by Kacey Stapleton

Created on: October 23, 2008   Last Updated: September 07, 2009

The bra strap bit down painfully into her shoulder, but she decided to let it go rather than deal with having a looser one sliding down her arm all day. As she slipped into the light green sleeveless summer dress, and wiggled her feet into a pair of black denim wedges Carmen thought the outfit was what her friend Elise always referred to as 'trailer chic'. Checking the mirror she only applied a little lipstick and made sure there were no obvious lumps or bulges to make her shoulders look like over-stuffed croissants. Otherwise, Carmen didn't really care what she looked like right at this moment. She didn't want to go.

She couldn't resuscitate her high school charm out of her tired thirty year old body. Her hair was still honey blond, and the brown eyes still appeared huge and well spaced in her narrow face, but there were skin rolls and sags here and there around her figure the result of motherhood three times over. Faint lines around her eyes marred even their beauty just a bit. These imperfections wouldn't be willed away by any amount of determination, but she knew that wasn't why he showed up anyway. His attraction to her wasn't based on any of those things.

The day would be a fit of humidity she could tell. Her shoes were already sticking uncomfortably to the bottoms of her heels by the time she reluctantly opened the patio doors to step outside. Walking along the gravel pathway to the pool she was steeled for a day she'd rather hadn't come.

She insisted the kids got some pre-breakfast exercise every morning before going to school. Her own mother always assigned routine chores, but Carmen was keener on her children being able to concentrate on schoolwork rather than being able to keep a tidy house. Not so surprisingly the two oldest usually chose a morning swim until so late in the year their teeth chattered through blue lips before trying some other form of activity in the early autumn mornings.

Out on the patio the atmosphere was even more oppressive. Jackson, her husband mentioned last night, he was hoping for an early winter, but she reminded him this part of Texas habitually hung on to summer as long as it could. Sometimes his vague optimism was the biggest source of discord between them. The other cause of friction was watching her children swim. Carmen's father Aksel was sitting in one of the larger white plastic chairs near the pool. Indifferent to heat, he was wearing his usual wardrobe which included a long sleeve white shirt and pressed slacks.

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