“Do you just want to use me as an incubator?”
But seeing his eyes flash with intense desire as well as determination, I know that’s only part of his plan. And for someone who hasn’t even had sex yet, planning on having a baby feels a little like putting the cart before the horse.
“I’ve always wanted kids of my own, is all I meant,” Michael says defensively. “I love Jase, and I raised him as my own. But….”
He breaks off. And I know what he means.
“But he’s not your own, not your flesh and blood.” I agree without knowing the whole story.
“Jase never mentions his Mom,” I muse aloud, and without meaning to, I find out things that Jase might never tell me otherwise.
“Jase’s mom…Sarah, my first wife, was a mistake,” Michael says flatly.
But he’s quick to add that Jase wasn’t.
“I met Sarah when I was still in trade school. Having no family of my own, I felt bad for her being a young single mom.
“I guess I thought I’d be helping more than anything if we were some kind of couple. Of course, I’d help out with baby Jase and with money. And she’d have some downtime or time to better herself. Do the things she thought she couldn’t do as a single parent.”
“So what happened?” I ask, already knowing it doesn’t have a happily ever after ending, but I sense somehow that Michael needs to tell me. Like it’s his white whale or something.
“I used to let people walk all over me, Vanessa,” he reflects, which sees me make a face.
Somehow I can’t picture anyone daring even to try to have one over a man the size of Michael, but there it is.
“I mean, I was young and naive. Sarah was young, but she had a plan once she saw how much I doted over little Jase.”
“She left, didn’t she?” I ask him, spoiling the story, but it’s not one I think Michael relishes in telling me.
Telling anyone for that matter.
“She did. And she took all I had with her. The only thing she left behind was Jase….”
He goes quiet for a moment, and I feel his whole body tense at the memory.
“Was he…was Jase okay?” I ask, shocked by what he’s told me.
“Jase was fine and young enough not to remember too much of his Mom. He’d only been by himself a few hours, but it still gives me chills when I think about how someone could be so cold. So…irresponsible.
“And all you tried to do was help her?” I ask, and Michael nods slowly.
“Yeah, I got played. She went along with my stepdad idea, all the way to the altar. It wasn’t long after that, once we had a shared bank account and long before I set up Hart Construction, that she took what little savings I had and as much furniture and tools as she could hock for cash, and she left.”
I feel saddened by his story. Sad for Michael, but sadder still for my friend Jase.
No wonder he’s wired a little differently. But when I think about it, he and I maybe get along so well because we’re very similar.
In one way at least.
“My mom left too.” I hear myself say absently. “I was a little older than Jase, but whatever she’d done to my Dad, he was ready to let her walk out on the condition she left me behind. And that was that.”
“Does Jase know that?” Michael asks, and I shake my head.
“Like I said, Jase and the word ‘Mom’ in the same sentence? It just doesn’t happen,” I inform him, watching him nod like a man who knows already.
“Let’s get outta here, huh?” he suggests again. Only this time, I readily agree.
Talking about the past instead of enjoying the present isn’t how I want today to go. Not how I want Michael and me to go anyway.
“I’ll get dressed,” I mew, stifling a yawn and groaning like an old woman as he helps me off him. Feeling his eyes on me as I search for my clothes.
“Let me look at you naked for just a minute,” he smiles, swiveling his chair and running his gaze up and down my body. Making me feel hot in all the warm places and warm in all the cold places.
“You’re beautiful, Vanessa,” he remarks, as pleased a looking man as ever I’ve seen as he shakes his head to himself with disbelief.
As if he’s struck gold or oil like he’s seeing it all for the first time.
“You’re not too shabby yourself, Michael,” I remind him, then clicking my tongue, I ask him to help me find my bra.
The new one that fits just right.
Somehow he managed to get it off me and vanish without me even realizing. Besides my panties, which have ridden up my ass, it’s all the encouragement the man needs to put his hands on me again.