Jason’s heart was in his throat. The jig was surely up. What was he supposed to do? Apologize? Beg forgiveness? Whip up some tears and just go all-in as the pathetic loser so maybe she’d never mention it to anyone?

            “O-Oh?” he stammered after she didn’t speak again.

            “Yes, you have,” she insisted. “I couldn’t say for sure, since you were sitting down when I came in, but I daresay you shot up at least an inch in the past year.”

            Exhaling again, Jason resumed a normal heartbeat, though still conscious of the woman’s right foot pinning his member against his thigh. As usual, jumping to conclusions nearly ruined him. He primped the fleshy bulbs of her lovely toes.

            “Huh. I, uh… I h-hadn’t noticed,” he mumbled. He truly hadn’t; at most, it was a quarter of an inch he’d grown. Nothing Heather should’ve been able to see.

            “Well, what do I know? It’s just been so long since I’ve seen you, Jason,” Heather said. “I suppose I’ll probably always just remember you as the little boy. I hope that’s not embarrassing for you.”

            “Not at all,” he shrugged. He only hoped to keep her talking, such that her attention wasn’t locked to what her feet had discovered he was hiding. His hands worked in a hypnotic, deeply familiar pattern now. His thumbs caressed her sole at the center, lovingly tracing ovals in her flesh.

            “Well, don’t get too much taller on me,” Heather warned playfully. She wagged a finger at him from the opposite end of the couch. “Just so long as you stay the same little Jason I’m so fond of.”

            The young man’s skin warmed. He felt a bead of perspiration on the nape of his neck from all this silent excitement. Much as it stung to hear those types of comparisons, he couldn’t help but wait for the next one.

            “And by the way, Jason…” Heather sighed, at last opening her eyes again and staring Jason full in the face. “You give… an excellent… foot massage.”

            His cheeks flushed red. “Ha, it was nothing. Any time,” he heard himself say, dangerously.

            “I just may take you up on that,” she winked, her full lips pursed.

            Jason involuntarily expelled a puff of audible air as the woman’s sole caressed in a single broad, confident stroke up against the bulge of denim between his legs. Those hazel-green irises of hers kept their hold.

            At that moment, the front door clacked unlocked. Just as casually as the activity was begun, Heather slid her ample feet out of her personal masseur's grasp, though she took her time to let his thumb caress the fall of her foot a final time. Jason’s mother Melanie entered the living room holding bags of groceries to find a perfectly innocent scene: Jason and Heather, seated at opposite ends of the couch, their hands folded in their laps.

            After the requisite greetings and joyous hugs from his mother, Jason remained on the couch while his parent and the gargantuan neighbor strolled back to the kitchen. He was only glad to have calmed down in the nethers before he had to stand up and embrace his mother. He couldn’t be certain, but as Heather followed after his parent, Jason was sure he felt a single long fingertip zig-zag through his hair again.

            “I tell you, Melanie, it does feel a bit like living in a mausoleum sometimes, filling up that house all on my own with an entire divorce-worth of furniture,” Heather explained to Jason’s mother from the other room.

            “So the time’s finally come? Spring clean?” Melanie asked.

            “Something like that. The movers are coming next week to take out the big items, but I still have some more delicate family pieces going into storage tomorrow that I’d prefer to handle myself, maybe with some help. But there’s such an awfully large amount.”

            “You’re saying you could use some help tomorrow?”
            “Yes. Know of anyone? It would pay, of course.”

            “I’m sure Jason would be up to earning a few bucks, with summer beginning, so he can afford to get out of these four walls and avoid hanging out with me,” Melanie joked, loud enough for her son to hear in the living room.

            “Well, that sounds perfect,” Heather said. “I think Jason is just the young man for the job.”

            That night, Jason lay restlessly in bed, unsure why he couldn’t fall asleep on his own mattress. Upon his hands, he realized he’d retained the sensory memory very well of massaging Heather’s twin giant feet. His fingers twitched with instinct. While he sat awake, Jason couldn’t help but let himself drift back to some of the quieter, unexpected moments of his youth which confused him then and only today were beginning to make more sense.

            Like that time when, as a child, he’d first met Heather Goodman in the summer, while she was still married. Their height gulf was even wider then, of course, and Jason’s memory of her was of a literal valkyrie seated on the couch at a neighborhood gathering in a spaghetti strap dress. Even then, as he lay on the floor with his Legos, his eyes were drawn to the sight of Heather’s smooth, polished peds resting in strappy sandals upon the carpet. His head bobbed every time one of her toes lifted and stretched inside the footwear. He cared less about Legos after that.

            The next historical event was buried somewhere in adolescence. Much of the neighborhood was banded together for some group gardening along the outskirts of the suburb. While Jason laid on his stomach in the soil, plucking weeds and planting bulbs, he found himself in noticeably frequent proximity with Heather who, of course, was pruning the trees and high shrubs which ran along the flower beds. For three entire hours, it seemed, Jason found his face not twelve inches away from Heather’s nude eleven-and-a-halfs, painted by a light caking of mud and flower petals. He remembered watching her sole occasionally arch up with aching slowness while she reached for the branches: something like the giant’s wife of Jack and the Beanstalk pruning the sky vine.

            Still another time, not more than a year before today, when Jason found himself in Heather’s presence for the last time before he left for college. With almost no hesitation, she leaned down, wrapped the entire wingspan of her arms around the boy’s ribs, and lifted him right off the ground. Jason flinched, surprised at Heather’s strength and steadiness as he barely felt a vibration in her poise. She squeezed him against her chest; he dangled almost a foot away from the ground, her hair sweeping by his cheeks. Before he was deposited back to earth, he received a smarting squeeze and even a kiss on the top of his head. He didn’t forget that sensation for a while.

            Jason finally found his way into sleep. Anxious as he was after the near-complete humiliation today on the couch, he couldn’t help but anticipate spending the day in Heather’s alluring company.