The Lemonade at Closing Time

The bus depot sat three streets away, a grimy brick box where Andrew spent his nights checking schedules and sipping lukewarm vending-machine fizzy cans. His shift started at eleven. It was ten-forty, and his feet had carried him into The Crown and Anchor purely out of habit, or maybe something less nameable. The pub was emptying out, last-call stragglers shrugging on coats, the fruit machine burbling its idiot tune into the quiet.

Andrew ordered a lemonade. He always ordered lemonade.

And then Natalie turned from the till.

She was thirty-five, tall, with auburn hair that caught the amber bar lights and held them. Her dress was black, simple, and cut so low it seemed to defy physics. The deep vee plunged between her breasts, the fabric clinging as if it knew exactly what it was doing. Her legs went on forever, and she moved with a lazy confidence that made Andrew’s throat go dry.

“Lemonade, love?”

Her voice had a rasp to it, friendly but knowing. Andrew nodded, fumbling coins from his pocket. His fingers were thick and a little clumsy these days. Gray hair, portly build, blue eyes that had once been called striking but now just looked tired. He’d been handsome once, in a rumpled, promising way. That promise had curdled somewhere along the line.

Natalie set the glass down. As he pushed coins across the damp wood, her hand brushed his. Deliberately. Her fingers were cool, soft, and they lingered just a beat too long.

Andrew looked up.

Her eyes were stunning. Properly, unfairly blue. The kind of blue that made you think of Mediterranean shallows, of things you’d never actually seen. She was looking at him not like a customer, not like an older man, but like someone she’d been waiting for.

“Quiet night,” he managed.

“Better now.”

She said it simply, without a trace of mockery. Andrew felt something loosen in his chest. He’d watched her for months, this ravishing barmaid with the dreamgirl face and the body that made Saturday-night lads elbow each other and leer. He’d never been one of them. He just watched, and longed, and constructed elaborate fantasies in which she noticed him, really noticed him, and decided she wanted him anyway.

It seemed impossible. It was happening.

Natalie lifted her hand and slowly, very slowly, ran her fingers through her auburn hair. The movement lifted her breasts, the dress straining. Then her fingers trailed down, over her throat, down across the magnificent swell of her cleavage. She watched him watch her. Her lips parted slightly.

“You’re always so polite,” she said. “Always lemonade. Always that same look.”

“What look?”

“Like you’ve forgotten how to want things. Or maybe you remember too well.”

Andrew’s pulse was a heavy, insistent thing. He could smell her perfume now, something warm and slightly spicy. The pub was nearly empty. The last customer had shuffled out. The landlord was somewhere in the back, clanking barrels.

“Natalie,” he whispered.

Her name came out of him like a prayer. He loved her name. He’d whispered it to himself in the dark of his flat, in the shower, in the long dead hours at the depot. Natalie. The syllables were round and rich, a name for a woman who could ruin you.

She drew a sharp little breath.

“Say it again.”

“Natalie.”

Her eyes fluttered shut for half a second. When they opened, something had shifted. She reached across the bar and took his hand, not brushing this time, but holding.

“Come with me.”

She led him through a door marked Staff Only, into a narrow corridor that smelled of bleach and old beer. At the end was a small room with a battered leather sofa, a low table stacked with coasters, a bare bulb overhead. She didn’t turn the light on. The glow from the corridor was enough.

Natalie turned to face him. She was taller than him in her heels, and she looked down with an expression that was tender and hungry all at once. She saw someone kind, gentle, tender. Not the Jack-the-Lads who grabbed and assumed. This man had been beaten down by life, and he carried it quietly, and that quietness made her want to give him something.

She kissed him.

Soft at first. Just lips, just warmth. Her hands came up to cup his face, her thumbs brushing the stubble on his jaw. Andrew made a sound, a small broken thing, and she deepened the kiss. Her tongue touched his lower lip, and he opened for her.

“Sit down,” she murmured.

He sat. The sofa creaked. Natalie stood over him for a moment, then settled beside him, turning her body so her knee pressed against his thigh. She crossed her legs with deliberate slowness, and Andrew’s gaze dropped.

The dress had ridden up. Her legs were extraordinary, long and shapely, and she was wearing stockings. Black, lacy, the tops just visible where the hem ended. Real stockings, with suspenders. The kind women wore when they intended something.

“You like them?”

“God. Yes.”

“I wore them for you.”

That wasn’t true, she’d worn them because she liked how they felt, but saying it made his eyes go wide and dark, and she liked that. She liked the way he looked at her like she was a miracle.

She kissed him again, harder now, her hand sliding up his chest to his collar. His tie was loose, his shirt rumpled. He smelled of soap and something faintly electrical, the depot’s scent. She found it inexplicably arousing.

“Say my name again,” she breathed against his mouth.

“Natalie.”

“Again.”

“Natalie.”

Her fingers worked down his chest, over the soft swell of his belly, to his belt. She unbuckled it with practiced ease, then the button, then the zip. The sound of it was loud in the quiet room.

Andrew’s breath was ragged. He was already hard, straining against his boxers, and when her fingers slipped inside and freed him, he gasped.

She looked down. He was thick, uncut, the head already slick. She wrapped her soft fingers around him and stroked, slowly, from base to tip.

“Is this what you wanted?”

“I’ve wanted you for so long. So fucking long.”

“Tell me.”

“Every night. Every shift. I come in here just to see you. I drink lemonade because I need my hands to stop shaking.”

Natalie’s stroke grew firmer, her thumb circling the sensitive ridge. She loved this, the power of it, the way his hips jerked, the way his voice cracked. But more than that, she loved the tenderness in his face. He wasn’t taking. He was receiving. There was a difference.

“Touch me,” she said.

His hand moved to her cleavage, trembling. He cupped her breast through the dress, feeling the weight of it, the heat. She arched into his palm, and her nipple hardened against the fabric. He groaned.

She stroked him faster. Her grip was perfect, tight enough to make him feel claimed, loose enough to keep him on the edge. She knew exactly what she was doing. She’d done this before, but not like this, not with someone who looked at her like she was the answer to a question he’d stopped asking.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “So, so beautiful.”

“I love when you say that.”

“It’s true. It’s the truest thing.”

Natalie leaned in and kissed his neck, just below the ear. Her hand never stopped moving. She could feel him throbbing, feel the tension building in his thighs. She wanted to make him come. She wanted to feel him let go, this gentle, beaten man, wanted to give him something he’d replay in his mind for years.

“Come for me,” she said. “Come in my hand. I want to feel it.”

Andrew’s hips bucked. He was close, so close, the pressure coiling at the base of his spine. Her hand was a furnace, soft and hot and relentless. He looked at her, at those blue eyes, at the cleavage he’d dreamed about, at the stockings, at her lips parted and wet.

“Natalie.”

It was a gasp this time, almost a sob.

“That’s it. Let go.”

He did. The orgasm ripped through him, hot and violent, spurting into her palm. She kept stroking, milking every pulse, her fingers slick with him. He cried out, a raw sound he didn’t recognize, and she held him through it, her free hand gripping his shoulder.

When it was over, he slumped back. His chest heaved. The room smelled of sex now, cutting through the bleach.

Natalie looked at her hand, glistening and warm. She smiled, a private, satisfied thing, and reached for a box of tissues on the table. She cleaned herself with neat, efficient movements, then tucked him back into his trousers and zipped him up.

“There,” she said.

Andrew couldn’t speak. His mind was white noise. She stood, smoothed her dress, and offered him her clean hand.

“Come on. Back to the bar.”

He followed her like a man in a dream. The corridor, the door, the sudden brightness of the pub. The landlord was still nowhere to be seen. The fruit machine still burbled.

Andrew looked at the clock above the optics.

Ten-fifty-eight.

His shift started in two minutes. The bus depot was a three-minute walk. He was going to be late for the first time in fourteen years.

“I have to go,” he said.

“I know.”

Natalie was behind the bar again, as if nothing had happened. But her eyes were different. Softer. She reached over and straightened his tie, a gesture so intimate it nearly undid him all over again.

“Same time tomorrow?” she asked.

Andrew stared at her. Tomorrow. There would be a tomorrow. This wasn’t a one-off, a pity-fuck, a moment of madness she’d regret. She was asking him back.

“I’ll be here,” he said.

“Lemonade?”

“Maybe something stronger.”

She laughed, a bright, genuine sound. “Don’t go wild on me.”

He walked to the door, his legs still unsteady. At the threshold, he turned.

“Natalie.”

“Yes, Andrew?”

He loved that she knew his name. He’d never told her. She’d noticed anyway.

“Thank you.”

“Thank me tomorrow.”

He stepped out into the night. The air was cold, the streetlamps haloed in mist. He walked toward the depot, not hurrying, not caring about the time. His body felt loose, electric, remade. His hand still remembered the weight of her breast. His cock still tingled from her grip.

He was sixty years old. He was portly, gray, a man whose accent promised an education that had come to nothing. And a woman with auburn hair and blue eyes and legs that could stop traffic had just taken him into a back room and made him come so hard he’d seen stars.

At the depot gate, old Mickey was smoking by the barrier.

“You’re late.”

“I know.”

“You’re smiling. You never smile.”

Andrew clapped him on the shoulder and walked inside. The fluorescent lights buzzed. The schedule board needed updating. The coffee machine gurgled.

He whispered her name one more time, just to feel it in his mouth.

Tomorrow, he’d bring flowers. Not roses, something less obvious. Something she’d look at and know he’d thought about it. And he’d order whatever she told him to order, and he’d wait for closing time, and he’d follow her back into that room and learn what else she wanted to give him.

Because this, whatever this was, was not over. It was just beginning. And Andrew, for the first time in decades, was ready.