I laughed as I handed off the bowl. “The dark ages, when phones were rotary and you had to meet people in person to find a boyfriend.”
“Like picking up a nerdy guy with a cute beard at the Blockbuster,” Rory answered, pressing his forehead down against mine.
“Try to tell your students our love story,” I joked back. “But you’ll have to explain what video rental stores were in the first place.”
Rory dropped his bowl on the counter beside us, then tightened an arm around my waist. I groaned softly in response, and he took the dinner out of my hand, depositing it on the counter while he pushed against me with a kiss.
“Mmhmm,” I hummed my appreciation.
Rory pressed his lips against my ear, the curly hairs of his beard like sparks on my earlobe and the tender skin of my neck beneath. “You know, speaking of all the things we need to get done in this house, pretty soon, there’s going to be a teenager downstairs every evening.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, writhing against him as he sunk his fingers into my side, clutching me closer. I could feel his cock fattening.
“Who knows when we’ll have a little privacy…”
His fingers inched down, closer and closer to my ass, and, pleasure igniting inside of me. I turned and let him rut up against me from behind. “Be kind,” I teased, thrusting back to meet him. “Please rewind.”
Rory laughed, his deep chuckle warming me even more.
My secret weapon had always been corny dad jokes.
Rory had about a million secret weapons, as far as I was concerned, starting with the way his beard felt against the back of my neck, and how powerful his grip was when his hands landed on my thighs.
He thrust against me again. The million things I had been fretting about all disappeared, leaving only me and Rory and everything he wanted to do to me.
“You’re my man,” I gasped.
“I’m your man,” he growled back and then spent the rest of the evening proving exactly how true that was.
RORY
I woke up a few minutes before the alarm the next morning. Carefully removing my arm from its spot across Franklin’s chest, I crawled out of bed and crept my way to the bathroom.
No time to wait…I thought, my vision bleary without my glasses.Things to do.
As I stepped under the blast of hot water in the shower, I worked up a lather on my hairy chest and rubbed the bar of soap down my belly and my thighs. The weekend before classes started, I figured campus would be quiet, and I’d be able to finish off my syllabus without an endless stream of interruptions from colleagues.
I couldn’t blame everyone for asking after my sabbatical. It’s only polite, and I would have asked them the same. I just didn’t know how to explain that I had accomplished zero work on my book. Not to mention the few times I shared what happened with Annabel and Ava, the responses ranged from awkward subject changing to outright pity.
I stepped out of the shower with a sigh, drying myself with a terrycloth towel and then tightening my old robe around my waist. Marlene jumped at my feet as I headed downstairs, eager for her breakfast just like I was for mine.
“What do you think, Marlene Dietrich?” I asked her as we entered in the kitchen. “Does the idea of two nerdy men trying to raise a thirteen-year-old Goth girl make you scratch your head, too?”
Marlene made a curious growl, then jumped around some more while I dumped food in her bowl. I knew I was being harder on myself than I should have been. Ava, Annabel, Franklin, and I all decided together that she would move to Seattle with us, and Franklin’s cousin Colleen was going to host her a few nights a week, too. It was a schedule that Ava worked out, and I was glad she could have control over some aspects of her life, even if so much was still up in the air six months after her mother died.
Not to mention having Colleen in the picture relieved a lot of my anxiety that I’d be clueless to help a thirteen-year-old girl navigate the year 2019.
To be honest, I’d just spent my sabbatical living with Ava, and I sometimes felt like I didn’t know the first thing about her. I didn’t even know if she would call herself Goth. I thought that was what the black eyeliner and clothes meant, but she only talked about K-Pop, which the internet had confirmed for me was an entirely different thing.
But as Franklin and Collen assured me, that was just a typical parenting experience. It didn’t matter whether I understand Ava’s music or her clothes. What matters was that I cared for her and provided for her and loved her as a member of our family.
And I had no doubt that was something I could do.
I snuck back upstairs to dress and grab a couple of papers, pausing only long enough to plant a kiss on Franklin’s cheek and hear the grumbling noises he made when he curled up into the pillow. I left a note wishing him a good day, then drove myself to campus to hide away in my office.
Sipping a giant travel mug of coffee with aSome Like It Hotposter looking down on me, I was ready to burn through my emails and finish the last lingering tasks on my to-do list. With any luck, I could be home to help Franklin and Asher later that afternoon.
“Knock, knock!” a familiar voice called out, appearing in my doorway. “Here on the weekend, even! Most people have to be dragged back after sabbatical.”
