by K. Ryan
Followed by, obviously:
Ms. O can be my cougar any day #kennedyhighcougar
And another:
Ms. O makes good O face
And this one:
Do u think she takes requests? Id like to see 1 from behind #doggystyle
And this one too:
2 many pics to decide which 1s going in the spank bank first #decisionsdecisions
Oh, and this one:
Do u think this was b4 or after that dude got her pregnant?? #lucky
Mob mentality at its finest.
Then another comment, this time, judging by the account’s picture and handle, was obviously from a girl:
This is what happens when ur easy and take pics like this. Bound to happen eventually. Don’t feel bad 4 her at all.
Out of all the comments, that one pissed me off the most. This stupid girl, too stuck in the kind of backwards, idiotic, and cruel thinking that makes the recipients want to kill themselves, was just as bad as the boys. The idea that Emma had somehow brought this on herself, that calling off her engagement because she realized she didn’t want to have kids with that dipshit had given anyone license to do this to her—I couldn’t even see straight.
Everything in my room blurred. Red streaks fogged my vision. The walls inched in closer. It was all I could do not to rip my computer off my lap and slam it into the wall.
Because I just couldn’t stop myself, I clicked over to another picture, which took me to yet another Twitter handle with more comments all too similar to the ones I’d just seen. So I did it again. And again. It was just more of the same hateful vitriol.
I just wanted to reach through my computer screen, strangle these little fuckheads, and scream at them, “She was your teacher, for Christ’s sake! What the hell is wrong with you?”
Maybe if I shook them hard enough and slammed my fist into their faces enough times, it might knock some sense into them.
Then again, probably not. For whatever reason, these shitheads felt entitled to those pictures. Like they owned them. Like they owned her. And those spineless pricks at her school hadn’t helped matters by just firing her instantaneously.
That sparked yet another search and I typed in Emma Owens Kennedy High Hickory WI. The news articles were well over a year old, but there they were for anyone to find. My eyes skimmed the first article, ironically enough from the Hickory Press Gazette, and my fists clenched when I read the line: “The district would not comment directly on Ms. Owens’s dismissal from her position, but Dr. Rebecca Leonard, Hickory School District Superintendent, stated that ‘the district does not tolerate inappropriate and lewd behavior of any kind from our students or our staff’. An open records request for Ms. Owens revealed the official reason for her termination was inappropriate conduct...”
That was as far as I got. I couldn’t read anymore.
From what I could tell, there’d been no investigation, no mediation, no effort to actually educate their students about this kind of shit, no protection for Emma’s privacy, and zero sympathy towards an employee who’d been violated in public. And thanks to the powers that be, there also wasn’t much of a union left to help Emma either. She’d had no support other than from her brother and sister-in-law.
I felt sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
And the worst part about it all was how accepting Emma seemed. Not that she wasn’t upset, but she wasn’t as angry as she should be. How could she not want to slap all these kids into next year after seeing this? Why didn’t she try to do more? Even if she’d been able to actually file charges against her ex, those pictures were still out there. They were still being posted and she could still take action, especially now that there was a law in place…but she didn’t.
She wasn’t angry. She was defeated and exhausted. I couldn’t blame her for feeling that way, but it seemed like she hadn’t even really tried to defend herself either. Like she felt she deserved this, that she’d earned it somehow by taking those pictures and sending them to her boyfriend in the first place.
Two thoughts popped into my head at once and I got to work on the first one, typing in a new search on Google to take care of the problem. After a few minutes of digging, I settled on one possible solution that would take some time and effort on my part, but it was free and effective. My next step was to test it out to make sure it actually worked, so I copied the url of the first picture I’d found of Emma and pasted it into Google’s url removal tool. After selecting to remove the entire page from a search, I hit the request button.
Well, it was worth a try. I’d have to check back in a few hours to make sure it actually worked, but it was something. Even if I had to manually enter every single one of these urls by hand, I’d do it if it actually worked.
Now, my next order of business was Emma herself. She didn’t have to tell me how all this had destroyed every shred of self-worth, dignity, and confidence she had before this all went down...everything I knew about her leading up to the bombs she’d dropped on me tonight was proof enough.
We would take it slow, I promised myself, and everything would have to be at her pace.
Emma clearly didn’t believe she was worthy of just about anything good anymore and she’d taken great pains to punish herself when she wasn’t the guilty party in this mess.
I was just going to have to change that.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Come on, buddy,” I knelt down on all fours, trying to coax my cat out from underneath the kitchen table. “I have to give you your pain meds. Oliver, you have to take them!”
He just dipped his striped head down until the white plastic cone hid his eyes, but I knew exactly what I would find if I had a clear view of him—the kitty stink-eye. Instead of seeing him, I heard him: maawhr.
That high-pitched mewing tore at my heart, but I couldn’t give in. The poor little guy needed some relief and it didn’t help that trying to force that liquid medication down his throat was just as bad as trying to herd him into his carrier. God, he really could be a little rat bastard when he wanted to be.
“You know, if he had the view I’ve got right now, he’d probably come running right out of there,” a familiar deep, throaty voice chuckled from behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder to find Finn standing in my open doorway, a change of clothes and his guitar lodged underneath one hand and the other hitched onto his hip.
“Shut it,” I threw back and tilted my chin up to him. “And you wanna shut the door, too, while you’re at it before Mrs. Johanssen realizes I’ve got contraband in here? She’s already pissed enough at us, so I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t think twice about ratting me out.”
“Right, right,” he laughed, shaking his head at me and promptly followed my instructions.
He set his clothes and his guitar down on my kitchen table then lifted the edge of the table up with his fingertips, shaking it up and down until Oliver scurried out from underneath it, knocking himself sideways a few times when his cone caught on the edge of a chair on his way out.
“Hey!” I scolded him. “That wasn’t very nice. You scared my baby.”
Finn just rolled his eyes and glanced back at Oliver, who sat about 10 feet away from us on his haunches and stared back at Finn as if to say: What? Bring it, asshole. I might’ve lost my balls, but I still got my claws.
“He’s gotta get his meds somehow, doesn’t he? You just gotta do what I did last night. I held his ass down and shoved that syringe down his throat.”
My mouth dropped open in faux shock. “You did what?”
Finn shrugged and crouched down, patting the carpet to get Oliver to come closer. “You know he’s not an actual human baby, right?”
When I shot him a withering glare, his lips curled up into a sly smirk. “He’s not gonna break, Em. He’ll be fine and so will you.”
There was probably a double meaning in that, but I wasn’t exactly up for decoding tonight.
“If you say so. I guess that means yo
u’re gonna help me?”
His lips spread apart even wider into a warm smile that hit me all the way down to my knees. “You say jump, I say how high.”
“Oh boy,” I lifted my eyes to the ceiling.
“Let’s tag-team RB and get it over with, shall we?” Finn called over his shoulder as he advanced on Oliver, whose sweet, sea foam eyes rounded with alarm.
He scooped my cat up into his arms like he’d been doing it for years and carried him over to the couch. I scrambled into the kitchen to grab the needle-less syringe the vet had given me and the little vial of liquid kitty morphine—or whatever it was—and joined Finn on the couch. With Finn holding my cat in a vice-grip, I pried open Oliver’s jaws, who clenched down with the strength of about 20 cats, and when I had an opening, I shoved that syringe in and squeezed the pain meds down his throat.
True to form, Oliver squirmed out of Finn’s grasp, leapt off the couch, sputtering, spitting, and meh-ing all the way into the bathroom.
“He’s probably gonna sulk in his litter box for a little while,” I laughed. “That’s nothing new.”
Finn cocked an eyebrow at me. “Well, what do you say we order a pizza and then as soon as RB decides to make an appearance, the three of us park it out on your patio for awhile tonight?”
“I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”
So, an hour and a half later, Finn, Oliver, and I parked it out on my patio. The pizza box was already demolished, two empty Matthews Brewing Co. beers already sat at our feet, Finn had his guitar in his lap, and a cone-less Oliver sat in mine. Finn picked away at the strings and it took me a second to get the melody.
The song didn’t fully click until Finn’s soft voice sang out to me about how I should excuse him for forgetting and I laughed when he sang, “You see I’ve forgotten if they’re green or they’re blue.”
“Oh, I know this one now,” I smiled and helped him finish the rest of the lyrics. “Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen.”
Finn kept strumming away, finishing up the next few bars of the song with its sweetly sincere lyrics and I smiled at him, even as Oliver rolled on my lap to reach a white paw out to my chest.
“Aw...is this my song, now?” I laughed.
He just nodded, flashing me a wide grin and kept on playing until my cat blinked up at me, yawned, and let out a long meh.
Finn abruptly drummed his fingers on the neck of his guitar and grinned down at Oliver. “You know, when he does that, it sounds an awful lot like he’s saying, Mom.”
I arched an eyebrow at him and huffed out a laugh. “Okay. Sure.”
“No, I’m serious. It’s like this…” he proceeded to do his best RB-impression, “Moooooommmm.”
My head dipped back into my chair as my shoulders shook with laughter. Oliver, however, was not amused and curled the side of his upper lip up at Finn in response.
“Oh, the stiff upper lip! Good one, contraband,” Finn chuckled, shaking his head.
Oliver responded by crawling up on my lap until both front white paws latched onto my collarbone and he settled his head on my left boob, purring and meh-ing the whole time.
“Wow,” Finn’s eyes widened and he nodded to my cat. “You sure know how to hit me right where it hurts. Well-played, RB. Well-played.”
My cat responded in turn by taking his sweet time to blink at my boyfriend and nuzzled his head into my boob once again. I wrapped both arms around him, hugging his furry body to me and thanking whoever controlled things like fate and circumstance for bringing the little furry man on my lap and the larger, human man seated at my elbow into my life. I honestly didn’t know what I’d do without them.
“Hey,” Finn called out to me softly. “You ready to go inside now? Head to bed?”
I swallowed tightly. This was the part that had me shaking with jittery excitement. Finn might have promised me that we’d take things slow, that nothing had to happen, but I just wasn’t sure what I wanted tonight. Did I want to ‘go slow’ or did I finally want to attack the fine piece of man-meat sitting next to me?
What did ‘taking things slow’ even mean? It was my own fault for leaving those terms so undefined...I guess I was going to have to clarify those terms tonight.
. . .
We did all the normal, end-of-day couple things: cleaning up from dinner and putting away the dishes, brushing our teeth, putting our pajamas on, which, incidentally, we did in separate rooms, kissing Oliver goodnight—well, I did that; Finn made fun of me while I did it—and by the time he crossed the threshold of my bedroom, Finn wrapped an arm around my shoulders and kissed the top of my head.
The fact that I was even referring to us as a couple was a victory in itself, but still...this nervousness, these butterflies playing hopscotch in my stomach, my chest heaving in and out...I couldn’t remember if this was normal or not. It’d been so long since I’d been in this position. God, what had it been—seven years since I’d done this whole new-relationship thing? It didn’t help that my fingers wound around themselves until I was practically wringing my hands in front of my bed.
I lingered at my usual side of the bed, glancing up at Finn with the best imitation of a smile I could muster. I knew what I wanted to do; I just didn’t know how to get myself to do it. Pesky things like nerves and hesitation kept me from moving much closer.
“Hey,” Finn called out to me as he rounded the other side of the bed. “I’m nervous too, Em. It’s been awhile since I’ve slept in the same bed as someone who wasn’t Sling.”
A laugh escaped my throat.
“Don’t ask,” he pointed a finger at me as he tossed the edge of my comforter off to the side. “I’m scarred for life and I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”
I scrunched my nose at him, holding up both hands. “I won’t say a word. Promise.”
Finn waggled his eyebrows at me as he slid into my bed and all I could do was follow his lead. I trusted him not to take me anywhere I wasn’t ready to go yet, but I still needed him to show me the way. Shit, too bad I didn’t keep my turntable in my bedroom—I could totally play Peter Frampton right now and that would totally be weird, if not completely inappropriate.
Oliver chose that particular moment to hop up onto the bed, plastic cone of shame and all, purrumbling his way around our legs, not caring if he stepped on either of us, and did a little circle in the middle of the bed before finally settling right in between us.
Finn let out one long sigh and sat up to lift my cat high in the air until he deposited Oliver right at the foot of the bed.
“There you go, contraband,” Finn mumbled to him. “Right where you belong.”
My shoulders started shaking, but the laughter died in my throat when Finn’s fingertips brushed my cheek. I shivered under his touch and let him me pull in closer until my chest pressed up against him. His thumb traced circles into my skin and my eyes flitted shut, reveling in the way the light sensation lit tiny fires in his wake.
My breath seemed to leave me all at once when his lips sealed over my mouth, begging my lips to part, and finally slid his tongue in between the open space.
Finn pulled away abruptly and pressed his forehead into mine. “Em?”
“Yeah?” I didn’t know how I had any breath left to answer.
“You trust me, right?”
I didn’t even need to think about it.
“Yeah.”
Of course I trusted him. How could I not?
“Good,” he murmured as he leaned in to kiss me again.
This time, he didn’t stop. My eyes closed, wanting to savor this moment, and he really did take it slow, moving his lips gently against mine, tasting and taking the way I needed him to. One of his hands slipped underneath the comforter, trailing down and reducing me to a shivering mess until his fingertips curved around my hip. He pulled me tighter against him and now, I suddenly didn’t care too much about the cat nestled in between us at the foot of the bed.
The cat would survive on th
e floor for a little while and sure enough, about a second later, he hopped off the bed, mewing and grumbling all the way down the hallway.
My fingers closed around Finn’s overgrown scruff and I tugged on it playfully to somehow bring him in deeper. As if my limbs had a will of their own, my right leg lifted up and curled around his waist, squeezing him in just about as close as I could get him. His hand glided all the way up until it closed gently around the base of my thigh, his fingertips lightly trailing circles up my skin. Needless to say, I was pretty grateful I’d decided to wear the skimpiest, laciest scrap of underwear I owned when he groaned into my mouth the second his fingers came in contact with the material.
It was lazy now, easy and slow as his hands drifted up and down, slipping underneath my oversized T-shirt, and at no point did I want to stop him. At no point did I freeze up and try to push him off me...I didn’t want him to stop. I never wanted him to stop. I think I could spend the rest of the week like this with him, wrapped around him and tangled in my sheets. Here I’d been so nervous and so worried about how I would feel when all I’d needed to do was trust him.
My hands fisted into the hair at his nape and I shivered at the heady sensation of his long, wiry scruff tickling the side of my face. Suddenly, the temperature in the room hiked up about 10 notches when he pulled away from my mouth to leave feather-light kisses on my neck and my collar bone, only removing his mouth long enough to jerk the T-shirt over my head and send it flying to the carpet. His lips started their descent now, taking careful inventory of the space in between where my bra ended and began, and moving down to cover my stomach.
