I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, but I know I'm not ready for the pressure that comes with everyone knowing I picked up a brush again. "Could you keep it between us?"
"Yeah. Of course I can, E."
"Thanks." I lift my ball brush thing. "For this, too."
"Anytime. Theft and destruction of propertyaresome of my favorite things to do, after all."
I grimace. "If Atty asks where his stress ball went, I'm blaming you."
"Heard and accepted. Happy painting, bro."
33
PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCE
ATTICUS
It's not hard to find Professor Paul Ryan. I was still so jacked up on the plane that I did most of the necessary digging to pass the time until landing.
The rest I finished up after I had an appointment with my hand and spent not one buttwohours cleaning tiny dicks from the office. Not all of them, though. I kept one. Just a single golden dick no bigger than the tip of my little finger. I might throw it out. I'm not even sure why I put it in my jacket pocket.
But as I walk up to the little pub on the outskirts of town, where I know Paul Ryan spends his Friday evenings, I rub it between my fingers.
Inside, it's warmer and full of middle-aged men working the nine-to-five dream who've checked out of life. Every one of them wears a wedding band, and yet they're all here at the end of their week instead of at home with their wives. A few students mill about the space. Most of them young women. The ones who've found out this is the hunting ground for older, wiser dick that doesn't come with attachments.
Aurora's teacher sits at the far end of the bar, finishing his pint.
He's a real piece of work, I found out. Not only an asshole, but also a cheater with a taste for twenty-something pussy. He's fucked at least seven of his female students since he started teaching at ASU. And every one of them started out with shitty grades that eventually turned into top marks in his class.
Thinking that might've been his intention with Aurora makes me want to cross the pub, smash his pint glass, and gore his throat with the broken pieces.
She isn't mine to be possessive of. I know that. And she might never be, but I did promise to protect her, and I don't see why that protection shouldn't extend to all aspects of her life, not just what she's doing for us with Ambrose.
Lucky for Mr. Ryan, we're trying to keep a low profile.
So instead of making a very bloody scene, I settle for sipping a half pint alone in the back of the pub until he's paid up and ready to leave. I follow him only a minute after he's gone, already knowing the route he takes when walking home.
When he gets to the alley that serves as a shortcut to get from the pub to his middle-class neighborhood, I speed up.
He glances over his shoulder, hearing me coming too late to do anything about it.
My hands curl into his jacket as I shove him hard into the brick wall, making him cough and splutter from the impact. I had no plans to hit him, but somehow my fist finds his face, anyway, and the satisfying crunch of his nose shattering beneath my knuckles makes me feel at least ten percent better.
"Fuck!" he cries in a pitiful, garbled voice, having trouble speaking with a mouth rapidly filling with blood. "Take what you want. Just?—"
I pull him forward to shove him harder against the wall, keeping him pressed there with one fist curled into the front of his jacket that he tries and fails to rip free.
"Shut up, you piece of shit."
"What do you want? You have the wrong?—"
"Oh no," I sneer in his face, and he cowers like the candy-ass little bitch I already knew he was. "I have the right man. Paul Ryan, lives at 30 Kennedy Crescent, married to Candice Ryan, father to Kyle Ryan…"
His eyes go wide.
"Professor at ASU," I continue. "Who enjoys sleeping with his female students. Ring a bell?"
He pales. "I don't know what you're?—"
