by Max Monroe
I wanted more time to test the theory.
Which brought me to now.
The hours got long during the season for people like Winnie and me, people who had decisions to make and staff to organize past the point when the last player’s cleat left the field. I’d been doing this—putting in hours and hours after the sun went down—since I could remember, and I knew Winnie hadn’t exactly been relaxing in the tropics for weeks at a time.
So, tonight I hoped to find her before the hours bled into nothing and the time to do something other than work completely escaped. I wanted to change, and the first step toward that was to spend time with her—get to know her.
We hadn’t had time for much other than foreplay, fucking, and football, and my brain was finally starting to wonder what it was about her personality that kept me coming back for more. I knew why I craved her body, but I didn’t have the answers for the rest of my yearning. Prolonged attraction and downright affection for a specific woman and some newfound tolerance for kids? Honestly, I was really nothing more than a big ol’ bag of what the fuck these days.
As I neared the end of the hall, moments away from turning the corner into the one that led to her office, a buzzing started to build in my blood.
Anticipation or some form of psychosomatic indication that Winnie Winslow was near—it could really have been either one. Her back to me, she moved with grace, but not the kind that lacked a spark. She swayed and swooped like she had something hidden in each step. With the way I felt when I watched, I was starting to think it might be magic.
Her hair fell down her back like a sheet, covering a large portion of the plum color of her shirt, and a barely there wave had set in thanks to hard work and a little sweat.
I wonder if her skin tastes salty…if her pulse will thrum slow and steady or erratic like the buzz of a hummingbird’s wing while I suck softly on the vein in her throat.
“Winnie,” I called, eager to see her reaction to me and calm the one in my pants. We’d left on pretty good terms, and I felt pretty confident that I’d scored some points with the whole aiding-in-distracting-her-kid thing.
When Winnie turned and her nostrils flared more than her eyes, I decided maybe I shouldn’t have been so eager. And yet, even in the face of her distaste or disinterest or uncertainty—or whatever it was making the whites of her eyes get bigger and the plump of her cheeks hollow out—the scales tipped so far toward needing more time with her, with them, confusion felt like a distant memory. The Winslows were apparently like chips, as I was left completely unsatisfied with just a little of them.
“Busy?” I asked. She reached up to fidget with the ends of her hair, pulling a nonexistent piece out of her face—it was clipped back at the top—and shifting her gaze to the beyond boring pattern of tile on the ground.
It took a few seconds, but eventually, her shoulders relaxed and her eyes met mine again. “Just finishing up, actually.”
Fantastic.
“Come out to dinner with me,” I told her. I figured I had a better chance that way than if I asked her. It was one of those rarely practiced truths; people said no a hell of a lot less if you didn’t present them with an easy opportunity.
She looked down the hall to her closed office door, a door I knew concealed her daughter, who waited on her mom to be done. She was probably curing cancer or answering several unsolved meteorological quandaries, but no matter the math or science, she was, indeed, waiting for her mom to finish up.
She’s just doing it with style. I smiled at the thought.
Winnie’s eyes softened slightly at the change in my face, but they didn’t lose their edge completely.
Her expressions walked such a thin line, every smile only a heartbeat away from a frown, and every glare just moments away from ecstasy. So easily manipulated, I loved to see the way her face changed, and I often found myself playing with her just to get the chance.
Knowing exactly where the conversation was about to go and wanting her company badly enough not to care, I beat her to the punch.
“Lex too. I want to take you both.” I smiled and reached out to put my hand to her jaw, but I stopped when she looked hesitant. I tugged at the very end of a clump of hair instead. “Hell, I owe her dinner after how smart she made me look today. Players and coaches, everybody thought I taught her all that information.”
Laughter creased the very corners of her eyes, and she bit her lip, shrugging one sweater-covered shoulder. It was practically a turtleneck, the cowl covering nearly every inch of skin at her throat, but my mind wandered to the skin underneath as it moved and pulled, and suddenly, it seemed like the sexiest clothing ever made. Her wardrobe had been transitioning slowly along with the turn in the temperature, and I found there wasn’t ever something Winnie used to cover her body I didn’t like—except for the very obvious obstacle it presented when I tried to catch a glimpse of a whole lot of skin.
“She taught herself all that.”
“I know.”
“On a Wednesday.”
I smiled deeper.
“In an hour.”
I thought of the way Lexi constantly dug for information and imagined being the person who most often had to supply it. “She must keep you on your toes.”
She laughed and shook her head, the tension melting right out of her shoulders as we talked about her biggest accomplishment. “She’s easy. Far more mature than most kids, and looks the other way when I have to cheat and look up the answers to her questions on Google.”
I could picture it happening: Winnie, acclaimed doctor and brilliant mind, sneaking away to find the answers to questions posed by her six-year-old.
“That’s how I learned so much about Teen,” she went on.
“Ah. The clinical penis,” I said, remembering that day nearly two weeks ago. In some ways, it seemed longer. In others, it felt like no time had passed at all. I still wanted her with an intensity I couldn’t justify, and I still knew it was a bad idea.
The only difference now was that there was no stopping, no turning back—I couldn’t have if I’d tried.
“Dinner?” I prompted again. If I dropped it, so would she. I was going to have to be like a dog with a bone this time around.
“Wes…we’re fuck enemies,” she said, surprising me. I’d honestly thought we were coming to a blatantly opposite place. Apparently, my notions weren’t anything more than romantic propaganda pushed by a misinformed heart.
“Fuck enemies?” I asked with a sardonic laugh.
“Like fuck buddies without the friendship.”
Sharpness twisted my chest and squeezed at the bluntness of her words.
It took me a few seconds longer than I would have liked to calm my racing thoughts, but eventually, I focused on my most important truth: That wasn’t how I felt.
“Win,” I said. “Truthfully?”
She nodded tentatively, unsure of what I had to say but willing to hear it. She looked like she thought it would be callous—mean, even.
“I’d have to change a thousand things over to be your enemy.” Her breath left her in a surprised whoosh. “You and I are friends.”
“Wes…” She shifted on her feet, as though maybe she weren’t so sure.
“Maybe you could hate me,” I conceded. “But I could never not like you.”
“I don’t hate you,” she said with her mouth. Not even a little, she added with her big, honest eyes, and I finally relaxed. Her talk of being enemies was just that—talk. A mechanism to distance herself from a man whose every move screamed he needed it.
But my needs currently worked in opposition to my wants, and I’d never been that good at denying myself instant and frequent gratification.
“Good,” I told her, prompting again, “Dinner?”
Uncertainty haunted the dark depths at the centers of her eyes, but the pull she felt toward me, the same magnetism that made me ask, kept her from saying no.
“Okay. But it’s a school night, and Lex—”
/> “We’ll go to my restaurant,” I interrupted, too busy celebrating my victory to give any consideration to the fact that it was already eight o’clock—not that it would have changed anything if I had. I had to have their company. “In and out in record time, and if she’s a picky eater, the chef will make her anything, whether it’s on the menu or not.”
“You don’t have to worry about Lex and food. She eats just about anything. I’m the pickier one between the two of us.”
Something, some feeling deep in the pit of my stomach, told me she wasn’t just talking about food. Life and experience and a hell of a long time raising her daughter alone had taught her to be selective about everyone they welcomed into their lives. And she wasn’t sure I was worthy of it yet.
Neither am I.
But I wasn’t ready to say good-bye, so I used a word I couldn’t remember consciously using in years. “Please?”
She looked surprised at the word, and though she looked beautiful, I couldn’t feel anything other than disappointment. My mother had died giving birth to me, but I still suspected she’d have been disappointed in the way I’d treated people for the last several years—and I knew my father would have.
Even though I greatly respected nearly everyone, their backgrounds and unique outlook and successes, I hardly ever showed it.
And when I had demands, I usually demanded them. Maybe I needed to stock up on honey and give up a little bit of my vinegar.
“Okay. I’ll get Lexi.”
I smiled widely. “Good.”
“But you’re buying my dessert too.”
“Hey,” I teased. “I own the place. Something tells me I can make it happen.”
Winnie and Lex had been grateful for my help in avoiding taking the labyrinth of trains they would have normally taken to get home, and I was happy to have company on a journey I normally made all on my own. Just three weeks ago, I had been convinced I was most content with the opposite.
Like I said…big ol’ bag of what the fuck.
I drove nearly silently while they chatted, Winnie mostly asking specific questions in order to get Lexi talking a little more. It’d been a busy day, and according to what I had witnessed, that was one of the times she felt the least like talking.
And I couldn’t say I blamed her. I usually didn’t feel like it either. Why everyone thought every silence needed to be filled with chatter all the goddamn time was beyond me. Some of us were content to be quiet.
Still, this was a little different.
Winnie had finally shared with me that Lex had been diagnosed as high-functioning on the autistic spectrum—through an entirely unplanned conversation during postcoital supply-closet talk. I couldn’t be sure, but it kind of seemed like she’d just needed to get it out, and I’d been happy to listen. Granted, I’d still had my hand on her breast and probably would have been content to do just about anything. But in hindsight, I really was glad I’d listened—and that she’d trusted me enough to share it with me.
Apparently, an important part of Lex’s therapy was pushing her out of her comfort zone a little at a time. Kind of like stretching a muscle—if you worked her into it slowly, eventually all of the things that would be socially expected of her would come easily.
I was all for the success of the kid, I was by no means an expert on a child I’d spent time with three times at most, and I knew what they were doing was one of the reasons Lexi was able to talk to me as much as she was now, but I had a secret—I liked her like she was.
I like a kid. Huh. I’m just as shocked as you are.
After dropping my car off at my apartment garage, we walked the few blocks to BAD and occupied a table in the back.
It was pretty busy—good for business, so I couldn’t complain—but I could tell the noise and overall activity was starting to become a little too much for Lex. She was agitated and antsy, and both of those made Winnie more and more uncomfortable by the minute.
I frowned as I realized that she wasn’t reacting solely to Lexi’s discomfort, but also to the threat of mine.
She was obviously afraid I’d be bothered, and—shamefully—under any other circumstances, she probably would have been right.
I simply hadn’t had the experience with this kid or any other to understand. But everything I knew about Lex only made me want to know more—and I knew enough to know that anything seen as negative by someone else when it came to this kid, was something far deeper, and way further beyond her control than any of us could possibly understand.
An idea struck me.
I squeezed Winnie’s leg under the table—to touch her, to get her attention, and to fly under the young genius’s radar.
“I’ll be right back, okay?”
Winnie’s eyebrows drew together slightly, but she nodded, her cute black-frame reading glasses bobbing slightly on the bridge of her nose—apparently, she needed them to see the menu. “Okay.”
I scooted out of the booth and headed for my office here at the restaurant. Thatch liked to joke that I sure had a lot of offices for someone who never fucking worked—which was not true, of course. But according to Thatch, his version of the truth was always better.
I flipped on the switch and blinked at the bright light before rounding my desk and opening and slamming drawers quickly.
My manager, Amanda, a cute woman in her midtwenties with rainbow-colored hair, apparently noticed, peeking her head in with a knock on the metal doorframe. “What’s the commotion, boss man?”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, opening the last drawer and shouting a little in victory when I saw the old scientific calculator right on top.
Amanda raised her eyebrows and stepped back at the unexpected show of emotion.
“Don’t mind me,” I said as I waved her off.
She looked at me as though I were a mythical creature, the discrepancies born of my own habits, but I didn’t have the time or patience to address it.
Brushing past her, I gave a little wave and moved back toward the table where Winnie had Lex pulled close to her side and was speaking softly in her ear.
I slowed my step until it seemed like their moment was over and then sped back up to my normal pace.
“Hey, Lex,” I said. “Look what I found. I used this thing in college, but even then, I didn’t have half the brains you do.”
“What did you major in in college?” Winnie asked as Lex reached out to take the calculator and quickly occupied herself.
I settled back into my seat and smiled at having done something right. Lex was content, and now that she was, maybe Winnie would be at ease too.
When I glanced back to Winnie, she was looking at me with something else in her eye again, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“Electrical engineering. I’ve used it well, huh?”
Life was weird. I wouldn’t have predicted anything about my career—other than the restaurant. I’d known from a very young age that I wanted this, but it wasn’t about me. It was all about my mother.
Winnie laughed but shrugged. Made a show of looking around the packed restaurant. “You look like you’re doing all right to me.”
My gaze flicked between her and Lex. They put more questions in my mind than answers, but I knew one thing that was definite. I felt happier than I had in a long time.
When I met her eyes one last time, I added a wink.
Goddamn, Thatch would be proud.
“Right now, it looks that way to me too.”
“You need a fucking doula, Cass,” Georgia repeated for the fourth time since we’d sat down for lunch at a bistro not too far from the Mavericks’ stadium.
Every table that lined the exposed brick wall was filled with couples and families and people taking a midday break from work, but in our party, I was the only one who hadn’t taken the entire day.
Georgia claimed to be working from home, and Cassie made her own schedule. But Dean had flown the Brooks Media coop and trekked all the way from Manhattan just for this lunch d
ate in New Jersey. Apparently, he was filing it as an expense, citing sanity and happiness in the workplace.
I’d questioned if he thought that was a good idea, but he’d pretty much waved it off. “Kline Brooks isn’t going to say jack shit about a day date with his wife,” he’d said. I wasn’t quite so sure, but I wasn’t an expert by any means.
“For fluffernutter sake’s, Wheorgie!” Cassie screeched and slammed her palms down onto the table, a wild woman finally pushed over the edge. It took quick hands and reflexes on everyone’s part to prevent our water glasses from tipping over, but other than that, none of us batted an eye.
This had become the norm: Georgia constantly worrying about Cassie and the baby and fixating her neuroses on anything and everything pregnancy-related. I was concerned for everyone’s well-being when Georgia and Kline decided to start a family.
Seriously.
With the way she acted toward Cass’s pregnancy, you’d think Cass was actually her surrogate.
“I honestly don’t think Cass needs a doula,” I offered in hopes I could play Switzerland and stop a full-on catfight from breaking out. “She’s planning on having the baby in the hospital and—”
But Cassie had other plans, chiming in before I could finish my attempt to keep the peace.
“And I’m getting all the fudging drugs they will allow me to have. All of them. I want them to numb me from the neck down. I have no desire to feel this child shoot out of my vagina. I mean, have you seen the size of my husband? He’s huge. And I’m not just talking about his giant schlong. I mean, big hands, big feet, big fluffing head.” She pointed to her belly as evidence. “Look at me! No one should be this big at twenty-some-odd weeks pregnant with their first baby. If the size of my belly is any indication, the fudging doctor is going to need bridge cables to suture up the hole.”
Dean and I couldn’t not laugh at that, but Georgia stayed steadfast in her doula views.
“A doula can still help you even if you get an epidural.” She pleaded her case. “They’ll just be there to guide you through the rough parts, before you’re able to get an epidural.”