Emilia burned for her husband to notice her again. It wasn’t that they stopped having sex, but over a twenty-year marriage, Jim’s insatiable need for her dwindled to perfunctory clockwork humps that usually ended with him using her vibrator on Emilia to come long after he did. And when they were done, he’d almost immediately launch into a talk about his day, with no hint of passion, of love.
Even so, Emilia might have stayed in her boring, uninspired rut for the rest of her days if a perfect shitstorm didn’t blow through her life. First came the news that her son Landon, the brightest point in her life, was moving in with his girlfriend instead of coming home that summer. Emilia was proud of him for growing up, of course, and his girlfriend was a well-adjusted wonderful woman who would be graduating college in another year, but Landon was only nineteen, damn it. He should be home with her where she could take care of him while he worked a summer job or two. Of course Emilia recognized she was being selfish, and she wished him and his girlfriend all the best, but at home, alone, she felt a desperate pang of loneliness.
That loneliness was compounded when Jim announced he’d be taking on an early night shift for the power company. It was a step up for them monetarily, but with her job as a florist and his already-comfortable salary, they really didn’t need the extra money. He was adamant, though, especially since his boss dangled a managerial position in front of him like a carrot. Emilia hadn’t seen him this excited in years, and though the nights would be rough, she would survive for him.
The storm force winds were further amplified by the return of her son’s three best friends from colleges around the state. Each of them had blossomed from the gangly awkward teenagers she knew and loved into handsome young men, likely the fantasies of many of the women on their campuses. They were nineteen or twenty now, but Emilia had never thought of them as anything more than frequent guests at her house, even if she’d caught their stares and muttered conversations about her looks to one another throughout the years. They were boys, after all, and though she had to scold them a few times, they behaved.
They came over late in the afternoon just a few days after they got home for summer break. Emilia was fresh off a yoga workout, her mat still laid out in the middle of the living room. Her dark hair was swept back in a ponytail, her girls tightly encased in a sports bra and white tank. Her yoga pants definitely showed off a lot more of her body, but she had on a pair of athletic boy shorts underneath, so it wasn’t like she was going to be giving everything away.
Emilia bounded to the door, wondering who it was, and was pleasantly surprised to find Simon, Jaxton, and Milo. She’d seen Jaxton’s unmistakable car in his parents’ driveway that morning — he had the thing plastered in decals and it was unmissable just a few doors down — but hadn’t realized the other two boys were home.