BLUE BALLS AND TIGHT SPACES
Simon
The next weekpasses in a blur of enjoying every moment that I can with my boys, continuing to modify my new television script to make the fact that Bea is my inspiration even less recognizable, running out of printer paper and ink because my blasted computer somehow gave itself orders to print seven copies of the movie script I’m supposed to be memorizing for the shoot in September, ignoring yet another call from my parents, making plans for my own murder mystery dinner since Iamthat level of petty and annoyed with Lucinda Camille, and texting and phoning Bea.
Texting and phoning Bea is my favorite part.
The woman makes me smile in new ways, which should be impossible given how much experience I have with smiling, and I shouldn’t confess how many times I’ve re-read our text conversations.
I manage to join her late Saturday evening at a pub where Hudson is performing, and watching the pride and joy in hereyes when she cheers loudest in the entire establishment after every song makes something ache deep in my soul.
She loves him more than my parents have ever been capable of loving me, and she loves him every bit as much as I love my own boys.
And that—that deep capacity to love those whom she could so easily resent, her choice to continue loving them—that is what makes my soul ache with a desperate need that I’ve generally been able to ignore.
Until I’m texting with her, or phoning her, or arriving at her burger bus with my boys for lunch in the midst of our summer fun.
Then I feel it again every time—that longing for her—forsomeone—to love me for the absolute mess that I am the same way that she loves her brothers and her friends.
A smart man would recognize this is a fool’s path.
But as I am not a smart man, and as it’s once again Wednesday, and Bea is once again set up in a car park at Austen & Lovelace College, across the lake from the Monday car park.
My children are at their college program.
And I’m approaching the burger bus because I’m obsessed with wanting her to myself and increasingly desperate to find a way to see her.
Preferably finally naked once again, as I’m happy to lie to myself and insist this longing is coming from my cock and balls and not my heart.
I’m a man starved for his Beatrice fix.
But Tank and I are still at least five paces from her bus when a creeping sensation makes me slow my steps.
“Oh my god, it’s Peter Jones!” someone says in a falsetto voice from inside the bus almost instantly.
Bloody hell.
She’s not alone.
“Hello, Hudson,” I say amicably.
A man who is very distinctlynotHudson, with brown eyes and curly light brown hair and a very familiar pair of dimples, appears in the service window and grins back at me. “Hello, Peter.”
“Hey, Simon,” Bea calls from deeper inside the bus. “Guess what? Griff showed up on my doorstep this morning. He decided to come home for the All-Star break.”
“If I shake his hand, will he break every bone in mine?” I inquire.
“What kind of a question is that?”
“He was the victor when his team did the social media challenge where pro athletes have their grip strength tested.”
Griff smiles broader. “You’ve been following me.”
“Daphne was singing your praises, and my boys found the video,” I tell him. “Lovely to meet you. I shan’t be offering my hand to be crushed, but you may feel free to tell anyone you wish that I was a complete and total fool who’s afraid of you if it helps your reputation or your ego.”
Bea joins him at the window and smiles at me in a way that makes my lightheadedness once again go lightheaded.
She’s clearly bewitched me.
