Monday I rose when it was still dark out. I had an eight o’clock meeting with a care facility in Scranton, which meant I needed to be on the road no later than seven in case I got lost or ran into traffic. I wrote Helene a quick note and left it on her nightstand under her cell phone explaining my early departure, and then I hoofed it the three miles back to my place on foot and in clothes that were still damp. I froze my ass off the entire time, and when I entered my dad’s house, I immediately stripped out of my clothes and hopped in a hot shower.
Scranton was a bust. Of course it was. No one wanted a curmudgeonly old man with a track record of being physically violent. I was running out of time. I was also running out of money. My dad had squirreled away enough cash to keep his expenses paid for a period, but not an indefinite period. His accounts were dwindling, and the personal money I’d saved from working over the years and keeping my living expenses low was earmarked for the illustrious Ross Bernstein—though justifying his expense was becoming more difficult by the day. I wasn’t going to see my money tied up in my father’s house, because his stroke and his mess of a life were his problem and not mine. I had my own to worry about, and if that made me a shitty son, so be it. Perhaps if he’d not been a shitty father, I might care.
It was all a balancing act when it came to this house. I was smart with renovations and real estate. I needed to spend just enough to maximize the return when I sold the place. The faster I could work, the more profit. My father’s mortgage payment was not an investment, which meant it was nothing more than a carrying cost that was effectively going down the toilet every month until I could unload this property. If I’d sold the property as-is, the return would have been pathetic, but if I could pull this renovation off on a good budget and in a decent timeframe, then the return would far outweigh the investment.
Now I just needed to figure out how to focus my attention on this fucking house when finding my father a place to live kept trying to interfere—never mind the woman I was infatuated with. My focus on anything at all went out the window the very moment I let myself think about her.
Much as it had on my drive to Scranton.
I’d spent the entire drive forcing myself into her mind. I put myself in her place and made her perspective my own—and not the perspective I wanted her to have or assumed she’d have, the one she simply did have because it was her mind to operate in the way it was programmed to. She didn’t appreciate my need to let her call the shots in our physical relationship. My brain was offended by this, because my thought process said she should appreciate that for obvious reasons. Her brain was offended because she knew that taking all the control meant she would never fully know or understand what my needs were. And apparently that didn’t sit well with her.
Chivalry was clearly dead in this relationship, and by the time I’d reached Scranton, I finally understood why it needed to be. Our dynamic was simply too unique to survive the niceties of politeness. She needed to see all of me—my desires and wants especially. And I needed to trust that she understood my desires were firmly rooted in something more than mere sex with her. They were. Of course they were. I didn’t question that. I just needed to stop questioning that Helene understood that—which was a difficult thing for me to do, knowing just what she’d seen of my debaucherous, pathetic past. And now as I pulled out of the old folk home parking lot, I hadn’t forgotten that bit of crucial knowledge.
I pulled into the parking lot of the store I’d spotted on my way into town before I had the chance to talk myself out of it. I sat in the parking lot dreading this. This wasn’t how such … things … should be purchased in my opinion. The advent of online shopping had removed the humiliation of such occasional needs. But I was worried even Amazon’s two day free shipping wouldn’t get these items into my hands as quickly as I wanted them.
I dialed her as I sat there in my dad’s old pickup truck.
“Hi,” she said a bit hesitantly.
“My sweet Hell.” I stretched and yawned before I could stop myself. There was something very relaxing about nothing more than her voice. “What are you doing?”
She sighed. “I just got off the phone with my dissertation director. It didn’t go well. I’m ready to give up.”
“You have until spring. This is a work in progress. Give yourself time.”
“Or a coronary,” she muttered. “Are you still in Scranton?”
“I am. I have a couple questions for you. I need you to answer them honestly, and if you have questions for me, I’ll answer them honestly too.”
She was silent for a moment, but she eventually said, “Okay.” The word was drawn out as though she weren’t entirely sure she was okay with saying okay at all.
“Are you okay with me touching your asshole?”
“What?” She nearly cut me off.
“Answer the question.”
She took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“Licking it?”
She paused again, taking another deep breath. “Yes.”
“Penetrating it?”
“Yes.”
“Fucking it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like having your nipples sucked?”
“Yes.”
“Pinched?”
She went silent for a second. “I don’t know.”
“But you’ll let me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Do you want to ask me anything?”