Page 110 of Mr. Charming

The words are barely out of her mouth before I’m turning my phone back toward me and pressing the FaceTime button. Her face lights up my screen, and there’s a little too much flesh to expect my dick not to perk up.

“Gorgeous,” I say.

A slight blush pinkens her cheeks. “Handsome.”

“This was a bad idea.” The urge inside me to flee my condo and cross the city to get to her apartment is almost impossible to control. “I want to be with you even worse now.”

“Me too. I kind of wanted to take your sister and mom to the hotel and have us go home together. Like old times.”

Relief washes through me that she wants the same thing as me. That we’re on the same page.

“What were you doing before I called?” I change the subject, needing to make sure I don’t actually ambush her and show up at her door. She’d let me in, even though she shouldn’t.

“I was writing in my journal.” She flashes it on screen.

“You still do that, huh?”

She flashes her pen, her fancy colored pen she always used when writing to her older self. Her grandma had dementia, and she’d written in journals that they would read to her. Tedi wants the same thing if it happens to her.

“I do. How about you?”

I nod. “Not as often, but sometimes. Gotta keep that shithead teenager up to date about our wins and our fuckups.”

Once I started therapy, my therapist thought it would be a good exercise for me to write to my younger self about what I’ve done and accomplished. He thought it was a way for me to forgive myself for the things I did in the past as well as work through some of the pain from my relationship with my father. It’s kind of worked, so I can’t say he was wrong, but at first it felt impossible to put pen to paper and write about how I felt.

“Your teenage self would love who he became.”

“You think?” I lean back with my arm under my head on my pillow. “I think he’d kick me in the nuts for losing you.”

“Well, then I guess senior citizen Tedi and young buck Tweetie would beat the shit out of both of us for what we allowed to happen.” She pauses, looking contemplative. “Your sister brought up a good point to me today.”

“Yeah?”

My sister is always giving advice when she’s not asked. She practically forced me to tell her everything that went down with Tedi. She was relentless in her calls and her visits. I blamed it on her divorce and needing a situation or person to fix since she couldn’t fix her own life. I’m not sure I would’ve made it through that dark time without her, though. I’m lucky to have Georgia, and I loved every time I looked into the stands and saw her and Tedi laughing together tonight. I’m not sure why my mom was sitting by Conor’s dad, but that’s a problem for another day.

“Your sister asked me when enough is enough. That maybe we need to stop punishing ourselves and just live. Stop overcomplicating things.”

“Don’t you just hate her and her free advice?”

Tedi laughs at my obvious joke. Georgia’s told me the same thing many times before, but it’s a hard thing to do.

“It’s the worst.” I watch her lie down and rest her head on her pillow.

“I wish I was next to you right now,” I say, feeling my dick swell under my sheets.

“What would you do, Tweetie?” Her voice is soft and seductive, so I tread about as lightly as I usually do. Which is to say, not at all.

“Ask you to blow me?”

She shakes her head, a smile teasing her lips.

“Before I can answer that, I need to see what you’re wearing. Will you show me?” I bring my hand down and stroke myself.

She pans the camera down her body.

“Slower,” I say, enjoying the cami tank top that’s snug against her bare tits, her nipples hard and poking against the fabric. The waistband is something plaid. I assume it’s flannel pants, but she surprises me with shorts that showcase her smooth legs. “You kill me, woman.”

She brings the camera up to her face again.

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