Mack Daddy(21)

“Why is that?”

“I mean…look at her. She’s tall and gorgeous. Look at me.”

It pissed me off to hear her say that.

“You think you’re unattractive?”

“I can’t really be the judge of that. I don’t have a clear understanding of how people see me physically. But I’m certain I don’t compare to her.”

You’re right. You don’t.

My heart was pounding because I was dying to tell her what I really thought. I wished things were different, that for even one night I could’ve shown Frankie how attracted to her I was. She had no clue how badly I wanted to taste her lips. Just one taste. What would things have been like if I had been able to just let go of all of my inhibitions? I envisioned backing her up against the washing machine and pressing my erection into her so she could feel how much I wanted her. She’d never doubt my level of attraction to her again. I wished I could just make her feel good, take her body to places I bet it had never gone before.

Listen to yourself.

I needed to be realistic. I wasn’t going to cheat on Torrie. And breaking up with her to somehow be with Frankie would be a mess. My family and Torrie’s were too tied together. I was in too deep and pretty sure my father and her father would make my life a living hell—maybe even make Frankie’s a living hell, too. I couldn’t let that happen. More than that, I didn’t trust myself not to royally screw things up with Frankie, even if the other complications didn’t exist. Her father abandoning her when she was a baby really f*cked her up. I couldn’t trust myself not to hurt her. As much as I knew this dilemma would be easier once grad school was over and I didn’t see her every day, I also couldn’t imagine never seeing her again. But that was what it would come to.

Despite everything, I wanted her to realize how beautiful she was, inside and out.

Her voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “Have I lost you?”

“Let me try something, okay?” I took hold of the side braid she was sporting.

“What are you doing?”

“I just want you to see something. Humor me.”

I slowly undid her braid from bottom to top and could feel her breathing quicken the longer I was messing with her hair. When all of the tresses were loose, I ran my fingers repeatedly through her red strands.

Then, I slipped her glasses off and placed them on top of the dryer.

“You try to hide. You’re far more beautiful on the inside than pretty much anyone I have ever met. I don’t know if I even realized how much that mattered until I met you. But f*ck, woman, you do everything in your power to hide everything else—the physical beauty God also gave you on the outside. I’m not gonna lie. I didn’t see it clearly at first.”

I turned the camera so she could use it like a mirror.

“Look at this. There is no way that someone wouldn’t be threatened by you. This girl…she’s f*cking hot, Frankie.”

She squinted. “I can’t see. I don’t have my glasses.”

Shit.

I had forgotten how blind she was.

The sexual tension broke apart as Frankie and I both started to crack up. We got a good laugh out of that one.





The moment I’d been dreading for years was about the happen.

While for everyone else, this was just another morning here at St. Matthew’s, today was the day I was meeting Torrie Hightower for the first time.

Lorelai had agreed to man the class while I headed down the hall to the conference room. It was hard to believe after all these years, I was going to come face to face with her. It was even harder to believe that she’d have absolutely no clue how significantly she’d impacted my life.

I peeked through the door and saw her typing on her phone. She was almost exactly how I’d pictured her: a tall, commanding presence with perfect skin that was slightly lighter than the color of caramel. The curls of her shoulder-length, black hair were neatly sculpted. Donning a beige dress and matching Louboutins, she seemed way overdressed for this meeting. Torrie was even more beautiful in person than in the photos I’d seen years ago. That realization brought on unwanted images of Mack and her together. Exhaling, I vowed to brush off my jealousy.

I finally opened and forced the first words out. “Hello, Miss Hightower. It’s nice to meet you.”

She stood up and extended her long fingers toward me. “Miss O’Hara. Thank you for meeting with me. I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to come in.”

“I understand. You’re very busy.”

Torrie sat back down in her seat before turning her phone on vibrate. “Let’s cut to the chase. Jonah has had a very difficult year, for more reasons than just our move from Virginia. Things at home with him have been very difficult, so I’m curious as to what you’ve noticed at school.”

“Well, first of all, your son is very bright. He’s probably one of the most intelligent students in my class. But, yes, it’s clear that he suffers from a great deal of social anxiety. We used to remove him from those situations that seemed to bring him discomfort, but now we’ve been taking a bit of a different approach.”

“How so?”

“Well, it’s really not benefitting him to teach him to run from situations that make him uncomfortable. So, we’ve been trying to make him stick it out longer, to teach him to cope with those feelings.”