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“I don’t like being reminded either.”
Yeah, so maybe I was being a little bit of a brat, for reasons unknown. I got a charge out of it, I guess. And if he wasn’t going to be around to charge me up after school the way I liked, why shouldn’t I take what I could get.
“Alright.” He nodded again, not giving me that smile I liked, giving me something a little more serious, and I guess I didn’t mind that so much either. “Well, if I see you doing what you’re supposed to be doing, I’ll know I don’t need to remind you anymore. But if you can’t follow the rules, I’m gonna have to remind you a little harder. So let’s see how it goes.”
“Remind me harder how?” I knew, obviously. But I wanted him to say it. I wanted him to do it right now, actually. Bend me over and smack the brat out of me, say I’d better get over to that fucking homework place after practice because I belonged with him after school, not fucking around on my own, ignoring him and getting into trouble.
“With a spanking,” he said— quiet, but still out loud— and I glanced around wide-eyed, not quite believing he’d actually said that word right here in the library. Not even in a sex way, either.
My back and my neck and my shoulders got hot, and I got edgy and angry and hard, and I wanted him to say it again. “For not eating a snack? That’s bullshit.”
He lifted his eyebrows a little, but didn’t call me out on… whatever it was I was doing. Just kept being reasonable. “All I’m asking you to do is eat a sandwich when you get home. A piece of fruit.Something. An after school snack doesn’t need to require this level of arguing. Eat, drink, homework. You know the rules and you know the consequences. The rest is up to you.”
“Doesn’t seem like any of it’s up to me,” I muttered.
“Well, you know how to make that stop,” he told me, picking up the cards and pulling off the rubber bands, cutting the deck in half, and holding half the stack out to me. “Say the word.”
“I’m not wasting my safeword on a fucking sandwich,” I muttered, snatching the note cards out of his hand, irrationally annoyed over… something.
He frowned and leaned forward. “You do understand that a safeword isn’t a one time thing. You can say it as many times as you want. It doesn’t wear out.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Yes.Iknow. I was… I don’t want to talk about this here.”
He nodded. “Okay. We don’t need to talk about it anymore at all. Unless I come home to a problem.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Being home alone after schoolwas a fucking non-issue. It was where most of my life happened, for fuck’s sake. And even if the occasional scary, unexpected thing popped up, even if lately home had been kind of a nightmare, for the most part it was as close as I got to quiet and calm. So it made no fucking sense that home alone after school atCaleb’shouse— where it was warmer and safer and nicer in every possible way— should put me at peak anxiety, but yeah.
Walking through the courtyard, letting myself into the building with the set of keys I wasn’t entirely sure I was supposed to have, jetting up to his apartment like I was scared I was being watched, had me sweaty and sick to my stomach by the time I got inside, gulping deep breaths and blowing out air and listening to how extremely fucking quiet it was.
I should have stayed after practice. Hit the weight room for awhile until my legs were shaking. I should have gone and hung out with Riggs or Walker or even Ellis, who was still trying to round guys up for drinking when I left the locker room. Should have blown this all off for some noise, because I was not feeling this empty bait-and-switch apartment at all.
Coach T was still in a garbage mood, still blaming everyone but Walker when he was throwing into the weeds, and doing anything right when he was this pissed off was impossible. After four seasons with him, I knew when I was killing myself just for my own ego, but I’d done it anyway, looking for some kind of satisfaction I never got.
I’d torn myself up, was covered in scrapes and soon-to-be bruises, and still had a heavy heartbeat, and no one was even here to clean me up or tell me what a good job I did at practice. Even though they didn’t have a clue the difference between a good practice and a bad one.
And okay, maybe I was fucking mad about it. Maybe IwantedCaleb at my practices, hanging around every day so everyone noticed. Maybe Iwantedthe whole school to know I was getting dicked down by The Beast. Or maybe I didn’t, and I was just tired and needy and horny and dramatic. I honestly couldn’t tell.
I dropped my bag in front of the couch, swiping my phone open to check the time. The walk home from practice was a joke, like it took longer to walk around the field and through the parking lot than it did to walk up Pekoe and around the corner. Could have been five-flat running, but I’d dragged ass instead, so it had probably taken ten, but it was still only 5:45.
Normally, I’d have been nervous getting home this early, but there was nothing to be nervous about here. Not gonna lie, something about that put me on edge, and yeah, cool, irony, but whatever.
I checked my texts, still wincing every time I did, always expecting one from my mom, and still getting dead ass silence instead, not that I cared. Not that she cared, obviously.
Some new shark gifs in the team group chat, and trash talk about Ollie Prep that was starting to sound more and more like empty swagger. I reread the text Caleb had sent while I was at practice that saidSee you at 6:30, start your homework and eat something.
My stomach growled, agreeing, and I stared at the bowl of apples on the table. All I had to do was grab one. I didn’t have to cut it up or use a plate, I could just eat it and then wrap the core up in a napkin and shove it deep in the trash and space out the rest of the apples and no one would ever know.
Which… was not the point of eating something that someone told you to eat. I realized that. I just had habits that were cemented in, and covering up the fact that I existed in case someone remembered and got mad about it was a big one. Plus, who the fuck was he to tell me I had to eat something. Not everyone was even hungry after school, and if he wasn’t even going to be here tomakeme eat it, why the fuck should I?
Anyway, I’d lost my fucking appetite. That always seemed to be true and not true at the same time.
I took my eyes off the apples and looked at the kitchen table instead. I’d spent my whole life doing homework on my lap, wishing for a desk or a dining room, thinking if I just had enough space to spread out and see everything, my brain would be less jumbled up. And yesterday when he’d sat me down to take that practice test, and again later to do Algebra and history, I’d found out— again— that having one simple thing that everyone else seemed to have really did make all the fucking difference. A table and a snack and someone sitting with me to make sure I focused and got stuff done, suddenly I was somebody else.
But whoever that was was gone now.
His kitchen table was big enough to hold a month’s worth of homework. But I didn’t feel like doing any.
