Page 108 of The Thought of You

“Well.” She licks her lips, and I follow the movement with my gaze. I’m completely consumed by her. “It was uneventful, for the most part,” she says with a shrug. “A couple of students were out with a stomach bug, which sucked, but I wasn’t hit by a dodgeball or basketball this time. That’s one good thing. But the PE teacher I share a classroom with was wearing sweatpants.”

“What’s wrong with those?” I cock a brow.

She lifts her darkening gaze. “They’re too distracting, especially when they’re paired with wild hair and devilish smirks.”

I fight one of those smirks right now, hiding behind my glass of Pinot Noir. “It sounds like the trouble I’m having with the perky English teacher I share a classroom with.”

“Oh?”

“She bends over a lot, and it’s hard not to picture leaving teeth marks in that ass. In fact, the first chance I got, I did just that.”

Her gulp is magnified by the silence of the night. “And what did you think?”

“All I can think about is doing it again,” I rasp and lean over for a wine-soaked kiss underneath the stars with the woman who’s completely taken over my body, mind, and soul.

It’s been an hour of talking and drinking, but we’re doing less of the latter now that both our glasses are empty. I should’ve brought the bottle out here with us. I had every intention of retrieving it from inside, but twenty minutes have passed, and I still haven’t moved.

I’m too hooked on Addie, and all we’re doing is talking about family and friends.

Such innocent topics are somehow far more interesting when she’s the one I’m chatting with. We could talk about rocks and I’d be captivated.

She curls her foot under her other knee and twists to fully face me, her glass abandoned on the table on the other side of her. “It’s wild that our dads know each other, right?”

“I had no idea, but it makes sense. Everyone around here knows one another.” I shrug. “Did you say your dad lives in Louisiana now?”

“Just outside of New Orleans in my stepmom’s hometown.”

“Do you get to see them much?”

“I used to visit a few times a year, but it’s been a while now since my last trip out there. He’s so busy with work, and I’ve had a lot going on too—I’m actually a lot like him with the routines and lists and organization.” She sighs as a smile teases her lips. “When I do visit, it’s always the best time. We go to Café du Monde for beignets and coffee, stroll through the French Quarter, and enjoy the museums. Once, we ran a marathon through the city together, and it was a blast. My stepmom made us matching shirts and cheered us on from the sidelines—she opted to ride her bike along our route instead of running.”

“She sounds supportive.”

“Very.” Addie nods, then snaps her fingers. “Another time, I met them in Pensacola for a beach trip, and we found some baby sea turtles. It’s all I could talk about for months, and my dad started calling me ‘sea turtle.’” She balances her chin in her palm as she rests her elbow on the chair. “We’ve made a lot of good memories since the divorce.”

“What ever happened with your parents?” I ask, but then I think better of it. “You don’t have to tell me. I don’t mean to overstep, but you saw my family. We hardly have any boundaries.”

“I want to share with you,” she says, and her tone is almost shy as she tucks her hands back into her lap. “If you can believe it, my mom wasn’t always the way she is now.”

“How do you mean?”

“For one, she was Mom and not Rain. She had a full-time job as a receptionist at a local dental office, and she and my dad were happy… until she saw a psychic during a girls’ trip with some of her friends right before I turned ten.”

“A psychic?”

Addie’s lips tighten into a frown. “One hour with a psychic, and my mother was a different person. She’d somehow been convinced that she needed to clear my father’s trust fund to make donations to various charities, and we should all become vegetarians. That we should all be closer to the earth. On my tenth birthday, she even tried to convince us to sell the house and travel the country in a van, where she’d educate me on the world by being one with it.”

“What did your father say?”

“He thought it was some kind of phase she’d grow out of. That maybe she was having her midlife crisis sooner than most people, but the phase took on a life of its own.”

“What do you mean?” I scoot to the edge of my seat and lean both elbows on my knees.

She twists her lips this way and that, pausing before she blows out a frustrated breath. “She sort of maxed out all their credit cards with donations to environmental charities and organizations. Her thought was that my father would have to pay one way or another, but what he did instead was serve her divorce papers.”

I swipe at the corners of my frowning lips.

“He stuck around in town and helped with our financials for a while, but eventually, Rain and I filed for bankruptcy. Dad made sure we kept the house, but then he packed up and moved to Louisiana, where he met Henrietta.” She offers a sad smile that cuts through me when she says, “He found his happy and never let go.”

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