Sucker for the Boss

by Blue Sky Books

  “So you think I should just forgive you for your behavior because I’m having your baby?” she knew she was seconds away from bursting into tears. He was all she wanted anymore.

  “No, not forgive. Just to give me a chance. If you’re unhappy with me, I won’t ask again. I didn’t know how you felt about me. I thought I’d done a pretty good job of painting myself to be a complete asshole” he pulled her towards him, her hands landing on his chest. She allowed her face to sink into his chest, she felt happy, even though a myriad of emotions were coursing through her veins, all at the same time.

  “I didn’t want to force you into wanting me because I’m pregnant Don” she said, her voice was muffled slightly by the fabric of his shirt. His face was perched on her head as he stroked her back gently.

  “Nobody can force me to do anything, you should know that by now. If I’m here, begging you to accept me, it’s because I cannot live another minute away from you. It’s because I want to get to know you and love you” he said and she pressed her eyes shut tightly. She wanted to hold on to that moment forever.

  ******

  Andrew and Laura were staring at them, their reaction to the news had been different stages of shock, surprise and panic.

  “So you’re saying that you two have been going at behind our backs for over a year now?” Andrew finally spoke up, and Laura slapped his hand lightly, trying to turn a forceful smile at Elaine and Don.

  “Well, we kinda got there first before you two” Don said and it was Elaine’s turn to slap his hand.

  “Besides, we weren’t serious about it till very recently” Elaine spoke up and her hands went to her belly.

  “So that child is yours?” Andrew turned to his son, he was still in shock.

  “Yes dad. I’m going to be a father” Don replied and exchanged a broad grin with Elaine.

  “What are we going to tell that kid? How are we going to tell that kid what all of our relationships are?” Andrew asked again, Elaine could see her mother was panicking again.

  “We will tell him or her how much the family loves them and that will be more than enough. A loving home and a family” Elaine said and caught her mother’s gaze. She wanted to reassure Laura, that things were not as bad as Andrew was making it up to be.

  “I wish you had told us sooner” Andrew said, Elaine instantly knew how Don was going to react to that.

  “And what would you have done? Not married Laura? I haven’t known you to sacrifice anything in your life for your family” Don stood up from his seat.

  “Don please” Elaine said and grabbed his hand, pulling him back to the seat again.

  “I just want to say. To both of you, Andrew and Don, that I will not want my child to grow up in this atmosphere, with the two of you fighting constantly” she said, glaring at the two of them, she made sure they could tell from her voice that she meant business.

  “At least, one of you will be a good parent” Andrew said with a slight laugh. Thankfully, to Elaine’s relief, they all shared a laugh. Don was the one laughing loudest, he was proud and happy and looking forward to being a dad. Doing everything differently from his own.

  “I’m just happy you both decided to make it public” Laura finally spoke up, she looked at her daughter, “I was so worried when you said you didn’t want the father to be a part of the child’s life. I was certain that was going to be a mistake. Besides, I’ve always maintained that the two of you would make a great couple” she turned to look at Andrew and smiled. Elaine could tell that her mother had the same effect on Andrew that she had on Don. Neither of the men could resist an encouraging smile from the women they loved.

  Don reached out to stroke Elaine’s belly, a habit he had gotten into in the past few weeks.

  “So you’re not moving into this house then, I’m guessing?” Laura asked and Elaine shook her head.

  “I’m moving into Don’s apartment mom. You’re of course welcome to come and stay with us for a few days towards the end of my pregnancy. I could definitely use the extra help” she said and patted Don’s hand which remained on her bulging belly.

  “I can’t wait for this baby to be born. Our first grandchild Andrew, and it will have both our genes!” Laura suddenly threw her arms around Andrew’s neck and they all laughed.

  “That’s an odd thought, but she’s right” Don said in the middle of his laughter.

  As he helped Elaine into the car, she looked at the way his curls shone in the sun. She hoped their baby is born with the same hair-genes as his, she would love to see a mirror image of Don running around the house.

  “You don’t think this is too weird for everybody is it?” she asked him, when he settled down beside her and rammed in the key into the ignition.

  “I don’t think it is. And even if it is, who the Hell cares? As long as we’re happy” he said and turned to smile at her. It had only been four weeks that they had started to properly be in a relationship, but Elaine knew, in the bottom of her consciousness, that she had known him forever.

  As the engine growled to a loud start, she covered her ears dramatically.

  “For starters, you’re going to be a father. Lose the car” she said loudly, over the sound of the engine as Don pulled out of his father’s driveway. He laughed at that and patted her head affectionately.

  “If you insist. Or maybe, I can buy a brand new family car for us, so that you don’t have to ride that bike everywhere” he said and Elaine raised her brows.

  “So you’re not going to lose the car?”

  “Isn’t the car a part of who I am? Who you fell in love with? Do you want me to change?” he asked her and she bit down on her lip. She hadn’t really thought about it.

  “I can try to change if you really want me to. Because I’d do anything for you. But think about it before you ask me to make any radical changes. The last thing I want is for you to realize five years from now that you don’t love who I become” he was concentrating on the road now, but he turned to look at her sometimes. Elaine was smiling, thinking, in utter disbelief that she was agreeing with everything he said.

  “No Don. I don’t want you to change” she said finally and blew him a kiss. He laughed and pretended to catch it.

  “I want you to be this guys, forever”

  Tempted by the Football Star

  Jocelyn Jones threw her hands up in exasperation. She liked Annabelle Wright. She did, after all, have an accent like the Queen of England. But sometimes she just didn’t get it. “You don’t understand,” she said again. “I’ve been in college for almost three years now, and then out of nowhere this meathead decides that he wants to be in my English literature class. Come on, why now? We’ve only got one semester left before finals.”

  Anna sipped her coffee and yawned. She was tired, no doubt, from studying so hard. That was another reason Jocelyn liked her so much; she studied just as hard as Jocelyn did. They sat in the student café, across from each other, with college students milling around them, absorbed in their own lives, hunched over books or laughing loudly at each other’s jokes. But Jocelyn hardly heard them. All she heard was the tut that Anna let out. It was the kind of tut an impatient mother gave to a child, the kind of tut that said come on, be serious, you can’t really be thinking like that.

  “You don’t own the class,” Anna said. But when her British friend said class, it came out cluuussss. “You can’t dictate who joins it.”

  “I know that, obviously,” Jocelyn said, sipping her own coffee. “But—but—ah, whatever!” She laid the coffee down and threw her hands up again. There was no making her see. If she didn’t understand straight away, she never would.

  Jocelyn had been studying like a madwoman for the past three years, and her life had reached a steady tempo. She knew the names of everybody in her classes, and she got along with them reasonably well, and now this guy just waltzed in and disturbed her equilibrium. Part of her knew that she was being selfish – that Anna was correct – but she couldn’t shake the
feeling: couldn’t force the pulse that intruded her thoughts every time Zack Underwood opened his mouth.

  And he was so cocky. He always had a cocky smile on his lips, and he knew that girls looked at him, and he seemed to like it. The girls in class were in awe of the fact that he was a quarterback, it seemed, in awe of the fact that he could throw a football better than any of the school had ever seen. If Jocelyn was completely honest with herself, she was impressed, too. But the way the girls in class looked at him went way behind being impressed. It was like they saw him as some kind of god.

  “Jocelyn?”

  “Huh?” she said, turning to Anna, who had risen to her feet when Jocelyn had been away with the clouds.

  “I’m going to cluuuuusssss. I’ll see you laaaaater?”

  “Yeah, sure, see you later.”

  Anna left her, and Jocelyn finished her coffee. She had class, too, in fifteen minutes. English class, where Zack Underwood would be, with his dark brown eyes and his thick black beard and his curly, short black hair, with his strong jawline and his muscular arms bulging from his t-shirt. He was a jock, alright, if she had ever seen one. And he was white. That wasn’t something that should have been a problem to Jocelyn, and it wasn’t a problem as such. Just because he was white and she was black, it didn’t mean they were immediately enemies. But in high school she’d had some bad experiences with white jocks (the usual racist shit over-privileged white kids thought was hilarious). She knew that Zack was not the same person as the jocks (jerks) in high school, but that instinctive anger was there.

  Ah, well, she thought, and rose to her feet. The café was emptying now, students charging toward the doors like cattle, bumping, jostling. It reminded Jocelyn of the few parties she’d been to at the start of college. She hadn’t been to many since. She wasn’t really a party kind of girl. She was more of a hunker-down-in-the-library-with-an-essay-on-Hemingway kind of girl. But as she watched these students she remembered those parties and felt a momentary pang. Had she missed out on a vital part of college? Had she made a mistake when everyone else was party, and she was studying? Was it time to let her hair down, just a little?

  She waited at the back of the throng, her backpack thrown over one shoulder, her books cradled in her arms. For some reason, the idea of letting her hair down and this meathead Zack Underwood were linked in her mind. Whenever she thought the phrase let my hair down, his face pushed itself into her mind. She didn’t know the significance of it. But, yeah, she could admit it to herself—he was hot. She did like looking at him. But that, she thought, was all she would do. She would just look at him, and nothing more.

  Finally, the crowd seeped out of the café like water seeping out of a pierced pipe, and Jocelyn was free to go to her English class, where he awaited.

  *****

  “How can we account for Hemingway’s apparent pessimism in To Have and Have Not?” Sarah, the professor, said, looking around the small ten-person classroom (it had been a nine-person classroom before). “Or do we disagree that he is pessimistic?”

  “I think he is,” Sally said, who was the kind of college girl who agreed with everything the professor said in the hopes of getting better grades. When Sarah looked at her, over the rim of her stylish glasses, waiting for her to elaborate, Sally began the inevitable floundering. She hopped from one point to the other like a rabbit on speed, settling on nothing concrete.

  “I think what she’s trying to say,” Zack said, with his smooth Texan voice, smiling that smooth cocky smile, “is that Hemingway understands the futility of life, and represents that in the helplessness of it all.”

  “Helplessness?” Jocelyn’s voice surprised her. Usually, when she spoke, she had a carefully-constructed point in her mind. Now, she was in free-fall. She looked across the room at Zack. He stared back openly at her. Jocelyn took a deep breath and searched her ‘literary banks’ (the pocket of literature in her mind reserved for moments like this). “I do not believe the novel is about helplessness at all,” she said, her voice steady now. “Harry Morgan is not a helpless man. If it is a character study at all, it is the study of a man who is willing to do anything to support his family. It may be a critique of rugged individualism – he fails whilst trying to pull his family ‘up by the bootstraps’ – but more likely it is a Marxist commentary on the inevitability of outside social forces. Does Harry choose to become an illegal smuggler? Perhaps, in a sense. But choose is a misleading word here. Harry is forced, by the necessity to provide for his family, into illicit activities. Capitalism – the American Dream, even – has failed him, and so he must dive into activities he otherwise might not.”

  She broke off. The class looked at her with a mixture of awe, resentment, and amusement. The professor nodded, and made a few notes, which always made Jocelyn feel good. If the professor was taking notes, she must’ve said something right! She found herself blushing, but nobody seemed to notice. The professor gave her a compliment and then moved on. After a few moments, everybody stopped looking at her.

  Everybody except Zack.

  She glanced up as the professor spoke, and saw that he was smiling at her. It was that charming, disarming smile, and it turned Jocelyn’s light blush into a fierce blooming. She shouldn’t let this man make her blush, but she couldn’t help it. His lips twitched into a smile, causing his beard to shift. Jocelyn sat near the door, and when the class was over, she almost ran out of the classroom, wanting to leave before anybody could talk to her.

  She was out of the building, walking across the courtyard between the humanities block and the cafeteria, when she heard footsteps behind her. Someone was either jogging toward her or past her. She didn’t know which to hope for, and soon she couldn’t hope for either. It had happened. Somebody touched her elbow. Though she had heard him coming, she still started. Her books flew in the air and were falling when Zack, with lightning-fast reactions, caught them in one quick movement. Jocelyn watched in amazement, his movements so fast she could barely track them.

  He shrugged. “Football,” he said, and handed her the books.

  She almost snatched them from him. He smiled again. “Thanks,” Jocelyn muttered. “But you shouldn’t sneak up on people. It gives them the creeps.”

  “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” he said.

  Jocelyn found she had stopped and faced him. Students walked around them, talking, or listening to their headphones. One woman read a book as she walked, oblivious of the students around her. Jocelyn stepped through the crowd to the edge of the courtyard, where they wouldn’t be in the way. Without being asked, Zack followed.

  They stopped near the benches. “What did you want?” Jocelyn said. Her voice was icy. Her heart was hopping up and down in her chest like an excited toddler on a bed, and she knew it wasn’t just from the scare. Something about this man made her heart beat like that.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” Zack said. What infuriated Jocelyn even more was how calm he seemed. He just smiled his cocky, self-assured smile as he watched her, like he knew the punch line to a joke she didn’t even know the set up to.

  “Okay . . .”

  “That was really awesome in there,” Zack said. “Your point, I mean, about To Have and Have Not. I was wondering if you would help me with the essay we have coming up?”

  “What, tutor you?” Jocelyn said. “I don’t have time for that.”

  She had to work on the essay, too, and she didn’t want to give her precious time away to sit with him and help him catch up. But he didn’t seem thrown. He shook his head, that smile always on his (kissable) lips. Kissable, she thought, her palms damp with sweat. Where the hell did that come from? “Not tutoring,” he said. “More like a study group. I wouldn’t want you to teach me, just give me odd pointers here and there. If you don’t want to, it’s okay. Just thought I’d ask.”

  He made to turn away, and Jocelyn knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted her to call him back. And the worst part was that she wanted to, as well. “Wait,” she sai
d. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m going to the library tonight. I’ll meet you there, if you want?”

  “Sure,” he said. He reached into his pocket and brought out a folded-up piece of paper. “This is my number. Text me.”

  Their hands briefly touched as he handed her the paper. A thrill moved from his fingers to hers, and then up her arm. She bit her lip, and then forced herself to stop. Zack laughed pointlessly and then walked away, leaving her with books in one hand, phone number in the other, not entirely sure what had just happened.

  But she did like the tightness of his arms as he walked away from her. For a moment she imagined him in the gym, his arm muscles tightening as he heaved the weights, sweat dripping from his hard body. She shook her head.

  Can’t stand here like an idiot all day, she thought, and walked toward the cafeteria. She didn’t have any lessons today, but a student’s time, she realized, was mostly not about lectures. It was about doing long stints in the research-mines for your papers. She sat in the cafeteria with her coffee and her books and to everybody else she would’ve been the same old Jocelyn.

  They wouldn’t have known how goddamn horny she was right now.

  *****

  She almost didn’t text Zack. It was a perfect demonstration of his cockiness that he would give her his phone number instead of asking for hers, and then that he would just expect her to text him. She almost didn’t, but she would be kidding herself if she said she didn’t want to see him again. The library at their college had four floors. Jocelyn always went to the fourth, which was dead this late (ten pm), and which Jocelyn liked. She didn’t want other students invading her study time. When she walked into the large room, filled with rows and rows of books and desks, nobody was in there. She sighed contentedly and found her usual space in the corner.