Page 67 of Fire

“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for being everything I thought you were when we were younger.”

“Thank you for coming back to me.” I rest my chin against her head while she draws lazy circles in the bubbles. Peace descends around us, and I feel myself shifting, claiming Ivy as mine rather than Julian’s.

“I’m gonna say something,” I murmur, “and it’s important to me that you really hear me.”

She nods and I take a breath before continuing. “Julian’s hang up with your body has everything to do with him and nothing to do with you. Being judgmental like that? It’s ‘projection as protection’ at its finest. He’s an inadequate fuck and knows it. He cuts you down to make himself feel better.”

“You know what?” Ivy shifts, the water sloshing as she sits up to look me in the eye. “It doesn’t matter anymore. He doesn’t matter anymore. He’s gone. In the past. And the only thing that matters is you and me and Nell, making steps that take us to a better future.”

I lift my glass. “Amen to that.”

She clinks her glass against mine, then drinks, smiling as she swallows. “Do you remember when we were like sixteen, maybe seventeen? I was starting to worry about college, and you had the great idea to make a pact? We promised that no matter what happened, we’d come back to each other. Remember? We even looked up contracts on the internet and signed it to make it official.”

“Of course I remember. That pact is a promise, and you know how I feel about those. My cousins have been making fun of me for years because on some level I always believed you’d come back to me, and we’d end up here.”

“In your bathtub?” Grinning wickedly, Ivy slides her hand down my chest, under the water, along my abdomen, and pauses at my lower belly.

“You know what I mean.” I lean back, widening my legs, inviting her to continue her journey. “I never stopped loving you. I never stopped holding out hope that we’d be together. I still have that pact we wrote.”

Her hand stills. “You do?”

“In a box in my closet. Wanna see it?”

“I do.” She wraps her hand around my swelling cock. “But there’s something else I wanna see first.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Ivy

I sit down for lunch in the break room at work and open my bag, humming happily to myself as I set plastic containers of food on the table. My phone buzzes with a call and I check the screen, hoping to see Micah’s smiling face, but my heart sinks when I see it’s Nell’s school calling. I immediately conjure up images of broken bones and missing teeth after another failed attempt at flying off the monkey bars. What will that awful nurse say this time? Will she insult my parenting? My daughter’s energy and imagination? Or both?

Bracing myself, I accept the call.

“Miss Cole?” says an unfamiliar female voice. Professional. Concerned.

I sit up straighter. “This is her.”

“I’m Nadine Murphy, the assistant principal at Oceanview Elementary. How are you this afternoon?”

Significantly less okay than I was a few minutes ago, I think, but instead say, “I’m doing well. Thank you. How are you?”

“I have Penelope in my office today.”

My appetite immediately disappears. Nell’s in the principal’s office? What in the world happened?

I open my mouth but none of the questions I want to ask come out. Thankfully, Nadine hurries on, filling my stunned silence with information. “There’s no need to worry. She’s not injured, but you should be aware she was involved in an altercation with another student today.”

“An altercation?”

As in fighting? My sweet little girl was in a fight?

This is a phone call I never thought I’d get. A situation I never anticipated. I set my fork down and push my lunch out of the way to rest an elbow on the table and my head in my hand.

“She and a little boy in her class got into an argument about your living arrangement. Things escalated and the little boy pushed her. Instead of stopping there and being the bigger person, Nell pushed him back.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, pinching my forehead with my thumb and fingers. “I have so many questions; I don’t know where to start.”

“That’s totally understandable. I’ll give you the information I have and if you still have questions when I’m done, I’m happy to answer them. I’ve spoken to both students separately and heard their version of what happened. There isn’t much discrepancy between the two, so it’s safe to take Nell’s story at face value. I’ll let her explain herself when she gets home, but it sounds like the other child made a comment about you two living with a man she just met. Nell asserted this man is her father, the other child called her a liar and Nell called him a name, which resulted in him pushing her, and her pushing back.”

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