Chapter 2
Tori
It had been the longest day ever at the new job. Taking over a class in the middle of the first six weeks was not a good idea when it came to first grade. The kids had all loved the teacher I replaced, and it had taken me some time to earn their affection. I would forever be seen as the bad guy, the replacement who took their beloved Mrs. McConnel away. It wasn’t my fault that the lady had gotten married and moved across the country, but you couldn’t explain that to a bunch of kids.
Some were warming up to me, and that was making it better, but first grade was still hard. I’d hoped to teach high school English, but since I was only twenty-two, and looked more like one of the kids than one of their superiors, I’d had a hard time finding a job until this one opened up. I was the first called and couldn’t pass up the position. It was a foot in the door, and I hoped in a few years when I started to look more like a schoolmarm and less like a student, I’d get to move to a different grade where.
The drive home wasn’t bad, but it could have been two blocks and would have still felt like forever. I couldn’t wait to get home to peace and the luxurious claw foot tub that my small house had since it had been built in the fifties. Luckily it had been remodeled by the previous owners. And considering the neighborhood was decent, and I could afford it and still, eat, it was a good find.
I pulled up to my house to see that Kevin had made himself at home again, and when I walked into the house, I realized that was an understatement.
“Babe, you’re home!” Kevin jumped over the back of my two-month-old sofa which I had thought it important to buy new instead of something used.
“What are you doing here?” I glanced over his shoulders at the three others he’d brought with him and then looked into his big, dopey brown eyes, which narrowed in a way that I expected a sarcastic comeback any second.
“I wanted to be here when you got out of school. I missed my girl.” He leaned in and planted a kiss on my cheek and then offered me a crooked smile. He was gorgeous and a total loser. To think his charm is what attracted me to him was growing more and more laughable day by day and this wasn’t his first stunt he’d pulled at my house while I was gone. I stared up into his eyes as he raked his hand through his dirty blond hair and thought of the time over the summer when he flooded the neighbor’s yard after hooking up a makeshift slip and slide in my back yard. He’d invited the neighborhood kids hoping no one would call the police, but that had backfired on him when one of them skinned his knee, and his mother came over to find Kevin drinking.
The cops had shown up, but not after Kevin had ditched the beer, hiding it in my attic until they were gone.
He was a constant screw up and I’d only gotten with him because, at the time we met, he was in college and had a steady job, but once summer hit, he was a different person. My best friend, Jackie, thought he was a moocher and found it convenient that he’d stopped working when I got hired on at the school. He spent most of his time over, so I’d given him a key. Big mistake.
“I wanted to come home to some privacy, Kevin. I wanted to soak in the tub and lay on my couch and relax. I work hard all day around a bunch of kids, and I don’t want to come home and find your little friends here.”
He pulled me into the kitchen trying to hush me. “Little friends? Those people are not much younger than you, for fuck’s sake. You sound like an old lady sometimes. And would it kill you to be a bit hospitable, don’t make me look bad in front of my bros.” I couldn’t help noticing that one of his bros was a female and she constantly eyed Kevin like he was her next meal or perhaps her most recent. I was over it. I didn’t know how much more I could take of Kevin.
He gave me his puppy eyes, which for some reason always made me grow tenderhearted, but I was still mad. “Give me your key. You can have it back when you learn to behave.” Or never. I wasn’t sure I’d ever trust him with it again.
He turned his hip in my direction. “Reach in and get it.” His cock was bulging in his pants, and he wanted me to see it. We’d never had sex, and it was precisely this kind of behavior that had made me hesitate. I couldn’t see myself with someone like him. We’d done oral a few times, but he always got tired after he came and he’d only gone down on me a few times compared to the twenty or more blowjobs I’d given him.
I reached into his pocket, knowing the keys were dangerously close to his erection, but I looked him in the eye and fished them out, not even brushing against it.
He pinned me against the counter, pressing it into my leg. “Come on, Tori. How about I send the guys home and you and I can fuck around? I’ll give you something to make up for it.”
“No. How about, you take your friends and go the fuck home to your house to play video games.” I didn’t even own a gaming system and noticed he’d brought his over to hook up to my big screen which was a present from my aunt who’d helped me secure the house.
“My mom’s there.”
“Exactly. Maybe it’s time you grow up and get your own place, Kevin.”
His eyes lit up. “You saying you want me to move in here with you?” He’d tried that stunt already, but I wasn’t having it.
“You know better. I don’t want anyone to live with me, especially a man who doesn’t have any desire to work.” There were so many people who would love to have a job, and there was Kevin—the type that would rather sit on his ass and do nothing instead of making a living.
“Fine.” He turned and went to the TV and started yanking out cords and his friends got to their feet and helped him gather up all his junk. On their way out, Jackie came in.
“Please tell me you’re finally kicking that loser to the curb.” She threw her purse on the floor by a chair and looked at me with pleading eyes.
I let out a breath and a half-hearted chuckle. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?” She hated Kevin from the minute I’d met him.
“You can do better and you should. Ditch him, and we’ll go out and find you a hot guy. Someone who has a job and a desire to be more than a teenage boy for the rest of his life. Peter Pan needs to go.”
“Well, I know one thing, the next one will be much older if I can help it. I don’t even know what I was thinking getting mixed up with a younger guy.”
“So, did you tell him it’s over yet?” Jackie let out a long sigh as I shook my head in response. “You needed to do it yesterday. Rip that bandage off. You need to find a nice man your age, maybe a few years older.”
“Not just a few, I want an older man.”
She gave me a confused look. “You don’t mean old older, right? Like six years? Eighty years?
“I don’t know. I’m not opposed to dating someone who is in their forties or fifties, as long as they treat me right.” I’d always had an affection for older men, and the ones I’d had in my life, my aunt’s boyfriends, they were wonderful to me.
“That’s awful. That’s like my dad’s age. Don’t you think that’s a bit gross?”
“There are some attractive men out there at those ages. People don’t age the way they used to, and I like a mature man. Someone who knows how to treat a girl and wants to take care of her.”
“That’s the creepy part, and in a few years, you’ll be taking care of him.” She rubbed her arms and curled her lip as if the thought made her skin crawl. “I couldn’t imagine dating someone my father’s age. I mean, he’s not a bad looking man, but he’s a dad, and he dresses like a dad and no.”
“I’ve never had a dad, so I have nothing to compare that to.” I had grown up with my aunt after my parents, who had been about as responsible as Kevin when they had me, abandoned me.
“I’m sorry. I mean, surely there are some hot men of an older age out there, but what are the chances of you meeting one? Where would you meet? The seniors center on bingo night?”
“There are some older attractive men at the school.” I shrugged, but she wasn’t buying it. She knew the men at the school, because she was the librarian there, and the person who had gotten me my teaching job.
“You’re not talking about Mr. Miller, are you? He’s married, and his wife had only been dead two months.” She scrunched her nose and then began to laugh when I gave her a dirty look.
“No, I’m not talking about Miller,” I said with a grimace.
“You’re aware that everyone else is married, right? Most older men are.” I wasn’t going to tell her that I’d had my eye on someone already. I wasn’t sure if he was available, or even interested in a girl my age, but he was super sexy.