Rambling Rhodes

The Audacity of Hope

Hope Chastity fidgeted restlessly in her chair. Home for the summer after her junior year of college, she had grown quickly bored of the familiar lifestyle of her hometown routine. The house and family that had once meant everything to her felt somehow smaller, almost quaint, compared to the wide and wild world she now knew was out there, waiting for her.

Oh, Hope had blossomed handsomely over the short few years since graduating high school. Gone were the braces and Coke bottle glasses that had so defined her and made her the source of endless ridicule and whispered, over-the-shoulder laughter from the schoolmates she had once foolishly considered her friends.

No, Hope had indeed become a woman in recent years, although she was only just now starting to realize and appreciate the fond and salacious glances she was now earning from men, both young and old. It was with a coy acknowledgement that she returned the longing leers of the boys who once thought of her only as an object of feminine potential gone awry. Now, with her feminine potential now realized in nearly all its glory, Hope was becoming bolder, more confident.

And with good reason. The gawky, uncertain frame of Hope's youth had been replaced by a slender, athletic and graceful body, adorned with the most fabulous set of womanly globes ever granted by the hand of God. Having traded in her glasses for Lasik surgery and her braces having granted her a smile worthy of a Colgate commercial, Hope had transformed into a woman who could turn the heads of men and women alike.

She had yet, however, to experience the intimate love of either.

As she sat amidst the still-packed boxes scattered around her childhood room, Hope found herself looking out over the lawn, still carefully tended, as it had been for the last several years, by Zutroy, the immigrant lad her family had taken in when Hope was still a young girl.

Zutroy, too, had inherited an enviable youthful frame. Years of solid, manual labor had transformed a sickly, anemic child, into a muscular, powerful young man, although he had largely gone unnoticed by the local women who thought of themselves as "above" his station in life.

In her restlessness and boredom, however, Hope had now noticed Zutroy; and Zutroy, although unbeknownst to Hope, had started to notice her years ago, realizing early on the fine woman she would eventually become. . . the woman she was today.

As she watched Zutroy toil in her parents' yard, her eyes transfixed by sinewy muscle and beaded sweat that seemed to ripple and glisten hypnotically in the noonday sun, Hope was gradually overcome by an overwhelming longing, a longing that eventually morphed into an audacious sense of purpose, a primal yearning.

Suddenly, Hope found herself standing, smoothing out the wrinkles in her Capri pants and checking her near flawless profile in the mirror, before skipping lightly out of her bedroom and down the stairs, intent on one purpose and one purpose only.

The only question remained: would Zutroy reward the audacity of Hope. . . ?

Posted by Ryan at August 28, 2008 08:37 AM | TrackBack