“Beckett Archer Jagger.”
He’d said it so proudly, I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t normal to recite your first, middle, and last name to strangers. The flight attendant snapped the overheard bin closed and knelt down next to him.
“Well, hello, Beckett Archer Jagger. I’m Danielle Marie Warren, and you’re adorable. How old are you, sweetie?”
“I’m six-and-three-quarters.”
“Six-and-three-quarters, huh? Well, I’m thirty-one-and-a-half.” She winked at me and continued talking to Beck. “Only I usually round down from thirty-one-and-a-half—to twenty-seven. Can I get you something to drink, six-and-three-quarter-year-old Beckett Archer Jagger? Maybe some juice?”
He nodded. Then added, “You have legs like a giraffe.”
“Beck,” I scolded.
The flight attendant laughed. “It’s okay. I’ve gotten that before. When I was your age, the kids used to make fun of me for having long legs.” She pointed to her name badge, which read Danny. “My name is Danielle, but everyone calls me Danny for short. And when I was in elementary school, the boys used to call me Danny Long Legs. You know…” She wiggled her fingers. “…like the long-legged spider bugs? Daddy long legs.”
Beckett chuckled. “My mom has a nickname for my dad.”
“She does? I bet it’s something better than Daddy Long Legs.”
I interrupted. “Not sure we want to repeat any of the nicknames Mommy uses for Daddy these days.” I looked at the flight attendant and explained, “Divorced.”
She smiled and winked. “Well, how about I get you some juice before we take off? And something special for Daddy, too?”
A few minutes later, she came back carrying apple juice in a plastic cup with a lid and straw and a glass with two fingers of clear liquid over ice.
Passing them to us, she said, “We’re going to be delayed a bit waiting for some weather to pass. Hope you didn’t have plans for tonight.” She looked at Beck and teased, “You don’t have a date or anything, do you?”
He scrunched up his face like she’d just told him he had to eat all of his broccoli and beets. Let’s keep it that way for a long time, son. I haven’t even figured out women yet. I’m far from ready to give you any advice.
While neither Beckett nor I had any plans for tonight, Danny Long Legs’s comment had me wondering what plans Emerie had decided on for tonight. After our conversation this morning, she hadn’t mentioned anything else. It might have been because the only talking we had time to do this afternoon was me whispering into her ear while she was bent over her desk with her skirt pushed up twenty minutes before I had to leave. Come on my cock was a hell of a lot better than any more discussions about Professor Putz.
But now it was eating at me. Was she sitting at home next to that douchebag she’d been pining over for more than three years? The asshole might act more refined than I did, but when it came down to it, we were both men, and Emerie was a beautiful woman. I’d seen the way he acted when he suspected something might be going on between the two of us. He became territorial—not jealous. Which told me a hell of a lot about how he thought. People are jealous when they want something someone else has. They’re territorial when they’re protecting something they already have. That fucker knew he’d had her all along.
My gut told me he was avoiding getting involved with Emerie because he wanted to have a good time—fuck his way through the faculty and his students, avoiding any real relationships. And how, exactly, did I know this about the guy when I’d only met him a few times? Because I knew the face of that type of man. I’d looked him in the mirror every day for the last two years since my goddamned divorce.
Beck had taken out his drawing pad and was drawing a giraffe. I laughed, thinking how often I doodled while on the phone. Nurture won over nature more often than not. I could totally see myself drawing a giraffe right now if that pencil had been in my hand. Although my giraffe would probably have had tits, because since I hit the age of ten, all of my doodles had pretty much incorporated tits in some way.
While during my entire childhood everything had reminded me of tits, the last week everything reminded me of Emerie. An advertisement for bright red lipstick at the airport. Emerie’s bright red lips wrapped around my cock. The flight attendant mentioning that our plans might be ruined by the weather delay. Emerie’s plans—was she snuggled on the couch with the putz? My son drawing a giraffe. If I drew a giraffe, it would have tits. Emerie’s tits are incredible. All the roads in my mind had been rerouted to one destination lately.
I knocked back half of the drink in one gulp and dug my phone from my pocket.
Drew: What did you wind up doing tonight?
Then I waited for the buzz to tell me Emerie had responded. And waited.