Page 78 of More, Daddy
We may be close, but she’s still my boss. As much as I want to tell her to get the fuck out and leave me to agonize over the twisted organ in my chest that I have the audacity to call a heart, I can’t.
“Ahh,” she says decidedly after a minute or so of us giving each other dead eyes. “It’s a woman.”
Fuck.
I shake my head, then scratch at the side of my jaw. “I need to get back to this.” I glance at my screen, which is devoid of anything. No browser tabs, no intranet, no gradebook, hell, I don’t even have a game of Solitaire going.
She nods to the award on my bureau, behind my desk. “You realize your Superior Youth Athletic Training Award is super shiny, right?” Leah releases her grip on my office door handle, and sits in one of the two seats across from my desk. “There’s nothing on your screen. So tell me her name, and if you don’t, I will 100% let my imagination run away with me, and then start spreading vicious rumors.”
I know she’s joking, and I also know this is her soft way of telling me she’s here if I need to talk. And I assume because I know all of that abouther, then she’ll know that I’m not a complete asshole when I say, “It’s my business, not yours.”
Another moment enduring her eyes on me, raking over the rumpled, untucked ends of my shirt, the way one of my boots covers my jeans and the other doesn’t, the dirty Cattleman I wore today instead of my nice suede hat, and my ruffled hair, uncombed and kinda greasy. My jaw is coated in stubble, and since she’s been in my office, I’ve caught no less than three yawns.
“If you need anything,” she says, getting to her feet. “Aside from a shower, a shave, and a laundromat. Seriously. You know I’m next door.”
I nod, and she leaves, and then I go back to sitting and stewing.
At three o’clock,I have to trudge across campus and do some training.
Work. Real work will take my mind off of this bullshit. I’ve been torturing myself since I found out, and all I want to do is stop thinking about this shit.
Stop thinking about her.
She said she’s in love with me three times last night. How can she be in love with me? She doesn’t even know me.
And yet… I fell in love with her. Except, no, it’s different for me. I really did fall in love with who I was talking to. I just didn’t have all the information, like the fact she is actually a teenager who graduated high school—the same high school I work at—last fucking year.
It’s absurd. It’s insane. It’s absolutely disgusting.
I cannot be attracted to someone ten plus years younger than me. I amnotattracted to younger women. I never have been.
I jerked off when I saw her body. That photo, that picture Itook of the one she sent, velvety curves on display, skin like porcelain, tits like the fucking Venus de Milo?—
“Mr. Dupont! What’s up!” a sweaty boy in a football jersey walks past, initiating a high five, which I do. I give him a nod, and duck into the training office.
Put it out of your head, West. None of it matters anymore.
Not even how fucking compatible we were sexually.
She was so good at being my loving girl, my baby.
Or, I don’t know,was she? Or was that all just acting, for my benefit, to make me fall for her? For me, all of it was real and that realization infuses my stomach with a fresh bout of nausea, causing me to grip the edge of the training table and tug my hat off, welcoming fresh air to my warm skin.
It was real for me.
I was ready to exist beneath the sun and in the light of the moon. I was ready to put a ring on her finger, even though it felt fast. Even though it was crazy.
It was crazy good. She was crazy perfect.
But she isn’t even who I thought she was, so I have to wonder, was any of it real? Or was I just her joke?
I don’t know, but I’m more grateful than ever when Tanner Colt walks in, a bag of melted ice on his collarbone. Finally, something that takes my mind off ofher.
“Letme just get you one more bag of ice, for the ride home. It’s hot out there, and your mom’s AC in the car is broken, right?” I ask Tanner as he sits up on the table, fitting his arm back through his shirt.
He shakes his head. “She got her AC fixed. But we don’t have an ice machine at home, so I’ll still take that bag, if you’ve got it.”
I hand him the bag, and we walk out together. After making sure he gets loaded up into his mom’s car, I head back to the training office.
