Or against my face as he kisses me senseless. God, I bet he’s great in bed. Skills very few other men have.
Stop it, Misty!
When spring break comes, I’ll send my baby to spend the week with her father’s parents. They’re decent grandparents even if they let their asshole son kick us out when I was pregnant. And don’t find it worth reprimanding him because he has nothing to do with Bernie.
When they take her, I have a week to find a man or two to help me scratch the itch I have. The one that the vibrating toy doesn’t quite reach when I’ve gone too long without physical intimacy with a man.
“Zep seemed nice,” Bernie calls from the kitchen.
“Something like that.”
“I heard him ask about me. Just like the kids in class did.”
My mind completely abandons thoughts of Zeppelin in bed, and I walk to her with concern. “The kids in class asked about you?”
“Yeah, but it was okay. Most of them seem nice. There’s one girl, Carly, who seems really nice. I think we’ll be good friends.”
“Do you want to invite her over for dinner one night?”
“Maybe,” she says with a shrug. “We’ll see. She’s in soccer, so she’s at practice after school every day. She wears tall socks. Do you think I can get some socks like hers, Mommy?”
I smile and find a snack for her. “I think we can go shopping soon to find some. Do you have any homework?”
“Just math. It sounds like Zep’s as good at math as me.”
Wow, these walls must be pretty thin. “I bet you’re better than he is.”
“I wonder if I could beat him in a race. Of math. He has very long legs, so I don’t think I could win a running race.”
Zep did have amazing legs. Thick thighs I suspect are pure muscle. “You’d be surprised,” I say, pushing the thoughts away. “Catch him at the right moment, and you might speed past him like a blur.”
Yeah, like when he’s drunk off his ass. Or maybe high. Whatever his vice is.
“That would be so funny!”
I grab the cookies and pour two glasses of milk. I don’t always give her sugary treats like this, but I think she might be downplaying what it was like for her at school. Bernie tends to put on a brave face for me.
“I have to make a birthday card for Dad,” she says, catching me by surprise.
“He’ll love to get it,” I say, taken off-guard.
How the hell did she remember Ben’s birthday?
“Mommy?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“How come you don’t have a boyfriend?”
And now we’re switching gears again. Bernie knows her father and I aren’t together, but she doesn’t know the truth about him. And if I have my way, she never will.
“Um, I guess I don’t really need one. Why?”
“Ms. Larson… you know, my teacher? Her boyfriend sent her roses today. She wouldn’t tell us why, but her cheeks turned pink when she read the card. Then she hid it so we couldn’t find it. You deserve to get flowers, Mommy.”
I can imagine what those roses were for, and I’m finding myself heating up a bit too much. The type of activity I haven’t done since last spring break.
I’ve never gotten flowers in my life. I might’ve had flowers in a corsage if I’d gone to prom, but I didn’t. And when Bernie’s sperm donor and I were together, neither of us had enough money to buy condoms let alone purchase something frivolous like flowers.
