Dear Bridget, I Want You(26)

I leaned against the counter, moving in a bit closer to her. “My parents worked a lot, too. But I never blamed them for it. It just made me appreciate the time we had together more.”

“What did your parents do?”

“Actually, my father’s an ophthalmologist. He still has a practice in Leeds. My mother’s a secondary school teacher.”

“Wow. Did you have a good childhood?”

“I did. It was great up until a certain point.”

She kept looking at me in a way that encouraged me to continue.

Tell her.

“I don’t…I don’t really talk about this. It’s hard for me.” Glancing out the window, I continued, “The other night you asked me why I wanted to become a doctor, and I told you it was because I wanted to save people…”

“Yeah…I figured there might have been something more to that.”

“Yes.” I nodded then took a deep breath in. “Calliope and I had a mutual friend named, Blake. We were like the Three Musketeers, and Blake was like a brother to me. We were on vacation at Calliope’s parents’ lake house in Scotland when we were sixteen. She’d invited us both along. We had the bright idea to take her father’s small boat out in the middle of the night. There were only two life jackets. We agreed that Calliope should get one. Blake insisted that he was the better swimmer and told me to just take the other one. I don’t know why I agreed. I shouldn’t have let him get on the boat without a life jacket. We got pretty far out, the water was choppy…and we capsized. Blake went under, and I tried everything to find him. But it was dark and murky.” I stopped to close my eyes for a moment before saying, “They didn’t find him for three days.” I was starting to choke up but managed to control it.

“Here I was thinking that you knew nothing about loss,” she whispered.

“It’s not exactly the same as your situation, of course, but it’s certainly shaped my life. Becoming a doctor was my way of trying to make up for not being able to save him. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about what he would be like now, and not a day goes by where I don’t blame myself for letting him get on the boat like that.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Without hesitation, she reached for me and pulled me into an embrace. I could feel her heart beating against mine. Her ample tits felt so good pressed against my chest. In fact, it felt better than anything I could remember. My hands slid down her back and stopped short of her ass—as much as I wanted to touch it. I felt my erection growing by the second.

She looked up. God…the way she was looking at me. Her eyes were begging for more. No longer giving a fuck about any consequences, I slowly leaned in, readying to taste her lips.

The pitter-patter of footsteps coming down the hall stopped me in my tracks. I quickly turned toward the sink, pretending to wash the dishes as Brendan entered the room.

“Mom, can we have tater tots tonight?”

Bridget was out of breath. “Sure. Yeah, honey. Yup. Anything you want.”

“Cool.”

Brendan ran back down the hall.

Bridget looked dazed, almost embarrassed about what nearly took place between us. My hard-on had barely gone down. I didn’t know what the fuck to do next. All I knew was I wanted her. I knew it was all wrong, but I didn’t know how to change how I felt.

Frustrated, I went back to my space to be alone and spent a good portion of that evening lost in thought.

Grabbing a pen, I started to just write down my thoughts—what I wanted to say to her if I had the guts. I never planned to actually give her the letter.

Except, later that night, as my restlessness grew, I took a chance and impulsively slipped it under her bedroom door.





This was not good.

Simon almost kissed me.

His hand nearly touched my ass.

He was hard.

I could feel his erection against me.

It shouldn’t have happened, and yet I couldn’t turn my body off tonight, couldn’t stop thinking about him, couldn’t stop wondering what would have happened if Brendan hadn’t come into the kitchen.

I never kept any pictures of Ben laying out. It was just too painful to look at him. I did, however, keep a photo of my late husband in my bedside drawer. Sometimes, I would take it out and look at it when I felt like I needed his guidance to get through a particularly rough day. Tonight, I took the photo out for an entirely different reason. It was out of guilt, because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that for the first time since Ben’s death, I was really developing feelings for someone else. I was starting to move on.

The only problem was, I simply couldn’t move on with Simon. His plans were to go back to the UK, and a future with him therefore wasn’t an option. Even though he and I had never discussed it, Calliope also told me he didn’t want kids. While he was great with Brendan, there was a big difference between developing a friendship with a child and taking on the role of parent. Anyone I would eventually end up with would have to accept the father role.