Chapter Six Bram
Chapter Six
Bram
Bye, love you!” Sara calls to the girls as I’m walking down the stairs. I see Maddie standing in front of the door looking like a ripe peach in a yellow sundress with her Focus Group Pink lipstick.
“Sara, I’ve got to go. Call tomorrow?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she says, giving me a quick wave before hanging up.
I finish descending the stairs and carefully place Porcupine back into her tank.
She climbs onto a moss-covered rock and then blinks giant black eyes at me as I swing the lid shut, as if to demonstrate her amphibian innocence.
“Good morning, Ms. Kowalczk,” I say in my best nothing to see here over at the frog tank voice.
Maddie doesn’t return the greeting, swinging her golden hair over her shoulder and looking up the stairs. “Are the girls up in their room?”
“For now,” I say, frowning a little. Maddie and I are currently in what could charitably be called an armistice—we avoid each other on campus and keep our communication about childcare as brief as possible—but she’s never been outright uncivil to me.
“If you come with me, I’ll show you where we keep the swimming stuff in case you take them to the pool.
It’s the last weekend it’s open, so it might be a good idea to go. ”
“Fine,” she sniffs.
Okay, then.
We go out to the garage, where I point out the plastic tote full of pool noodles and goggles and inflatable water wings that the girls don’t technically need anymore but still want to bring.
Then I lead her to my office so I can give her the key to my crossover—I figure that’ll be easier than her trying to wedge pool noodles into her sedan—and fish it out of my satchel right as she says, with some layer of meaning I can’t decode, “Was that Sara on the phone?”
“It was.” I hold out the key, and she snatches it away, like she can’t bear to have contact with me for a second longer than possible.
But she doesn’t flee the room. She doesn’t turn on her heel and stalk off with that comportment-lesson-straight back.
She instead lifts her chin and crosses her arms, her green eyes flashing in the late morning sunlight.
She’s looking at me like I owe her money. *
I step back, so that I’m half sitting, half leaning against the edge of my desk, and cross my arms too.
My office is on the ground floor, in the large octagonal turret that sold me on the house the moment I saw it.
It was the hardest space to restore—if I never have to strip hardwoods in an eight-sided room again, I’ll die a happy man—but now it’s my favorite place in the whole house.
Built-in bookshelves line half the walls, while the other half consists of tall windows trimmed in stained glass.
My desk, given to me by Leo and Sloane when I was officially awarded my PhD, faces those windows and my big cottonwood tree outside, which my dendrology friends tell me is older than the house itself.
Botanical prints hang wherever there’s room, books and papers crowd two of the deep window seats, and the other window seat has a basket of Fern’s latest knitting project tucked into the corner.
The twins have left a carnage of construction paper scraps and broken crayons near the door to the office closet, which is supposed to be where I keep paper files and old research, but has long since been turned into Letty and Berry’s “apartment.”
If there’s any room in the house that sums up my life, it’s this one.
The room where my teen curls up in the window and crafts while I work, the room where the twins scoot around on their knees and crawl into my lap and have me watch their YouTube “videos” that they perform live for me.
The room where I grade, where I write, where I quietly sketch plants and mycelium and where I think about how nice life can be sometimes, how we have beautiful mosses and wafting ferns and clever mushrooms, too many books and funny children and ridiculous friends.
And now, for the first time, Maddie is standing in the middle of it.
I like the way she looks in my room, surrounded by my things, framed by my books and prints, lit by the sunlight coming in from the tall windows. She looks like she belongs here.
That is a very dangerous thought. I push it away.
“Is there anything else, Ms. Kowalczk?”
Her lips press together, roll in, purse into a plush, pink bloom. A thousand words considered, almost spoken, discarded.
I wait patiently, still leaning against my desk, watching her decide whether or not she wants to pick a fight with me. Outside, a hot breeze washes over the front yard, and the cottonwood sings back to it with a rustle and clatter of dry leaves.
“No,” Maddie finally says, and turns to leave the office. Then stops and adds, “Look, it’s not really any of my business what you get up to when Sara is away. But I don’t want anything to do with it again.”
“What I get up to when Sara is away.” I repeat her words slowly, sure I’m missing something. My mind flips through memories of frozen chicken nuggets and extra screen time requests and a handful of other venial single-parent sins.
“That’s right,” Maddie says, warming to her cause as she fully turns to me and unloads.
“You know, my ex did this same shit to me, and it was only the one time, but that one time was enough to fuck me up for months. I’m still a little fucked up over it and the laundry list of other awful things he did to me, if I’m honest. And I think cheating is the mark of a coward.
And a narcissist. And a . . . a dickhead. ”
My body stills as I begin to piece together what she’s implying. “And to be clear, you’re saying that I’m a coward and a narcissist and a dickhead?”
She gives me a look of such unfiltered scorn that a lesser man might have withered right on the vine, but I meet her stare with a level one of my own, my eyebrow lifted ever so slightly.
“Obviously, that’s what I’m saying,” she bites out.
“It sounds like you’re building conclusions without gathering any data first,” I say, and then straighten up. “Do they forget to teach the science part over in Political Science? Or is it all about disingenuous op-eds over there?”
“You’re thinking of Journalism,” she says, glaring up at me as I step closer to her.
“No, because the journalism students bother to interview their subjects.”
She takes a step back as I get close enough for my shadow to brush hers, and then another step back until her heel hits the bookshelf behind her.
“I don’t need to interview anyone.” Her eyes are pure dragonfire, green and mesmerizing, and an angry flush spreads across her throat and chest and rouges the tops of her cheeks. “It seems to be common knowledge.”
“Hmm.” I stop mere inches from her. “Common knowledge. That’s quite an assertion.”
She narrows her eyes as she looks up at me. Her chest is heaving. “It’s not an assertion. It’s a fact.”
I’m breathing harder now too. I can smell her, and she smells floral, delicate—jasmine, I think. I have some in the greenhouse. I want to touch my nose to her neck and trace it up to just behind her ear. I want to bury my face in her hair.
I lean forward until my lips are at her cheek, and breathe, “If you have a question, Ms. Kowalczk, then ask it.”
She pulls in a shivering breath, and I give in to temptation and brace my forearm against the shelf next to her head. Our bodies are nearly pressed together now, separated by nothing, by mere atoms of nitrogen and oxygen and argon.
“Fine, Professor,” she says, and I think she means for it to be cutting, but it comes out soft and tattered, like it’s a word she’s whispered to herself in the dark. “Are you cheating on your wife?”
“I’m not,” I murmur. From this angle, I can see the dark roots of her hair growing in, I can see down her bodice to the enchanting gap between her tits.
I imagine myself running my fingertips along that gap.
I imagine myself taking her waist in my hands and turning her around to face the books, guiding her hands up to grip the edge of a shelf as I kick her feet apart . . .
Maddie pulls back to meet my eyes. “You’re not?” she asks suspiciously.
“I don’t have a wife. Sara and I divorced five years ago, and she’s engaged to a much smarter person than me now.
I’m not dating anyone, I’m not hooking up with anyone, I am as single as anyone can be.
Now, may I ask why you came into my house like a little storm cloud, so certain that I’ve made you an accomplice to adultery? ”
Her mouth twists adorably to the side—abashed, defensive, pouty. “The campus newspaper had a throwback picture of you and Sara on some trip. I guess I might have . . . jumped to a conclusion or two.”
“If your ex cheated on you, then I understand,” I say.
Anger at this anonymous ex scratches at the soles of my feet and the middles of my palms, itchy, restless, but I keep my breathing even and carefully set the anger aside for another time.
Anger is a mint plant—best to keep it in its own pot, far away from everything else. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“Thanks,” whispers Maddie. Her eyes are wider now, her mouth softer, but she’s still breathing like she’s running for her life.
“I don’t cheat. And if you must know, you were my first since the divorce.”
“Oh,” she says, breathlessly. “Okay.”
“Do you like that?” I murmur, and oh god, what am I murmuring? What am I saying? We have rules. But I have to know. I have to. “Were you jealous when you thought I was still married?”
Her eyelids are hooded now, her long, dark lashes nearly brushing her cheeks. “Yes,” she releases on a low note. “I was jealous.”
“You want me all to yourself?”
She swallows and closes her eyes all the way. Nods.
I do what I definitely should not do, and I brush my lips gently over the shell of her ear as I speak.
“I’m not scared of your jealousy, Madelyn.
I’ve got nothing to hide. But if you’re going to come flaunt your bad manners at me, I’m going to assume that you’re looking for attention.
And you should know that I’m happy to give it to you. ”
A barely audible gasp.
“You like that? Does it get you wet to think about me fixing that bratty little attitude of yours?”
We’re still not touching, save for the graze of my lips over her ear, but my words have her trembling and trembling. She finds my hand, and keeping her eyes closed, she pushes it up her skirt. We both inhale when my fingertips encounter hot, wet silk.
She’s soaked.
“Madelyn,” I say as I find the top of her panties and slide my fingers down, down, right into heaven. “You’re such a bad girl—”
A broken moan.
“But you know what I think? I think you’re a good girl, deep, deep down.
In fact, I think you want to be my good girl.
” I don’t even know what I’m saying—it’s a fog, it’s a fire—all I am is this fucking fever for her.
Burning in my blood. Swelling my cock with need. Hollowing out my belly with hunger.
It doesn’t matter, though, because the moment I say those words—good girl—it’s like everything in Maddie changes.
A low, whining whimper quivers through her as her cunt grows hotter and wetter and softer.
Her lips part and her eyes open and she has this expression of shock, but good shock, and she’s nodding then, quick, desperate.
“Yes,” she says, and now she’s trying to fuck my fingers, her hands grabbing at my forearm. “Yes, please. I’ll be your good girl—”
The front door opens and slams shut with a glass-rattling bang and the sound of teenage sobbing fills the ground floor.
Maddie and I both freeze, eyes meeting, my fingers still buried in all that soft heat.
I blow out a silent breath, my fatherly concern briefly warring with the very selfish urge not to move. And then my better angels take over, and I carefully free my hand and adjust Maddie’s dress so it hangs straight again. (And then adjust myself.)
“Wait,” Maddie says quickly as I’m about to leave the office to find Fern. She grabs my hand for the second time today, but this time, she lifts my fingers to her mouth. And licks them clean.
Fuck. Me.
I watch as her tongue curls around each knuckle and pad, and when she whispers a quiet that’s better, I nearly die.
“Good girl,” I tell her, and I relish seeing that delicious shock ripple through her again.
Has she never been called a good girl before?
Has she never been someone’s good girl before?
Then again, maybe not. Maddie is argumentative and bold and confident, everything you’d expect a law school grad with an interest in political science to be, but not always what the world expects a woman to be.
And maybe a person can only go so long being told that they’re the wrong kind of girl before they say fine, fuck it, if I can’t be a good girl the way I am, then I’ll be a bad girl the way I want to be.
Like Milton’s Satan with a thwarted praise kink. *
But I don’t have time to consider what it means that my brat secretly wants to be a good girl. Reluctantly, and with some bodily pain, I leave Maddie in the office and go upstairs to knock on Fern’s (shut and locked) door.
“Fern, honey, is everything okay?” I call.
“Go away!” she cries.
“I’ll give you space if you need it, but can you at least tell me if you’re safe?”
A loud sniffle. “I am.”
“And the other kids at school? Everyone is safe as far as you know?”
“Yes. Now, go away!”
I hate leaving her like this, but it feels ham-fisted and futile to force her to open up when she clearly doesn’t want to. I have no idea what’s worse—leaving her alone to face something clearly upsetting or unhelpfully crowding her when she needs to process something on her own.
Teens need to know they’re supported! But also teens need to learn resilience and independence!
Like, why the hell is parenting a teenager so complicated and contradictory?
How can this be nature’s plan for us??? Get it wrong, and you risk all sorts of horrors: self-harm, addiction, start-up culture.
Get it right, and they hate you anyway for chewing too loudly at the dinner table.
“I’ll be in my office if you need to talk,” I offer. Probably pointlessly. “And we can always talk tonight after you’ve had some time to think. Or we can call your mom. I love you.”
No reply, save for more sniffles.
With a sigh, I go back downstairs, and find my office empty of panting adjuncts.
The jasmine smell, however, lingers for the rest of the day.