Page 7 of Bonus Daddy
It took effort not to wrinkle my nose at him. That wasn’t weird at all. Nope. Totally normal. Also normal? How red his cheeks were. Had he been watching me practice?
A fresh wave of mortification washed over me. I’d been facing the back wall, with my sizable ass in the air, and I’d spent the last thirty minutes falling out of handstands.
Heart thumping, feeling awkward, I took a big swig of water and shuffled toward the door I’d left propped open. I’d wanted to invite the breeze in, yet I’d also garnered confused stares from my new lawyer–slash–college sweetheart.
He ran a hand through his hair, discomfort radiating from him. Interesting. If anyone needed some time on the mat, it was Brian.
The tension in his shoulders flowed down his arms, past where his sleeves were rolled, the muscles in his forearms flexing. His skin was dotted with light freckles and brown hair with a reddish tint.
“Why?” I brought my water bottle to my mouth again, cringing at how unruly my hair must have looked.
He watched me with a confused frown.
I patted the messy bun on my head, certain the look had morphed from cute Instagram influencer to deranged raccoon over the course of my yoga practice.
“Why do you walk the cat?” I clarified.
“For exercise,” he replied, like it was the most natural answer in the world.
“For you or the cat?”
“The cat,” he said with an awkward laugh.
“It’s a large cat.”
“Comically large.”
His eyes darted away, and he ran his hand through his hair again. If I remembered correctly, it was one of his nervous tics. He wore the façade of a polished lawyer well, but beneath it, the working-class kid from Brooklyn I’d known all those years ago still existed. The guy who loved boxing and greasy pizza.
His auburn hair was darker and shorter than it had been back in college, and his face was leaner, his cheekbones more angular.
He filled out that dress shirt well, like he wasn’t the kind to skip a workout, no matter how heavy his caseload.
Shame flooded me, and on instinct, I laced my hands over my abdomen to hide the sliver of stomach between my sports bra and high-waisted pants. It was silly, really. He’d already seen my body. Dressed like this, all my curves and lumps were on full display. After giving birth to two kids, my hips were wider and my boobs way less perky. I’d worked hard to battle my insecurities these last few years, but standing in front of this gorgeous man, it was hard not to wish I still looked like the fresh-faced farm girl he’d met all those years ago. Before a toxic marriage and the loss of my parents had sucked the life out of me.
Back when I was young and wide-eyed and hopeful. When we’d walk around Castle Island eating one-dollar hot dogs and planning a beautiful future together.
He looked back down at the bored-looking cat. “I know. Getting out like this helps with the litter box situation. Plus it needs regular exercise or it gets depressed.”
I nodded, lips pressed together. “Cat depression…”
“Is a thing, sadly,” he explained. “Cal came home with this beast, and now it’s my feline overlord. I’m the one who feeds him, so he’s latched on to me.”
The navy blue harness with matching leash was pretty adorable, especially against the creature’s long gray and white fur.
“Is it a bobcat? I saw one at the Central Park Zoo when I took the girls there last year. That size and the super pointy ears are sus.”
“He’s a purebred Maine Coon,” Brian said. “Cal has his papers and everything. But he behaves more like he’s half dog, half face-eating leopard with a superiority complex.”
The exasperated look he gave the cat was pretty adorable.
“What’s its name?”
“Dammit,” he replied and I shot him a look.
“His legal name is Fuzzy Wuzzy Murphy, but he terrorizes me, so I call him Dammit.”
I gazed down at the cat, who, aside from enormous, looked harmful. “He looks like a Fuzzy,” I declared with a smile.
