A Son's Tale

At 9:57 p.m. her phone lit up, signaling his call. He was early. She liked that he hadn’t been able to wait, either.

“Hi.” She hadn’t been able to talk to him after class. She’d had no valid reason to. And this close to the end of the quarter with papers being due, he’d had a lot of students hovering around him, needing his attention.

“How’d it go?”

“He made the first cut!” She’d been bursting with the news. “Can you believe it? He’s not even five feet tall and he’s that much closer to playing on the junior high team!”

“Congratulations!” Cal chuckled. “You aren’t a proud mama or anything, are you?”

“Of course I’m proud. But I’m also very thankful for you and your father. Without the two of you…”

“Don’t, Morgan. If you’re going to start downplaying your part in this, I’m hanging up. He’s your son. Take credit for his accomplishments. It won’t kill you, I promise.”

Sighing, but with a huge grin on her face, Morgan relented. “You should have seen him, Cal. The second I picked him up from tryouts, I knew he’d done well. He practically danced into the center and stopped to talk to every little kid who noticed him.”

“What did you do to celebrate?”

“We stopped for pizza on the way home. His choice, of course. And then spent a couple of hours on the internet tonight, reading up on everything related to basketball that he could find. From stats to strategies to success stories of short players. He’d been wound so tight, he was actually tired at eight-thirty and went to bed at nine without any argument.”

“When is the second cut?”

“Tomorrow. I was hoping your dad would take him again. I called a couple of times but he didn’t answer. I figured I’d catch up with him in the morning. If he can’t do it, I know Julie can.”

“I’m sure he’ll do it. I actually got him to agree to go out for a steak dinner with me tonight and then stop off for some new jeans. He added some new sweatpants to wear when he’s playing with Sammie. And the whole night he was after me to call and find out how tryouts went. But I wanted to give you guys your time together.”

“You could have called.”

“Maybe I wanted to talk to you in private.” Cal’s voice grew serious. “You have no idea the change your son has made in my father’s life, Morgan. It’s truly me who owes you, not the other way around.”

“Or maybe neither of us owes anyone,” she said, running her finger around a barely visible wood grain on the table. “That’s how it works with…friends, isn’t it? The give and take is mutual.”

“Friends?”

“Well, I mean…”

“I have plans for us to be much more than friends, Ms. Lowen.”

Her body flooded with desire. She swallowed. She should have brought in a cup of tea. Laced with every calming herb known to humankind.

“You have nothing to say to that?”

“I’m too busy thinking about tea,” she said, grinning just a bit.

“Your herbal stuff?”

Squirming in her seat, she said, “Maybe.”

“The aphrodisiac kind, I hope?”

“No!” The word came out far more strongly than she’d intended. “I’m sorry,” she quickly added. “But you are more of an aphrodisiac than I seem to be able to handle, Professor, so just be nice and let me think about my tea.”

“I turn you on, huh?”

“So much so that I am sitting fully dressed at my dining room table, with a fully padded, serviceable bra and white briefs on under my clothes. I couldn’t take a chance on anything more comfortable.”

“Or what?”

“Or what, what?”