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Sometime after three at night, Charlotte fell asleep beneath the soft down comforter, stretched thin and naked and still quivering with lust. The last image in her brain was that of Quentin, telling her it could never happen again.
Her heart told a different story.
9
Quentin couldn’t sleep when Charlotte left his apartment that night. His skin emanated her gorgeous scent, making his cock rise up beneath his sheets. The smoothness of her skin, her gorgeous, bouncing breasts, her thin, taut waist had all been there, in the palm of his hand, literally bowing to his every whim.
And he couldn’t have her again. He’d drawn the line in the sand. It had to be over between them. He couldn’t fuck up the delicate balance of the office, just to bend her over his office desk and part the achingly gorgeous lips of her pussy and dive, headfirst, into her.
That had been the old Quentin. The Quentin who’d ruined relationship after relationship. The Quentin who didn’t have a little girl to care for three or four days during the week, depending on her mother’s schedule. The Quentin who hadn’t brought MMM from the trenches and into the limelight, making it one of the top-tier music magazines of the current landscape. He was an editor. He was serious. He wasn’t cocaine-addled and sex-addicted. Not anymore.
And Charlotte had been a momentary weakness, a slight stain on his otherwise incredibly clean career.
His alarm clock blared out just after six, forcing his legs to the side of the bed. He leaned heavily against the palms of his hands, his nails dipping into his skin. Jesus, he was tired. When he’d been twenty-five, he’d once spent an entire week awake, hunting drugs and chicks, fucking when he felt too fatigued and taking shots to boost his energy. And he hadn’t collapsed at the end of it either, like some kind of medical invalid. He’d slept a hard six hours and then he’d gone at it again, like a dog. Constantly chewing the life out of his surroundings.
But now, with less than an hour or two of sleep, his thirty-six-year-old body felt fatigued and strung-out.
He rose, finally, and scrubbed at his naked form in the shower, fighting back his bad boy urges and trying to cleanse himself, mold himself back into the man he’d become. Not the man he yearned to be again.
Dressing in a black suit jacket and dark jeans, he bolted toward the kitchen, rustling together a small breakfast for Morgan. He knocked on her door with two sharp kicks of his knuckles and then heard her cry out.
“All right, Daddy! I’m coming!”
She didn’t sound exasperated, or angry, or weighted. She sounded ready to face the day.
“I set out your clothes for you. Do you see them?” he called.
“I don’t like this dress!” she cried back, through the door. “It’s too pink.”
“Look in your closet, then,” he answered, cracking the door open. He caught a view of his pajama-clad daughter’s shadow, rubbing at her eyes. “Just pick a different shirt.”
“Oh, I want to wear the Iggy Pop shirt,” Morgan said, leaping toward her wardrobe. She burst open the top drawer, digging through the perfectly aligned shirts, most of which were band-related.
“You can’t dress her like this,” her mom, Kate, had said once. “She’s going to grow up and do a ton of drugs.”
“Just because she knows who Iggy Pop and Nirvana are?” Quentin had asked, incredulous. “That’s culture, Kate. Or maybe you somehow forgot your roots, as well. I seem to remember you in the front row of many, many of my shows…”
This had, of course, pissed her off. The Iggy Pop shirt had stayed in the collection, along with the other band ones. And Morgan had become the “cool” kid at school—the one who talked lovingly about Kurt Cobain and Woodstock and music-related memories that she couldn’t possibly comprehend. And it would only get more interesting as she grew older.
“Shut the door, Dad,” Morgan cried then. “I want to get dressed.”
“Oh.” Lost in a reverie, Quentin wandered back to the kitchen and filled a bowl of cereal for himself, crunching at the sugar-laden shit and trying to raise his heavy eyelids. Eventually, Morgan joined him and poured a bit of milk into her bowl. She crunched sweetly, using the teeth she had left, and didn’t bother him with chitchat. She knew he didn’t take kindly to it in the morning. She recognized his somber mood.
Together, Quentin and Morgan packed her a quick, turkey sandwich with crunchy lettuce and a bag of Lays potato chips.
“Mom never lets me have chips,” Morgan whispered somberly, her eyes lowering. “She says they’re fatty.”
“Well, your mom has never gained a lick of weight in her life. So, I suppose she knows what she’s doing.” Quentin sighed heavily, zipping the lunchbox closed. He passed it to his daughter, ruffling her blond hair. “But in my opinion, a few chips every day won’t kill you. They won’t even make you fat.”
