Page 88 of More, Daddy
She waves me off, her blue eyes rolling up to the sky in her head. “My husband was the same way. When he realized that I was utterly and totally in love with him, and that hemayshare those feelings for me, he totally freaked. Did the whole thing where he calculates how old he’ll be at each of our then-hypothetical children’s ages. You know,I’ll be 100 when they graduate high school, thattype of stuff.”
I snicker. “As if the worst thing on planet Earth is having a dad with gray hair when you graduate.”
She smiles. “I know, right?” She swipes her hand down her thigh, smearing pink and red paint along her worse-for-wear sundress. Dropping her brush into a worn metal cup, she stretches out her hand to me. “I’m Dolly Gray. What’s your name?”
I smile. “I’m Briar Matthews. I’m a junior cheer coach at Bluebell High. I work as a teaching assistant right now. And now I do some subbing.” I pluck the perfect card from the bin and dig around in my purse for my cash.
Dolly bags my card and puts her feet up on a stool, rubbing her swollen belly. “Good card choice.”
I smile, counting out dimes and pennies to find the correct amount. “I’m sorry I totally just emotionally purged all over you.”
Dolly twirls a piece of honey hair around her finger with a smile. “I begged for it. I mean, how would we have known which card you needed without those details?”
I look around at the other booths at the market. “Can I ask you something?”
She rubs her belly as a little boy and an even smaller little girl run in, then out of her booth. She hollers after them, saying, “Make sure Honey has her sandals on, Bear!” Dolly refocuses on me. “What’s up, hon?”
“How’d he finally get over the whole age thing?” I ask.
“Truth is, the age thing is symbolic of fear.”
“Fear of what?”
She shrugs. “Everything. Being left. Being judged by others. Getting their heart broken. Changing their routine. Not being able to satisfy us. Not being able to keep us.” She shrugs again as if it’s so obvious, and plain to see. “Everything.”
I lick my lips, and finger the stack of sale cards. “So how’d he get over his fears?”
Dolly’s eyes find mine over the racks of cards, and her lips curl into a seductive and teasing smile. “Sex. Lots and lots of kinky, hot, freaky, passionate sex.”
I laugh, because she’s joking… right? “Seriously?”
Dolly sits up, plucking her paintbrush from her cup. Refocusing on her canvas, she lets out a heavy breath. “This baby is right on my bladder. It takes me a day to paint one card with how many breaks I need, I swear.” She adds detail to a melted sunset on her canvas, then faces me. “Oh, and I’m serious.” She pats her belly. “This is my third in less than three years. My husband has absolutely zero worries these days.” She winks, and a cluster of women approach her booth, asking for specific cards, handing her homemade baby gifts. I don’t talk to Dolly again, but I walk away from her booth with new resolve.
West is my man. I’m in love with him and I have the utmost faith and belief that he is also in love with me. He’s just stuck on all his fears.
He’s been ignoring me all week since the last time I saw him. He said we were over. He can consider last week a break. Come Monday, he’s going to be aware that we aren’t over.
We’ve barely fucking begun.
What a lotof people don’t know about Austin Reeves is that he’s a real goody-two-shoes. I mean, he once admitted to me that at parties, he dumps beers out in the bathroom sink and refills the cans with water so it looks like he’s drinking without actually having to drink. He told me his mom askedhim not to drink until he was twenty-one, and he didn’t want to lie to her.
Sweet, right?
But not the kind of sweet that makes you want to fuck. Luckily, Austin and I never made it that far. We got tripped up long before he made it to home base. Our relationship had devolved into something a lot like friendship around the one year mark, but our mutual desire to not be alone won out, and we stayed together for all of our senior year.
I don’t think we even kissed or held hands the last year we dated.
He stayed at my house a few times when my dad failed to call or come home—his parents trusted us to be alone together, and we never gave them a reason not to trust us. He laid on my floor, or slept in my bed next to me with our backs pressed together as we talked until we couldn’t hold our eyes open one moment longer.
Today, though, Austin is all I have eyes for.
Oh, also today? Football and cheer homecoming meeting, with everyone on the minutes, including the principal Leah Mitchell and the athletic director and trainer,West Dupont.
I tip my head onto Austin’s shoulder, and stroke my fingernails up the inside of his bicep, blinking up at him. “I’m so tired today, Aus. I was out way too much this weekend.” I stick my lip out in a pout and use that whiny, youthful voice that West likes his babygirl to use. Last time I used it, it got me bent over his couch.
Austin sticks his lip out, too. “Ahh, babe,” he says, using the term lovingly but without affection, which of course I’m aware of. He calls everyone babe, even Dallas, but judging by the look simmering on West’s face as he crosses and uncrosses his legs on the other side of the table, he doesn’tknow it’s commonplace for Austin to use token terms of affection in a trivial way.
West refuses to look at me, but the corner of his jaw twitches as he struggles to maintain his faux calm composure.
