Best Laid Plans: A Summer Camp Swingers Novel

“I don’t see how you can eat that,” I said about her own breakfast, coffee and grapefruit, “much less together.”

“I’m watching my girlish figure.”

Her girlish figure looked fine from where I was sitting, but I didn’t say it aloud. We ate breakfast in relative silence until the phone rang. She stood and answered.

“Hello? Oh, hi! How was your night? Good dinner with the crew?” She sat down, crossed her legs, and mouthed, “Your dad.”

“I figured.” I deliberately avoided looking at the triangle formed by her thighs and the fabric of the robe, or how the top had parted enough to reveal the lower curve of one breast. Instead, I distracted myself by clearing dishes.

“Mmm hmm, we did,” she said into the phone. She glanced at me and then pretended to straighten the cloth placemat. “I think so… Well, we’ll see… I know… I am too.” She changed the subject to gardening plans and talked about them for a minute. Then she said, “I’d better let you go. I don’t want to make you late. Give me a call tonight when you get to the hotel. Okay, I love you too. Talk to you then.” She unwound the cord from her finger and returned the handset to the wall.

“So,” she said to me, “ready to get to work? We should start before it gets too hot.”

“No chance of that for a couple of hours. It was still pretty chilly when I finished my run. You’d better wear something warm. Does Dad have a sweatsuit I can borrow?”

“I can probably dig one up.”

She fetched it and then returned to her bedroom to change into her own gardening clothes. I stripped off my jogging shorts in the guest bedroom and put on the sweatpants. My father was three inches taller and thirty pounds heavier, so the pants felt like I was auditioning for clown college. The sweatshirt was almost as large, but I pulled it over my head and hoped I didn’t look too ridiculous.

Mom returned in a pair of jeans and a ratty old sweatshirt from my dad’s Navy days. She took one look at me and laughed. She covered her mouth, but her eyes danced with amusement.

“Is it that bad?”

“Not at all,” she lied.

“Gee, thanks.”

“You look fine. Just… smaller than I remembered.”

“Yeah, well, Dad’s a big guy. Now, if you’re done teasing me about my size,” I said, a little childishly, “do you mind if we get to work?”

“I’m sorry, Paul. I really am.”

I immediately felt guilty. “I know. It’s just that I’ve always been a little miffed that I’m not as big as him.”

“So? You’re bigger in some ways.” Her eyes flashed but then she blithely changed the subject. “Ready to get to work?”

I arched an eyebrow. She ignored me and pulled out her gardening gloves.

“Start out front?” she said. “Pull weeds and spread the mulch. Then I have several flats of pansies I want to plant. Sound like a plan?”

“Yeah, sure.” I tugged on a pair of my dad’s old work gloves.

Pulling weeds was dull work, so my mind wandered. I started off thinking about renovations at camp but quickly switched to the people instead. It wasn’t an overtly sexual environment—far from it, it was a family camp—but that wasn’t the case in the privacy of a cabin or the new Pines Retreat that Susan had built for the swinging crowd. Christy had only seen the family side of the camp. I was eager to introduce her to the hidden side as well.

“Wow,” Mom teased, “you must really love pulling weeds. You look so excited.”

“Treacherous organ,” I muttered to myself. Louder, “Must’ve been daydreaming.”

“That’s okay,” she said, “it’s natural.”

It isn’t natural for my mother to notice, I grumbled to myself. But it wasn’t the first time she’d seen me like that, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

“Do you need to take a break and, ahem, visit Rosy?”

“No, but thanks.”

“I wouldn’t want you to turn blue. Certain parts of you, at least.”

“I’ll be fine, Mom,” I said through my embarrassment. “Just ignore it and it’ll go away.”

“But… it’s so hard. To ignore, I mean.” Her eyes practically danced with laughter.

“Oh boy, here we go.”

“I’m sorry, honey,” she laughed. “I’ll behave.”

The sun climbed higher in the sky, and we eventually finished weeding the front beds. I went around back to the tool shed and returned to the garage with the wheelbarrow. I loaded a couple of bags of mulch and wheeled them around front. We spread them and a dozen more. The morning had gone from chilly to warm to hot by the time the sun reached its zenith.

“Okay,” I said at last, “I’m officially roasting.” I tugged off my baggy sweatshirt. It was damp with perspiration, while my shirt underneath was soaked. I stripped it off and tossed them both into the grass.

Mom fluffed her own sweatshirt.

“Why don’t you just take it off?” I suggested.

“Because I’m not wearing a bra.”

“So? You’re wearing a T-shirt, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but…”

“I don’t mind if you don’t.”

“Oh, what the hell,” she said. She crossed her arms and lifted the sweatshirt over her head. Her T-shirt stuck to it and briefly exposed her breasts. She pulled it down over them and tossed the sweatshirt on top of mine.