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“Promise?” Morgan asked.
Great. Now, her mother was making her dislike her own body. Quentin formed several half-thought messages he could write to Kate when he arrived at the office, most of which worked along the theme of: “Don’t fuck her up and make her like you.”
But, of course, he’d appreciated Kate once. Maybe he’d even loved her. He’d certainly married her, in a flurry of drug-addled decisions and manic days. And according to the spread they’d recently had about him in a lifestyle magazine, he and Kate had been quite handsome looking that fateful day. Kate had worn a low-cut, lacey white dress, her tits poised to fall out at every minute, and her body bone-thin. Quentin had been rough-looking, tired, but with bright, animal eyes. His black hair had been longer, then, and falling in coils to his shoulders.
They’d been the very portrait of the rock star and the model, married young and partying wildly. And their divorce, in that sense, had followed the given course.
He walked Morgan to school, grateful that the sun peeked through the clouds and colored their faces. Morgan still gripped his hand, not embarrassed. She waved lovingly at passers-by, telling them chipper “good mornings” and immediately flashing smile after smile.
“How do you do it, little Morgan?” Quentin asked her, at the front step of her school. She clung to her piano books, gazing up at him, confusion clouding her eyes. “How do you stay so happy all the time?”
Morgan cackled with laughter, showing the darkness where her tooth used to be. “Daddy, don’t be dumb.”
Suddenly, a boy wearing overalls and a girl with a bright blue dress padded past, grabbing onto Morgan and springing her toward their classroom. Morgan cried back in shock and giggling surprise, “Daddy, I’ll see you soon! Love you!”
Quentin stretched his palm flat in a final wave, feeling the strings of his heart yank. Another parent, a woman named Melanie, stood beside him, watching the three children run wildly. She shrugged her too-thin shoulders, so reminiscent of Kate. “They have so much more energy than me in the morning,” she said, stretching out a wide smile.
“If only they could bottle it. I’d buy it, and pay more than any drug.” He paused, hoping he hadn’t gone too far—alluding to his past. “I think I’m going to go sleep at the office,” Quentin joked, trying to lighten the mood as he turned toward the sidewalk.
“Or just run coffee through an IV till nightfall,” Melanie said, waving as he left her behind.
The other parents always gave him the jitters, making him feel incompatible to the role of “father.” He’d packed a lackluster lunch; he’d allowed his daughter to wear an Iggy Pop shirt to school. Once Kate got wind of the chip and Iggy Pop combo, she’d probably grumble at him for several weeks, asking if she could really “trust him” around their child.
But the girl was happy. Happier than he’d ever been, he was sure. And didn’t that mean everything?
Quentin took a taxi to the office, arriving just after seven-fifteen and taking the elevator to the 26th floor. He was the first in his office, which was still crisp and fresh after the janitorial staff’s cleaning the night before. Papers were aligned neatly on desks; pencils and pens poked, rag-tag, from tiny holders. Even Maggie’s desk, a general tornado-zone, had been straightened and ordered.
Sighing, Quentin reminded himself that this world of responsibility, of magazine spreads, of pencils and pens, was his world, now. Not the other one. The one with Charlotte, stretched barren in front of him, crying out for his cock. No.
Quentin began to work at his desk, burrowing himself deep in magazine spreads and trying to build the interview he’d conducted the previous day into some kind of hard-hitting story. “Old band makes good again,” that sort of thing. In reality, he felt horrible for them and their inability to move on, while still feeling jealousy bleed through him. They wouldn’t have thought twice about fucking Charlotte, regardless of her position in their lives. They would have bragged about it and moved on.
But in reality, meeting and fucking Charlotte had been the most exciting part of his life in the past several years, especially since he hadn’t allowed himself to even look at other interns in the past. He’d never felt this kind of spark before. It had ignited a powerful force within him, something that forced him to remember his wild, bad boy side. He hadn’t always been a father, packing lunches and making small talk at the entrance of the school. No. Fuck no.
Suddenly, someone banged at his door. He lurched his head up from the magazine spreads, realizing he’d been in a reverie for the past fifteen minutes, without making a single edit.
He cleared his throat. “Come in.”
