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I can safely say I’ve never in my life been five seconds away from riding the cock of a stranger approximately two hours after meeting him. I’m sure tomorrow, I’ll feel differently about the situation. Regret it, probably.
But tonight?
Tonight, I’m going to enjoy being the type of person who rides the cock of a stranger approximately two hours after meeting him, especially when the stranger very clearly knows exactly what he’s doing.
“Fuck, baby,” the man whose name I don’t even know rasps. Teeth scrape my nipple before biting a path upward, unsatisfied until they’ve caught my bottom lip between them. “You sure you wanna do this?”
Am I sure I want the beautiful, funny, undeniably cocky but very charming man to keep touching me with utter confidence and finesse? “Yes.”
I’ve always been one to find smirks more smarmy than sexy but when this guy flashes me his? I find myself squirming with a little more ferocity.
His grip on my waist tightens, trying to hold me in place, and I still. Not because of his hands, though. It’s the grimace curling his lip that freezes me in place, the way one arm suddenly slackens to hang limply at his side.
“Are you hurt or something?”
“No.” His bullshit denial is followed by a wince. “Just a sore shoulder.”
Keeping that in mind, I’m careful as I recline the passenger seat of my car as far back it’ll go, gentle as I push him to lie back. “Guess I’ll just have to do all the work.”
* * *
In my decade-long stint as a formerly teen, perpetually single mom, I’ve accomplished a lot of things. Got my GED while nursing a colicky baby. Struggled through a teaching degree while keeping a whole ass child alive. Worked my ass off to provide a good, stable life for me and my little guy.
The ability to get us places on time, though, is something I’ve yet to master.
“August Lane, I swear to freaking God.”
My groaned holler is met with furious footsteps as my son thunders around the apartment, yelling back, “Coming!”
Uh-huh. I’ve heard that before—at least three times in the last ten minutes. I wish I could say he inherited his complete lack of punctuality from his father but sadly, that’s all me.
When creaking sounds in the hallway, I pause scraping old cat food out of the vomit-green ceramic dish August made when he was eight. I detest the thing, and it certainly doesn’t go with the other decor in my sister’s sleek apartment, but throwing away anything August made is akin to chopping off a limb for me, and the furball slinking around my calves refuses to eat from anything else. “Don’t bother coming down here if you don’t have your baseball stuff.”
A pause. A sigh. A smile on my face as August momentarily retreats. When he stomps into the kitchen a minute later, mussed hair and rumpled outfit screaming‘someone slept through their alarm this morning,’he pats the loaded duffel bag hanging off his shoulder pointedly. “Got it.”
“Good.” God knows I don’t want to give the Mommy Squad any more fuel for their Sunday Lane Hate Campaign than my mere existence already does.
Even after all these years, it never gets easier. Being pegged as the nanny or the aunt or the big sister rather than the mom. The slow mental calculations when I set them straight. The tight-lipped smiles and thinly veiled judgment. I hoped it would be different this time but all it took was our very first day at Sun Valley Elementary to prove my hope was in vain.
Very quickly, it became clear that I didn’t blend in with the school’s particular brand of parent, or teacher. A brightly-striped cardigan layered over denim overalls, two artfully messy buns secured at my nape, the platform Converse August scrawled on with pink highlighter at some point in the last decade, none of them garnered me a great first impression amongst a sea of neat gray. The principal didn’t like me. The other teachers didn’t like me. The few parents I met didn’t like me either.
A couple weeks later, nothing has changed except I’ve resigned myself to my fate because it’s not about me. It doesn’t matter if the gaggle of perfect, pristine parents running the fucking PTA don’t like me. I just need their perfect, pristine children to like my kid.
He didn’t exactly have a great time in his last school. I’d never admit it to him but our big cross-country move had little to do with me wanting a fresh start, and everything to do with him needing one. Back home, he was one thing; his parents’ son. An—unwanted by one member of the party—accident. Here, he can be anything he wants.
And that, apparently, is the best U12 baseball player Sun Valley has ever seen.
“The new coach is gonna be there today,” August tells me for at least the hundredth time as he stoops to scratch Pickle’s fluffy head, his undeniable excitement setting something warm ablaze in my chest. Often do I relish in being blessed with a pretty quiet, lowkey kid but sometimes, I worry it’s not really him. That it’s a product of the environment he was raised in—the one I tried desperately to counteract—where being neither seen nor heard was the best course of action. So, it’s a relief when, every so often, he lets that bright spark in his personality shine through. “You know he used to play with the Chicago Wolves? He got drafted right out of college. Into theMajor Leagues,Mama.”
I do know that. All of that. I also know in approximately three seconds, he’s going to follow up by telling me how thatneverhappens, how he hopes it happens to him one day. Considering how often August lapses into this topic of conversation, I’d be a terrible mother for not knowing. Although, I might still be a little terrible; I’ve yet to Google the mysterious legend who’s going to be spending at least three afternoons a week with my kid. Cash, I think his name is.
Handing over the lunch I had the good sense to pack last night—a gourmet meal of last night’s leftover pasta bake and two of the muffins I stress-baked—one of which I plan on stealing—I wiggle my brows at my kid. “Maybe you bumped into him when we were there.”
“Yeah, right.” August snorts playfully but his eyes gain this dazed, dreamy quality, like he’s picturing what would’ve happened if we’d bumped into his hero during the first pitstop of our very long, detour-heavy road trip from Texas to California.
Cardiac arrest, probably.
Shaking it off, August thumps his shoulder against mine, an action that only serves to remind me that my eleven-year-old and I are almost the same height. “You’re gonna come and watch, right?”
