The Book of Brooke

Chapter 6

 When I get to Jacob's house to watch Mikey for the day, it's immediately awkward. I can't put what happened out of my mind, but it doesn't seem like Jacob can either.

Mikey's warming up to me more and more, but Jacob seems to retract because of what happened between us. It's the afternoon when I come in for my shift, so Mikey's mom isn't here, but Jacob is going into the office soon.

"Bye, Mikey. I'll see you soon." He says. The way that he's such a good dad is so sexy to me. He turns towards me. "Brooke, can we talk?"

Oh no.

I follow him behind the stairs and he makes sure that Mikey can't hear anything.

"What's up?" I ask nonchalantly.

He raises an eyebrow.

"Are we not going to talk about what happened?"

"What do you mean?" I'm not a good liar. "You're going to have to be more specific."

"Are you kidding me?"

"I mean, a lot of things happened."

"I'm talking about when you sucked my dick, Brooke."

"Oh." I say. "That. Right."

I look down at my shoes, and Jacob looks down at his. I'm not really sure what to say and I have a feeling that he doesn't either. I don't want to look back up at him, i want to put the thought of his naked body aside and out of my brain forever.

Okay, maybe not forever. Just until he leaves and this isn't awkward anymore.

"Well." Jacob says. "I didn't hate it."

I look up.

"You didn't?"

"No. Did you hate it?"

"I didn't hate it." I tell him. "I actually liked it. Quite a bit actually."

"I liked it too." He says.

"But you're married." I say.

"It's complicated."

"Really?"

"It is. There's a lot that you don't know."

"What do we do?"

"I don't know." It's a moment of silence between us before I notice leaning in and I find myself leaning in too, but before our lips can touch, his phone rings.

What a cockblock.

The moment is ruined as he picks his phone up and answers.

"Hello?" He says. "Sorry, yeah. I'm on my way."

He puts the phone down.

"Work?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry, but I have to go. I'll see you later though?"

"Yeah, for sure."

*

After Jacob leaves, i attend to Mikey, who has decided that he wants to try putting gel into his hair. He's sitting on the couch in the living room, watching some reality television show that's very obviously not aimed at his age group from the intense amount of botox, fillers and silicone behind the skin of all the ladies on screen.

"My dad wears gel in his hair sometimes." Mikey tells me. "Whenever he goes out with my mom."

His eyes are fixed on the tv screen, although they aren't very interested. I sit down next to him, watching the screen in the same way that he is before turning to him and thinking about whether or not I should ask a kid this, or whether or not he would even have the answer.