Dirty Little Midlife Disaster by Lilian Monroe
Mac
I ride for over an hour,but it still doesn’t cool the embers burning on my skin. I feel her everywhere. Pressed up against my back, wrapped around my waist, her thighs plastered against mine. I feel the memory of her silky, soft skin against my fingertips.
Trina.
I’ve been wanting to learn her name for weeks. All summer, I’ve spent more time than usual at my father’s bar in the vain hope that she’d show up again. It’s pathetic, really.
But she came back. She has my number. I felt the sharp intake of her breath when I started the bike. I know she’ll want more.
Or at least, I hope so.
The engine cuts as I pull in next to my father’s bike in the parking lot of the Cedar Grove. Then I groan as a minivan door opens, and a tall woman with chocolate-colored hair and a sultry smile slides out.
“Well, if it isn’t Mac Blair. Funny seeing you here.” Belinda sways her wide hips toward me.
“Were you waiting for me to show up?” I jerk my head to her minivan.
She rolls her eyes and lets out a coquettish laugh. “Of course not. I was just stopping in. I haven’t seen you in so long, and you know, the kids are in junior high now, so…” She lets the words hang, and I don’t take the bait.
Belinda was a mistake. A big, big mistake that I do not intend to repeat. Ever.
See, I’m a teacher at the local elementary school. I teach second grade, and I’m damn good at it. But—not to sound like an arrogant jackass—there are certain mothers who tend to be interested in me beyond my role as their kid’s teacher. They see the motorcycle, they see my age, my body, and they think I can give them a good ride.
It’s inappropriate.
Belinda and I…
I hate admitting this, but it’s true. I slept with her. Her kid was in my class, and on the last day of the school year, she showed up at the school with a bottle of whiskey in her hand and fuck-me shoes on her feet. I took her home and obliged. I won’t pretend I didn’t enjoy it.
If it had happened even a day earlier and people caught wind of it, I could have been in big trouble. There’s no explicit rule against parents and teachers seeing each other, but it’s highly, highly unprofessional. It was a mistake. Inappropriate, obviously, and the only thing that saved me was that I was no longer teaching her child.
The problem is, I ran into her all the time for the next four years. School drop-offs, pick-ups, theater nights, sporting events, science fairs…she was always there.
And now she’s here.
Four years, this woman has been batting her lashes at me. And she’s not unattractive—not at all—but it’s just not something I want to do again. I can’t handle the whispers, the looks from other mothers, the stain on my reputation.
“How’s Michael doing? Looking forward to the new school?” I take a sidestep away from Belinda to keep some distance between us.
“I’m not here to talk about my kid, Mac.” She tilts her head. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I want to take you up on that motorcycle ride you promised me four whole years ago?” Her eyes flick from me to my bike, and there’s no mistaking the heat in her gaze.
“Listen, Belinda.” I take a deep breath and comb my fingers through my hair, looking for the right words.
It was never going to be more than sex with her. It’s never more than sex with anyone. I can’t do that lovey-dovey bullshit. It doesn’t make sense to me that people actually want that. To open up. To be vulnerable. Why give someone else the chance to hurt you? Why show someone else all your softest, weakest places?
Even if Belinda tried to convince me she just wanted sex, I can tell by the desperate edge to her voice that she wants more, and I simply can’t give it to her. I don’t have that in me to give.
Not to mention she was the first and only time I’ll ever hook up with a parent. It’s not worth the torture afterward, when they inevitably want more than I can give. It’s not worth throwing my job away. My reputation.
Then, just as I’m wracking my brain for the right way to tell this woman to leave me the hell alone, a car comes screeching into the parking lot and slides into a spot across the pavement from me. Four white-haired ladies shuffle out of it.
One of them is about four feet tall with eyes that shoot flames as she glances at another woman over the hood of the car. “Dorothy, you wouldn’t know good wine if I smashed a bottle of it over your head.”
I know Dorothy. She owns the Heart’s Cove Hotel with her twin sister, Margaret. She’s wearing an animal-print dress, cinched at the waist with a belt studded with turquoise. She gets out of the opposite side of the car and plants her hands on her hips. “And how would you know good wine, Agnes? I didn’t know they had sommelier classes in hell.”
Agnes sticks out her tongue.
A short-haired woman puts her hands up. “Ladies—” She stops talking when she sees me, points in my direction, and screams, “He’s here! It’s him! It’s the motorcycle man!”
Belinda lets out a huff. “Do you know these women?”
“Uh…” I frown, my eyes darting between the three women shuffling toward me, then to the driver who’s following behind. It’s Margaret, Dorothy’s twin sister and co-owner of the Heart’s Cove Hotel. “Yeah,” I finally say. “I do.”
“Mac Blair is the motorcycle man?” Dorothy screeches. She turns to Margaret, then swivels her head back to me. Then she squeals and jumps. “Yes! Mac Blair is the motorcycle man!”
“Excuse me, Belinda.” I walk away from her, angling toward the women in front of me. “Ladies. Can I help you?”
“Don’t know who you’re calling a lady, but I’m hoping it’s not this old hag,” the short woman, Agnes, says, jerking her chin at Dorothy.
I frown. “Um…”
“Oh, don’t mind her.” The pixie-cut lady with purple reading glasses around her neck grabs my elbow and yanks me closer. She peers into my eyes, then takes a step back and studies me from head to toe. Then she nods. “You’ll do.”
“I’ll…do?”
“What are we waiting for?” Dorothy cries. “Mac, we’re here for a drink. Lead the way.” She thrusts her arm toward the bar, then proceeds to lead the way herself.
The five of us enter the Cedar Grove in a whirlwind of silver hair and animal print. My father is behind the bar counting the till while Lee, my younger brother and part-time fill-in bartender, wipes bottles down with a white cloth. They both look up and freeze. My father’s brows inch down over his eyes.
“Ooh, moody,” Pixie Cut says. “I haven’t been in a dive bar in decades.”
“What are you calling a dive bar?” my father growls, but there’s no bite to his words. His lips tip up as he meets my gaze, tilting his head in question. Who are they and why are you with them? his eyes ask.
“She meant it as a compliment,” Margaret cuts in smoothly, looking utterly out of place in her peach pantsuit and pearls. “Didn’t you, Lottie?”
Pixie Cut—Lottie—still has her arm hooked through my elbow. She leads me toward the bar and hums her agreement. “Of course it’s a good thing.” Propping her reading glasses on the end of her nose, she glances at the bottles on the wall before removing the glasses and looking at Dorothy. “I thought you said this place had good wine.”
“This is what I was trying to tell you,” Agnes huffs. “She wouldn’t know it from vinegar.”
“No, I said I hope they have good wine,” Dorothy says with a roll of her eyes. “But I’m thinking maybe I’ll just have bourbon.”
Margaret groans. “Dor…are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Of course it’s not a good idea.” Dorothy plonks herself on a barstool right next to a grouchy old regular.
“New friends of yours?” my father asks me with a grin while the other ladies take their seats. His eyes linger on Margaret, watching the way her fingers run over her pearl necklace while she peruses the beer-stained menu. Having her in here is like having the First Lady visit my father’s bar. She makes everything seem grubbier. Suddenly, I see every speck of dust, every bit of dirt, every beer stain and layer of old grease.
“Something like that,” I answer, then glance over my shoulder and let out a long breath when I see Belinda hasn’t followed me in. I’ll have to buy the first round to thank these ladies for that.
“We have full attendance for your class on Monday, Mr. Blair,” Margaret tells me. “The students can’t wait to learn from a talent such as yourself.”
“Call me Mac. He’s Mr. Blair,” I tell her, gesturing to my father.
My father really plays up his fading Scottish accent when he leans a broad palm across the bar to shake with her. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mrs…”
“Margaret,” she replies, slipping her hand into his while she pats her hair with the other. “Call me Margaret.”
“We should do shots,” Lottie states with a decisive nod.
“Good idea!” Dorothy cries, while Margaret and Agnes bark out a “No!” in unison.
“First round is on me,” I tell my father, who nods.
“Oh, I like him,” Lottie says, lowering her reading glasses to look me up and down again. “I definitely like him.”
“Have a little shame, woman,” Agnes huffs, but she gives me a long, assessing look just the same.
Grinning, I meet my father’s gaze across the bar and nod toward the door. He gives me a slight dip of the chin while my brother surveys his new patrons with an arch of the eyebrow, and I slink out before the four ladies can crowd around me and tell me more about how “I’ll do.” Whatever that means.
When I get outside, I poke my head out to check for a certain minivan, then slip out when I see the coast is clear.
Then, grinning, I get back on my bike and ride.
