by Trina Solet
Mariah's expression turned gloomy. "I know, one bad turn after another. She only got to spend a handful of months with her aunt before she died. At Professor Gregoriev's funeral, Mina didn't even cry. Her eyes were just wide open while Ned held her in his arms the whole time, just held her tight, giving her all his strength and his love, talking to her so only she could hear. They stood off to the side. That way the other mourners wouldn't crowd around Mina. Watching them, I wanted to cry, but I told myself if Mina wasn't crying, I wasn't going to cry either. But afterward, I got on the phone with my mom and dad and I cried my eyes out. That little kid carrying so much sorrow, she couldn't even cry." Mariah shook her head and blinked at Jeff.
"She looks so fragile, but really she's such a strong kid," Jeff realized. "I just wish she didn't have to be." There was so much pain and so much potential for happiness in that little girl. Jeff wanted only good things to happen to her.
"At least things are good now," Mariah said. "Ned is a good dad. Any time people don't see Mina with him, they ask where she is. That's because he always has her with him. Now that's dedication."
"Can't be good for his love life," Jeff said under his breath, except he shouldn't have said it at all.
From behind her glasses, Mariah eyed him with a predatory look. "I heard that," she said. "So you're worrying about the professor's sex life, are you?"
"No," Jeff denied it. "It was just a passing thought." A thought that he should have kept to himself instead of blurting it out and not expecting her to hear him.
Mariah was now nodding wisely. "Sure thing. I understand how it is. You're just concerned that the professor might have unfulfilled needs, desires that go unsatisfied while his body aches for release. You stay up at night tossing and turning with this burning issue on your mind, do you, Jeff?"
"Why didn't someone warn me you were evil?" he wondered.
She laughed, but then she got serious. "You tread carefully around that man. He has his hands full. Not that I can speak for him, but I don't think he has time for guys who are going to just flit in and out of his life," she warned him.
"You mean he'll only be interested in someone he can be serious about, not someone like me," Jeff concluded.
"Like I said, I can't speak for him. But when a man has a kid, and a kid like Mina with all her troubles, you don't play around with him."
After leaving Mariah and going inside the library, Jeff kind of regretted going over to talk to her. He didn't like that warning she gave him about Ned's love life. She was right, of course. Jeff might not like hearing it, but his own disappointment told him that he had been hoping something might happen between him and Ned, just a little taste.
Maybe he had even been hoping that his first time bottoming might be with Ned. The thought made him shudder and bite his lip. That's what Ned did to him. But that talk with Mariah told him that there was no chance of anything like that happening between them. With Mina in his life, Ned wasn't going to mess around with a student.
Jeff couldn't believe how crushed he felt at that thought. His hope was based on nothing and he was feeling miserable because it got squashed. He was an idiot. Plus he should be worried about being homeless and hardly having any money, not about not getting laid. Though, if he was being truthful, his feelings for Ned were about a lot more than getting laid.
Chapter 10
Jeff spent most of his daylight hours either studying or looking for work. For the last two days, he made a little money helping fix a roof. Done with that, he grabbed a shower at Marco's before going to Ned's office to pick up Mina.
It was later than usual. Ned only had office hours that morning, and Mina could hang around with him. Jeff didn't see her as he went in though. Making his way through the Economics Department offices, he did see a guy leaving Ned's office and looking very unhappy. His head was down, his steps hurried. Jeff looked inside Ned's office and found him just getting up from his desk, sighing.
"Did that guy just leave here crying?" Jeff asked him.
"What? No. He was just a little upset," Ned said defensively.
"What did you do to him?" Jeff accused.
"Don't make me sound like some kind of monster. All I did was tell him that he couldn't just magically get the grade he wanted, he had to keep the grade he earned."
Jeff narrowed his eyes at him. "You enjoyed crushing him. And you say you're not a monster."
"Me? I'm a pussycat. You should see Glen when a student goes in to try and dispute their grade. The look in his eyes, it's like the gleam of a machete in the hands of a serial killer. He carves them up with gusto," Ned said with a note of admiration in his voice.
"And they walk out of there dragging their entrails and shattered dreams," Jeff finished for him.
"Now you're just being gruesome."
"Me? I told you, you professors are on one side and us students are on the other. And where is Mina?" he asked since she was nowhere in sight.
"Glen was going to grab something from a vending machine down the hall, so she went with him," Ned said and pointed to where they had gone.
Jeff objected. "Hey, taking her to raid vending machines is my job."
"Glen needs fortification if he's going to survive the faculty meeting without feasting on the first of our eminent colleagues who dares to disagree with him."
"Is that what you have going on now?" Jeff asked.
"Yeah. Oh, how do you feel about doing some shopping for me?" Ned asked.
"No problem. You have a list?"
Of course he didn't. "I'll write one up real quick and give you my house key. I'll meet you guys there and you can stay for dinner if you want."
Jeff wasn't sure he should accept but then Mina ran in ahead of Professor Swensen, and the decision was out of his hands. While Mina looked up at him with big eyes and a hopeful expression on her little face, he could only say yes.
"I'll suffer through a faculty meeting, you have fun with Jeff," Ned told Mina.
Mina smiled while Ned looked glum.
"Give your dad a hug," Ned said and opened his arms. "I need a really good one to get through this meeting today." Mina stepped into his arms and gave him an adorably gentle hug.
After they were done shopping, Jeff delivered Mina and the groceries to Ned's house. He huffed as he set the bags on the kitchen counter and then he heard Mina huff too as she handed him her one bag with just a loaf of bread in it.
Once they were done in the kitchen, they hung out in the living room and waited for Ned. Mina went over to a cabinet with Blu-rays and DVDs. She pointed to a DVD. "Me," she said.
Jeff went over for a closer look. The DVD she pointed to was an old James Bond movie, From Russia With Love.
"That is you," he told her and she smiled at him and nodded.
Not long after that, Ned came home. He rushed straight over to Mina with his arms open. "I need a refill. The meeting was terrible. I need a big, big hug, the biggest."
Mina opened her arms too and she hugged him while also patting him on the back consolingly. Ned had his jacket over his arm and his laptop bag in one hand. Watching his shirt stretch across his strong back, Jeff had to bite back an offer to hug Ned as well.
*
Coming home to his kid and a gorgeous guy then getting ready to make them dinner, that was the life. Except that wasn't Ned's life. That was an illusion. The gorgeous guy wasn't there for him. He was interested in someone else, and he would probably laugh in Ned's face if he knew what he was thinking.
Actually, Jeff wouldn't laugh. He would be kind as he told Ned that he was a deluded idiot. But he was staying for dinner and that was nice. They would play house and Ned would lose all sense of reality.
Going into the kitchen, Ned could see that most of the ingredients he needed to make lasagna were already laid out on the counter. He turned to Jeff with a smile.
"I guess asking you to buy lasagna noodles kind of gave away my plan," Ned said.
"Kind of. Mina got out the lasagna pan and
the spatula for you," Jeff said to make sure she got the credit she deserved.
"Of course, the little chef. Thank you," Ned said and Mina looked pleased.
Ned just needed to get out a few more things and he also needed to find something to keep Mina busy.
"We need to wash these vegetables really well. That sounds like a job for the little chef," he decided.
Jeff helped her with that while also listening to Ned bitch about his meeting. Jeff was more amused than sympathetic. But he didn't need to be sympathetic when he stood so close and looked so good. Ned just had to keep his gaze off those strong hands as they scrubbed vegetables.
Ned was anxious for his lasagna to be a hit, but when dinner was served, he made a point of not watching Jeff for his reaction.
"This lasagna is great," Jeff said.
"Wouldn't you say that even if it wasn't?" Ned asked him.
"I would, but I wouldn't be very convincing," Jeff told him.
Ned doubted that. He could believe anything Jeff told him. When he was around him, he believed the impossible. Looking over at Mina, he worried that she might believe it too.
After dinner, when Jeff was helping him clean up and Mina was watching Gumball, Ned was anxious to keep the conversation going. At all costs he had to keep his mind off how hot Jeff was and how good it felt to be around him. Jeff's hands were strong but gentle, his skin tanned from outdoor work, his muscles always pushing against his clothes like they weren't meant to be confined. All of that right there was what Ned had to distract himself from.
He asked Jeff, "How did it go with Mina today?" That was a perfectly reasonable question and no one would suspect it was meant to keep him in a decent frame of mind.
"No problems. The store wasn't too crowded," Jeff said then he turned to Ned. "When we were waiting for you, Mina told me that she was a James Bond movie."
Ned smiled at that. "Glen gave me that DVD when I adopted Mina. I never got around to watching it. It was hardly something I could sit down and watch with her."
"All your time was about her, I bet," Jeff said and he was right. "Mariah was telling me a little about what Mina was like back then."
Ned gave him a sad smile as he said, "She was my dream. But it was nothing like I thought it would be." Ned took a moment. "The way she came into my life was so full of heartache. Then there she was, a child who walked right out of my dreams, so tiny, so painfully shy, petrified really. All curled up into herself like she was in a cocoon, she was shaking like a leaf when I met her." Ned barely got the words out. He was so choked up, he thought he might start crying.
Jeff kind of looked like he might cry too. "You've done a great job with her," he said, giving him more credit than he deserved.
"I think time did most of the work and being safe. At first, Mina was all big, apprehensive eyes. Even Luda could barely make her come alive. Everything was new to her. Mina was meeting her aunt for the first time, and Luda was in and out of the hospital constantly, still undergoing treatments. She fought really hard, but that in itself took a toll on her. I spent a lot of time with Mina in those days. Luda's prognosis wasn't good so she already talked to me about adopting Mina, and we got the lawyers on board. Once she was sure there was no chance of recovery, we finalized the adoption."
"Mina couldn't have gotten a better dad," Jeff said.
"I got a head start. I spent a lot of time with her even before we lost Luda. But it was important that Mina get to know her aunt while she still could. I can still see Luda in the hospital bed, teaching Mina the alphabet song. There was this light in her eyes when she looked at Mina. Luda set aside her own pain and sorrow and focused on her niece's future. She wrote a letter to Mina. One line from that letter stuck with me. 'You made my final days shine bright.'" Ned swallowed and wiped tears from his eyes.
"Mina has you now," Jeff told him.
"She brought me so much happiness, but I can't take away her fears. She still has nightmares," Ned said though she hadn't had any recently.
"You are taking away her fears. You do it all the time. And one day they'll be all gone," Jeff predicted and squeezed his shoulder.
As Jeff left his hand there, Ned reached up and gripped it with his own. Looking over at Jeff, he saw that he had tears in his eyes too. They stared at each other too long, but Ned didn't want to look away until Mina ran into the kitchen and asked for a popsicle.
She was all they needed to put them in a cheerful mood. They went into the living room with her to watch the Powerpuff Girls and argue about which one of them was the best one. Mina made her case by pretending to fly around the room.
Noticing it was dark, Jeff decided it was time for him to go. Ned was dying to ask him to stay, but what he really wanted was for Jeff to stay all night. In the end, Ned would go to bed alone and fight against fantasies of Jeff joining him under the covers.
He would wrestle with the phantom version of Jeff in his bed until he proved too strong and Ned too weak. Finally succumbing to him, Ned would dream of getting the fucking he was dying for and wake up with his hand already on his cock.
Chapter 11
Finals had gone well for Jeff, but his troubles were only starting. With the end of the term, most of Jeff's friends were leaving town. Still hoping to get a job, Jeff stuck around though finding a place to stay was proving more challenging all the time.
If he left town and went to his mom's new place, she would welcome him without a doubt. Then he would be crowding her, her new husband and his three little girls. As long as he could take care of himself, Jeff wanted to leave them in peace. He liked to think of his mom being happy after all the hard times they had since his dad died.
At least he did earn some money. It was only half a day helping put up some drywall on a rush job, but he lucked into a job lead from one of the guys there. Brody did the same kind of work Jeff did and he often ran into him on construction sites. He sometimes passed Jeff the jobs he didn't want.
This time he told Jeff about a job working on a crew run by these two guys, the Posner brothers. It was supposed to pay really well and Jeff jumped at it. The job was pulling anything of value from buildings that were going to be demolished or gutted for renovation. That was definitely work that Jeff could do.
The first job was on a Sunday, and that should have tipped him off that something was wrong, but they said it was because the place was going to be gutted the next day. Then the house turned out to be brand new. The protective film was still on the appliances. The way the guys went to work tearing up the place was a little too rushed.
Jeff didn't know for sure that what they were doing was illegal, but he had a bad feeling. He didn't wait around to find out for sure. He pretended to do some work. Then as soon as he saw a chance to slip away, he got out of there. He called Brody to see what he had to say about what the hell was going on with these guys.
"The work we were doing was shady as fuck. What the hell did you get me into?"
"Sorry, man, my bad. I didn't know. A cousin of mine who knows the Posner bros filled me in. As soon as I mentioned their name, he was like, 'Bad news. Stay away.' It's good you quit. Just don't talk about them to anyone."
"Wasn't planning to." Jeff had already decided that he couldn't afford to report them unless he wanted to risk getting arrested himself.
Brody had more to tell him. "That cousin of mine said one of the Posner brothers has a real bad temper. I forgot which one. Anyway, he took a hammer to a guy's scull for stealing from them. Don't know if it's true but better not to find out."
Jeff agreed with him there and decided never to ask him for any job leads ever again. Thinking back on how he took this job, no questions asked, Jeff had to wonder about his own bad judgment. Now that the term was over, he was more desperate than ever to find work, so desperate that he got duped into doing something really dumb and maybe even dangerous.
What he should have done was to move on someplace where he was more likely to find work. Instead he stayed in town where
his job prospects were shrinking and he was running out of places to stay. His reason wasn't a mystery – he didn't want to leave Ned and Mina.
Before he left, Marco gave him the key to his place and said he could stay there. It was sitting empty anyway. All of his roommates were gone, though two of the guys would be back in a week.
Late in the evening, Jeff tried going over there but noticed that the building manager was looking at him funny. He probably knew all the guys were gone and no one was supposed to be there. Getting worried that he might call the cops on him, Jeff left. He wanted to spend the night indoors, but not in a jail cell. Now he was tired and didn't have a place to sleep.
He opted for hanging around on campus. It was relatively safe and he still had his student ID. If campus security caught him, they were likely just to make him move on. Though it was early, he grabbed a bench near the English Department and went to sleep. That way if he got chased out by security later in the night, he would at least get some sleep.
What he didn't expect was to hear a familiar voice telling him to wake up. Jeff opened his eyes to see Ned leaning over him. For a minute, he thought he might have fallen asleep at his house. Then he realized that what he was lying on was way too hard.
"Ned?" he said as he looked around to figure out where he was.
"Are you as surprised to see me as I am to find you sleeping out here?" Ned said. As Jeff swung his legs off the bench, Ned sat down next to him.
"I was just..."
"You are not about to lie to me, are you?" Ned said sternly. "I'm here because Mariah called me. She didn't want to snitch, but she was worried that you had nowhere to go. She heard rumors about you. Then she saw you sleeping out here and that confirmed it."
Jeff didn't know what to say.
"Why didn't you tell me you didn't have a place to live?" Ned wanted to know.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to lie to you. At first, I hid the truth because I didn't think you would give me the job if you knew," Jeff admitted.
