Page 12 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
A flicker of something unnameable moves through his eyes. Then he smiles, one of the amused, vicious smiles that used to signal torment for me when we were boys. Now I think it might signal torment for someone else.
“You’re right,” he announces, tossing his half-eaten apple in the trash without looking at either the apple or the trash can. It lands perfectly in the middle with athunk. “I should visit the library. Pick up a book. Get to know a librarian. It’ll do me good.” And without another word, he leaves, sauntering off with his hands in his trouser pockets.
“Sorry about that,” I say to Maddie as I turn back to her, but she’s already shaking her head.
“Don’t be sorry for him, I don’t even know him! Be sorry for you, lurking out there and making me nervous!”
I lift my hands, palms out, the posture of an innocent man. “I wasn’t trying to make you nervous. I only wanted to touch base with you before you left to get the twins. That’s all.”
Her mouth, immaculately painted in Focus Group Mauve, curves into a luscious scowl. “Look,Dr. Loe,” she says, her gaze narrowed into black-lashed slits of irritation, “I might work for you at your house, but you’re not allowed to give me a performance reviewhere.”
Oh, I want to give her a performance review, all right. Over my lap. With those pointy kitten heels up in the air.
“Understood,” I say with a mildness I donotfeel. “I promise I’m not planning on doing anything of the sort. I’ll be home around five thirty; you have my number if you need anything. See you tonight, Ms. Kowalczk.”
IHEAR SCREAMING.
I’m halfway out of my weathered hybrid crossover, one hand wrestling with the door and the other with the satchel I’m trying to drag out of the passenger seat, and I finally give up on the satchel and the door and bolt around to the backyard, leaving the car door hanging wide open.
There was a time in my life where I did a lot of adrenaline-fueled bolting, where I had a knack for ruthless, reflexive action, and when I clear the corner of my house, my mind is already sorting through the possibilities—that there will be blood, broken bones, a strange dog that Hester Prynne, despite being a massive German shepherd, is too cowardly to chase away—and then I wrench myself to a halt, the split second between my photoreceptors turning light into electricity and my brain turning that electricity into information stretching into years.
Letty and Berry are jumping through the sprinkler, shrieking at the cold water, shrieking at Hester Prynne, who is trying to bite the water, and then shrieking at Maddie until Maddie chases them back through the spray again. Fern is tucked away on the patio, chatting to a friend on her phone while she works on one of her many embroideries in progress (a hobby that sounds wholesome until you see the things she embroiders).
No one is bleeding. No one is broken.
The screams are happy ones.
I let out a full exhale for the first time since I opened my car door, and Maddie walks through the sprinkler to me, a challenging look on her face, like she’s ready to revisit our earlier disagreement. Satisfaction—strange, uninvited—blooms inside my chest as she comes closer.
I want the challenge. I want her to try me. I want her to step closer and let me see those flawlessly lipsticked lips and those wicked green eyes.
And then I make the mistake of dropping my gaze.
Something much, much stronger than satisfaction rips through me.
“Thank you for playing with the girls, they love the sprinkler,” I manage to say when she’s close enough.
She tosses wet hair over her shoulder, andoh god oh god—it’s not just that her blouse is wet, but the thin bra underneath too, and I can make out the pink of her nipples. I can see the hard shape of them.
She might as well be wearing nothing at all.
“I was happy to,” she says briskly. “Now, about you showing up randomly to my class—”
“It won’t happen again. And can we speak inside the house for a moment?” I sound gruff and a little stern, but that’s better than lewd and panting, I guess.
She regards me with enough miffed suspicion to make Dr. Monty proud, and then lifts her chin and marches to the kitchen door and goes inside.
“Fern, will you keep an eye on the littles?” I ask my oldest. I get a nod from the teen, and then I follow Maddie inside, no idea how to say what I’m going to say next, but also knowing with certainty that I’m going to say it.
Maddie has drifted from the kitchen to the dining room, which in my house is lined with bookcases, and is perusing the spines of some vintage gardening books with a dilatory finger.
“Ms. Kowalczk,” I say, and she huffs.
“You can call me Maddie, you know.”
“Ms. Kowalczk,” I repeat, “do you want a dry T-shirt to change into?”
Maddie turns to face me. And with the warm glow of sunlight pouring in from the west, I can see through her wet shirt in here just as clearly as I could out there. I drag my eyes up immediately, my entire body tight and breathless and eager to fuck, but she sees, of course she sees where I was looking.
