Page 33 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
Chapter Eleven
Bram
Maddie’s face crumples so quickly that I barely track what happens—a dimple in her chin, a quiver of her lip, and thentears, streaming down her cheeks and racing down her neck to join the post-shower droplets still freckling her chest above the towel.
“Madelyn, are the twins okay?” I ask desperately, and when she nods, the wave of panic recedes.
“Playdate,” she chokes out.
Fuck.Right.Having Maddie here for the last month meant that I was no longer on playdate management duty, and I’d forgotten.
I let out a breath—slowly, so Maddie won’t notice. I didn’t actually think the twins were in any danger, but the mammal-parent part of my brain immediately relaxes knowing where they are.
And then she starts crying even harder.
I might be a rare person in that tears rarely upset me. Crying is good for us, at least sometimes: it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, it calls forward endorphins and oxytocin, it signals a need for attachment and inter-individual response and can often succeed in strengthening social bonds. To that end, I’ve never tried to stop my children from crying—after I changed a diaper or bandaged a scraped knee or took away screen time, I always held or cuddled the little crier until the tears turned into sniffles and then into sighs, and never told them not to cry or to forget about it. What would be the point of that? Telling someone to stop crying is essentially telling them not to feel what they’re feeling, and you might as well command the moon to wane or tell a prairie thunderstorm to settle down. Feelings are weather, and weather is... itself. The best thing you can do is take shelter together.
Except—
Except right now, I am notnot upset. I am not serene and unruffled in the face of emotional weather. I see Maddie’s shock dissolve into shame and hurt—and despair—
And I’m across the room somehow; she’s in my arms somehow. I’ve pulled her tight into my chest, her head nestled well under my chin, her wet chest and arms and hair getting everything damp, and I want to fix it, I want to fix whatever it is, I want to tell her that I will make it better, and then I want to go and make it better.
Even if she’s crying because of me. Because I was too stern or too stingy with my shower or because I scared her by walking in.
As that last possibility occurs to me, I loosen my hold and attempt to step back. Apart from her using my shower—which is objectively a little strange—she still has a right to privacy, and I have her crushed against my chest while she’s still wet and basically naked. But when I try to pull away, she tightens her arms around my waist and buries her face in my chest, crying even harder. Full-blown sobs. Sobs like I would never have thought a sharp, perfectly made-up law school grad capable of.
And I don’t... hate this moment right now.
I hate that she’s upset, of course, I hate that I don’t know what’s happening and so I can’t start helping. But I don’t hate the feeling of her face pressed against my chest, of her fingers clutching at my shirt like I’m the only thing keeping her upright. Of her lingering jasmine scent mingled with the smell of my bodywash, my shampoo. In fact, smellingmeon her makes me want to growl in pleasure. Makes me want to pet her, spoil her.
“Okay,” I murmur. “Okay. Come here, yes, just like that. Good girl.”
I’ve walked us over to the large wingback I have in front of the fireplace and I sit down, pulling her onto my lap. She goes willingly, pliantly, nestling right up against my chest again and continuing to cry through it all. If there was ever a time that I resented my high school growth spurt, having to duck through doorways, having to get blazers and jackets tailored for my shoulders, then I was a fool, because this moment, being able to hold Maddie—through whatever this is—is more than worth it. It’s everything that could ever matter.
I stroke her wet hair. She’s got her fingers twisted in my shirt, her knees pulled up as far as they’ll go, and when I adjust the towel to keep her covered, she balls up all the tighter, like she wants to crawl inside my rib cage and hide there.
“It’s okay,” I soothe in a low voice. “I’ve got you. I’m not letting go.”
The weather has been fussy—cool at night, a little too warm during the day—and so I still have the air-conditioning going to keep the edge off the heat. Which means that soon Maddie starts shivering as she cries, chilled from being wet and in a now-damp towel. I reach for a blanket folded neatly beside the chair and pull it up over her, towel and all, smoothing it over her back and tucking it around her thighs.
And gradually, as she warms up, as I hold her securely against me and rub her back over the blanket, her ragged breathing starts to mend itself. Her tears slow. She doesn’t stop gripping my shirt, however. She doesn’t unbury her face.
It’s not a good thing to do, it’s not at all the right thing to do, but the itch to feel her skin under my palms is overwhelming, a craving that roars at full hunger nearly the instant I first recognize it: I slip my hand under the blanket to stroke her bare thigh.
From her knee to where the towel ends at the curve of her backside, and then back down again.
I can’t see them, but I can feel the goose bumps rippling out from my fingertips, an opulence of them, everywhere I touch. And she’s trembling again but not like she’s cold.
She sucks in a breath as my fingertips trail higher, up to her hip, and then leave, like nothing happened, like I’m still on official childcare-provider-comforting business. But then I caress up to her hip again, treating myself to a scant second of pause, a flash of memory involving my hands and these same hips, and she lets out a shuddering exhale.
And then... shifts.
Instead of tucking herself into my chest now, she’s sitting squarely on my lap, her head resting on my shoulder and her legs hanging over the arm of the chair. The hard-on that I hadn’t realized was swelling is now roosted right under her warm, plush rear, trapped between us, and the pressure is... is almost enough, I think. I could come like this, with her sitting on me and nothing else.
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t tilt her head back to find my gaze. But her knees part. A little, and then enough that a hand could reach the warmth between her thighs.
“Madelyn,” I say, and my voice is low and firm. “Are you spreading your legs?”
