my boots. Then you're going to use your mouth on my feet until the sun comes up. You in or out?"

I watched his face go through it. Surprise first, fast. Then something hotter moving in underneath it. He didn't laugh. He didn't ask if I was joking. He looked at the ground for a second, then back up at me, and his breathing had changed.

"You're serious," he said.

"Completely. One night. My rules. It ends when the horizon gets light, and neither of us owes the other a thing after that."

"And you picked me." It wasn't a question, exactly, but I answered it anyway.

"I picked you because you've been looking at me for five years like a man starving outside a restaurant, and you never once got pushy about it. That tells me what I need to know." I tilted my head. "Still need an answer, though. In or out?"

"In," he said. "God. Yes. In."

"Then get down here."

He went down onto the gravel by my tailgate like it was the most natural thing in the world, and I'll admit my pulse picked up watching it. A grown man, big shoulders, work-rough hands, folding himself onto his knees on sharp rock because I told him to. His hands were shaking a little when they came up to my boot laces.

"Nervous?" I asked.

"Kinda, yeah." He glanced up, and there was an honest grin under the nerves. "Forty-one years old and my hands are gonna shake untying a boot. Feels stupid."

"It's not stupid. Take your time."

He worked the laces on my left boot, the worn leather one with the cracked eyelet, and got it loose. I leaned against the tailgate and put a hand on his shoulder for balance while he pulled. The boot came off with that soft release of pressure, and under it was my grey wool sock, damp at the toes from the night air and a full shift on my feet.

He held the boot like it was something valuable, then set it down on the gravel beside him, careful, out of the dirt. Then he just looked at my socked foot for a moment. I actually saw his throat move when he swallowed.

"Go on," I said. "You have my permission. That's the whole point of you being down there."

He wrapped both hands around my ankle and my heel first, just holding, thumbs pressing into the arch through the wool. Then he brought his mouth down and pressed his lips to the top of my foot, through the fabric, a long slow contact that I felt all the way up my calf. Warm. Wet. Deliberate.

"Well," I said, and my voice came out rougher than I planned. "Somebody's done this before."

"Once or twice." He didn't look up. His mouth moved along the arch, open now, breathing against the wool, and his thumbs kept working the ball of my foot in slow circles. "Been a long time, though."

The second boot came off easier. He set it next to the first, lined up like soldiers, and I noticed that and liked it. A man who pays attention to small things. Then both his hands were full of my feet and his mouth was working, and I stood there under the buzzing streetlight with my head tipped back, looking at the stars, letting it happen.

I'd had a fair amount of sex in my life and most of it was fine and forgettable. This was already different, and we'd barely started. It wasn't just the mouth, though the mouth was good, slow and hungry, sucking gently on my heel through the sock, teeth grazing the edge of my sole. It was that he was taking it seriously. Like the job mattered. Like I mattered, at least for tonight, which is all I was asking anyone for.

"Stop a second," I said, and he stopped immediately, mouth lifted, hands still. Good sign, that. Fast obedience.

I reached down and pulled both socks off myself, slow, watching his face while I did it. His eyes tracked my bare feet the way a cat watches a bird. When the socks dropped on top of the boots, I put one foot flat on the gravel between his knees and rested the other on his thigh.

"Rules," I said. "Listen close, because I'm only saying this once. One. No talking unless I ask you a question or tell you to talk. You can make all the noise you want, but no words. Two. You don't touch yourself. Not once, not for a second. Your hands belong to me tonight. Three. Nothing above the ankle. Not yet. That may change and it may not, and you don't get a vote. Four." I pointed east, past the church spire, where the sky was still pitch black. "The second that horizon turns grey, we're done. Everything stops, you help me with my boots, and we go home as neighbors. No phone calls, no showing up at my fence, no tomorrow. Agreed?"

"Yes," he said, hoarse.

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Something about the ma'am went straight through me. I laughed, short and low, and reached down to push his hair back off his forehead with my knuckles.

"Good. Then get back to work. You've got roughly six hours."

He didn't waste any of them. His mouth found my bare sole and the sound I made surprised both of us. His tongue was hot and flat against skin that had been in boots for nine hours, and he groaned into it like I was the best thing he'd tasted in years. His big hands kneaded my calves down low, staying legal, staying below the line I'd drawn.

The cicadas sawed away. The diner's sign flickered and buzzed. A truck went by on the highway without slowing, and I didn't care, and he didn't stop, and somewhere in there I looked down at this quiet neighbor of mine kneeling in the gravel with his eyes closed and my foot in his hands, and I thought, this was the best decision I've made in two years.

* * *

Around two in the morning my back started complaining about standing, so I made my first adjustment to the program. I climbed into the bed of the truck and dragged my canvas tarp half over the tailgate, then told him to get up here with me. He hesitated at the wheel well.

"You sure? I didn't figure I'd get up off the ground tonight."

"Sit against the cab and keep your hands where they've been," I said. "I've been on my feet all day. My back gets a vote too."

He climbed up and settled where I pointed, and I stretched out with both my feet in his lap, one resting right against his thigh, close enough that I could feel the heat of him through his jeans. His hands went right back to work, thumbs digging into my arches, and I lay back with my hat over my eyes and let the night get long.

"Question," I said, after a while.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"How long have you thought about this? Honestly."

I heard him take a slow breath. His thumbs never stopped moving.

"Since the week I moved in. You came over about that dead branch hanging over the fence, in your work uniform. I didn't say two words the whole time and I thought about it for a month after."

I laughed at the stars. "A month. That's nothing. I've gone years."

"Years?" He sounded honestly startled.

"Garth. I live alone with two dogs and a job where I talk to tourists about bird habitats. You do the math." I pulled my hat off my eyes and looked at him. "Which is exactly why this is one night and one night only. I don't want to get used to anything."

He was quiet for a moment. His hands kept working, steady, patient.

"Okay," he said. "One night. I can do one night."

"You'd better," I said, and put my other foot against the hard length straining at his fly, just resting it there, not moving. "Because you're not allowed to touch that, and I'm not helping you with it yet."

"Yet," he repeated, and his voice cracked on it, and I grinned up at the dark.

"Yet," he said again, like he was testing whether I'd take it back. I didn't. I left my foot right there on his fly and wiggled my toes once, just to watch his jaw tighten.

"You've done this before," I said. "The way you started out tonight, all soft and careful. Somebody taught you."

"A long time ago," he said. His voice was rough. "She