Hopefully this time older and wiser.
After about an hour of playtime, Birdie decided it was worktime, and the two of us moved to one of the small handful of tables Hang Five Arcade has set up by the ticket redemption counter for weary parents who need to take a load off. Right now, Birdie and I feel like weary parents, and I’m suddenly rethinking my stance on wanting three kids.
“I need more tokens,” Bodhi demands with his hands cupped out in front of him, standing next to our table where Birdie and I are sitting, and I’m trying not to notice each time her smooth, bare thigh rubs up against mine.
“I just gave you fifty tokens. What the hell did you do with them already?” I mutter, grabbing a handful of gold coins out of the plastic bucket on the table and depositing them in Bodhi’s hands.
“I shoved them up my ass and then shit out some stuffed animals for a few kids. What the hell do you think I did with them? Stop being cheap, Daddy, and give me another handful.”
Birdie snorts next to me, and I keep my annoyed glare on my friend as I reach into the bucket again and deposit another handful of tokens into his outstretched hands. As soon as the last coin drops onto the pile, he’s off and running.
“Don’t run, or you’ll knock someone down!” Birdie yells after him, doing the same to Tess when she suddenly emerges from the room behind us and goes running by our table after him.
“Good Lord, you put people in front of a bunch of games that will spit out tickets you can redeem for nothing but crap, and they turn into toddlers,” Birdie complains, both of us watching Tess shove Bodhi out of the way so she can play the Wheel of Fortune coin game he was standing in front of.
“Don’t act like you’re not bouncing in your seat, waiting to turn your tickets in for a tie-dyed stuffed sand crab, seventeen Laffy Taffys, nine Pixie Stix, and a bouncy ball,” I tell her, turning away from Tess and Bodhi arguing to see her smiling at me, a big megawatt Birdie smile, with her dimple out and where she’s biting the tip of her tongue.
Fuck, she’s so goddamn beautiful it’s literally killing me.
I could see the hesitation on her face when we walked over here a little bit ago and I patted the bench seat next to me for her to sit down instead of pointing across the table. When I lied and told her it was only so we wouldn’t have to shout over the noise while we worked, she quickly slid in next to me, and I’ve been regretting that decision ever since. I should have made her sit out on the curb, and we could have talked through the window where I didn’t have to smell her tropical skin, watch her tits push against the tight material of her cotton shirt every time she takes a breath, and feel her arm brush up against mine every time she moves.
“I have enough for the purple hedgehog, and I’m only ten away from the lava lamp,” she says, squealing a little as she looks at the pile of orange tickets in the middle of the table, making me laugh. “This is very exciting. But we need to work first.”
Pulling a piece of paper out of her planner that she takes everywhere, Birdie slides it over the table to right in front of me, and I look down at it.
“I know you saw I’ve replied to all those emails requesting interviews from you, telling them you’re not talking to anyone at this time. I also contacted that guy at USA Today you spoke with on the phone, and he’s agreed not to publish anything you said that day as long as we give him the first interview when you’re ready. But we really do need to put out some kind of a public statement right now,” she explains. “I drafted up a press release and blamed your… episode on exhaustion. ‘Please give me some privacy, blah, blah,’ the usual. I hope that’s okay. Read it over and let me know what you think.”
“Episode, huh?” I smile at her, actually finding humor in what I did for the first time since it happened.
“It sounded nicer than ‘that time you went batshit crazy and taught your pitching wedge how to swim.’” She smiles back, brushing another piece of hair off her cheek and tucking it behind her ear.
She put those damn braids in her hair again today, but a few long pieces have come loose throughout the day, the wispy blonde strands constantly annoying her as she tucks them away or blows them off her cheek. I’ve spent the last two days doing math problems in my head to try to stop picturing myself bending her over the desk in her office, yanking down those tiny cotton shorts she keeps torturing me with, and clutching those two long braids together in one of my hands while I fuck her so hard from behind the desk moves across the room.