by Emma Chase
So, I sit on the bed and run my fingers through the thick blond hair that’s sticking up in adorable angles.
His eyes open with a deep inhale of breath.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
He starts to sit up . . . and then lays right back down.
“Shit, I’m still wasted.” He covers his eyes with his forearm. “What time is it?”
The words just come out, I don’t really think before saying them. “Early. But I have to go. My son has book-club at eight.”
Dean drops his arm and blinks, looking up at me like he’s not sure he heard right.
“You have a kid?”
“Yeah. Well, a teenager now.”
Those ocean-blue eyes widen. “No shit?”
I nod, smiling. “No shit.”
Dean clears his throat, but his voice is still scratchy. “Teenagers are cool. Amazing and totally irrational at the same time.”
I chuckle. “This is true.”
He glances around the room. “You want coffee? I can probably manage some scrambled eggs. Possibly toast if I really dig deep.”
A sweet warmth fills me. Maybe I’m setting the bar too low, but the fact that he offered to make me breakfast instead of rushing me out the door like the scenarios my sisters have described, is nice. He’s nice. More than nice.
And if I didn’t already know it before, I do now—I like him so much.
But still, I shake my head.
“I already ordered a car. Stay in bed, go back to sleep. I can’t do breakfast.”
He nods slowly, his expression hard to read. He runs his fingertip gently up my arm. “Lainey, last night . . . it was intense.”
The word comes out soft, tender.
“Yeah.”
“And awesome.” He meets my eyes, his mouth beautiful and earnest. “Last night was really fucking awesome.”
I run my tongue over my lip, remembering the taste of him.
“It really was.”
In the pause that comes after, I wait for him to ask for my number, if he can see me again. If I want to grab a coffee sometime or dinner—at this point, an invite to some vague future brunch would make me ecstatic.
But he doesn’t.
And I guess that connection I felt was a one-way street.
Though disappointment creeps in, I refuse to let it take hold. Because last night was amazing and hot and perfect—and I don’t want to taint it by hoping for more.
My phone dings with the notification that my car is here.
“I gotta go.”
Dean leans up on his elbow. His other hand slides under my hair, gripping the back of my neck—and I love that too—the feel of his hand on me.
He brings me down close to him and he kisses me, slow and gentle, one last time.
His forehead rests against mine and he whispers, “Bye, Lainey.”
I give him a smile. “Bye, Dean.”
I grab my bag and head out the door, and don’t tempt myself by looking back.
~ ~ ~
My Uber driver is a fan of Bob Dylan. I close my eyes and rest my head against the window as “It Ain’t Me Babe” plays on repeat during the drive home to my parents’ house in Bayonne.
The house is silent as I ease open the front door, knowing just where to stop before it creaks. I walk up the mauve carpeted stairs to my son’s room—to check on him.
Rationally, I know Jason’s fine and sleeping—and any time you open a fourteen-year-old boy’s bedroom door without knocking, you’re risking seeing things that can never be unseen. But it’s a habit, a mom-compulsion I can’t seem to shake.
He’s on his side, wrapped in a cylinder cocoon of blankets with just his head sticking out, the way he’s slept since he was two. He’s got my honey-blond hair and delicate features. He’s long and lanky right now, but he’ll fill out.
I named him Jason after my dad. Because his father is an idiot, and a jackass, and not one of my better choices. He didn’t want anything to do with us—when Jay was born or in any of the years since. But it’s for the best—I don’t want someone so stupid around my kid anyway.
I close the door softly and go to my room, changing into an oversized sweatshirt and worn yoga pants. Then I pad down to the kitchen.
A few years ago, my mom went through a cock phase.
She redecorated the kitchen in barnyard-red and white with rooster accents. It’s not my taste, but that’s a big part of my excitement about doing Life with Lainey. The hook of the web series is I’ll be living in a house—an old house—while decorating it on a low budget, room by room, with my unique style and sparkling personality.
Jason and I will be moving at the end of the summer. It’s an amazing perk—the first time I’ll have my own place, even if only just for the year.
I lift the tail of the cookie-jar rooster that I found at a yard sale in Hunterdon County, and take out a tea bag. Then Erin walks into the kitchen in gray polka dot pajamas and fuzzy purple slippers.
“What are you doing here?” I yawn.
“There was an accident in the tunnel and Jack didn’t want to deal with the traffic. Plus, he gets a cheap thrill out of doing it in my old bedroom with my cheerleading trophies watching us from the shelves.”
“That’s one twisted puppy you’ve got there. You should definitely marry him.”
“Is he paying you to say that?”
I nod. “Five bucks for every mention.”
Erin looks me up and down as she sits at the table. “Someone looks like she got some last night. Did you just get home?”
I sigh in blissful satisfaction, the orgasmic endorphins still flooding my brain.
“I didn’t just get some—I got it all. I had all the sex. The sweaty quick kind, the dirty rough kind, the slow lazy kind. It was ah-maz-ing.”
“Good for you. Are you going to see him again?”
“Nah.” I shake my head. “I didn’t offer and he didn’t ask.”
And for just a second, I let myself feel the sadness of that. The regret and disappointment. Then I shake it off, breathe it out, banish it away.
“I’ve got too much going on anyway—with the move and the show and all.”
“That’s true.”
Erin goes to the counter and starts to make her own cup of tea. “Hey—where’s the house you and Jay are moving to again?”
Like I said before, life can be bitchy and she’s never boring. Every once in a while—she also has a wicked sense of humor.
“It’s a small town, south of here.” I blow on the steam wafting from my teacup. “It’s called Lakeside.”
Chapter Two
Dean
August
Most high school kids are good at one thing—sports, art, academics, being a smartass, getting high, the smooth-talking baby-politics bullshit of student government. They figure out whatever their “thing” is and congregate with other students who have the same talent. And then you have a clique.
“Dig, Rockstetter! Tuck your chin—move your feet!”
When I was a student here at Lakeside High School, I was good at a lot of things. I moved through cliques as easily as that X-Men mutant guy passes through walls.
“Why the hell are you looking behind you?! Keep your eyes on your target! That safety is gonna be right on your ass, you don’t have to look back to check!”
I played the drums, taught myself when I was seven, so I was cool with the grunge crowd, the druggies, the band geeks and theater freaks.
“Left, Jackowitz! Your other left! The play is Blue 22—you go left! Run it again.”
I had a good face, an athletic build. I’d discovered early that sex was awesome, so not only had God gifted me with an above-average sized dick—I knew what to do with it. That put me in good with the pretties, the popular kids, and especially the cheerleaders.
“Where’s my offensive line? That’s not a line—you’re like Swiss cheese!”
I had great hands and quick feet—I could catch
anything. That fact didn’t just make me a football player, a wide receiver—around here, it made me a star. Anyone who tells you growing up a football God in a small town isn’t fuck-all awesome is either clueless or lying to you. It’s like that expression “money can’t buy happiness”—it’s entirely possible that it can’t—but it sure as shit makes being happy a hell of a lot easier.
“Nice, that’s how it’s done, Lucas. Good job.” Garrett Daniels—head coach of the Lakeside Lions, and my best friend, claps his hands. Then he calls downfield to the rest of the team. “All right, let’s go! Bring it in!”
Garrett got sucked in by the teaching tick after his NFL quarterback prospects were shattered in a college game—along with his knee. He mourned the loss, then brushed himself off and came up with a new life plan. In addition to being able to coach the best sport ever, he gets a real kick out of teaching—from making history come alive for his students. His words, not mine.
“Twenty-minute break,” Daniels tells the sweating gaggle of teenage boys that huddle around us. “Hydrate, get some shade, then we’ll run drills for another hour and call it a day.”
It was different for me. I had no illusions about being a Stand and Deliver, Dead Poets Society-esque, Mr. Keating shaper of young minds—that’s not my style. But the pay is decent, the benefits are good, and the hours are a cakewalk. The summers off allow me to tour with the band I’ve been playing drums in since I was a kid, and being the football team’s offensive coordinator lets me enjoy the smell of the grass and the feel of the pigskin in my hands. There’s no downside.
Teaching lets me live life exactly how I want—uncomplicated, easy.
I like easy. Sue me.
“You just get back today?” Jerry Dorfman, former jarhead, current guidance counselor and defensive assistant coach asks me, as the players stream off toward the water cooler.
“Last night.”
I tour the Jersey shore with Amber Sound from June til August, slipping back into town just in time for preseason practice.
“So . . . how was it?” Jerry nudges me with his elbow.
“Good. It was a good summer.”
“Don’t give me good—give me details. I’m married now. I have to get laid vicariously through you.”
Don’t let him fool you—Jerry wasn’t getting laid before he was married, either.
Last spring he tied the knot with Donna Merkle, Lakeside’s megafeminist art teacher. And, I’m saying this as a guy—when he’s not on the clock or dealing with a kid—Jerry’s a pig. The whole faculty and student body are still pondering the mystery of how the two of them happened.
“What’s the matter—Merkle holding out on you?” I ask.
“Hell no.” He runs his hand down his “Dad-bod”. “My wife can’t resist this fine piece of male specimen. But . . . there’s no harm in hearing about your adventures in punani-land.”
Punani-land? And the guy wonders why he’s not getting any.
“Yeah, Coach.” Mark Adams, the fresh-faced team trainer and newbie gym teacher, agrees. “When I went here, we all knew you got more ass than a toilet seat.” He makes the Wayne’s World “we’re not worthy” gesture. “Teach me your mighty player ways.”
I’m not that much of a player. Not anymore.
Back in high school, in my twenties—sure—that was another story.
These days, I’m all about keeping it straightforward, casual, good. I think friends with benefits is the greatest invention of the twenty-first century. I don’t lie or do headgames, and I don’t do relationships—there’s nothing easy about them.
But that’s the thing about small towns—who you used to be sticks forever—even if you’re not really that person anymore. Although there are worse things to be than the town player. And, I don’t want to disappoint the fans.
So, I smirk. “Well, there was this one girl.”
Jerry rubs his hands together and Adams pumps his fist. Garrett’s there too, but he stopped giving a damn about my sex life decades ago.
“Was she hot?”
My eyes roll closed in awe.
“Smokin’ hot.”
With endless legs that felt incredible squeezing my waist, a pussy that tasted as sweet as cotton-fucking-candy, silky honey-gold hair that looked real pretty wrapped around my hand, and these big, innocent, sparkling hazel eyes that could rip your heart out.
And her laugh . . . it was long and light—the kind of sound that pulls you in, makes you want to laugh with her.
Lainey.
Last name—unknown. Number—unknown.
With that thought comes the sharp kick of frustration that nails me right in the gut. Because if I’d been more than half awake, or sober, I would’ve asked for her number.
Goddamn it.
Typically, in the summers one bite of the apple is enough for me—there’s a lot of fruit on the trees. But I definitely would’ve gone back for another taste of her.
“Was she a freak in the sheets?” Adams asks.
“I bet she was a deep-throater,” Jerry adds. “Nothing’s more glorious than a woman without a gag reflex.”
And it’s weird. Normally I don’t have a problem with Jerry and Adams talking like two pervy asshats, but hearing them direct this shit at Lainey seems all kinds of wrong.
There was something about her—a sweetness, a charm . . .
“I never do this, Dean. Ever.”
. . . that makes me feel protective. Proprietary.
“We had a good time.” I shrug, blowing it off. “Like I said—it was a good summer.”
Jerry and Adams open their mouths to argue, but I swiftly cut them off with a stern, “Enough.”
Just then, the dark-haired captain of the cheerleading squad—Ashley Something—jogs up to Garrett, who’s been ignoring the whole exchange.
“Coach D, can we use the field to practice our half-time routine while the team’s on break?”
“Sure.” Garrett checks his stopwatch. “We’ve got about ten minutes left.”
“Thanks!”
Ashley bounces away and a few seconds later, a flock of cheerleaders take the field in a square formation, decked out in blue-and-gold uniforms.
Teenagers today have a thing for the 80s aesthetic. The style, the music—thank God, not the hair. My theory is they subconsciously long for the old-fashioned days they’ve heard their parents talk about—before electronics and social media ruled the world.
“Mickey” by Toni Basil pounds out of the field speakers.
And the cheerleading squad starts to dance.
But . . . there’s nothing old-fashioned about it.
There’s some hip shaking, a little skirt flipping . . . then things get weird. When they start sucking their fingers into their mouths, turning around and smacking their own asses—then smacking each other’s asses—swirling their hips and kicking their legs like they had a high-paid pole dancer for a choreographer.
“I’m uncomfortable with this,” Jerry says in a stunned voice. “Is anyone else uncomfortable with this?”
I raise my hand.
Garrett—whose wife’s fifteen-year-old niece is one of the cheerleaders shaking their shit out on the field—raises his hand higher.
Young Adams looks conflicted.
Because when male teachers have reached a certain age you look at your female students sort of like you’d look at your sister. On a basic level, you recognize that they’re hot—young, pretty, perky in all the right places—but they don’t turn you on. You’re not attracted to them.
Because they’re kids.
It doesn’t matter if they’re technically eighteen, or if they pass around nudes like goddamn baseball cards . . . they’re still naïve, clueless kids. All of them.
In some ways, these kids are more kids than we ever were.
In one synchronized move—the cheerleaders strip off their sweaters—leaving them only in tiny skirts and gold bikini tops, with the word “Score” written across their chests in big
blue letters.
“Whoa!”
“Jesus!”
“Where the hell is McCarthy?” Garrett looks around. “No way she’s gonna let this slide.”
No sooner does he say her name than she does appear—like the devil.
Michelle McCarthy has been the principal at Lakeside High School for forever. She hates me—I’m pretty sure she hates all of us. When I was a student I thought her high-strung frustration was entertaining—but now, as an adult—I think she’s a goddamn riot.
Miss McCarthy marches out onto the field, waving her arms, her pudgy cheeks ripe tomato-red, and her meek, hunched assistant, Mrs. Cockaburrow, following behind her like a docile indentured servant.
“No—no—shut it down! Shut. It. Down!”
The music cuts off and the cheerleaders look crestfallen.
“There is no stripping on the football field!” McCarthy declares. “Where’s Ms. Simmons?”
Kelly Simmons is the special-ed teacher and cheerleading advisor. Back in high school, she and I used to bang each other’s brains out—in-between relationships with other people, and sometimes during those relationships. She was the hottest girl in school and kind of a bitch. Now she’s the hottest teacher in school, and still kind of a bitch.
“She’s in the parking lot with her husband,” one of the cheerleaders volunteers. “I think they’re having, like, marital issues.”
McCarthy’s finger swings like an axe in the air. “Regardless—you’re not doing that routine on the field. Clothes stay on. You’re students, not strippers!”
Ashley stomps her foot. “Strippers are people too, Miss McCarthy.”
“Not in high school, they’re not!”
Lucas Bowing, our starting quarterback walks up next to me. “I don’t see what the problem is. I think they looked good.”
Beside him, sophomore defensive end Noah Long stares hypnotized at the bikini-topped girls. “Yeah. Mickey is F-I-N-E, fiiine.”
Then they both start dancing, and grunting, and swinging their hands as if their tapping imaginary asses.
“For God’s sake, stop twerking,” I order. “Badly—I might add. You’re supposed to be hydrating, go drink some frigging Gatorade.”
