Fifteen
Gavin
I woke with the worst hangover in my adult life. My head felt as if it was stabbed over and over a million times as I slowly forced myself out of bed. Memories of the night before came back to me in a rush. Maddie’s body, hot, pressed against mine as I touched her and spanked her and bit her. I pressed a finger to my lips. I hadn’t given her an opportunity to experience the same pleasure that I had. Should I have felt guilty for it? I wasn’t entirely sure how to feel. She had enjoyed every moment of it, though. From her moaning to her screaming. My cock stirred as I remembered how she screamed as I moved behind her. I recalled how her body had felt as my hands were against the wall and hips were pushing against hers.
I wanted to feel it all again, damn it. I wanted to feel her. But it was purely a physical attraction. Any sane man would be crazy not to be attracted to her.
I got dressed while waiting for my erection to go down. I’d have to take care of it later, most likely.
After a moment, I walked downstairs to find Maddie sleeping on the couch. I remembered not letting her up the stairs, and instead forced her to sleep on one of the smallest couches in the house. She agreed, and I was slightly surprised that she hadn’t snuck toward one of the bedrooms upstairs.
I realized the binder full of my stories had been left on the floor near the entrance. I picked it up and flipped through the first few pages. The first two were stories that I had written when I was 10, about a boy trying to find his lost dog. The next one was a 50-page story about a man who had gotten lost in a mall, and the several few following it were all about lost people. I hadn’t realized that I only wrote about losing things.
I found the story Maddie had mentioned at our first dinner together, about the child lost in the hospital. It was my first attempt at horror, and I remembered giving it to Ron to critique. He avoided reading it and asked to take it home over a spring break to look at it. I realized that must have been when he showed it to Maddie. As I thought back to it, Ron hadn’t ever spoken about it again. Mom had been given the story shortly afterward, and I had forgotten all about it.
Something convinced me to take that story out, fold it, and slip it into Maddie’s purse. She may have been a gold-digging whore, but at least she appreciated my writing when no one else bothered to read it. She mentioned that I was her biggest supporter; I would never have thought she had been one of mine.
I shoved the binder into my closet. I hadn’t had the passion to write for a long while, especially after my father passed. Mom begged me to write her a book every now and then, and I realized I always told her that I would write it one day. I never thought that one day would have actually arrived.
I stood over Maddie’s sleeping form. Her hair was tangled and a mess around her face, and the blanket barely covered her naked body. Makeup was smeared across her face, but it was somehow attractive. God, she was beautiful. Better looking than the models I’ve seen in magazines or the internet, and somehow, she was smart and passionate about her dreams at the same time. Maybe a little too passionate. I shook my head. Why was I praising the woman who used my dying mother to her advantage?
“Hey,” I said loudly. “Get up.”
She barely stirred. Instead, she nestled further into the couch on her side. The blanket was cramped toward her front, leaving me with a view of her slender back and the top of her ass. It had a bright red mark on it that would surely turn into a bruise.
“Damn it, woman, get the hell up,” I said again and shook her shoulder. Her eyes peeked open and closed when she noticed me.
“What time is it?” she asked with a sore voice. Her hips wiggled as she woke up, and I wondered if she was doing it on purpose.
“Doesn’t matter. Get out of my house,” I said.
She sighed and leaned on her elbow. The blanket fell toward her lower back, giving me a new view of her breasts.
I turned away and crossed my arms.
“I’ll call you when I need you to come back,” I said. “Probably next week for dinner.”
“I’m just supposed to wait around for your call?” she asked and stood. My eyes gravitated toward her body.
“Get dressed,” I said. She found her dress on the floor near the door of the bathroom and slipped it on. I noticed she didn’t bother looking for her panties or bra. It wasn’t until then that I realized the bar must have been a disaster. “And yes, that’s how this agreement works.”
“Fine,” she said and readied her stuff. She pulled out her phone and snapped a quick picture of me.
“What the hell was that?” I asked and tried reaching for the phone.
“We didn’t get any pictures last night,” she explained. “This one is so your mom knows you’re getting laid.”
“That’s gross,” I said.
“I’m just going what you said. This is going on my profile with a short description of how lovely last night was,” she said and put her shoes on. I raised my eyebrows. “The dinner, you asshole. How lovely the dinner was.”
“Whatever, just make sure to post it before tonight. It’ll make her happy,” I said. Maddie said goodbye as she walked out the door, and I shut it behind her without a word. I walked behind the bar to find three bottles smashed and a pair of panties and a bra soaked in alcohol.
The woman was going to drive me crazy.
was standing over the sink when I arrived at her house. She wiped her mouth, and I knew instantly that she hadn’t been able to keep her breakfast down.
“Do you want a new protein shake?” I asked as I finished the last of my shake. “The banana cream isn’t so bad.”
“I don’t mind the strawberry one,” she said. “I think I have enough for a few more meals.”
“I’ll restock you,” I said and helped her to the couch. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired,” she said and leaned against the back. “Karen let me sleep in too long, and you know how I’m always more tired with the more sleep I get.”
“I’ll talk to Karen about that,” I said. I wasn’t actually going to yell at Karen for letting mom sleep in, but it seemed as if Karen was just an easy target for mom’s frustration. “Do you have any plans today?”
“Really?” Mom looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Other than just sitting here and watching the rest of that comic book show, I think I’m free.”
“How about a trip to a museum then? That aviation one that you used to take me all the time?” I offered. Dad used to take the both of us to museums once a week growing up until he grew too busy with work. Mom took it up afterward.
“I think I’d like that,” she said. “Let me just get dressed and then we can leave.”
I waited in the living room for the better part of an hour until she was ready. I wasn’t upset; it was just a reminder of how much energy she had left in her body.
“No more than three hours,” Karen said before we left. “She needs to take her medicine and rest in three hours.”
“I think my son can take care of us,” she said.
“Thanks, Karen. I’ll have her back in time,” I said as mom followed me to my car. She walked with a slight limp and hump in her back, and it was a struggle getting her in the car without her falling over.
“I don’t remember it being this hard,” she said.
“What being hard?” I asked.
“Everything,” she said. “Just, everything.”
I frowned and started the ignition. “Just tell me if it’s too much, okay?” I asked.
“I will. I’m just so happy to be out in the cold air.” She rolled her window down and put her elbow out. It was barely 50 degrees outside, and I made sure she was wearing three coats and a thick pair of pants before leaving the house. I had a sweater beneath my faux leather coat with jeans.
“Maddie is such a darling,” she said. My fists clenched on the steering wheel. I was surprised that we had gotten this far before she mentioned her, but there was still hope in me that this outing could have remained Maddie-free.
“Yeah,” I said and turned onto the highway. The aviation museum wasn’t far, maybe a 20-minute drive, and I hoped she wouldn’t talk about Maddie the entire drive.
“She knows how to put you in your place.” Mom laughed. “That’s the type of woman you’d need. Your dad would have loved her. I think he did, actually. I remember she baked him a birthday cake one year, a little ugly yellow cake with weird blue frosting. She must have been only six or seven, but Charles loved it.”
“I remember that,” I said with a faint smile. “It was supposed to be lemon flavored, but it ended up tasting like sour heads. I didn’t even know that was a possible flavor for cakes.”
“We all had a good laugh,” mom said. “But I knew she was special. Granted, I thought she was going to end up with a good-looking senator. She sure has the look of a senator's wife.”
An image of her bent over my bar popped up, and I forced it away.
“She does,” I agreed. “I’m glad you like her.”
I parked the car toward the front of the aviation museum.
“Like? Gavin, I love her. She has the perfect sense of humor, she’s beautiful, your children would be beautiful, and do you see the way she looks at you?” mom asked.
“The way she looks at me?” I frowned. “What do you mean?”
Mom shrugged. “She just looks at you with such devotion. Like she can’t even believe she’s with you. Poor girl has no idea you’re the lucky one.”
I tried recalling a look from Maddie, but I realized that I barely even paid any attention to her face the entire night. I only bothered with her words and her body.
“You sound like you’re the one who wants to marry her,” I said with a chuckle and helped her out of the car. She leaned against me as we entered the museum.
“I just really think she might be the one,” mom said. “The woman for you.”
She was smiling so much that it pained me to keep the truth from her. I wanted nothing more than to tell her that I wasn’t in love and that Maddie wasn’t the one. But I wanted to keep her happy.
“She really might be, mom,” I said.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” she said. I purchased our entrance tickets at a booth in the middle of the giant museum. “Have you talked about children? Does she want any? Or maybe she wants one of each?”
I pocketed the tickets and helped her up an escalator. Posters of exhibits surrounded us as we went up a floor, and she picked a few that she wanted to look at. I knew it was impossible to see them all within three hours, so I had her pick a few particular ones.
“We haven’t even talked about marriage yet,” I answered her question from earlier when she reminded me of it. I realized my mistake and corrected it. “I mean, we’ve talked about it in the sense that we know we both want to get married. And soon. But I think the kid talk might come a little later.” I would never tell her I wasn’t interested in children at all, it would have crushed her.
“Well I can just imagine how beautiful my grandchildren would be,” she said. “Hopefully they’d take after her.”
I tuned out the rest of the conversation while still giving her the answers that she wanted. She truly believed Maddie was the one for me. I supposed she was an incredible actress after all.