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Mr. Rushmore sets me down onto the grass gently with a slight smile that’s so tender I could weep. “All right, precious?”
If he hadn’t taken my breath away, I’d have to laugh. He’s looking at me in precisely the way the director has been trying to compel the actor playing Freddy—the character with a crush on Eliza—to look at me on stage for months. Rushmore is looking at me with Freddy feelings. Maybe they should have cast him.
Except he’s not acting. I don’t understand it. He doesn’t even know me, but he’s looking at me like I’ve changed his entire life.
His own daughter Ridley has known me since kindergarten, but half the time she barely remembers we’re on the same team.
This is so strange, I think to myself.
He bends and picks up the bouquets that tumbled to the ground. As I take them with both arms, his hand brushes against the back of my hand that grips them from underneath. An undeniable heat prickles my skin. The energy in his touch crackles with an unmistakable charisma. In fact, it radiates off him from head to toe.
You know how people say certain politicians have a way of making you feel like you’re the only person in the room with them, even at a crowded event? That. That is what he’s doing to me right now.
Rushmore’s hand lingers and it’s not an accidental brushing of skin against skin. He somehow has loaded this touch, this caress invisible to the rest of the world, with such pleasure that I gasp. My mouth goes dry.
This is without a doubt the wildest moment of my life.
I’ve never felt attracted to anyone with silver in his beard and at his temples. But Rushmore is churning something up inside me that makes me want to explore this pleasure some more. The thought astounds me. Mr. Rushmore has never taken up any real estate in my teenage brain. Any crushes or fantasies I might have entertained have been always focused on boys I know.
But now, with our hands touching and our eyes locked…I get it. He’s got something women want. Something I want, which boys my own age do not possess.
I blush and back away, repeating “thank you” to him. I nervously ascend the stairs at the side of the stage and take my final bows with the rest of the cast, keeping a smile on my face even though my whole being is shaken.
The encounter probably lasted less than two seconds, but I know already that the heat radiating through my body in the wake of this confounding moment will stay with me for days to come.
4
Rushmore
I sip my single malt alone on my deck, mercifully separated from mosquitoes by a mesh screen.
Searching the internet for information about Hunter Rydell may not be the wisest move on my part. I’ll have to be discreet. I don’t want to ruin Hunter’s senior year with rumors and innuendo, though I should have thought of that before giving her flowers. And before breaking her fall while gazing at her like a lovestruck teenager.
I also have my daughter Ridley to think about. She will no doubt lose her mind at the first hint that her father has an interest in a relationship with someone her age.
The house is quiet; Ridley must still be out with her friends. She doesn’t stay out this late when she’s bunking with her mother. I suppose this is exhibit A in the warehouse full of evidence that I’m too permissive of a parent.
I sigh and down the whiskey. Bianca, my ex, would have a field day, wouldn’t she? Probably use her sway with the PTA and the headmistress to have me ejected from the school board if she knew I’m crushing on student. A Greenbridge student.
The school seems to overlap every area of our lives. But this kind of overlap? The school’s biggest benefactor and board president dating a student? Likely no amount of money for the theater arts program or the robotics team would make this kind of scandal go away. Am I willing to make these kinds of sacrifices for a woman I don’t even know?
Slow your roll, old man. No scandals yet. Nothing unseemly about me giving my phone number to an 18-year-old woman, after all.
Worrisome? For some people, I suppose.
Will it hurt anybody? As it’s nobody’s business but mine, I don’t see how.
I brush my fingers over her cast photo in the playbill for the seventeenth time tonight. She’s grinning sweetly in the professional headshot, her pouty lips begging to be kissed.
I’ll have to strike a delicate balance to protect her from ridicule. Hell, I don’t know her parents; they might kick her out of the house over this. I’ve seen it happen for much more trivial reasons.
The conflict is not lost on me. The best thing I can do to protect her is to leave her alone. But the thought of that only makes me need her all the more.
5
Hunter
Addie fingers the petals on the enormous bouquet of pink roses that I’ve plopped on the kitchen island.
