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He snorted, taking a too-big bite from his sandwich so he had something to do with his mouth.Everyone should have such problems, he could hear his younger brother saying. If he bothered to call his younger brother, which he wouldn’t, he was still annoyed with the prick for skipping their mother’s birthday, so Ilan had no choice but to go to Arizona himself. Ari could probably get away with murder if he wanted to.
Rachel texted again.
Ilan swallowed the bite of his sandwich a little too hard and coughed.
He really hadn’t meant to go over to Abigail’s house and rub one out. He still wasn’t sure how that had happened, to be honest. He’d gone over there because he wanted to talk to her about her concerns about the development. He really had. But somehow, they’d ended up with their hands down each other’s pants, and what, he was going to say no when a beautiful woman wanted to wrap her hand around his dick?
He wasn’t that good a guy.
He hated that every encounter they had felt like a dare.
It was a competition he didn’t remember signing up for. A marathon with miles marked by orgasms. It wasn’t an awful way to go, he reasoned, but there had to be another way. A way that didn’t end with him feeling like he should apologize to someone for… what, exactly? He wasn’t doing anything wrong, it wasn’t that it was more—
His phone went off again, and this time he cursed out loud. Rachel was getting even more brazen. The banner for this text message let him know it had an image attached and the tiny thumbnail of the image was very clearly a naked breast. He sighed.
He knew next to nothing about Abigail Meyer, at least not adult Abigail Meyer. He seemed to remember as a kid she really liked to slather grape jelly on graham crackers, which was an odd thing to remember, but most of his religious school memories were that disjointed. Well, he knew all sorts of ways she liked to cum. He knew what sounds she made just before, during, and after.
But did he know what was most important to her? Did he know what her most re-watched tv show was on her fucking Netflix queue?
No. And that was how she wanted it.
Same with Rachel. Their relationship had been complicated from the beginning. She was separated from her shmuck of a husband, and everybody who knew the situation knew she would do just about anything for a divorce, but the guy refused to give her one. So officially they were still together. Even to their kids, which meant that even though they both dated other people they did it discreetly.
Ilan knew that going into it, and at the time it hadn’t seemed like a bad thing. He could be respectful. And he did feel bad for her. It was a shitty situation.
But that had been two years ago.
He hadn’t intended to have a two-year relationship that was for all intents and purposes a secret, but that’s what happened. He sucked it up because he told himself he was a standup guy, and Rachel wasn’t keeping him secret because she wanted to. Or at least, that’s what he’d believed until the day he overheard her telling her best friend she had to go because she had to see her “cumberjack”.
That hadn’t been the end, but it had been the beginning of him having a problem with the situation. Then, one day Simcha fucking Hallerman had cornered him at a bar. She’d had a few, sure, and he was willing to let it go at that. But then Simcha made it very clear he should be flattered, and also into it, because this is just what he did, right? Pleasure bored housewives? She’d done everything but offer to pay for his time. He supposed he could have just laughed it off. He hadn’t been prepared for the feelings of humiliation and shame that gripped him.
That was when he decided he and Rachel were through.
The fight had not been his finest moment, and he had acknowledged he was probably being a macho tool. But he stood by what he said. They were done. He wasn’t going to stand around and let her and her friends think it was perfectly acceptable to treat him like a living, breathing, sex doll. Maybe he wanted to go on dates where people saw them and knew they were in an actual relationship once and a while.
Maybe he wouldn’t be annoyed if Abi let him kiss her hello. Or goodbye. Or just fucking because.
Was it so much to ask? Was it so much to expect?
His phone dinged again. He sighed. It was going to be a long night.
* * *
Abi was curled in the overstuffed chair on her sun porch, Latke cuddled on her shoulder, and Applesauce snuffling around in her lap, as she responded to emails. The dinner with Leah was great, dinner at Leah’s house was always great, but she shouldn’t have taken the time away. She should have jumped straight into emails when she got home from school. She was going to be up until God-knew-when.
An email from Esther Cantor caught her eye and she was immediately tense. Esther was that teacher. The one she was praying would just retire already. The one she’d been having problems with since she took the job as principal. The one that just… didn’t get it. She was like the mothers who thought preschool teaching was glorified babysitting and any old thing would do as long as it had a catchy tune and the graphics were cute.
Esther was the reason Abi adopted Latke and Applesauce in the first place.
This year, Esther’s brilliant idea (that she told no one about until the day she appeared with it) was to have a class pet. Well, multiple class pets. Originally, there were three guinea pigs:Latke, a stinking cute trickster with long hair and twinkling eyes, who liked to get right up into things; Applesauce, a regular-haired guinea pig, who also liked to get curious, but wasn’t quite as capricious as her brother; and Sour Cream. Poor Cream.
First, the indignity of calling him SOUR Cream in the first place…
Abi got it: it was cute, and there was a theme. But really? Sour? There was nothing sour about that little guy. He was squiggly and had just as much long hair as Latke. But he really, really didn’t do well with a bunch of screaming three-year-olds. The poor thing developed a kind of anxiety disorder that started as hair loss. He stopped eating. He sat in the cage and just shook. Or chewed the cage bars.
Abi was still castigating herself for not noticing more quickly.
But it was ridiculous to hear that a grown woman—one old enough for retirement—who could adopt three living creatures wouldn’t recognize when one of them was suffering and—Abi didn’t know—do something about it.
