Why the fuck did I let Avery get into my head? I broke the rules. No fucking the same chick more than once a month. No fucking anyone Piper knows. No relationships.
I couldn’t keep my cock in my pants, and now everything is fucked up.
“What the fuck is your problem tonight?” Marcus says, on his walk up and down the street.
He calls it mingling. I call it trolling for pussy. At least that’s what I called it when I did it. Marcus has a harder time than I ever did. The blond man-bun doesn’t help, but his real problem is his clothes. The chicks here aren’t interested in suits, they want muscles on display.
“Nothing.”
He leans on the car beside me. “I’ve known you a long time, buddy, this ain’t nothing. You are fucking pissed. Look at you, your face is so hard, you’re scaring people away.”
“Good.”
“Is it that new pussy you were telling me about?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Is that a no?”
I exhale sharply. I can’t even figure out what it is. Or if this is about Piper or not. Sure, she’s great, but now I’ve got all these fucking feelings for Avery that I never wanted to have, and I don’t know how I can have both of them.
I swore up and down when Piper was put in my arms that first day that I wouldn’t expose her to a string of relationships. That I wouldn’t be like my mother. I had a different daddy every month. Sometimes every week. None of them lasted. None of them gave a damn about me.
I wasn’t going to repeat that with a string of women. At least not in my house. My pussy and my child would be kept far apart.
But before now, I could never see myself with anything but a string of women. How could any man be happy with just one? As far as I was concerned, all I wanted to do was bend them over my car and have a little fun for the night.
“You going to say anything?” Marcus asks.
“Nope.”
“Whatever is going on, you need to lighten up.”
“Lighten up?” I repeat, my lip snarled.
“Yeah man, you always take life so seriously. Stop denying yourself for once. Loosen up and enjoy things.”
“I have a kid, I can’t.”
Marcus laughs, “Piper’d probably thank you for not being such an uptight bastard. And so would I.”
I grunt, my back muscles tense with the situation.
“I thought you were fucking her today. Did it fall through?”
Against my will, a smile forms on my face.
“You dog. Was she as good as you thought she’d be? Did you get your cock down the bitch’s throat?”
Just as fast, the smile vanishes.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” I snap, unwilling to hear him talk about Avery like that.
“Touchy. Sounds like it’s more than a little fuck to me.”
“I’m going home.”
Without waiting for Marcus to leave, I shut my hood, open my car door, get in and start the engine.
I have a thirty-minute drive to figure out what to say to Avery when I get home.
Avery
“Like I said, one Law & Order is enough. We’re watching something else.”
“But the deal was I help with the dishes and we can watch it,” Piper says, pouting.
After Knox left, we finished our supper at a slower pace, chatting about all sorts of things. But I was too chicken to go anywhere near the subject of her mother. Piper didn’t bring it up, so I left it alone.
When we finished eating, Piper left the room. My mother would’ve killed me if I did that. I hauled her back and told her we were watching the news channel all night unless she helped me clean everything up. And I may have lectured her on helping her father out more.
“We did watch Law & Order, it just finished. Now we’re going to watch something else. How about Community?”
“Fine,” she grumbles. Sometimes I see a lot of Knox in her.
“You can pick the episode,” I say as a peace offering.
Piper takes the remote and scrolls through Hulu until she finds the episode she wants. It’s the first paintball fight, one of my favorites. And apparently one of Knox’s. Figures we’d have the same favorite TV show of all time. And favorite band. I wonder what else there is.
We just watched the paintball episode when I was here on Thursday. That night was easy, too. Being in this house is too comfortable. With both Knox and Piper.
Forget comfortable, who am I kidding? I like being here. I like them. I want to hang out with them both.
But like I’ve been telling myself all day, I have to remember this is about sex.
I don’t know how to make it only about sex when Knox does things like invite me over for dinner and defend me against internet trolls. How? This isn’t fair. And it’s never going to work.