“I’m getting chilled.” She turns her head to the side, blinking open one eye. “Grab a blanket and give me your naked body heat.”
“You’re going to have to sneak down the back stairs, right at six o’clock.” I grab a blanket from the floor and start to slide into bed.
“Uh uh … naked body heat.” She grins.
I slide off my briefs and cover us with the blanket. She wiggles free from the confines of the sheet and hugs me with her whole body. After shushing her humming three times, I give up and let it lull me to sleep.
*
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“I can’t find my other sock. Why is your door locked? You never lock your door.”
My eyes shoot open as I jackknife to sitting. Ellen eases to sitting next to me, rubbing her eyes.
Rattle. Rattle. Rattle.
He’s already working the key from above the door into the lock. How the hell did he get that down so fast?
“Harrison stay out—”
Light from the hallway blinds us as he stands in the open threshold, holding a single sock in his hand. Elle pulls the blanket up to cover her bare chest, but I think there’s a good chance he already saw it. Maybe not. Maybe it’s too dark in here.
Fuck. I hope it’s too dark in here.
“Ellen?”
“Morning, Harry.”
“Harrison. I’ll be out in a minute. Please shut the door.”
“Did you have sex with Ellen?” Harrison takes a step inside the bedroom, eyes making an inspection of the floor where I’m sure he’ll find her discarded clothes and my briefs.
“Harrison, close the door, now.”
He closes the door—with him still on the inside of the room.
“Not what I meant.”
He flips on the lights. We squint again.
“For god sake, Harrison.”
“Did you have sex with Ellen? You said you wouldn’t have sex with Ellen. You promised you wouldn’t have sex with Ellen or my teachers. I told you this would happen if you kissed her. Did you kiss her?”
He’s smarter than this. He knows the answers to these questions. But when he’s upset, he thinks out loud, so I let him because I’m naked under this blanket and so is she. Neither one of us can get up and cover up without leaving the other one naked. We’re completely at his mercy.
“Why?”
Beneath the blanket, Ellen rests her hand on mine. She feels his struggle. This was what I wanted to avoid.
“I told you to find your own friend. She’s my friend. You don’t even like her. You gave her a D—a seven—seventy percent.”
Ellen’s fingernails dig into my hand. How kind of him to bring up the seven.
“Harrison, get ready for school. We’ll discuss this later.”
“Dad, you promised—”
“Harrison! We’re done. This conversation is on hold until tonight.”
He grits his teeth and fists his hands as he turns toward the door. After he opens it, he turns back toward us. “Are you going to make cookies?” he asks Ellen.
I cringe. Simon and his fucking-around dad.
“Uh …” Ellen glances over at me.
“Chocolate chip. Gluten free. Dairy free.”
“Harrison, out.”
“When you have sex with men who have children, you’re supposed to bake cookies.”
Ellen stifles a laugh. “I’ll have them hot out of the oven when you get home from school.”
He nods stiffly and shuts the door.
I drop my head in my hands. “Fuck …”
Ellen giggles, collapsing back on the bed.
“It’s not funny. Why didn’t my alarm go off?” I grab my phone from the nightstand. It should have gone off. I toss it aside and nudge her leg with mine. “Get dressed. School. Work. A kid with one sock. This is going to be a long day.”
Ellen rips the blanket from me and cuddles up on the one pillow still on the bed, her back to me. “I don’t have anywhere I need to be for another few hours.” She yawns. “Keep the noise down. I’m going back to sleep.”
“What the fuck? Hello … Harrison’s in the other room. He just walked in on us. Were you not paying attention?”
She tucks her knees to her chest, nuzzling her nose just under the edge of the blanket. “Not my problem. I’m off the hook with a batch of cookies.”
After a few seconds of staring at her back, red hair splayed over my pillow, I realize she’s serious.
“Unbelievable,” I mumble on my way to get in the shower.
Closing my eyes under the stream of hot water, I think of one week with Ellen. It’s not enough. All reasoning says I should not do this—I should not have said yes. She said it herself: we were over before we started. I’m delaying the inevitable. I lost one woman I loved, and I’m going to lose another. But I can’t think about Heidi without thinking of all the times I wished I could have had one more day—one more week.
These are my one-more days. This is my one-more week. It won’t change the future. It won’t cure her dad. It won’t erase fifteen hundred miles. I’d rather have her in my life for the next seven days than not. It’s just that simple.
I do my usual morning grooming and pick out my suit for the day.
“Let me.”
I turn toward the sleepy voice. She’s so fucking beautiful in black panties and no bra, but her green scarf is draped over her shoulders covering her breasts.
“Nice scarf.” I grin.
She smiles, blinking her blue eyes a few times to adjust to the closet light. Taking my suit jacket, she holds it for me to slip in my arms. After she buttons it, she adjusts my tie and grabs the lapels of my jacket.
“Flint Hopkins, you sure do look the part.”
“What part is that?”
A flash of something resembling pain pulls at her brow for less than a second, but she smiles through it. “The one that got away.”
Palming the back of her neck, I press my lips just below her ear, waiting until I feel her pulse. “No one’s getting away for the next week,” I whisper. “I’ll see you later.” I kiss her softly on the lips and snap the scarf off her neck, giving her a wicked grin before tossing it on the bed as I walk out of the room.
*
Ellen
I stay in Flint’s bed, occasionally drifting off to sleep, occasionally shedding a few tears. In twenty-four hours he completely took my heart in the Hail Mary of all Hail Mary passes. The man who feels unworthy of true happiness laid his whole heart open for me. I’m not sure what hurt most, the desperation in his eyes when he told me he loved me or the realization on his face when it became clear that no amount of love could keep me here.
I’ve simply loved my father my whole life. There’s nothing to contemplate.
By nine, I put on my clothes and drive home for a shower and time with my babies. After lunch I get everything settled with the hospital. I signed a contract with them, but they let me out of it, given the circumstances. I need to type out a letter to my other clients who have already been referred to another therapist temporarily. It’s now permanent. But I leave that for tomorrow. I have to feed my babies and pick up ingredients for cookies.
*
“Cookies.” Harrison grins as he comes in the back door a little before four with Flint right behind him.
“Wash your hands,” Flint says.
“Yeah, yeah …” Harrison ditches his bag and disappears into the bathroom.
“Smells good.” Flint eyes me. I’m not sure if he’s talking about the cookies or not. The comment fits the cookie scenario, but his eyes portray a different kind of hunger.
“Warm and moist.” I wiggle my eyebrows, taking one from the cooling rack and sinking my teeth into it.
Flint gives me a look that makes everything south of my navel feel just as warm and moist. “Two,” Flint warns Harry just as he starts to pile a third cookie onto a small plate.
“They’re my cookies,” Harry murmurs, disappearing up the stairs.
I smirk at Flint. He grabs my wrist and shoves the other half of my cookie into his mouth.
“Mmm … you’ve got baking skills.” He sucks each one of my fingers before releasing my wrist.
“You really need to stop acting so surprised that I have skills. And why are you here so early? It’s not even five.”
“Cookies.” He unbuttons his overcoat.
I laugh. “Cookies? You left work early for cookies?”
“I left work early for the baker.” He hangs up his wool overcoat and slips off his suit jacket, draping it over the back of the kitchen chair.
“I’m flattered.” I rest my backside and my hands on the edge of the counter, admiring Sex in a Suit as he loosens his tie and unbuttons the top button of his shirt.
He halts his motions, eyes shifting to the side as he sniffs several times. “It smells like more than just cookies.”
“Dinner’s in the oven.”
“Dinner?” He prowls toward me, caging me with his body as his hands press to the counter next to mine.
Biting my lower lip, I nod several times.
“Harrison-safe?”
I nod. “And I have tickets to the new Spiderman movie.”
Flint quirks a brow. “It’s a school night.”