Helen started the next day with a long soak in the bathtub, trying to wash away the cobwebs still in her mind. But when she reached between her legs and felt the soft hairs she was reminded of the girl, and she wondered how it might feel to be bare down there. In a daring move she knelt upright, grabbed the foam and razor usually reserved for her legs and began to shave away the blond locks bit by bit.

It took the best of a quarter hour, and she had to shift and move her legs around quite a bit. When she was finally finished and sank back into the tub, she had to add some hot water. Her fingers roamed over her freshly shaven mound and she revelled in the feeling, astonished by the smoothness and sensitivity.

She had brought her cordless phone, but she didn’t really expect it to ring. So when it did, it was accompanied by a startled shout, her foot slipped from the opposing end of the tub and her head nearly went all the way under the water. Coughing, she came up again and grabbed the phone.

"Yes?" she managed between sputters.

"Helen! Good morning! What are you doing?"

"Hi Miranda!" Helen sneezed, her nose tickling from the bubbly water it had accidentally been filled with. "Sorry, I’m taking a bath, and the phone startled me, and my head went all under..."

A loud guffaw sounded through the speaker. "Oh Helen, that’s just so you! Almost drowning because the phone rings!"

Miranda seemed to be in an especially chipper mood today, which meant that she probably had some new gossip and would be visiting all her friends over the day to spread it.

"Wait!" Miranda’s voice grew more honest. "It’s early in the morning and you're taking a bath? I know you girl. Have you had sex?"

Shit. Miranda in fact knew her too well. The woman, five years her senior, had become her best - and only - friend over a short stint at the company where Helen had worked, and had since been with her through the highs and lows of her life, consoling her after failed relationships and helping her get through the death of her parents. She’d been a life savior more than once, a real friend - but also one with a high level of curiosity, one that wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Helen finally stuttered, "yes, no, not exactly," and instantly knew that this was the wrong thing to say.

"That," Miranda’s voice was now dripping with sarcasm, "makes me really curios. How do you not exactly have sex?"

Helen tried to come up with a plausible story, but an instant later Miranda was already babbling away again.

"Never mind, I talked to Erica from the gym yesterday, and she told me some interesting news about the Miller’s. I’ll bring lunch and get you up to date with the newest gossip."

There was a clicking noise, and the hooting of the dial-tone filled her ear. She hung up the phone and closed her eyes. Never minding the fact that her friend hadn’t even waited for her to agree, there was one question running through her head. What was she going to tell Miranda?

* * *

The door to the grocery opened and Helen stepped inside to the chiming of the old, mechanical bell. Every time she did so she felt like moving through a time portal. The wares were still in the low shelves she remembered from her child days, and the air was filled with the same mix of smells. Warm bread, sugar, fresh fruits and cabbage mingled and took her back to better times. She needed to buy some vegetables, as Miranda tended to go for meat and pasta when she brought lunch but used to forget about salad. She picked a few ripe and soft plum tomatoes, two onions, and was just about to reach for a yummy looking head of lettuce when somebody bumped into her side.

"Sorry," They both said simultaneously, the other voice sounding young and melodic, and somehow familiar. She turned towards its owner, but didn’t immediately recognize her. The girl was a bit smaller than her, and lithe, wearing a yellow one-piece mini dress and had - at this moment, her mind creaked to a standstill - short, dark brown hair with blonde highlights. She could also see recognition in the girl’s eyes.

Then the girl smiled brightly. "Oh, so good to finally meet you. I’m Lisa, Lisa Briggs, your new neighbor."

Helen automatically reached for the proffered hand and shook it. "Helen," she managed to croak, "Helen Sanders." She waited for the ground to open up and swallow her, but, of course, that didn’t happen.

"I’ve been wanting to meet you since I moved in," Lisa babbled happily, "you’ve got such a beautiful garden, you’ve got to have loads of tips for me for what I can do with mine. You have to come over for coffee soon."

"I," Helen was searching the girl’s face for signs that might give away whether she really had seen her dirty performance, but she found only teenage bubbliness, and with an immense feeling of relief she said: "I’d like that."

Lisa had a small nose and a narrow chin, which together with her high cheekbones gave her an impish quality when she smiled. Helen felt a flutter low in her stomach and realized that their hands were still wrapped around each other’s. She tried pulled hers away, but Lisa’s grip got even stronger.

"I’ll have to run, my new bed will be delivered any moment," Lisa told her. "Know what, I’ll just come over in the afternoon and we can talk more." Helen felt a bit knocked over by the girl’s enthusiasm, but then Lisa’s eyes took on a strange gleam. "You know," the girl said slowly, "what I like most in this shop?" And without waiting for an answer, she snatched a huge cucumber from the shelve and pressed it against Helens body, leaving her no choice but to clutch it to herself.

Time seemed to stand still around her, and she was unable to move, almost drowning in her embarrassment.

Then the girl stood on tiptoes and bent closer, her cheek almost brushing Helen’s when she whispered: "They do have the most delicious cucumbers."

Helen was rooted to the spot and only realized that Lisa had let go of her hand and left the shop long after bell had chimed. Waves of shame ran up and down her body. She looked around, suddenly panicked, but she was lucky. Nobody had taken notice the two of them. George, the owner, was just handing out the change to the only other customer.

She continued her shopping on shaky legs. She did buy the cucumber, though.

* * *

At quarter past twelve, the doorbell rang. Helen, still carrying a tight knot of worry in her belly, let Miranda in, who marched straight through into the kitchen and set a plastic bag on the counter, then pulled Helen into a hug. Miranda was famous for her hugs, with her being almost six feet tall and quite curvy, or as she would put it herself, with thirty-plus pounds of additional cushioning. Her best friend immediately started babbling about this and that, telling her who in their part of town had a new car, who was supposed to be getting divorced, ranted about the latest price increase for fuel and a number of other inconsequential things which Helen could feel safe to ignore while she prepared the salad.

Over lunch, which they took outside at the table in front of the living room, protected from the sun by a cream colored awning, the topic turned inevitably towards her new neighbor. "You wouldn’t believe what Erica told me!"

Helen sighed. Everybody knew that Erica was an even worse gossip hound than Miranda, and someone - she couldn’t exactly recall who - had once joked that Erica would win the national bodybuilding competition if she gained a gram of muscle for every hour of gossip she traded.

"Pray tell, what did Erica say?"

Miranda leaned towards her, her eyes wide and told her in a half whisper, "She’s a delinquent. That’s what she said. Was expelled from three schools over the last year."

Helen raised her eyebrow. "Delinquent, you say? What’s she done?"

Miranda continued in her conspiratorial voice. "Nobody knows the details, but the husband of Erica’s friend knows someone from the national supervisory board, and he said that each time she was expelled, a teacher was also dismissed." Miranda paused, and her eyes narrowed, telling Helen that she had saved the punch line for last. "A female teacher!"

Miranda leaned back in her chair, and Helen knew she was supposed to react outraged at the presence of such a harlot in her neighborhood. She couldn’t find the heart to do so.

"So she’s got a thing for older women?"

Miranda seemed to almost choke, and Helen couldn’t help but feel a pang of evil satisfaction, even if her own reaction would have been quite similar just a few days ago.

After a few seconds, her friend had gotten her breathing under control again and was staring at her, wide-eyed. "Something’s up with you, Helen Sanders, I tell you. You should be careful though, one day you invite your new neighbor, the next day you come back to an empty house. These young people nowadays have no sense of property."

"You sound just like grandma did." The so addressed huffed in indignation. "Really, you can’t judge people just from some gossip that might not even be true."

Miranda’s mood appeared to plummet. "I just wanted you to be aware."

Helen relented a bit. "I know, and I’ll be careful. But I’ll also make up my own mind."

Thankfully, Miranda didn’t bring the discussion back to Lisa, and neither did she ask awkward questions about Helen’s romantic interests. The next hour went by with idle chit-chat, only interrupted when they put away the dishes, and then Miranda was off to the next stop on her quest to inform the world about the dangers of new neighbors.

Helen let out a relieved sigh once the door closed behind her friend. She really liked Miranda, but sometimes she could be too nosy and agonizingly headstrong in her believes.

Swinging back the backrest of her chair, she closed her eyes and relaxed in the clean and warm air.

* * *

Suddenly there was a hand touching her arm, and a voice whispering her name. She woke with a start, and her heart was beating a mile a minute. Turning her head around, she found a face only a foot from her own and yelped before she recognized Lisa crouched next to her chair, still in her yellow mini dress.

Lisa giggled. "Sorry, I hadn’t realized you were asleep." She didn’t sound sorry at all.

Helen gripped the armrest hard and tried to get her breathing under control. "Oh god, you startled me!"

The girl giggled again. "I didn’t mean to. But you look good, all flushed like you are."

A strange tingle ran over Helen’s skin at the words, and she felt nervous. "Let me just pull my chair upright."

"No need," Lisa chirped, "you just stay like you are, you look so relaxed." And with a smooth movement, she stood, hopped with her bum onto the table and wiggled it until she was right in front of Helen. The soles of her naked feet settled on the armrests, small toes with pink nail polish only inches from Helen’s arms, and the older woman suddenly felt trapped. Breathing seemed to become hard as she stared at the smooth skin so close to her, and then she couldn’t keep her eyes from wandering, she just needed to follow the curves of those pretty legs upwards, along smooth thighs, and even further. The hem of the mini dress had ridden up almost to Lisa’s stomach and, nestled in between those soft thighs, exposed two puffy lips, only flimsily covered by a lime-green thong.

Heat washed over Helen, and the tingle on her skin got stronger while she wondered what was happening right now. This was just so far outside of everything she had experienced before. Only when the silence around her became almost deafening did she realize that she had been ogling Lisa’s legs for more than a minute and slowly raised her eyes upwards.

Lisa was staring at her intently, noticing the flushed cheeks, the slightly parted lips and wide eyes of her older neighbor with satisfaction. A bubbly expression of elation filled her face, and when the woman was finally able to look her in the eyes, the corners of her mouth twitched upwards. This was going to be perfect. "Like what you see?" she whispered, coyly.

"Yes, no, this isn’t..." Helen was mortified. And then the balls of those two pretty feet lifted, and were rotated outwards, and came to rest on her bare arms. Unable to repress a shiver, her feeling of being trapped got even stronger. "What are you..."

Another giggle. "We really need to get know each other. We’re going to be neighbors, and it would be wonderful if we could be close friends too." The word ‘close’ was punctuated with her toes wiggling, painting a pleasurable sensation onto Helen’s arms. "Wouldn’t you like that too?"

"Yes!" The older woman gasped without thinking, and instantly bit her lip. She was making a spectacle of herself!

"Brilliant!" Lisa purred, all too aware of the effect she was having on the woman. And then the interrogation - and Helen could call it nothing else, for it was torture that the younger woman used, even if it was a wonderful kind of it - started.

"How old are you?"

"Are you single?"

"Where do you work?"

"Do you go out a lot?"

"What’s your favorite color?"

"How much do you weigh?"

The questions were rather blunt, and intimate, and went on for ages. Helen tried to hesitate and protest, but every time she did so, those toes started wiggling again, and she felt unable to resist. And then the questions became even more intimate.

"How many boyfriends have you had?"

"How often do you diddle yourself?"

"Do you shave between your legs?"

"Ever stuck your tongue inside a pussy?"

That last one left her breathless, and Helen’s mind screamed at her to stop, to push the girl away from her and flee into the house, but now those feet were softly gliding up and down her arms, and that felt so wonderful and dirty that her resistance crumbled before it could fully form.

Suddenly Lisa bent forward, her knees, which her arms were resting on, spreading wider and the neckline of her dress falling away from her body. Her face was once more just a foot away from Helen’s, who could feel the girl’s breath on her skin and smell its minty flavor.

And then the older woman’s eyes were drawn into the dress, looking at the firm, small breasts, like ripe apples adorned with pointed tips, so incredibly beautiful, and her breath shuddered. And hitched when the girl spoke again.

"How does it feel to fuck yourself with a cucumber while you’re being watched?"

She choked, and stuttered, and shook her head.

Lisa smirked, and bent even further forward, until their faces were just inches apart and her hot breath was caressing her neighbor’s lips. "Was it good?"

"Oh god!" Helen moaned in response. This was lewd, this was dirty, but her pussy clenched every time she felt the girl’s breath on her skin, and her nipples were throbbing and yearning to cut through the fabric that covered them.

The girl leaned back again, grinning wide. "Are you horny?"