Wellies in the River

The river ran low and brown-green under the cottonwoods, and Lorraine stood on the packed clay of the bank with the sun on the backs of her knees. She was thirty-four, a county drainage engineer who spent her weeks in fluorescent offices and rubber over muddy culverts, and this bend was not on any inspection route. She had found it on a Sunday drive three weeks ago, marked the pull-off by a split fence post, and had not told a single person she was coming back.

The wellies were new. Glossy black rubber, knee-high, with a thin red band at the top and a shine so clean it threw the sky back at her. She had bought them that morning and worn them out of the store, the stiff soles squeaking on the tile, because she had not wanted to wait. They were hot now. Her calves sweated inside them. Every step from the car had made the rubber flex and creak, a small private sound she had listened to all the way down the path.

She set her canvas bag on a flat rock and looked both ways along the water. Nothing. No boats, no fishermen, no voices. The far bank was willow and tall grass. A dragonfly stitched the air and was gone. Lorraine rolled her shoulders, felt the thin cotton of her sundress stick between her shoulder blades, and let out a breath she had been holding since the highway.

“All right,” she said, quiet, to no one. Her voice sounded ordinary. That helped.

She walked to the edge. The clay gave under the soles, then firmed where the water had smoothed it. She watched her own boots in the wet shine of the margin: two black mirrors, absurdly bright against the dull river. Her toes curled inside them. She had not worn socks. The bare skin of her feet already felt over-warm, over-aware, as if the rubber were a second pulse.

Lorraine lifted the hem of the dress and looked down at herself. Plain cotton panties, pale gray, already a little damp from the walk and from the thinking she had done in the car. She was not hurried. She had given herself the whole afternoon and she meant to use it. Thirty-four years of being useful and on time, and this was the first hour in a long while that belonged only to the want under her ribs.

She put one boot in.

The sole met the river and the cold came up through the rubber faster than she expected, a clean shock against the ball of her foot. Water crept in at the seam where the upper met the sole, not much, a thin illicit thread that found her toes and made her gasp. She stood with one foot on the bank and one in the shallows, the boot already no longer only a boot. It was filling. Slowly. She could hear it, a soft tick and seep, and she could feel the first slick of river against skin that had been dry a second ago.

“Oh,” she said. She sounded pleased. She was.

She brought the other boot in. Both of them now, side by side, shiny to the ankles, the red bands still high and dry. The current tugged gently at the rubber and made the loose tops sway. Lorraine took a step. Then another. The clay bottom was soft and the wellies sank a little, each step a pull and a release, water pushing up inside as her weight came down. It climbed her arches. It wrapped her heels. Cold, mineral, alive. She stopped and stood still so she could feel it settle, the two small private pools forming around her feet while the rest of her stayed in the hot air.

Her nipples had tightened under the dress. She did not touch them yet. She wanted the boots first. She wanted the filling.

She waded deeper. Mid-calf. The brown-green water lapped the black shine and turned it darker where it wet the rubber, a moving line she watched with her mouth parted. Inside, the river was busier. Each step forced a gulp up over her ankles, then let it fall again when she lifted, so the wellies made a thick, obscene slosh that she felt in her stomach. Her feet were fully wet now. The cold had teeth and then it didn’t; it became a weight, a closeness, the rubber holding the water against her the way a mouth might.

Lorraine went to her knees in the sense of depth, not of posture. The water reached the middle of her shins, then higher, flirting with the tops. She had chosen the bend because the bottom dropped in a clean shelf a few yards out, and she could see the color change where it did. She walked toward that line with small steps, savoring the increasing load in each boot. They were heavy in a way shoes were never heavy. Full of river. Faithful to her feet and traitorous at the rim.

When the water reached the red bands she stopped, breathed, and took the step she had come for.

It spilled in over both tops at once, a sudden cold crown around each knee that plunged down the inside of the rubber and hit her skin in a rush. Lorraine made a sound she did not try to swallow. The wellies filled in a few heartbeats, water packing the space around her calves, swirling at her knees, finding every warm place and replacing it. The weight dragged. She lifted one foot and the boot came up sluggish, pouring a sheet back into the river from the rim, then settled again and drank itself full. She did it with the other. Slosh, pour, fill. The shine above the waterline stayed vain and perfect. Below, the rubber hugged a moving cold that stroked her with every shift of her stance.

Her thighs trembled. Not from the temperature. From the decision completing itself.

She stood in the middle of the slow current with both wellies brimming, dress hem darkened where she had let it fall against the water, and she put her hands on the red bands as if to steady the boots and instead only held them, feeling the tremor of water inside through the rubber. Her cunt ached. There was no prettier word for it that she wanted. She was swollen and slick already, the gray cotton clinging, and the cold locked around her calves made the heat between her legs feel enormous.

“Stay,” she told her own feet, and laughed once, breathless, because they weren’t going anywhere. The river had them.

Lorraine gathered the sundress and bunched it at her waist, tucking the cloth under one arm. Sun on her stomach. The panties were a shade darker at the center. She hooked her thumbs in the waistband and worked them down, awkward and careful, stepping one full boot and then the other through the leg holes so she wouldn’t dunk the cotton more than she had to. They came off damp and she balled them in one fist, then let them go onto the bank behind her with an underhand toss that barely made the rock. Bare from the waist down except for the shining wellies, she stood in the river and let the air touch her.

The contrast was the whole thing. Hot sun on her ass and the small of her back. Cold, heavy water inside the boots, moving when she moved, a secret tide no one could see. Her feet flexed against the inundated insoles and the sensation traveled straight up the insides of her legs.

She slid one hand down over her stomach, through the neat dark hair, and cupped herself. Warm. Soaked, and not from the river. Her middle finger parted her and found the slick seam, and she exhaled through her teeth. She was careful with her balance. The boots were anchors. She widened her stance until the water tugged at the outsides of the rubber and the filled shafts pressed her calves, and she began to stroke, slow, learning the angle that didn’t tip her.

The first passes were light. She circled her clit with two fingers and watched the red bands bob, watched the black shine throw little blades of light onto the brown water. Every time she shifted her weight the wellies answered, a deep glut of cold rearranging around her knees, and the answer went into her hand. She pressed harder. Her hips tipped forward. The dress stayed bunched in her other fist, knuckles white, as if she needed to hold onto some piece of the ordinary world while she did this.

“God, that’s—” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. The river took the words and flattened them.

She pushed two fingers into herself and the heat there shocked her after the cold at her feet. Tight, greedy, wet enough that the sound was soft and immediate even over the lap of water. She fucked herself with a steady rhythm and let her thumb stay on her clit, and the wellies sloshed in time, an accidental accompaniment she could not have designed better if she had tried. Fill and give. Cold grip and hot clutch. She closed her eyes and saw nothing but the shine she had been staring at, the ridiculous beautiful boots drinking the river while she stood in them and got herself off.

Her thighs shook harder. She opened her eyes because she wanted to see it. Wanted the picture: a woman of thirty-four, sundress rucked up, bare ass and belly in the sun, glossy wellies submerged to the tops and full of moving water, her own hand working between her legs with no apology in it. She looked down and the sight punched a moan out of her. The red bands were at the surface. Inside them her skin was pale and wavering, distorted by the water she had invited in. She curled her toes against the flooded sole and felt every ridge of the rubber through the cold.

“More,” she said, and gave it to herself.

She drew her fingers out and brought them up, slick, and rubbed her clit in tight circles, faster now, the kind of touch that didn’t negotiate. Her other hand abandoned the dress. The cotton fell and floated out around her hips, soaking at the hem, and she didn’t care. She got that hand on her breast through the fabric, pinched her nipple, rolled it, and the double current—sharp at her chest, relentless between her legs, cold and heavy in the boots—pulled her up onto the edge faster than she had planned. She eased off. She was not ready to be done. She had walked a long way in these wellies to earn the ending.

Lorraine slowed her fingers to a lazy stroke and stood there breathing, letting the orgasm recede half an inch. The river filled the small silence. A fish rose somewhere upstream and the ring of it reached her as a suggestion. Inside the boots the water had warmed a little against her skin and then a shift of current refreshed it, and she shivered all the way up. She lifted one knee as high as the depth allowed. Water poured from the top of the wellie in a clear sheet over the red band, splashing her thigh, and then she set the boot down and felt it gulp full again, the weight returning like a hand closing. She did the same with the other leg, deliberate, watching the pour, feeling the cold stripe on her skin run toward her cunt. When the boot drank, she moaned and put her fingers back where they belonged.

She fucked herself deeper this time. Three fingers, slow on the way in, a twist, the heel of her hand grinding her clit. The wellies held her. That was the filthy mercy of them: she could sag, she could let her knees go soft, and the water-weight and the river bottom kept her upright while she used herself. Her head fell forward. Hair stuck to her cheek. She talked because the quiet had become too large.

“Look at you,” she muttered, hoarse, to the woman in the boots. “Standing in the river with them full. Couldn’t even wait to get home. Couldn’t even—” Her fingers curled and she lost the sentence. “Yes. Like that. Don’t you stop.”

She didn’t stop. The slick sounds of her hand mixed with the slosh every time her hips jerked. Sun burned her shoulders. A strand of willow dragged the surface near the far bank and she watched it without seeing it, attention narrowed to the bright black rubber, the red lines at the water, the obscene comfortable weight around her calves, and the climb starting again behind her clit. She was close in a serious way now. Her stomach drew tight. Her ass clenched. The boots creaked when she rocked, full to the brim, a little water lipping over the tops onto her thighs and running down to join what her fingers were doing.

She brought her free hand down and spread herself, held herself open to her own touch and to the air, and rubbed with the flat of three fingers, fast and sure. The orgasm gathered low, heavy as the water in the wellies, and she chased it with her hips, small thrusts that set both boots pouring and refilling in messy pulses. Cold kissed her knees. Heat broke over her.

Lorraine came standing up in the river, a long breaking wave that bent her forward and tore a raw sound out of her throat. Her fingers stayed on her clit through it, gentler only when the peak made her jerk, and she felt herself clench around nothing and then around the two fingers she pushed back in, fluttering, soaking her own hand. The wellies shifted under her as her balance went, and she caught herself with a wider stance, water slopping over both red bands, the rubber squeezing her calves while she shook. It went on. She worked herself through the aftershocks because stopping felt like waste, each smaller crest answered by a fresh slosh around her feet, until her thighs burned and her hand cramped and the pleasure tipped from sharp to glowing.

She straightened by degrees. The dress clung to her wrists. Her chest heaved. Between her legs she was swollen, sensitive, dripping onto the inside of her own thigh and into the river that didn’t care. She kept her fingers there a moment longer, just holding, feeling the throb, and looked down at the boots that had stayed with her through all of it. Still shiny above the line. Still full. Still hers.

“Jesus,” she whispered, and it was almost a laugh.

She stayed in the water while her breathing slowed. The current tugged the hem of the dress and let it go. A cool thread found its way over one red band and down her shin, and she welcomed it, too wrung out to flinch. When she finally lifted a foot, the wellie gave up a long, luxurious pour, river water sheeting off the rubber and pattering back into the bend, and the sudden lightness made her sway. She poured the other the same way, watching, committing the sight to the place in her she kept for things she would replay. Then she walked out, step by heavy step, onto the clay.

On the bank the wellies still held an inch or two she hadn’t shed. She stood in the sun with her dress wrinkled and wet at the edges, panties abandoned on the rock, and felt water squelch between her toes inside the rubber. Her cunt pulsed with the afterbeat. She was smiling without having decided to.

She pulled the boots off one at a time, tipping them onto the mud so the last of the river ran out in brown-clear streams. Her feet emerged pale, wrinkled, shocking in the open air. She sat on the flat rock, bare-legged, the glossy wellies lying on their sides like spent things, and let the heat dry the shine back toward what it had been in the store. It would never be quite that clean again. The river had been inside them. So had the afternoon.

Lorraine dressed without hurry. Panties, damp, back on. Dress shaken out. The wellies she carried in one hand rather than wore, because she wanted the feel of the path under her actual feet for the walk to the car, and because she liked the weight of them swinging, still faintly river-cold, knocking her thigh.

At the pull-off she sat in the driver’s seat with the door open and the boots upright on the floor mat, red bands catching the late light. Water had left a faint line inside each one, a private watermark no one else would know how to read. She rested a hand on the nearer rim and felt the leftover cool.

She would wear them to the office on Monday over her usual pants, ordinary as any field pair, and when someone asked if the new ones were holding up she would say they were fine. She would not say that she had stood in a river with them full to the knee and come so hard her voice had cracked. She would not say she had already decided, somewhere between the second slosh and the last, that the split fence post was a place she meant to keep. The boots knew. She knew. That was the whole of it, and she turned the key with the secret sitting warm in her lap, the shine of the wellies throwing a small bright piece of the afternoon onto the dash as she pulled onto the empty road.