Small-town Scandal

Chapter 2: Apartment Hunting

Brett tried his best to keep his eyes focused on the road, but he found himself unintentionally looking over to Laurel in the seat of his truck. Emily had rode in his truck for years, yet not once did she look how Laurel did. Laurel's exposed shoulders relaxed into the leather of his seats, her arm propped on the pane of the window as the air brushed her chestnut hair around her shoulders. She looked at home in his truck, something that Emily rarely did. Emily was committed to her Volkswagen hatchback, it was easy to throw all of her gear inside without having to worry. She could fly around town all day without glancing down at her gas gauge once, while Brett's truck sucked up the diesel fuel in a matter of hours. Besides, Emily was prim and proper. She hadn't let her hair down once in the six years they had been together.

He felt a surge of energy being in Laurel's presence, something he had forgotten about entirely. Sure, he felt that from time to time with Emily, but most of the passion had died from their relationship and they had quickly subsided into the monotony of a relationship. Or, rather, routine. Half the time she was in the dark room working on her shoots so that she could have them up in record time, which meant she always came to bed late. Brett spent most of his time in bed with his laptop, going over taxes and different files for his work. If it wasn't that, he was being called out in the middle of the night for a power outage at one of the apartments or a leaky toilet.

They had one child together, she was only a toddler now. But Brett didn't feel the same connection as he did with his first son, Nicholas, who was now thirteen. Nicholas was living with his mom outside of town, and had recently started developing anger issues. Many times Brett would get a call from his ex-wife begging Brett to come over and talk to Nick. It seemed that Brett was the only one who could get through to him. But having a daughter with Emily only seemed to make matters worse. For the first year and a half they didn't have sex, which was a very bad time for the two of them. Brett had stressful days of work, never having a day off, and he had a lot of pent up sexual frustrations that needed to be resolved. Now that their daughter, Amelia, was getting older and spending more time away from Emily, Brett figured things would get better. He was lucky if they had sex once in a two week period.

Seeing Laurel, so young and, as much as he hated to admit it, perky, made Brett stir with emotions. He couldn't seem to focus on anything, reaching over to the dial on his radio to turn the song up. Of course it had to be some slow jam R&B song which made Laurel light up, bobbing her head to the beat. He had to look out his window in order to draw his attention away from the slight jiggle of her breasts with her movements, and immediately got an image of her naked. He slammed his eyes shut, telling himself not to think about it. But the more he told himself not to, the more he did. Her long body sprawled across his, the sweat beading on her chest, the glimmer on her lips as she pressed them against his neck, running his hands up and down her curvy spine. He was getting hard at the thought.

"Brett!" She hollered, reaching over to the steering wheel to pull them back on the right side of the road.

Brett snapped out of his thoughts, eyes wild as he looked at the road. He looked over to her, seeing her lips pull up into a smile. God, her smile was beautiful. He smiled back, "Sorry, long day."

"You must not get a lot of rest with all the work you do?" She asked, tucking her hair behind her ear. She relaxed back into the seat.

Five hours a night if he was lucky enough. But Laurel didn't need to know that, so he just smiled and nodded, "All work and no play."

"You must do something for fun?" She said, and bit her lip. Brett wasn't sure if that was intentional or not, but he liked it.

He shrugged, "I ski in the winter, run a marathon later in the summer, play tennis. All when I have time, of course."