A Blooming Flower

Playing Games

Jason

I couldn't look my wife in the eye. The memory of what I had done Sunday night haunted me every time I tried. It wasn't cheating, but it still felt like it. It feels like I committed a crime and I'm the only one who knows. Can I say I love and respect her after doing that?

I'm not the same eighteen-year-old kid that got her pregnant though. I'm a man.

A man can understand that lust and love are two separate things. My sexual desires and my feelings for a person aren't mutually exclusive, my current predicament established that well. I could love Katherine as the mother of my children, but yearn for another in my dreams.

As long as it remained a dream, right? Even if a sinful dream.

This was how I attempted to convince myself that I was still in control as I drove to the school to collect Lily.

It had taken Ellie until Tuesday afternoon to earn a detention from her Biology teacher and Lily had obeyed me perfectly. Within the hour she had text me asking if I would pick her up before Ellie could beg her to stay behind.

I was told Ellie had English last period which was in the main building, but Lily had Religious Education in the humanities block. Hardly any students left via the back gate and Lily was adamant she didn't want Ellie to find out about this so I agreed that's where I would be waiting for her come three-thirty.

Although the discretion surrounding the arrangement made it feel dangerously bad, I wasn't about to let her down because of my own immoral desires. She's still just Lily. Sweet, innocent, Lily.

We aren't doing anything wrong.

The need to repeat that to myself became stronger as I pulled the car up outside the school. I watched as the crowds of children fled the grounds. It only took five minutes for the masses to die down and for Lily to appear treading quickly across the playground.

She strolled out of the gates cautiously, keeping her head down, darting her eyes around as if she were on 'mission impossible'. I couldn't help but laugh to myself watching her, it was a bittersweet reminder that she was for all intents and purposes, a child.

The passenger door swung open and she hopped in, quickly throwing her bag at her feet and removing a pair of bulky headphones from her head.

Her soft blonde locks just brushed her shoulders as she detangled herself. My eyes fell to her face, the face I had imagined when I jerked off. Her lips looked soft, glazed with a strawberry pink balm, ripe for tasting. I wondered for a moment how sweet she would taste on my lips before my devilish thoughts were broken when Lily glanced up at me, buckling herself in for the ride.

"You OK, Mr D?" she asked so innocently.

Shit. I quickly pulled my eyes to the road ahead of us and started the engine. I hadn't realised I was staring. Did I freak her out? I scolded myself internally as we drove in silence. That was until Lily's angelic voice spoke out again.

"Thank you, for this".

I gave her a quick smile, keeping my attention on the road "you don't have to thank me Flower".

I heard her fidget in her seat next to me. Had I made her uncomfortable? I only told her not to thank me.

Was it because I called her 'flower'? No, I've called her that since she was a little girl.

I remember how Ellie came up with her nickname because 'Lily' was a flower. The logic was sound to a six-year-old and it stuck well, though I haven't heard Ellie use it in a while.