Page 65 of Please, Sir

“It’s okay,” she promises. “I’ve been on the shot for the last six years. Never had a scare. We’re all good.” She continues eating her ice cream, but all I can focus on is the fact she just told me that my cum is dripping down her leg. That I filled her so full that I’m literally leaking from her, while she wears my robe and sits at my bar.

“What you just said is extremely hot and… I’m not used to hearing that stuff. It’s been so long.”

She nods, and I take a bite as she studies me. “Did you ever want to date? Obviously you’re a human so you had urges to have sex that you didn’t act on but was there ever anyone you wanted to date?”

I don’t have to think about this question at all. “No,” I answer easily.

“Never a dance instructor or school teacher or anything?” she prods, licking a string of creamy ice cream from the back of her spoon. My dick perks up.

“So the guy with the roses,” I start, and even though she was upset about her ex-boyfriend when she arrived, her energy has shifted. When I mention him, her face doesn’t flinch. “He’s insistent on not letting you go, huh?”

She nods. “It’s never going to happen. And when I say never, I don’t mean, never until he does x, y, and z to please me. I mean never. I mean I’d rather be single and have no kids and die alone than spend a single moment with Michael Rhodes.”

“Damn,” I say, slipping off the barstool to move around the kitchen, fixing us drinks. My eyes, though, never leave hers. “What happened?”

She takes her final spoonful as I hold up a bottle of wine. She nods and I pop the cork, filling two glasses. It’s differentfrom what we had at dinner, and I don’t know if it’s good or not because I drink beer. I bought the wine for this date.

“Well, I told you how he and I grew up together, right?” she says, swirling the Merlot around her glass by the stem.

I nod, taking a sip.

“My parents always really wanted me to be with Michael, so when we got together when we were just kids, I thought that I wanted that, because they made it seem like Michael was the only guy I should want. But even from the start, I just, I don’t know. The spark wasn’t there, but the comfort was. And when you’re young, being comfortable and trusting someone is a huge part of it, you know?”

I nod. “It’s a lot of it. You can’t go on dates, you don’t have your own money. Dating in the beginning is really about friendship.”

“Right,” she nods, sipping her wine again. Her blonde hair spills over her shoulders, and the fluorescent lights paired with the white terry robe, she’s glowing at my bar, and even if she weren’t talking, I couldn’t tear my eyes away if I wanted to. “Anyway, fast forward to us being together for like… eight years.” She sets her wine glass down and gets lost in the marble pattern on the floor for a moment and when her eyes come back to mine, they’re disoriented slightly. Kind of dazed. Rueful. “I can’t believe I’m twenty-four and eight of those twenty-four years were spent thinking about Michael.”

“Twenty-four,” I repeat, letting out a low whistle. “I’ve got some years on you, Riley Rivers.”

She dances her brows. “I know and I like it, sir,” she purrs, smirking over the edge of her wine glass. I love that a moment ago she was contemplative and now she’s flirting with me. I can only hope I’m able to bring her happiness that way always. I love her flirtatious little grin, and her coy wink.

“Well, so, you two were together eight years,” I start,continuing her story because I wanna know how this moron fumbled Riley so greatly that she would rather be alone than be with him. She mentioned an STD test, so I’m starting to wonder if he cheated. “Tell me what happened, if you want to.”

Her eyes hold mine a moment longer than usual, seriousness widening her pupils. “Okay,” she finally says, tracing the rim of her wineglass with the tip of her finger. “Well, I started to feel smothered in Willowdale. My parents and his parents were hanging out all the time, and I could never just go to my parents’ house and complain about my boyfriend never doing the dishes or like, using my car and not filling it back up with gas. It sounds dumb, but sometimes I just wanted to see my parents without his parents around. And he was always working. He works in marketing and pawned me off on our parents all the time when he skipped dinners for work obligations,” she says, tossing quotes around the word as if it was alleged.

“There was always some big account, something great coming next and then we’d finally spend more time together.” She chews at the inside of her cheek a minute before her eyes come to mine. “I used to think he took me for granted, because of all the years we had together as friends and family friends before we were a couple. But now, looking back, I don’t think it was that.”

“No?” I ask, envisioning the prick from her doorstep the other day.

She shakes her head. “No. I think he was just a dirtbag, plain and simple, and I think his parents know he’s a dirtbag. If they could match him with a good human like myself then he would look better. After we broke up, they gaslighted my parents into believing that he’s not the problem but that I’m actually the problem.” She takes a minute to sip her wine. “According to all of them, the reason he and I broke up wasn’t what he did but the way I interpreted it. And if I could just get my shit together and get on the same page as everyone, then Michael and I could be together again and everyone would be fine. They’re just waiting on stupid old Riley.”

I shake my head. “Fuck.”

She nods, her eyebrows raised. “You’re telling me.”

A moment of silence passes between us as we finish our wine. I get us glasses of water next, because we’ve both had a lot of wine in the last few hours without water. She sips hers after giving me a grateful smile.

“What did he do?”I finally ask, because the question has been burning my tongue for too long. “I respect that you may not be ready or you may not want to tell me.”

She sighs. “Well… like I was saying, I felt very limited in Willowdale. Stuck. And I felt… largely unsupported. I wanted to coach at Bluebell High. I became friends with Leah Mitchell after a district event a couple years ago, and we clicked professionally. She called me one day and told me a coaching position opened up, and told me that they needed a health teacher unafraid to teach the curriculum. It felt like the stars were aligning. I’d wanted to branch out and get some space and here was this job in Bluebell, falling right into my lap.”

“Did you and Michael live together?” I ask, trying to sort out how messy this breakup was.

She shakes her head. “No. And I thought we could stay together and I’d come home on weekends. I don’t know. I realize now that if you’re madly in love, weekends aren’t enough.” Her eyes lift from the counter and come to mine. “Weekends were more than enough with Michael, and I hate myself for knowing that and staying anyway. Almost like I deserved what happened."

“I don’t even know what happened, but I know you didn’t deserve it,” I tell her, tamping down the anger that threatens to erupt in my tone. I don’t like her taking blame for something that I’m sure isn’t hers to own. Her parents and her ex sound like complete fucking assholes.

“I told him about the job in Bluebell, and my idea to go long distance. He freaked out. He said I was trying to get away from him and then he said I could go if he came with me and I told him that I didn’t need his permission to go and that he wasn’t entitled to come. And that’s… that’s when it just… the situation kind of imploded.” She sips her water, but I think it’s more to buy time than to quench thirst, since she nibbles the inside of her cheek again, taking a long pause. I don’t push. I sit, and I wait.

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