Page 97 of Comfort Me, Daddy

He turned around and I drank him in, Breakfast Beast, cooking in his pajamas, looking sexy as hell. “Making your favorite,” he told me, like it was obvious, and I guess it was because yeah, I knew those ingredients, knew those smells. Knew the one little nugget of information I’d given him that he ran with all the way to the end zone, and how did you not lose it for a guy like that, seriously?

“Spaghetti for breakfast? You’re fucking crazy.” My stomach rumbled though, thinking he was actually a goddamn genius, not caring what time it was, and I licked my lips, watching the sauce bubble.

“It’s a special day, you deserve a special breakfast to get you going.” It wasn’t his low down don’t-fucking-argue-with-me voice, but I didn’t feel like arguing anyway. Didn’t even feel like being a smart ass and sayingI know something else that could get me going. I felt like eating a pound of spaghetti for breakfast. Carbo loading. Coach T would be all about it.

“Is there garlic bread?” was what I finally asked him.

He grinned. “In the freezer. Grab it for me.”

I shuffled over to the refrigerator, reaching for the freezer handle, when I noticed the magnets on the door all cleared off to the sides, and GOOD LUCK LOGAN spelled out across the center. Except one of the Os in GOOD was a Q, because there still weren’t enough magnets.

I read it a dozen times until my stomach felt warm and full without eating anything.

“Thanks,” I said, swallowing down too many emotions for this early in the morning.

“You don’t really need luck,” he told me, sliding a cookie pan onto the counter, taking the garlic bread from me. “You’re very smart and beyond prepared. I know you’re going to do great.”

“Overselling it a little,” I muttered.

“You’re gonna do great,” he repeated, wrapping his arms around me, kissing my neck, making me feel all warm and weird and garlicky, and I sighed. This was some full on domestic bullshit, and I was here for it.

Whatever he served up, any time of day, I was here for it all.

* * *

“Are you okay?”Caleb asked me when I stiff-legged over to the table in the library for our final study hall. Not gonna lie, I was feeling a little nostalgic about it.

I was also feeling hella fucking sore. Practice had caught up with me a little this week. My legs hurt and my arms hurt, and my abs and ribs, and yeah, okay, my ass was a little torn up too. I was just feeling like one big ache at the moment to be real about it.

Truly though, every time I saw him I fucking one upped like a video game, my shoulders loosening up and my blood flowing a little quicker.

“I could use a fucking rub down,” I admitted, easing into the chair and stretching my legs out. “Or a rub off. Or a rub out. Whatever you can manage under the table.”

He didn’t laugh at my stupid jokes, and I didn’t really blame him, but his worry face made me feel bad. I kept forgetting he didn’t know the difference between me complaining about being practice-sore and actually being in pain. No-sports-playing motherfucker.

“Really, I’m fine,” I assured him. “Just been a long fucking week. Hump day practice is a beatdown but usually Thursday’s a walkthrough. Yesterday we did full pads though. I’m just sore. But we’ll ring up Ollie tonight and I’ll recover tomorrow. You know, assuming I pass and play.”

“You’ll pass,” he told me. “But you realize I understood like… none of the rest of that.”

“After this test, we’ll start working on your football vocab,” I told him, stretching my right arm across my chest and then doing it again with my left when I saw how much he enjoyed watching it. “For now the rubbing part is really all I’m worried about you understanding.”

He smirked and leaned forward, and then his eyes flicked to something behind me and he leaned back. I turned in my chair and saw Jen Mason heading over to our table. She was one of Ally’s friends, total valedictorian vibe, one of those people born an adult, who volunteered for front desk aid during study hall because she liked it, not to suck up. She was always nice enough to me, but I can’t say I was thrilled to see her when she held a folded yellow office slip out toward me.

I’d been handed enough of those to know exactly what it was, and I looked up at her and then across the table to Caleb. This was literally the only week of my life maybe that I hadn’t done something I could potentially get detention for.

“What is that?” I asked her, afraid to reach out and take it. The only thing I could think was somehow I’d landed on AP early, like maybe Mendleton had recounted my test scores or something and all this studying wasn’t even worth it.

She darted her head around, suspicious, like someone might be listening, whipping her long red hair side to side fast enough I had to pull back not to get a face full of it. Then she bent down close and slid the paper across the table at me while she leaned into my ear. “Your mom’s in the office,” she whispered.

I don’t know what my face looked like,but I felt like the blood rushed out of me in one giant trapdoor gush, like I was literally bleeding from my throat or something. I felt pale and dizzy and extremely fucking overdramatic, but all I could imagine was my mom sitting there in Mr. York’s office in fairy wings and glitter, bugging the fuck out.

“Thanks,” I told her, sounding normal somehow, and Jen nodded in that sort of super serious way she had, like office aid work was so wildly important, and marched away, and I sat there tapping the office slip on the table a thousand times a minute, trying to imagine any scenario where this wasn’t going to blow up in my face, but there wasn’t one.

Caleb reached across the table and stilled the tapping, covering my shaking hand with his giant one. “You want me to go with you?” he asked me, and I stared at him.

Hard for me to believe or admit, but I wanted him to go with me more than anything. Well, mostly I wanted to not go at all, for this to not be happening, to not have a mom who’d show up at school and obviously scare the crap out of the office aid they sent to tell me about it. But we were in reality or whatever, and I wanted him with me. My boyfriend, my daddy, my fucking… friend, I guess. Somebody who understood how much this sucked. Except he didn’t understand, not really. I let him see what I wanted him to see but this… I didn’t want him seeing this.

I pulled myself together and that was a rougher job than I expected. All the parts of me that were built for letting shit roll off my back, that were trained to take it and ignore it and deal with it, they were just practically gone, and I could feel those gaps in my armor big time, leaving all kinds of room to get jabbed and poked and clawed at until I bled out. How the hell could I lose all my asshole independence in just a few days of sleeping with his arms wrapped around me?

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