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Wednesday, Wednesday by superkate

It was a sunny day at Western Palms Retirement Community, like most days there. The birds chirped, the breeze tossed palm branches left and right, and somewhere nearby, a resident’s grandchildren splashed merrily in the community pool. The pleasantries of the day – Wednesday, to be exact – meant one thing:

George Holmes was bored.

He made no bones about stating this fact, and loudly, twirling a pen idly in his left hand. At the sound of his whining, the man in the other chaise lounge – George’s best friend and live-in “housemate” (though gossip around the community sauna had other interpretations), Jon Willis – glanced up from his Grisham thriller and sighed.

“You say this as though I might have forgotten since the last time you complained,” Jon replied, meeting George’s eyes before returning his attention to his novel. “You could try actually feigning interest in your sudoku book, since you absolutely had to have it last time we were at Borders.”

“Only because you wouldn’t let me get a girly magazine.” George tossed his pen from one hand to another, sighing. “There’s nothing to do,” he whined, though it really wasn’t comely for a retiree to whine like that. “I don’t see why we couldn’t have just stayed in – oh, shit.”

Jon frowned, but didn’t look up. “What?” he questioned, and flipped the page.

There was suspicious silence from George’s chaise lounge, and when Jon finally gave into the quiet and pulled his attention away from the book, he blinked into two glaring eyes that definitely did not belong to George.

“Where is he?” growled Lisa Cuddy.

Lisa Cuddy was the President of Western Palms Retirement Community, a spitfire in her later sixties with unnaturally dark hair (at least for a woman her age) and a rather impressive figure (again, at least for a woman her age). At the present, she wore a black bathing suit with a mostly-sheer scarf around her waist and draping to about her knees. And she was glaring like she had never glared before, which was something considering the amount she tended to glare.

Flashing his most charming smile, Jon feigned as much ignorance as he could. “George?”

“No, the other miscreant you live with,” Lisa replied coolly, her hands on her hips. When he blinked up at her, her glare intensified. “Where, Jon? Answer me now, and I might not cancel your tee time for aiding and abetting a pain in the ass.”

“Why, good afternoon , Lisa,” chirped a voice from nearby, and both Jon and Lisa glanced up to see George standing in the doorway between the patio and the condo, smiling charmingly. Jon arched an eyebrow. “I love the outfit. Really brings out your…eyes.”

She glanced down at her bathing suit, frowned, and took a brief moment to pull it up a few inches. “Cute,” she retorted, rolling her eyes. “Glad to see you act your age.”

“Ah, but you don’t know my actual age,” he responded with a smirk. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Though if you stopped by for a quickie, you’ll have to come back later. Jonny and I have golf at three, and poker at five. And we all know how long your quickies take.”

Jon resisted a smirk and picked his book back up.

Lisa, however, just rolled her eyes a second time. “Unfortunately, I don’t feel like vomiting today,” she shot back, and then stalked from the edge of the patio so she could poke him in the chest with a long finger and its manicured nail. “But I do want to know why you parked your golf cart on my patio.”

The Grisham novel was closed with a papery thunk. “You did what?”

George rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t intentional,” he responded, though his lips were definitely showing the hints of a hidden smile. “I just needed somewhere to park.”

“And my patio was the only place?”

He shrugged. “It was there, or on our patio. And Jonny wouldn’t have appreciated being run over.”

“Oh, don’t you drag me into this,” Jon snapped at him. “It’s your golf cart.”

“A present from you!” George sent him a pained look. “Where is the love, Jonny? Where?”

Lisa continued glaring at him for a moment, and then gave up and simply tossed up her hands. “Whatever,” she finally acquiesced, turning on her heel. “Just get it off my patio and I won’t report to the board that you’re stealing cable from the Millers.”

Jon blinked, turning around in his seat to gape up at George. “We’re doing what?”

George dug into his pocket and pulled out the golf cart keys, tossing them in her direction. She caught them deftly, frowning. “You can move it. Take it to the pool. Make a day of it.” He waved a hand. “You can even park in where it belongs when you’re done.”

She regarded him for another moment before shrugging and wandering off, muttering something that sounded distinctly like “You’re worse than him” under her breath. George smirked as she disappeared, and then sunk onto his chaise lounge.

Arching an eyebrow at him, Jon studied him carefully. “Any particular reason for the ten-second change-of-heart, or are you finally making good on your New Years Resolutions from ten years ago?” He paused, considering his own words. “And if it’s the latter, please don’t make good on the ‘raunchy threesome’ one from eleven years ago, or I may have to move to Eastern Palms.”

George smirked and leaned all the way back on his chaise lounge. “Actually,” he replied casually, “my change-of-heart came thanks to the e-mail I received.”

“You ran away from Lisa to check your e-mail? You are unglued. I always suspected.”

“Ah, but this was no mortal e-mail,” he continued, settling back into his seat. He picked up the pen he’d been playing with earlier and twirled it idly between two fingers. “Remember how, when Lisa first came here, she compared us to some guys she knew in New Jersey?”

Jon snorted. “The rant lasted a full hour. How could anyone forget?”

“Well, it turns out that Lisa wasn’t just a doctor before she retired. She was a big-wig at some hospital, and those guys? Big-wigs, too. Retired to Trenton, I guess.”

Blinking, Jon swallowed thickly. “…you didn’t.”

George’s smirk grew as he closed his eyes, the sunshine and the chirping birds surrounding both of them, their patio, and the sound of a golf cart in the distance. “Hope you like house guests, honey,” he replied.


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