Ryan
Dylan’s favorite thing, when we were home, was to sit on my stomach while I watched TV on the sofa. He was at Riggs Auto Two with me now, and I was working under a car, and when I rolled out on my back he sat on me again, like he was sitting on a skateboard. The problem was he was nearly eight and he was pretty fucking heavy. But I didn’t have the heart to tell him to get off.
It was after hours. Dex was gone, and I was doing some extra work to keep up, because even with my shirt on we had a steady stream of customers. Dylan was hanging out with me, because my kid loved hanging out in a body shop. It was in his blood.
Right now he was telling me about dinosaurs. A lot about dinosaurs.
“Which one is triceratops?” I asked, just to stop the flow of words coming out of him.
“Dad, I told you. Can we have cake?”
Honestly, this kid could eat like a garbage pit and still be the size of a toothpick. I didn’t know where he got it. “Why would we have cake?” I asked him, my voice strangled because he was sitting on my diaphragm.
“Because it’s Kate’s birthday.”
I stared at him. “What? It’s Kate’s birthday?”
“Yeah. I heard her talking to her mom on the phone. She said she didn’t need to call on her birthday, because it was no big deal.”
Panic shot through my veins. What should I do? Kate had said her birthday was no big deal. Still, was I an asshole if I didn’t at least acknowledge it? We’d slept together. It had been fucking fantastic. Now it was her birthday. Yes, I was an asshole if I didn’t acknowledge it.
“We have to do something,” I said to Dylan. “Get her something.”
“Why?”
Because I had an incredible night with her four nights ago. Because she’s all I think about. Because she’s saving my fucking life. “Because she’s Kate,” I said to Dylan. “She does a lot for us.”
He thought this over. I knew my son: he needs a minute to think it through, but once he does it, he’s in. “Okay,” he said. “We can get her cake.”
“Fine, but she needs a present too. What should it be?”
Panic again. I’d never bought a gift for a woman in my life. Perfume? Flowers? What the fuck? “What does she like?” I asked Dylan.
“I don’t know.” He scratched his fingers through his hair. “Um, books?”
I couldn’t get her a book. I didn’t know which one to get.
“She’s pretty,” Dylan said. “Makeup?”
We were both baffled. We had no idea how to buy makeup. “She’s taking a course,” I said. “A teaching course.”
Dylan looked at me, and we both had the same thought at the same time. Like a light bulb going off over our heads.
“School supplies,” he said.
Back to school shopping was one of the highlights of Dylan’s year. He had a lot of anxiety around school, but he liked to pick out pencils, pens, notebooks, those pink erasers. We spent an hour buying supplies for Kate, including a pencil case (Dylan insisted) and a protractor (Dylan insisted again.)
Then we got cake. There was no time to get it personalized, but we got a generic one that said Happy Birthday on it.
We got home, and I laid everything on the table. “Go get Kate from her apartment,” I told Dylan. “Surprise her.”
He was excited about it. He walked to the stairs on exaggerated tiptoe while I tried not to laugh. Then he crept down like a stalker.
I heard him knock on Kate’s door. “Kate, come upstairs right now, it’s exciting!”
Kate’s door opened. “Dylan?”
“It’s cake!” he said, totally blowing it. “It’s your birthday!”
She came upstairs. She was wearing yoga pants, a T-shirt—her lounging-around-the-apartment outfit. She had her glasses on and her hair in a messy knot. I looked at her and my whole body went warm. After we slept the other night, we woke up and fucked again, and that time I did it long and slow, letting her almost come twice before she gave in and begged me to do it. Then I tipped her over the edge and listened to those amazing fucking sounds she made while I came inside her. One night with Kate, and I was the most sexually satisfied man you’ve ever seen. I never wanted anything else.
“Oh,” she said, looking at me, at the table. Her cheeks were a little pink. “Oh, my goodness. This is very nice.”
“It’s chocolate,” Dylan said, still on the cake. Was I ever that innocent? I felt like I’d been born a ball of tension and anger. “Open the pencil case!”
So Kate did what she did—oohed and aahed over the presents, let Dylan show her everything and explain. She accepted a slice of birthday cake and ate it. “Tell me you gave him dinner,” she said to me with narrowed eyes as she dug her fork in and Dylan attacked his.
I held up my hands. “He had dinner, I swear.” We’d gone to the local Greek takeout place while we were out. “It was even good for him.”
Dylan left to play his video game in his room, and I watched as Kate tidied the table and put the cake away in the fridge. “Don’t do that,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
“It’s fine.”
She wasn’t looking at me. “What?” I asked. “What did I do?” I ran everything through my head, trying to figure out what I fucked up. I couldn’t think of what it was.
“You didn’t do anything,” she said, rinsing the plates. She put them down in the sink and dried her hands. “It’s just that…” She turned and leaned against the counter. “Birthdays were never a big thing in my house growing up. I guess I’m just not used to it.”
“Birthdays were never a thing?” They weren’t a thing for me either—if my father knew when my birthday was, I’d be shocked—but they were big for Dylan. We always went big for his birthday. He loved it. “You were a kid.”
“You’ve never met my parents.” She smiled, but there wasn’t a lot of happiness in it. “My parents are big on rules. Not in a mean way—they just like things to go their way. I’m an only child, and it was always sort of expected that I would do things the way they wanted. And they weren’t big on birthdays.” She frowned, staring at nothing. “When I say that out loud, it sounds pathetic. I’m twenty-seven today. Why the hell do I care what my parents think about birthdays?”
“Beats me,” I said.
“You’re right,” she said as if I’d said something profound. “Fuck it. I like my birthday. Thank you for doing this.”
I felt myself smiling. I was getting warm again. “You’re welcome.” I stepped forward, watched her cheeks go pink again as she looked at me. She looked soft beneath that T-shirt, and now that we were alone I was going to get my hands on her if she’d let me.
She didn’t protest, so I took her glasses off and set them on the counter. Then I tilted her face up and kissed her. I started out nice, like a sweet birthday kiss, but she went soft and hot, her tongue licking me, so I deepened it.
Kate moaned softly and her hands twisted the hem of my shirt. I moved my hands down to her neck, brushing my fingers along it, then sliding down her back. She gripped my shoulders, and the next thing I knew we were making out like teenagers, her fingers gripping my hair, my hands on her ass.
Only when I heard the thump did I realize we had moved and I had her ass against the kitchen table. I lifted her on and pushed her back, still kissing her. Her feet hooked around the backs of my thighs as she wrapped her legs around me. There were more soft thumps as her birthday presents fell to the floor.
I broke the kiss and moved my mouth along her jaw, the soft spot in the corner beneath her ear, down her neck. I could feel her breath, the hard knock of her heartbeat. “We can’t,” she managed in a whisper. “He’ll hear.”
I knew that. I was far gone, but not so far gone I’d fuck a woman on my kitchen table with a seven-year-old upstairs. Still, I kept her pressed down, savoring how hot and soft she was. “I’m coming to your room after he goes to sleep tonight,” I said in her ear, rubbing along the seam of her yoga pants, making her squirm. “I’m going crazy. I need to come inside you so bad.”
She sighed, arching her back and closing her eyes. “You are so sexy,” she said, her voice dreamy.
Something cool sliced through me. Because that was the only thing she could think of to say. It was a compliment; I’d heard it any number of times before. But coming from Kate, it felt different. That’s all this is to her, the voice in my head said. Just good sex. But that isn’t all it is to you.
And then, on the heels of that: Of course. Why would she want anything else from you?
I should say something. I should back out. But she was the only thing I fucking wanted.
It was far, far too late to save myself. And I knew it.