#Husband and Wife Sunday Morning Detroit Michigan | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

septiembrre · 4 years

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24 for the kissy prompts pls!

Let’s run away together kiss, @sothischickshe thanks for the prompt, boo <3

When Beth slept with Rio again, it was on a one-last-time basis. She was convinced she had built it all up - the sex, the headiness of it all, the tenderness, how good it was.

She was sure she was viewing those orgasms through a haze of nostalgia, rose-tinted glasses. It had been a time when her newfound power was dizzying. She was making money, coming up in the world and, suddenly, at forty, she found herself newly awake. Of course, she was going to have incredible orgasms. She hadn’t had sex in seven years. It made sense. If they were the best orgasms of her life, it was only because the sex of yore was with her blundering husband. This time would be different. Beth and Rio would fuck it out of their systems and they could go back to building their fortunes without the complication of partially resolved sexual tension.

As she processed the warmth of Rio’s hands gripping her tight, of her writhing, her clit against his tongue, already begging for his cock, Beth became too cognizant of it all - all of the feelings. Her blood was rushing, her body alight, and her thoughts bounding away from her in all directions. Then, Rio’s hands had fisted her hair, his teeth nipping at her pulse. He moved back inside her, was everywhere as if he had never left. Her hands had clenched against his neck, traced the scars she gave him last year, and for a time Beth stopped thinking.

Afterward, as she was finding her bearings, her breath, Rio brought his fingertips to trace the shape of her face. His hand dipped from her temple to the dimple in her chin - and seemingly despite himself, he kissed her. Beth, blanketed by the familiar softness from that sunny afternoon in her bed, the thrill of having his complete, unwavering attention, acknowledged that she was completely besotted, just like the first two times. She was as nervy as the grocery store robbery, as powerful as standing in the dealership and misdirecting the FBI, as boss as one-upping the very man in her bed. It was as perfect as the first time they kissed.

She could never let him know.

After some time, they shook off the spell. They cleaned up. They put on their clothes. They turned away from each other with one last tentative glance, a nod, and Beth went home. She buried herself in her responsibilities and at night, she came on her fingers letting herself think of him.

A week later, he showed up at her house. It happened again.

Then, again. And again.

It swelled from something Beth had convinced herself was sporadic, an anomaly, and evened out into their rhythm. Rio was in her life, in every way - and still, the moments between them burned. Their resilient spark kindled and the deadlock broke. They weren’t quite dating - but they were undoubtedly partnered. It thrilled her. He charmed her. Beth had never known what it meant to be in love, and for the first time, she was letting pieces of her that she had buried deep inside be known.

One afternoon, at the shop, Rio tugs her onto his lap. She’s been troubleshooting a kink with the printing press while Rio typed away on one of the work tables. He had turned it into a makeshift desk while he kept her and sometimes Annie and Ruby company as they printed. He noses down her neck and she’s starting to rub against him, when he says, “Let’s go on a vacation.”

Beth smiles against his temple, playing along, “Mmm, where? Fiji? Bora Bora?”

Rio leans back, squinting at her. “Damn, darlin’. Not unless you want to spend half our trip gettin’ there.”

She laughs, “Then what? You’ll bring me to Legoland with you this time?”

Rio scoffs and rolls his eyes. “The way this works, we can get away for a week and a half, two weeks tops.”

She eyes him and realizes he’s serious. Her mind goes blank and then unbidden memories from her life before surface. The first time Beth had been on a plane was a trip to Disney with Dean’s family. She had been in her first trimester with Emma, furiously trying to soothe a five-year-old Kenny and chubby-toddler Danny. It had been her in-laws’ idea. They had insisted on staying at the park’s resort and the whole trip was nightmarish from beginning to end. She was still in the throes of morning sickness and on full caregiving duty to keep the boys from getting too fussy. Her mother-in-law helicoptered her parenting throughout the trip and Beth was suffocated by the responsibility of making sure the children stayed clean and tidy for family pictures. Memories of murmuring, exhausted, to Dean that their children were too young to remember the whole charade, dominate her associations of that trip, and traveling overall to this day.

Besides the vacations to Disney with Dean and the kids, Beth had gone on trips within a reasonable driving distance of Detroit. They had spent school breaks on the shores of Michigan, in New York one Christmas. Once the kids were older, there were the yearly trips to Chicago, Indianapolis, and Toronto. She had been to Nashville once with Ruby and Annie, a girl’s trip, in between bouts when Sarah was better and a moment when Annie was flush with cash.

Beth doesn’t know what to ask for. In conversations like this one, she feels how different her life has been from Rio’s, and she doesn’t know where to step. Flustered, she pivots. “Where do you want to go?”

“It don’t matter much. Somewhere with good food and a five-star hotel where I can keep you naked.”

She laughs, excited, and a little nervous.

“We could go to… Montreal?”

Rio grins, quick. “Nah. Not yet. I go to the jazz festival there, every summer. We’ll go together this year, but I want to go somewhere sooner.”

Beth’s mind fritzes out for a few seconds, considering the possibilities.

“Where else you wanna go, ma?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “Honestly, anywhere.” He seems to be eying her meaningfully. Beth tries again, lowers her voice to a purr, “Where do you want to take me?”

He looks away, biting at his lips. “I’ve been wanting to go back to Mexico. I still have a lot of family down there.”

She’s surprised to hear the admission. He rarely brings up his family outside of Marcus or Rhea. But, by now she’s privy to the details of Rio’s schedule and knows he spends many Sunday afternoons with his extended family at his mom's house. “Oh yeah?”

“We used to drive down, spend summers in Guadalajara with my grandparents.” He smiles at the memory. “I still got a lot of cousins in Jalisco. Some of them moved to Puebla a few years back. I haven’t been since before Marcus was born. I’ve been itchin’ to go back and visit.” He looks at her as if they’re conspiring. “We can catch a direct flight from O’Hare into Mexico City, spend the beginning of the trip there. We could rent a car and take a day trip to Puebla. Then, we could go to Guadalajara for a few days. You ever been to Mexico?”

Beth shakes her head.

“Cool. You’d like it. People there are real nice and the food is bomb - the pozole…” He mimics a chef’s kiss.

“Rio…”

“Hm?”

Beth runs through it a few times in her head and decides to put it out there. “Don’t you think I should meet your family here first?”

Rio’s lips twist and he pulls Beth close against him. “You want to meet my má?”

Now, Beth’s shaking her head at him. “Yeah. Obviously.”

“My nosy sisters, too?”

“There’s no way they’ve got anything on Annie.”

He laughs. “You’d be surprised.”

Rio kisses her and it makes something shoot down her spine. Could she be any more of a cliché? Her mind starts down a familiar spiral: in her forties, past her prime, boring house-wife. She makes an effort to stop, correct course, and Beth realizes Rio is watching her closely, no doubt, reading her mind.

“Mm-kay. Next Sunday.” Then, undeterred, “But, where do you want to go?”

Beth pauses a moment. Where doesn’t she want to go? She considers what story she’s going to spin so she can get Dean to take the kids without putting up too much of a fight. And then she turns her brain off and starts to imagine the future, and Rio naked, and where he would look good naked. Everywhere, honestly, but- She thinks about his brown skin against crisp hotel sheets, in aquamarine waters where he wouldn’t even have to put on all the clothes Michigan temperatures demand he wear most of the year. She thinks about the bright red one-piece she bought when she was really feeling herself and knows he would love. She thinks about them, in the future, together.

“Somewhere warm and beautiful, with a beach.”

“Oh yeah?” He looks her up and down and bites his lip. She loves it. She loves that she’s finally allowed to love it. “I can picture you, in a bathin’ suit, gorgeous, in a big ass hat.” He brings his hand up to trace along her collarbone. She’s already wet, and she can feel him half-hard beneath her. “Your tits earnin’ freckles all along the top. Slathering up with spf 300.”

Beth smacks him. “Shut up.”

“What beach, mamí?”

Beth considers what she wants, all the places she’s ever want to go. She considers the possibilities. She takes a shot. “Let’s go to Hawaii.”

He’s nodding along with her, dipping in to kiss her again. “Let’s do it.”

#my writing #beth x rio

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deniscollins · 4 years

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Workers Fearful of the Coronavirus Are Getting Fired and Losing Their Benefits

Assume you own a tea shop in a college town and want to reopen for business next week. Six employees collecting unemployment refuse to come back to work because they fear contracting COVID-19. As the tea shop owner, you try to accommodate employees’ safety concerns by limiting customers in the store, installing a sneeze guard at the cash register, requiring masks and halting tea services and free samples of their teas. What would you do if the employees still refuse to come back due to their virus fears: (1) hire new employees and end unemployment benefits for those who refused to come back to work, (2) make other accommodations for these six employees, or (3) something else, if so, what? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

After scraping by for weeks on unemployment checks and peanut butter sandwiches, Jake Lyon recently received the call that many who temporarily lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic have anticipated: The college-town tea shop where he worked was reopening, and it was time to go back.

But Mr. Lyon, 23, and his co-workers in Fort Collins, Colo., who were temporarily laid off, worried about contracting the virus, so they asked the shop’s owners to delay reopening and meet with them to discuss safety measures. The reluctance cost them. Six of them permanently lost their jobs in May, and their former employer reported them to the state’s unemployment office to have their benefits potentially revoked.

“You have all refused to go back to work,” their former boss wrote in an email.

As people across the United States are told to return to work, employees who balk at the health risks say they are being confronted with painful reprisals: Some are losing their jobs if they try to stay home, and thousands more are being reported to the state to have their unemployment benefits cut off.

The coronavirus pandemic continues to strain the economy. On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that 1.9 million Americans filed new claims for state unemployment insurance last week. Businesses want to bring back customers and profits. But workers now worry about contracting the coronavirus once they return to cramped restaurant kitchens, dental offices or conference rooms where few colleagues are wearing masks.

Some states with a history of weaker labor protections are encouraging employers to report workers who do not return to their jobs, citing state laws that disqualify people from receiving unemployment checks if they refuse a reasonable offer of work.

Oklahoma set up a “Return To Work” email address for businesses to report employees who turn down jobs. Ohio offered a similar way for employers to report coronavirus-related work refusals.

Labor advocates and unions say the push to recall workers and kick reluctant employees off unemployment benefits carries grave risks in an age of coronavirus, when infections have rampaged through meatpacking plants, call centers, factories and other confined spaces where co-workers spend hours touching the same surfaces and breathing the same air.

“Their choices are: ‘Do I go back and risk my life, or say no and risk being kicked off unemployment and not be able to pay my bills?’” said Rachel Bussett, an employment lawyer in Oklahoma, where 179 businesses have reported workers to the unemployment agency.

Alabama, Oklahoma and South Carolina are among several states that have told workers they cannot continue to collect unemployment if they turn down a suitable job offer. Missouri has received 982 reports of workers refusing to return to their jobs.

In Tennessee, where 735 workers have been reported for refusing to return to work, the state labor commissioner announced that the fear of contracting the coronavirus was not a good enough excuse to not go back. To continue to qualify for unemployment, workers need to be directly affected by the virus: They must have a diagnosed case of Covid-19, be caring for a patient or be confined by a quarantine, among other reasons outlined by Congress in the coronavirus stimulus law that was passed in March.

The question has split along partisan lines, with some Republican politicians and business owners complaining that furloughed workers have little incentive to go back to work if they are earning more from the emergency aid passed by Congress.

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, recently told a Senate panel that workers who turned down their old jobs could be ineligible for unemployment payments. But Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor took a different view, saying that workers should refuse to go back to jobs they consider unsafe.

“This is uncharted waters,” said Kersha Cartwright, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Labor, which has encouraged businesses to work with employees on reopening plans after the state became one of the first in the country to forge ahead with reopening.

In interviews across the country, workers said they were anxious to keep their jobs at a time when the economic devastation of the coronavirus has left more than 40 million in the country out of work. With the job market bleak and many family members unemployed, many people said they felt powerless to refuse an order to return to work or question the safety practices at their jobs.

In the tea shop case, Mr. Lyon lost his unemployment benefits after his former bosses reported him to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. The state agency ruled that Mr. Lyon’s work “did not present an unacceptable risk” to his health, and disqualified him from unemployment for 20 weeks.

“What we’re asking for is so basic during an unprecedented global pandemic,” Mr. Lyon said.

But Qin Liu, who owns the tea shop, the Ku Cha House of Tea, with his wife, said they had tried to accommodate their employees’ safety concerns by limiting customers in the store, installing a sneeze guard at the cash register, requiring masks and halting tea services and free samples of their teas. But he said his business would founder if it stayed closed until there was a vaccine or cure.

“They wanted to wait a little bit longer till the danger has passed,” Mr. Liu said. “But for us, a small business, the danger is imminent.”

Mr. Liu said the business was also obligated under Colorado labor laws to notify the state when they dismissed the six workers, inciting the unemployment investigation.

In Toledo, Ohio, Stephanie VanSlambrouck, 45, said she urged her husband to quit when he was called back to his job as a steel fabricator after weeks of working from home. He reads blueprints and pores over figures all day, and has little need to go into the office, Ms. VanSlambrouck said.

But the couple have three children, and had already lost their home to foreclosure once, after the 2008 housing crash. So now, her husband eats lunch at his desk, sanitizes his hands and wears a mask to the Monday morning planning meetings in the small conference room.

“We’re caught,” Ms. VanSlambrouck said. “We have to do what our bosses are telling us. And to quit a job in this uncertain time would be ridiculous. You can’t walk away from something that’s providing food for the family because who knows what’s going to happen in a week?”

Mark Adani, a car salesman in suburban Detroit, spent weeks working from home to avoid the coronavirus. He is 71 and has high blood pressure and a wife with heart trouble. But he recently got an ultimatum from his dealership: Come back to the office or consider a new job.

“I’m damned if I come to work, damned if I don’t come to work,” he said.

Mr. Adani said one worker had already died of Covid-19, and he flirted with letting his bosses dismiss him when he was called back to the office.

Ultimately, he decided to go back. He was unable to reach anyone from Michigan’s overwhelmed unemployment system to answer whether he could refuse to go back and still retain his benefits.

With customers scarce, Mr. Adani said he spent much of the day at his desk, chasing online leads and worrying about bringing home the virus to his wife. Most of his co-workers slip on masks when they head to the break room for coffee.

“I really don’t feel this place is safe,” Mr. Adani said.

Nurses, grocery store workers, fast-food cashiers, slaughterhouse workers and others deemed “essential” have been navigating these fears throughout the pandemic because they never stopped working. Now, the concern is spreading to wider areas of the economy.

In Boise, Idaho, Robin Slater, a 65-year-old line cook with chronic shortness of breath from 40 years of smoking, said he was reluctant to answer the call back to work at the sports bar where he constantly bumps up against other cooks in the tiny kitchen. He said he was the only one who wore a mask. The plan, he said, was to limit tables to six people or fewer, though a party of 14 came in to eat last Sunday.

Mr. Slater said he had little choice other than returning to work because he was almost certain to lose his $220 in weekly unemployment, supplemented by the $600 passed as part of the coronavirus relief bill. So far, 147 workers in Idaho have been reported as refusing to work, though the state did not say how many had lost benefits.

Mr. Slater’s uneasiness has not gone away after his first few shifts, though few others at work seem bothered.

“Most of our servers and cooks are in their 20s and 30s,” Mr. Slater said. “They’re all like, ‘It doesn’t really matter.’ But I don’t want to go back to work and die.”

#Coronavirus

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