I don’t even have a fucking sweet tooth, but I wanted cookies. I wanted warm chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk.
This was Mara’s fault.
Mara. Fucking Mara.
It was also her fault that I was becoming Pavlov’s dogs to the sound of a cane coming my way.
It was also her fault that I’d never see the doorway to my guest bedroom the same way again. We almost kissed. I wanted to kiss somebody.
I wanted to kissher.
Which was really fucking stupid, considering I was never going to love a woman again.
The kissing part was probably just body chemicals needing to get stirred up or something.
And! It was Mara’s fault that her picture was saved on my phone.
Fine, she didn’t make me do that. I did it. Like a dirty little secret, I put it where I hide dirty pictures on my phone. But then she and her cute kids didn’t look right next to dirty pictures. That felt fucked up. So, I deleted the dirty ones and just kept the one of her. Was that some ink on the inside of her bicep? And the inside of her wrist? What would that skin feel like if I bit it? If that hand slapped my ass? If those nails clawed between my shoulders?
I rolled my neck as I zoomed in, then realized I wanted to crop out the kids so I could just look at Mara. If I did that, I’d officially be a fucking weirdo. I chucked my phone across theroom. Who the hell puts their kid’s friend’s mom in their secret folder?
And why her at all? Was I just desperate for a woman’s attention? Reading too much into chocolate chip cookies and hugs in parking lots?
Plus, those are squishy things, and squishy things lead to love. Love was never in the cards for me again. I’d had sex a couple times since Syd and I split, but I can’t say the encounters were fulfilling or meaningful.
So, fine, even if Mara was cute—okay, hot—it would be unwise to start fucking my kids’ friends’ moms.
Even if they had smart mouths and body parts that were begging to be bitten.
She called me a brat. Every time I revisited that in my brain, something uncomfortably delicious stirred inside me. All the things I asked Sydney for and she humiliated me about. What if Mara was actually into that?
There was no fucking way. Women liked a man to be dominant. Right?
I shouldn’t have been thinking about Mara at all beyond being Aspen’s mom. And still, I knew I was never going to delete the picture.
I let my forehead rest on my folded arms on the counter for a moment.Pull it together, Jackass.
I didn’t have cookies, so I dumped out the beer, recycled the bottle, and poured myself a glass of milk and sat on a stool in the kitchen.
I was in a pickle. I’d just asked Mara and her kids, and her giggly friend, to come to my game one day ago, and now I didn’t have a sitter for the game.
Technically, Mara did owe me a favor. I’m not the guy who likes to cash in favors. I’d rather indefinitely hold the few times I’m kind over people’s heads forever like a threat.
But what the fuck was I going to ask her? To watch my kids instead of coming to the game? To watch my kids at the game?
Fuck it.
Hey can I ask you a favor
MARA O’CONNELL
What’s up?
Damn, she responded fast. Probably doing what ever other single parent does after their kids go to bed: mindless scrolling.
It’s not a big deal if you can’t
It was actually quite a big deal, but again, I felt stupid even cashing in the favor.
