Page 27 of Passing Notes
“Sure thing. I’ll talk to him.” My older brother had used every advantage my stepfather had offered him. I didn’t hold it against him, but we were no longer as close as we had been before our father died. And as for his marriage? From what I could tell, he was as happy with his wife as I’d been with mine. If they ended up divorcing, it wouldn’t be a surprise.
Sam worked for my stepfather. He vacationed with him and my mother, too. In fact, he was in Hawaii with them right now. If my mother had accepted my choices without badgering and pushing me to do what she wanted, we’d all probably still be close.
“Talk soon, darling.” She hung up before I could tell her goodbye or that I loved her, or any of the other things we would have said to each other before my father died and she had traded up. The fact that she didn’t ask to talk to the kids had not escaped me; it never did.
Sasha, dressed in her bathing suit, poked her head out the front door. “Dad! Let’s go swimming! Come on!”
“Be there in a minute. Wait for me to get back there before you get in the pool.”
“I know!” she hollered.
I didn’t need to take a job with my stepfather to take care of my kids and I’d never trade my integrity for a few bucks.
Being a teacher was what my dad had always wanted to do, but he went to work at the Payton Mill straight out of high school and never got to live out his dream. He transferred that dream to me through our shared love of literature. Our trailer had always been full of books, full of imagination, full of love.
A car accident took his life when I was in high school. It also took my mother’s peace of mind. Over the years, I had forgiven a lot when it came to her. She had been left alone with two teenage boys to support on her secretary’s salary. I could hardly blame her when she remarried right away. Phil was her boss and had been infatuated with her for years. He wasted no time; he asked her out a few months after the funeral, proposed not long after that, she’d said yes, and life as we’d known it had ended.
After changing into my swim trunks, I found Sasha and Ethan out back. “Cannonball!” I ran around them and jumped into the pool with a huge splash.
“Throw me!” Ethan yelled as he jumped into the pool to land next to me.
I grinned and grabbed him under the arms to throw him into the deep end, glad that at almost thirteen, he wasn’t too cool to still have fun with his dad.
“Do not get my hair wet,” Sasha told us. She was lounging on a huge pink floatie with a Dr Pepper in her hand. “I’m not in the playing mood today. School is exhausting and I’m tired. I want to float.”
“You heard her, Eath. Don’t even think about splashing her. What are the rules of the pool?”
“Um, don’t go in without you and don’t be a jerk,” he answered. “Oh! Hey, Miss Clara, come over and swim with us!”
I almost drowned myself spinning around to find her on the other side of the fence, watering the multitude of plants she had on her back deck.
“I’m good over here, sweetheart, but thank you.”
“We have more floaties and Dr Peppers,” Sasha informed her. “I can get you one. It’s nice and cool in here and I need you to tell me how to take care of all those pretty plants you sent me. I also need to say thank you.”
“You’re welcome, honey. I’m happy you like them.”
It was hot out—one of those sunny, late-summer Tennessee days where all you wanted to do was jump in a pool or relax inside with the AC running. Not putter around the yard with a watering can. A droplet of sweat trickled down her temple and she bit her lip.
“Come on over, Clara. My pool is your pool. Ethan, run inside and grab Miss Clara a Diet Coke with way too much ice and a slice of lemon from the fridge. Grab me one too, while you’re in there.”
Clara’s eyebrows shot up. Yeah, I remembered what she liked to drink because we had always liked a lot of the same things.
“Just like you, huh, Dad? How interesting.” Sasha sent me a smirk from her floatie. “Come on, Miss Clara, you have to at least tell me about that one with the shiny pink and green leaves. Please?”
I could almost see Clara’s wheels turning as she struggled for an answer. “The rex begonia. It’s one of my favorites. You know what? I think I will join you and we can talk plants. It’s so dang hot today.” She set the watering can down. “I’ll go change.”
Ethan ran into the house for the drinks, and I floated on my back, doing my best to avoid looking at a smug Sasha.
“You like her, Dad. Don’t bother telling me you don’t, because then you’ll have to ground yourself for lying, right?”
I dove under the water and swam across the pool to the deep end, chagrined because my eleven-year-old daughter had my number and I didn’t know how to deny my feelings for Clara without looking like an ass or a liar.
I popped up in time to watch Clara gingerly open the side gate and tiptoe rapidly across the hot cement. My eyes bulged as they traveled up her long, slim legs, over the deep swell of her hips, up her taut stomach, and across her gorgeous tits to end up on her stunning face. Her bathing suit was a modest one-piece—deep purple with white trim—but it did nothing to prevent my mind from running wild. Not when I knew the stunning paradise under it. I’d touched and tasted every square inch of her body inside and out and it was all I could do to keep my composure and prevent my dick from getting hard.
“I should have worn my flip-flops, y’all.” She rushed to the steps at the shallow end and sat on the first one. “Much better.”
“I’ll get you a floatie.” Sasha climbed out and headed to the small shed at the side of the house where I kept the pool supplies.
