SWNOVELS Class Act: Chapter 5
house, the delicious scent of chicken roasting greeted me. I set my shoes on the rack by the door and made my way to the kitchen. It was already close to six. Practice went on far longer than I’d planned, but the boys were hungry for another win, and they’d pushed themselves this evening. They’d trained hard, and hopefully, they would see the reward for such dedication.
Teresa was checking the oven, but she turned and smiled when she saw me.
“No kiss?” She closed the oven and walked up to me, then ran her arms up my chest and twined them behind my neck. Her long black hair swung around her shoulders.
“Hell, yes, I’m just surprised to see you, honey.” I cupped her ass and pulled her closer to me, moaning when our lips met. It’d been a while since she slowed down long enough for me to enjoy her like this.
“Well,” she murmured when our lips parted, “someone’s in a naughty mood.”
“I sure am. When was the last time I came home to find you in the kitchen?”
I squeezed her ass, and she giggled. That’s my girl. This was the Teresa I’d met and fallen in love with. I loved the lawyer too, but she was harder to reach.
“How was your day?” she asked. “Mandy mentioned there was an incident with her friend. The new kid?”
“Yeah.” I dropped my hands from Teresa’s ass. “But I don’t want to talk about school. I’m home. How was your day?”
“Very good. Scored a big client today.” She returned her attention to the stove. “I’m thinking of Europe for a family vacation before Mandy goes off to college. What do you think?”
“Sounds great, but don’t you think spending the time at home with her would be better before she goes away?”
“She’s not going away, babe. It’s college.”
“You know what I mean. It’ll be just us.” And if Teresa worked and went on business trips as much as she did now, it would be just me.
“Think of all the fun we can have.”
I walked up behind her and circled my arms around her waist. “Or maybe… don’t you ever want to try for another baby?”
Teresa laughed and pushed my hands away. “Don’t even make jokes about that. I’m in my forties.”
“Why does it have to be a joke? Older women are having kids now. We always talked about having a big family, but we only have one kid. We always said we would have more when your career took off.”
“Babe, I’m at the pinnacle of my career.” She turned and took my hands. “Having a baby right now would slow me down. Think about all the freedom we’ll have with Mandy at college. Would you really want to have a baby disturbing our lives right now?”
I really would. Teresa was forty-two, but lots of women in their forties had babies, especially when they put their personal lives on hold so their careers didn’t suffer. But Teresa didn’t seem too enthusiastic about it. She kept giving me excuses whenever I’d brought the subject up before.
“Okay.” I stepped back.
“Honey—”
“No, it’s fine. It’s your body, so you get to choose what you do with it.”
“Can we discuss this another time? I’ve made a nice dinner for us, and Mandy’s home. I want us to sit down and have dinner like a normal family.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her why she thought we were not a normal family. Because she put her career over everything else. Saying that or even hinting at it would open up a can of worms, though, and would only devolve into an argument I could never win.
There was a reason she charged tens of thousands for a retainer.
“Sure. I’ll take a quick shower and change.”
“I’ll have everything ready by the time you get down.”
The shower was exactly what I’d needed to revive me and put me in a better mood. When I returned downstairs, our seats were already set at the dining table, and I smiled. We hadn’t eaten together for a while; it felt good.
“Need help with anything?” I asked Teresa.
Delicious aromas wafted in the kitchen. A bit of guilt knotted my stomach at how much I enjoyed this domestic scene. She wasn’t a maid—we had one who came twice a week—but I was a bit old-fashioned and liked to be taken care of. I pulled my weight around here, though, and I handled dinner most nights, since she was hardly ever home on time.
“You can bring the salad and gravy. And get your daughter down here.”
“Will do.” I kissed Teresa’s smooth cheek, grabbed the bowls, and took them to the dining room. The food looked damn good, but I was holding back tonight. I was almost sure I was going to get laid.
“Mandy?” I yelled from the foot of the stairs. “Come on down for dinner.”
“In a sec.”
Teresa frowned as she walked past me to the dining room. “Don’t yell up the stairs, honey. We’re not barbarians.”
“Much quicker this way.”
She shook her head. “Sometimes I forget about the neanderthal I married. After more than twenty years of marriage, you would’ve thought I’d sanded down the rough edges.”
“What are you talking about? I remember that’s what attracted you to me when we first met.” I’d been a rowdy jock with a foul mouth and a bad attitude. She’d taken one look at me, rebelled against her parents, and before I knew it, I was sliding into her on the back seat of my old Buick on our first date. Although far and few in between, sometimes I still wondered if she’d only said yes when I asked her to marry me because she wanted to get back at her strict parents. They’d never liked me.
Whatever it’d been then, I hated these little quips she made about my “caveman” behavior. Funnily enough, she had no problem with it in the bedroom. With company, she expected me to be Mr. Refined.
Mandy came clattering down the stairs, looking slightly irritated to be pulled away from whatever it was she’d been doing.
“What’s with the face?” I asked.
She took a seat at the table. “Nothing.”
“Come on. I know you well enough to figure out something is wrong. Just spit it out.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to talk to you about it, since it’s technically your fault.”
I sat and waited for Teresa to join us. “What’s my fault?”
“You getting Emery suspended for two days.”
Ah. Now the glares made sense.
“I didn’t suspend him, Mandy. The principal did.”
“Yeah, but you brought him to the principal’s office. Couldn’t you have handled it?”
“Not an incident of that scale, honey. The students had videos. Can you imagine the trouble I would be in if the principal had seen the video and I hadn’t reported it?”
“I guess you’re right.”
“He only got two days.”
“The only consolation is that idiot Priest got a whole week. I wish they’d just kick his ass out already. He’s been making Emery’s life a nightmare. He doesn’t need that, given what he’s been through at his last school.”
“Well, maybe if he didn’t try to be so different—”
Her gasp cut me off. “Dad!”
“What? I’m just trying to be helpful.”
“By suggesting he stifle who he is to make other people comfortable? Do you have a problem with the way he dresses? Because I thought you were cooler than that.”
A pink lacy bra floated through my mind, and I blinked. “No. Of course not. I just hate knowing anyone’s being picked on for something so silly, but you’re right. Hiding their identity because of others shouldn’t have to be the solution either.”
Teresa entered the dining room, her cell phone to her ear. “You guys start without me. I have to take this, but I’ll be back.”
“We can wait on you,” I said.
“It might take a while, and you must be hungry. Just go ahead, and I’ll catch up with you.”
My heart sank. I should have known better. An uninterrupted dinner, my ass. I was lucky dinner was on the table at all.
“You heard your mother.” I forced a smile. “Let’s dig in.”
We dished food onto our plates, me going for a large helping after all. The food tasted as amazing as it looked, but resentment made it go down hard. I took a long drink of water.
“Dad.”
I glanced up at Mandy. “Yes?”
“I-I don’t know if I’m right, but I think Emery’s in trouble.”
I put down my fork. “What kind of trouble?”
She shrugged, shoving a pea around her plate. “I’ve just noticed things.”
“What things?”
“Bruises he tries to hide with makeup.”
So I wasn’t the only one who had seen that, then. “What do you think is happening? Does he have a—a person who’s hitting him?”
“Not a boyfriend, if that’s what you’re asking. He hasn’t had one since the incident at his last school.”
“Oh.” I caught myself before I asked the question burning in my mind. What had happened at his last school? “I’m not sure you should talk to me about this, Mandy. Maybe your mother. She’ll know what to do.”
She rolled her eyes. “Mom’s too busy for us, or haven’t you noticed lately?”
I sighed. “What do you think is happening to your friend?”
“That he doesn’t get along with his dad.”
“You’re saying his dad’s the one hitting him?” Emery was so small. What kind of asshole dad would beat on him instead of protecting him? If he was mine, I’d never let anyone come close enough to hurt him.
My child—if he were my child, not mine.
“I can’t think of anyone else, and I don’t think they get along.”
“Doesn’t mean his dad abuses him, Mandy. Be careful of accusing people without evidence. Why not talk to Emery about it and let him know he can confide in you?”
“I guess you’re right. I’m still worried about him, though.” She downed her glass of water. “I’m not too hungry, and Mom’s not getting off that call soon. Think I can make a break for it?”
“Sure, honey. Go ahead.”
“Thanks, Dad.” She rose to her feet and hugged me. “You’re the best.”
I patted her arm. “Love you, kiddo.”
Left to my own devices, I picked at my dinner, stretching out the time for as long as I could to give Teresa sufficient time to join me. When almost an hour had passed, I took my plate to the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher. I’d know better next time than to keep my hopes up.
In the den, I closed the door and sat before the television with the sports channel on and a bottle of beer in my hand. Usually, a football game would have me glued to the television, but my mind kept drifting to too many things, but two thoughts overpowered the rest. Teresa putting work before the family again and everything Mandy had said about Emery.
Who was hitting him? What was I supposed to do about it? Talk to him and try to get him to open up to me?
I scrubbed a palm over my face. To get to the bottom of the Emery mystery, I would have to interact more with him, and that was the last thing I wanted. Principal Hayes had already assigned Emery to help me out for a week for the disrespectful way he’d addressed me in the cafeteria. The suspension had been for the fighting. So now I would have to find something to give the boy to do and to supervise him while he was at it.
It was like the universe kept pushing him at me the more I tried to stay away.
A knock sounded on the door, and Teresa walked in. The den was my place of comfort, and she rarely entered my sanctuary. Not because I didn’t want her here, but this was the one room in the house I hadn’t allowed her to decorate.
All the things in this room—from my La-Z-Boy to the magazines and trophies on the shelves—were mine. Some went back as far as my little league days. When we’d moved into this house together, I’d brought everything of sentimental value in. My parents’ urn with their ashes sat on top of the shelf to the right. She’d been pissed I wanted to keep it instead of scattering their ashes, but I wasn’t ready yet.
“I know what you’re thinking.” She climbed into my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Will you forgive me?”
I grunted. Did it matter?
“Use your words, Abe.”
A man couldn’t even grunt without her commenting on it.
“Are you finished with your call?” I asked.
“Yes. I swear if it wasn’t important, I wouldn’t have answered. You know my clients pay me well to be there whenever they need me.”
“What about when I need you, Ter? I’m starting to think I can’t afford you.”
She snapped her head back. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s the way I feel, okay?” I grabbed the remote and turned off the television. “I’m going up to bed. Did you eat yet?”
“Yes.”
“Come to bed.” I slipped my hand under her blouse and up to her bra and cupped her breasts. The bra wasn’t lace. My hand stilled. What the hell? My chest rose and fell.
“I’ll be up in a minute. I just need to fax something to my secretary.”
This time I didn’t argue. I stood and set her on her feet. “Good night.”
“Abe, don’t be that way. I work hard so we can all have nice things.”
I halted, her words punching me in the gut. That was what this all boiled down to, didn’t it? She wanted nice things I couldn’t provide on what I made as a teacher and coach. What right did I have to take that away from her?
Without a word, I walked out. I needed some space from her to breathe. Our bedroom felt lonelier and lonelier with every passing night. I zombie-walked my way through my routine of brushing, flossing, and changing into a pair of old shorts for bed. The worst thing was that even with all the muted fighting tonight, had she walked through that door, I would have kissed and loved her the way I always did.
My dick never got the memo that nothing interesting was going down tonight. It’d been six weeks since we last had sex. When we first were married, we had sex several times a week. I understood life got in the way and we couldn’t maintain that, but going from six times a week to one time in six weeks was an immense blow.
Frustrated, I grabbed my phone and opened an incognito browser. I hadn’t jerked off to porn in a long time. When we were more sexually active, we liked to watch it together.
I opened my favorite site and scanned through the newly added videos, but skimming over them did little to excite me. I clicked one with a mature, busty brunette wearing a lacy bra. A ten-second “must watch” ad popped up on the screen. Usually, I scrolled around until the ten seconds were up, but the image that appeared on the screen had me looking twice.
The advert invited viewers to watch the cam show for tokens. I’d never paid for porn before, and I wasn’t about to start now, but I couldn’t look away from the image. What was their gender? It was hard to tell from their appearance, especially with a light-pink mask covering most of their facial features. What was showing of their face were chocolate-brown eyes framed by nicely arched eyebrows, smoky eyelids, and accentuated lashes. Long, straight blond hair floated down to their shoulders. Were they wearing a wig?
They reminded me of… Emery.
How ridiculous. It wasn’t him, but I couldn’t look away as they crawled onto the bed. The short pleated skirt they wore did very little to hide the lace-covered ass beneath. They wore knee-length socks that made them appear… too young. I should have exited the ad, but I couldn’t.
They settled back against the pillows on the bed and lifted the skirt. The bulge between their legs was unmistakable. I should click the X and go to the video I’d intended to watch in the first place, but I snuck my hand into the waistband of my shorts as I watched them.
They were all smooth limbs, graceful movements, and soft moans as they cupped their dick. The ten seconds were up, and the video stopped with an ad to purchase tokens to continue watching the show. My heart pounded in my chest, and my mouth felt dry. No way would I add a charge like that to my account. The username schoolboytwink03 got stuck in my head and shocked my brain back into functioning.
Had I really gotten hard from watching a boy wearing a skirt and feeling himself up online? Had I really gotten hard from watching a man?
This was all Emery’s fault. I just knew it. I’d sensed something happening since I met him, and this dress-and-skirt-wearing boy now had me confused enough for my dick to like it.
I closed the video. Too ashamed, I shut my phone off and slid under the sheets, my dick tenting my shorts.
Ten minutes later, Teresa entered the bedroom and kissed me. When I pushed her legs apart and took her roughly, a damn pink lace bra was in my mind. When I flipped her onto her stomach and pushed inside her ass, a round bottom in torn pants bored a hole in my head. And when I came, I had to bite my tongue, afraid the wrong words would come out because all I could see was Emery’s crying face.