Blood Red

She drank in the sight of him, not only because he was a handsome man and a crush she knew she would never act on, but because he was Teddy’s father and the closest link she had to a kid she cared for more than she expected to. Handsome. Teddy would have been a very handsome man someday. He would have gone on dates and the girls would have swarmed around him. He would have probably kept playing sports, maybe even football, and he would have been good at it. But he’s dead. I know he is. I can feel it. Death feels like autumn; cold and sad and so very lonely, even in a crowd.

“All we can do now is hope, Bill.”

She got up and went inside, because if she didn’t she could feel that things were going to go where they shouldn’t between her and Teddy’s father. She didn’t want to be the straw that broke the Listers’ marital back, and she sure as hell didn’t want to be the one Michelle referred to as a skank.

VI

And what the hell was he thinking? He watched Kelli stand up and had to make himself stand still. He wanted to reach out and pull her to him, look into her dark blue eyes and run his fingers through her long chestnut hair. He wanted to hold her and comfort her the way he was supposed to take care of his wife and he was ashamed of himself for these feelings.

Kelli was half his age: it would have been close, but he was old enough to be her father. But she had exactly the sort of body he’d always loved—lean with small, shapely breasts and wide hips—and she was always so sweet. In the back of his mind, he played over another fantasy where she had her long legs wrapped around his body and her fingers locked in his hair and her mouth was bruising his lips.

He crushed out his cigarette and stood up, heading away from the house. The sun was down now and the air was getting colder, but he didn’t go back in for his jacket; he was pretty damned sure that if he saw Kelli in the next few minutes he would do something incredibly stupid.

Like kiss her and ask her to run away from all of this with me, and just for one time in my fucking life it would be so nice to forget everything but the freedom to do whatever I wanted. When the hell did I grow old and bitter? He chuckled to himself as he lit another cigarette. Around the same time I married Michelle, I guess. The same time I couldn’t just be free to go where I wanted and do all the things I kept meaning to do.

There had been college and then law school and then interning for a group of self-righteous bastards who knew their business and knew a good thing when they saw it. And damn, they’d paid him handsomely as soon as he graduated. But he sometimes wondered how different everything would have been if he’d decided to learn something other than corporate law when he was studying for the rest of his miserable life. Because there were days, and they were coming around more and more often, when he hated his job and he could barely stand to look at his wife.

Teddy had made it all worthwhile. The days when he and Michelle could barely stand each other, all his son had to do was walk into the room and they both remembered why they loved each other and why they’d been struggling to stay together for so long. All of the old clichés seemed to be true: he loved his wife, but was not sure if he was in love with her; she was his wife and his mate, but she wasn’t really his friend. She didn’t understand him, and he loathed himself for having those oversimplified, miserable excuses filling his head constantly. They were all easier to ignore when Teddy was there and filling not just the room but the whole fucking house with his sweet, silly smile and his endless childhood energy.

And now he was missing from the equation and it was painful to be in the same room with his wife, because they were both hurting, both desperate to lash out and not really much in the mood to be forgiving.

Teddy peered around a tree and looked at Bill, his eyes flashing with merriment and an impish smile on his face. He wore clothes that were unfamiliar to Bill, and his hair was a little wild, but oh, dear God, how sweet he looked; an angel made flesh, alive despite everything Bill had allowed himself to think.

“Teddy?” It felt like his heart had stopped when he saw his son.