Chapter 11
Dalton
I could hear Brittany’s door close, when I heard a ping come from my computer set up near the kitchen sink. My shorts were too wet because I hadn’t had time to dry off after my shower, so I threw on a clean pair of sweatpants without bothering with briefs and walked back to my computer in the kitchen. The free feeling that I always got from going commando in sweatpants was instantly choked when I read who the ping had been sent from over the apartment portal.
My father wanted to schedule a meeting for the next morning, and in the description for his request he had added, “You continue to show a lack of desire or understanding to prove that you want this second chance. Set aside time tomorrow morning to discuss this with me; you need to prove that you’re making progress and not repeating the past. I have yet to see proof of this.”
I checked my phone to see if maybe he had called me before attempting contact through the apartment portal, but when I found nothing on my phone saying he had tried to get a hold of me, it made perfect sense to me since our relationship was strictly business.
It made me feel closer to Brittany, who in reality was physically close to me by being just on the other side of my bedroom wall. We had more in common than I had originally thought, and it pained me knowing her father had just left her with the same frustration and anger that I was experiencing from my own father.
I had been trying not to think about how she had come to my door after her father had left and caught me right out of my shower. I had thrown clothes over my wet body and covered most of my tattoos before answering the door, yet she didn’t seem to mind the tattoos that peeked through. She had even pressed herself firmly against my body while I was still dripping, squeezing her hips into mine as she held our embrace. Couldn’t she see that she drove me wild? Didn’t she understand that I needed to keep my nose clean and I couldn’t risk getting involved with her? She must have seen how excited she had made me with those thin shorts. If she couldn’t tell by looking, she most certainly could feel how I excited I was against her.
Now she was once again on my mind. As I prepared for bed, I thought to myself how she was just on the other side of the wall doing the exact same thing. As she brushed her teeth in the adjacent room, I imagined her holding her toothbrush in between her teeth so that her arms were free to slip her loose sweater up over her head. If the wall hadn’t been there to separate us, then I would have brought myself up behind her and pulled her waist into mine, leaning into her neck and biting her, causing her to giggle between brush strokes. She would bend over to rinse out her mouth, squirming as she pressed her butt firmly into my crotch. Then she’d lean back up and turn around to wrap her arms around the back of my neck.
I rinsed my own mouth when I’d finished cleaning my own teeth alone in my bathroom. I slipped under the covers of my bed, playing out the fantasy I had let my mind invent. I turned my body so that as I fell asleep I was facing the wall that guarded Brittany from me. I wondered if she was okay after seeing her father, and I wished I could help her get out from his clutches. I wanted to hold her as we fell asleep, making sure that she knew someone cared about her. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to listen to her father and I wanted to confide in her about my father. I wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone.
Pushing all of these thoughts away, I tried to fall asleep. No matter how hard I tried, though, my thoughts kept coming back to Brittany and wanting to comfort her as I drifted into unconsciousness.
I woke up the next morning to a series of rough knocks and the sound of a key entering the lock to my apartment door. I jumped out of bed, still commando in my sweatpants, and rushed over to the baseball bat I kept near the living room window in case of intruders. I raised it above my head and approached the door as it swung open. My father, in a khaki-colored suit with leather shoes, his belly entering long before him, barged in through my door. Without flinching, he glared at me and barked, “Put that down before you do something again that you regret.”
I set the bat down, feeling utterly perplexed.
He closed and locked the door behind him and turned to face me.
“I didn’t know you had a key so I thought you were an intruder,” I explained. “I only keep this bat around for self-defense.”
“You do understand that there is a difference between assault and self-defense?” he asked.
This was the first time in a long time I had seen him in person, and he sent that comment my way like it was a bullet. I could feel my hackles raise as I got heated, angry he would even ask such a vile thing.
“I know the difference.” I turned to the window and opened the blinds, letting the sun pitch in through in long, rectangular patches.
“I see your decoration skills have still not changed,” my father said, taking in my apartment for the first time with me in it. “It looks like your room all those years ago, like you never left.”
He had never graced my doorstep with his presence until now. The room he had referred to, where he said I never left, was the place I had lived during the darkest period of my life. His words scratched open the wound.
“I don’t need a lot in order to get the things done that are needed of me,” I told him, trying to look respectable in my empty living room. With embarrassment, I realized I was still in sweatpants while my father had on a suit, and as he continued looking around my living room with knitted eyebrows, I tried to adjust my morning stiffness without him noticing.
“Tell me why are you dressed like that,” he said. “Have you been seeing a woman? Is there a woman here now?”
“No,” I said. Not that it was any of his business.
He marched over to my room and yanked open the door, making sure my room was woman-free. “With your past, you can’t be sleeping around, and if I hear that you are without intending to wed the girl first, then you know what happens.”
He didn’t have to remind me, I knew that if I was caught sleeping around before marrying that I was removed from ever accessing the money my father was holding for me. He would kill me for slandering his name, if the media even faked a story with a headline along the lines of “August Jones and His Promiscuous Son.”
My father had made it so that legally I would need to get married without scandal before ever inheriting a dime.
He cleared his throat and faced me squarely. “From now on, you’re going to check in with my assistant daily, once in the morning and once in the evening. I’m only trying to help you. You can still enjoy your life and have fun, but you’re on thin ice. Don’t forget that you put yourself there.” He pulled a card from his breast pocket. “My assistant’s name is Roland. He’ll be by at eight in the morning and in the evening every day except for Sunday. Here’s his number if you need to reschedule, but I’m putting my faith in your ability to show me that you truly want this second chance, so do what you need to do to make eight o’clock work for you.”
“I’ll make that work.” I took the card from his hands.
He nodded, taking one last look around the room, and then walked into the kitchen to look through my drawers.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“I hope I’m looking for nothing.” When he had also gone through all my cabinets, he turned back toward me and put out his hand for me to shake. “I look forward to hearing positive progress reports about you from my assistant.”
He shook my hand, and then left. I could hear him lock me back inside my apartment after he was on the other side of my door.
I made myself a pot of coffee and pumped out forty push-ups on the kitchen linoleum while I waited for the hot water to drip through the coffee grounds. I slammed the push-ups out fast, trying to exorcise the rage that was building up inside my chest from my father’s visit.
A soft tap at my door interrupted me, and I got up to see who was outside my apartment now. I couldn’t believe that my father had returned, let alone that he would knock in such a dainty fashion.
When I opened the door, Brittany was standing outside in a pencil skirt and a blazer. The skirt clutched tight against her curves, snaking down to her knees and hugging snug against her waist. Bouncing lightly against her hip was a large purse where I could see the outline of a textbook, but I was more focused on the outline of the skirt took against her curved hip, tapering in above her waist and stopping just below the belly button in a classic style.
She looked down at my sweat pants. My hard-on was still very visible through the soft, thin fabric, and I could see blood rush to her cheeks as she blushed. I shoved my hands in my pockets to try and gain some form of decency. Her shy smile erased all the rage I had been harboring a moment before. As she averted her eyes, I couldn’t help but get more excited by her getting flustered from seeing how stiff I was.
“Good morning,” she said through a mischievous smirk. “Was that your father leaving just now?”
“Yeah, he was on my ass about work. I really can’t stand how he treats me like just a tool in his toolbox, built and ready to be used for the sole purpose of following his orders.”
“He looked just as much of a jerk as my father is.”
“Sounds like we need to form a club,” I joked, and she laughed.
“We really do.”
I wanted to ask her out, this time on a real date without the guise of simply being a professional rendezvous between tenant and manager, but I held my tongue. My father’s words rang in my ear.
“Did you need something?” I asked, knowing that if I stared at her any longer in that slim skirt without inquiring about business, I might slip up and ask her out anyway.
She nodded, lifting the strap of her purse off her shoulder so that she could adjust the shirt beneath her blazer. Faintly, I could make out the snapping sound of a bra strap as she made herself more comfortable. “I just wanted to let you know there was another creepy guy sitting out in front of the building. He’s been there since your father arrived.”
At first my heart plummeted and my mouth went dry, and then I remembered what my father had said about meeting his assistant every morning. I stepped out into the hallway to peek through the windows by the entryway door. It was, in fact, one of my father’s cars. “One of my father’s assistants, nothing for you to worry about.” I shrugged, resigning myself to obeying my father.
As she passed me to leave for class, Brittany scratched my back, her nails instantly soothing my tension. I turned to her and she gave me a knowing smile without words, a smile that said, “I get it,” without actually verbalizing it. I smiled back at her, one of those sad smiles you give to someone who has said something funny to dry up your tears.
After she walked outside and down the apartment steps, I waited a few breaths before heading out to talk to my father’s assistant so that he wouldn’t suspect anything between me and Brittany. I was positive if he saw how I looked around Brittany he would know without a doubt that I was falling for her, and I could not let that happen.
Since hearing my father had all but made it illegal for me to flirt with her, he had ignited an obstinacy in me I couldn’t explain and I knew deep down was going to get me into a lot of trouble. I knew in that moment that I was going to disobey him, ask Brittany out, and risk everything.