The silence was loud.
Marge didn't move. Her hand had gone into the pocket of the green dress, the one where she'd put the envelope, and it stayed there, curled, a shape he could see through the thin cotton. Her thumb was working against one of her fingers. Her eyes were on a spot somewhere on the table.
Leo took her in without making it obvious he was taking her in.
The strapless green dress was doing what it always did to her. It held the shelf of her chest close and high, the fabric pulled tight across the full heavy size of her F-cup breasts. Her breathing wasn't even right now. Little short drags in through her nose. He could very vividly see the outline of her nipples pushing against the green dress.
'Huh, did she change out of her outfit during the tutoring and change back in when she put on those new earrings?'
Leo guessed that was what she did. She must have been really nervous about this conversation because she'd forgotten to even put on her bra.
Now that she was alone with him, her throat had gone pink, and the pink was already spreading down into the top of her chest where the neckline sat, moving all the way into her cleavage.
The dryer thumped once, off down the hall. The fridge clicked on again.
Leo gave it a second before continuing his plan.
He set his bag down again, slower this time, all the way onto the floor by the chair leg. He pulled the chair back out. He sat in it.
Her eyes flicked to him and back to the wall.
"While we're alone," he said.
"Leo —"
"It's okay. Just… sit down for a minute."
She didn't sit down. She stood with her weight on one foot, and the way her hip was tilted, it pulled the skirt of her dress across the front of her thigh, highlighting her curves. She looked at the chair across from him like it was a foreign un-understandable object.
Leo waited. Marge knew she would not remain standing in this silence forever.
Eventually she pulled the chair out and sat on the edge of it. The dress rode an inch up the backs of her toned tan thighs when she lowered. She smoothed it down with a small fast motion of both hands without looking at them.
'He is being very calm about this,' she thought, not looking up. 'Why is he being this calm.'
She let her eyes flick up for a quarter-second and then back down to the table.
'Why does his jaw look like that when he isn't saying anything. Why does he have to have that face, the cheekbones and the smile and the eyes all on the same person, it isn't fair to put all of that on one man.'
She made herself think about the laundry.
"About Saturday," he said.
Her color went from the throat up into the cheeks. He watched it climb into her hairline. Her whole face was red.
"Leo, please, I don't — I don't know what to —"
"I know."
"I wasn't — I have never —"
"I know, Marge."
"I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry. I don't even know what came over me, I had the wine, and the pantry was so — Homer was in the next room, Leo. Lisa was close by, she could've walked in any—"
"She didn't."
"That isn't the point —"
"I know it's not."
She stopped. Her hand came out of the pocket and pressed flat against the tabletop, like she needed to hold something down. Her eyes were bright. Her chest was rising and falling visibly under the dress, her heavy tits shifting constantly.
Her thoughts ran wild.
'I have been thinking about the kids since Saturday night,' she thought, and the thought opened up everything underneath it. 'About Bart, about Lisa, about Maggie asleep in her playpen while I was doing that in the next room. About what it would do to them if they ever found out. About what Homer would do. He was twenty feet away. He trusts me. He trusts me and I — '
'I was scared on Sunday morning that Leo would just tell him. Just come over and tell him. I was scared he would be angry with me, or disappointed, and he would decide the cleanest thing was to walk over and knock on the door.'
He let her get to the end of whatever she was building in her head. She didn't say any of it.
"Marge."
"I know."
"Look at me."
She looked at him. Three seconds. She broke first again, but softer this time.
"It's fine," he said.
"It is not fine, Leo."
"It's fine." He kept his voice low and level. "You're allowed to tell me it isn't. But from my side of the table, it's completely fine."
"I kissed you in my own pantry."
"You did. And, for the record…" he let the corner of his mouth come up, "it was a pretty good kiss."
Her head snapped up.
"Leo."
"Your lips were very nice, Marge. You taste really good."
"Leo."
"I'm just being honest. You asked me to be honest."
"I did not ask you to —"
"It felt implied."
Her hand came up and covered the lower half of her face. She was somewhere between a laugh and a mortified exhale and it came out as a small huff against her own palm.
'Oh my goodness. He is actually teasing me. He is teasing me about it.'
'…I missed this.' Leo held in a laugh. So innocent, so cute.
"You are not helping."
"I'm absolutely helping."
"I am being very serious."
"So am I." Leo's smile eased off. "Actually… let me tell you something. Just once. Because the only reason I can say it at all is that it's already too late for it to mean anything."
Her hand came slowly down from her mouth.
'Now,' Leo thought, steady with his plan. 'The move here is honesty, because honesty is the one thing Marge Simpson cannot hand back to me. If I lied or I pushed, she'd get scared or mad and shut down, and then every interaction from here on is going to be her building a wall one brick at a time. But if I tell her the truth — clean, plain, no ask attached — she is not going to have a reason to cut me off. She's too nice. She's too compassionate. She'd feel cruel walking away from a man who told her something real and then asked for nothing. She doesn't burn bridges. She'd never throw away a friend over something that honest. And as a bonus, every single time I'm in a room with her from now on, she's going to be running this conversation back in her head.'
He inhaled.
"I like you, Marge."
She went very still.
"I saw you when you first opened that door and I thought, okay… beautiful woman, married, neighbor, don't be a problem. And then I got to know you. And I think you're kind. I think you're smart in ways people around you don't take the time to notice. I think you're funnier than anybody in this house gives you credit for. I think you look in the mirror and don't see half of what I see when I look at you."
The blood was beating visibly in her throat. She was dead silent.
"I'm telling you all of this," he said, "because you're married. That's the only reason I can. If you were single I wouldn't be sitting at your table saying any of it, I'd be doing something about it, trying to get you to be mine. But you're married, and you love your kids, and you're not the kind of woman who's going to leave over a single kiss she had in a pantry. You're also, probably, not the kind of woman who'd look twice at a guy my age if you were free."
Her mouth parted, started to form a word, and didn't.
She wanted to say 'that isn't true.' She caught herself
"So this is a safe thing to say out loud," he went on. "No weight on it. Nothing for you to do with it. I'm just telling you, Marge, once, because I think you deserve to hear my thoughts after that. That's it. That's all I came over here to say."
He let the silence sit. The fridge hummed in it.
"So… your call. You can pretend Saturday didn't happen. Clean slate. Or you don't pretend. But either way, it's the same outcome. The only thing I'm actually asking for, Marge, is the thing I had before I walked into that pantry. I want you to talk to me across a table the way you did at dinner. I want you to laugh with me the way you did over the fries. I want you comfortable in front of my camera the way you finally got by the end of the last shoot."
He let a little smile onto his face, small and playful.
"And… look, I'm a grown man, I'm not going to lie to you. Part of me is kind of hoping something like the pantry happens again. I know you. I know you well enough to know you're not going to let that happen again," Leo lied to her face. "You already wrestled with it, and you came down on the side of your family, and I respect you for it, so I'm not going to push. I'm not going to make you uncomfortable. If nothing else happens, ever, I am genuinely fine with that. I like being close to you. The rest of it is a bonus I don't need."
Marge's eyes had filled.
She wasn't crying. Not quite. It was just the brightness, the way eyes look right before the decision to cry or not cry goes one way or the other.
'She's going to stay exactly where I put her, and she's going to feel good about it, because I just told her the one thing that makes her unable to walk away . That I won't ask her for anything romantic wise. She can't punish a man who asked for nothing. She can't cut off a friend who was honest with her. She's going to re-run this conversation every time we see each other. It's going to be sitting there the whole time.'
A tear got loose. She laughed, small and wet, and wiped at it fast with the back of her wrist.
"I thought —" Her voice came out thin, then steadied. "I thought you were going to come in here angry, Leo. Or disappointed in me. I have been sick about this since Saturday night. I could not sleep on Sunday. I kept thinking about Bart and Lisa. I kept thinking about — ," She took a breath. "I was even a little bit afraid you were going to tell Homer."
"Marge."
"I know. I know you wouldn't. I know that now. But I didn't, I regretted it so much, Leo. Not… not because it was you. The kiss felt good... but because of them. And I have been sitting with that for three days and I didn't know what you were going to say when you came in here. I would never have expected this. Ever."
"I know."
"I didn't know — I didn't expect — someone like you to —"
"Someone like me?"
"You know what I mean." Her cheeks went darker. "You are — you are very — you could have any number of —"
"I'm sitting at your table, Marge."
"Yes." She looked at her hand on the table. "You are."
"Hey." He reached across the table and put his hand over hers.
Just a second. His palm settled flat across the back of her knuckles, warm, steady, not squeezing. Her fingers twitched under his and then went very still. He held it for a three count, felt her pulse come up in the back of her hand, and then took his hand away clean.
She didn't pull hers back.
"I can do that," she said quietly. "What you said. Before the pantry. I — I would like that, Leo. Very much. I enjoy my time with you. I always have. I didn't realize how much I did until I thought about not ever being able to see you again after I did that. If you can… if you are really saying you don't need anything… then yes. Okay. Yes."
"Okay."
"Okay."
…
The fridge cycled off. Marge sat back in her chair for the first time since she'd taken it. The dress settled across her chest. Her hand left the tabletop and went to her ear, touched one of the new silver earrings without seeming to know she was doing it.
"Can I pour you some lemonade?" she asked.
"Sure."
She moved around her kitchen. Her hips rolled the green cotton back and forth with every step between the fridge and the counter, the fabric pulling snug across the round shape of her ass. She poured herself a glass also, which she hadn't done in two hours, and sat back down. Her hand wasn't shaking anymore.
'He likes me,' she thought, setting the pitcher down very carefully so it wouldn't rattle. 'A man like that said it out loud at my table.'
"Two more things, while I'm here." Leo regained her attention.
"Okay."
"Work."
Her face did a complicated small sigh of relief at the word. This was a fresh new topic that allowed her to push down her other thoughts.
"Tell me."
"You're due for another shoot. And you should know how the first two did before I pitch the next one. Because you are in the middle of building something, Marge, and you don't know it yet."
She raised a brow.
He took out a small notebook, flipped a page, set it between them like a businessman would. He'd known before he walked over that he was going to show her.
"Eldian Photos as a branch. Before your first set, we were averaging about twelve hundred visitors a week on the portal. Total. Across everything."
"Okay…" Marge waited for the next part.
Leo continued.
"Your casual shoot hit five thousand views in the first forty-eight hours. That's more than the entire branch did the month before you came on board. The second set, the uniform and the astronaut piece, is pacing at roughly a hundred and sixty percent of the first one over the same window."
"A hundred and…"
"Sixty percent. Faster climb. Higher ceiling. You can see the curve go up in real time."
He turned the notebook
"Since your first shoot went up, branch traffic month-over-month is up a hundred and eighty percent. Ad revenue on the site is up two-forty. We've had four new advertiser inquiries come in through the contact form. Three of them asked, by name, whoever the blue-haired woman was."
Her mouth parted slightly.
"…Whoever…," she realized they were talking about her. "...they asked?"
"Yes. Whoever the blue-haired woman was. In writing. I have the emails." He let that one sit. "Marge, you're sixty-plus percent of the branch's total engagement this quarter, and you've done only two sets."
"Oh my goodness."
"The pool-and-resort brand is the fourth inquiry. National catalog account. They saw the astronaut set and reached out."
"They reached out because of me."
"They reached out because of you."
She set the glass down and stared at the notebook. Her hand drifted toward the numbers like she was going to touch them and stopped an inch short.
'Somebody looked at those pictures and wrote to him about me. A company. A real company.''
"So here's the pitch," he said. "One-piece to start. Tasteful, long neckline, the kind of thing you'd wear at a hotel pool with Lisa in the next lane. After that, a basic two-piece. Similar to the astronaut one and you crushed that one."
She looked down at her hand, still on the table, in the spot his had covered a minute earlier.
"The budget on this one is a real step up. National catalog, they're paying for exclusivity on the set. You'd end the month with a check that could cover whatever you want. Get the painting supplies you've been meaning to get for ten years."
'He remembered I paint.'
"When?"
"I was thinking maybe Thursday. We can do it before tutoring or after it. Have Lisa and Bart do it at my place; they can leave before it if we do it after it."
"Only you?"
She asked it the same way she'd asked it both previous shoots, but this time, the second the words were out of her mouth, the afternoon came back in on top of her.
'A man like that said he liked me at my table. And the only person on the other side of the camera on Friday is going to be him.' Her face went hot all over again. The green cotton felt tighter across her chest.
'I would get to see his face when he looks at the screen. I would get to know which ones he — '
She cut the thought off and took a sip of her lemonade that did not need taking.
"Only me. Same as every time." Leo replied.
She took a moment before deciding. The color had not fully left her neck.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay." She nodded. "Let's do it."
"Good."
…
He reached for his bag.
The white envelope that had been in Marge's pocket was taken out again. One last attempt to pay him for his work with her children.
"Oh — let me just —" She started to slide it toward him.
"Marge."
"Leo, you spent your precious time teaching them, I can't not —"
"Yeah, you can." He slid the envelope gently back.
"Leo —"
"Consider it a privilege of being someone I have a crush on."
Her head came up so fast she nearly knocked her own glass.
"Leo."
"What." He was already smiling. "You're going to make me take your money after I just confessed to you? At your own table, Marge?"
"You are — you are terrible —"
"I thought we agreed I was being honest."
She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and the laugh came out anyway, bright and uncontrolled for a second before she wrestled it back down. The red was all the way up her throat again.
'He keeps saying it. He is going to keep saying it now. He is going to use it on me like this.'
She didn't hate that he was going to.
"Neighbors help neighbors," Leo went on, softer. "We are very much past a payment with cash, you and me."
She pulled the envelope back and set it aside next to the pitcher without another argument.
"Just come ready to do your best work Thursday. Oh… and bake me something too and we'll call it even."
"You like cookies."
"I like cookies."
"Thursday, then."
"Thursday."
He stood. She stood with him, smoothed the front of the dress, and walked him to the door without any of the performance she'd done on the way in. At the frame she paused, one hand on the wood.
"Leo."
"Yeah."
"Thank you. For — being —"
She didn't finish it. She stepped in instead and put her arms around him.
It was quick. Her full front pressed against his for about two seconds, her soft tits squishing flat against his chest through the dress, the shape of them molding to him, her cheek brushing the side of his jaw close enough that she could smell his cologne, her free hand landing briefly on the back of his shoulder. She felt the firm line of his chest under her tits and the warmth of his body, and she pulled back almost as soon as she'd committed, both hands back at her sides, color on her throat again, a little startled at herself. Looking down, she finally realized how visible her nipples were. How stiff they were against the front of the dress now, and she was praying he wouldn't look down to see them either.
"Sorry — I just —"
'Slipping back to old behavior. God, this is going to be so perfect.'
"Marge."
"Thursday."
"Thursday."
He crossed the lawn slow.