Thirty Happens (4 page)

“Please spank me…
Daddy
.”

Chris actually growled.

“You had to go there, didn’t you?”

“Desperate times, and all that crap.” I wiggled my butt at him.

“Damn it. Fine.”

I giggled in anticipation and then… pat.

He patted my butt.

“That was lame, Chris. You can do better than that. I want you to really slap it.”

A slightly harder pat fell on the other butt cheek.

Sigh.

“You kind of suck at this, baby. It’s okay, though. I mean, you can’t be awesome at everything.”

WHAP.

I jumped about a foot out of bed and whipped around in shock, holding my ass with my hands where he had cracked a really hard slap.

“Freaking OW!”

Chris started moving towards me and I automatically backed up.

“But you kept saying that you wanted me to hit you harder, hit you harder. Ohhh, Daddy, hit me.” He lilted his voice up at the end in a lame attempt of mimicking a woman’s voice.

“Not
that
hard. That freakin’ hurt. That wasn’t fun or sexy at all.”

“Don’t you dare look at me as an abusive spouse. Let’s turn the page back a bit. Who was the one who said no way? Me. Who was the one waggling her butt in front of me begging me to slap her? You."

Sigh.

I knew he was right, but I was so disappointed that it wasn’t nearly as fun or sexy as it was in the book. There was no way in hell at this point that I was letting him use nipple clamps or a riding crop on me. No freaking way.

“I know.”

“So is this ridiculous experiment finally over and we go to sleep and go back to being normal people?”

“Yeah, I guess. Define ‘normal’.”

Chris chuckled low as he pulled me to his chest for a cuddle. This was my favorite time of the day when we lay together just holding each other.

“You are crazy, sweetie. What on earth got in your head tonight?”

I looked over at the offending Kindle on my nightstand.

“Well, I was reading this book…”

Chris’ chest shook with laughter.

“I knew it was a book. Haven’t you learned by now that just because it’s in a book doesn’t mean it’s a good idea in real life? You know, the one that exists outside of electronic or paper pages?”

“Wait a minute, you’re saying that Sense and Sensibility isn’t real life?” I looked at him in mock horror.

“Mr. Darcy is just a fictional character, sweetie.” The corner of his lips edged up in a smirk.

“Mr. Darcy is from
Pride and Prejudice
!”

“Same thing. Not real. Sorry, babe.”

“All of my dreams, crushed, in that one moment. How could you?” I had the back of my right hand pressed against my forehead in a mock swoon. It would have been a very convincing swoon, if not for the giggles wracking my body.

“Anyway, I thought it would be fun to do something to spice it up. I think that was maybe a little TOO spicy.”

Chris pulled back and propped himself up on an elbow and brushed my hair from my face gently.

“Sweetie, you’ve been acting a little odd lately, like you are really unhappy with your life. That’s just not you. Are you okay?”

Crap, he was better at reading me than I gave him credit for.

“Uh, yeah, babe, I’m totally fine. Perfectly normal.” I flashed him a smile that I hope would reassure him, but even on my side of the smile it felt phony and a bit garish.

He shook his head at me slowly.

“Is this the life you want? Are you happy?”

“Yes, Chris.
You
are the life I want.”

“So you’re saying that if you could go back to that moment… you know which one I mean.” He added that bit in quickly when he saw me scrunch my eyebrows up in confusion.

“As I was saying, if you could go back to that moment… would you make the same choice? Would you make the same decision you made? Or would you stay and chase your dreams and become who you wanted to be?”

I just looked at him, not able to say a word but for some reason rapidly blinking my eyes to keep the tears back. How had he known the question that I had been asking myself?

“Kar, if you could go back in time and change it all, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t.” He smiled and leaned forward for a kiss, then laid on his side and pulled my back to him, so that we were curled up together.

I sighed and cuddled into his warmth, feeling both comforted and extremely disjointed all at once.

‘
If you could go back in time and change it all, would you?
’

Maybe.

chapter four.

more than a few years back…

M
y eyes were closed as I felt the warm sun on my face.

Seriously, was there a better feeling in the world? Laying on the grass in the early spring, when it was warm enough to not be freezing, but not so hot that I had to worry about boob sweat.

Boob sweat was the absolute
worst.

“Care Bear, what are you doing out here?”

Ugh. You have got to be kidding me. Care Bear? We’d only been dating for about a month, but I think that perhaps it was time to cut this one loose. Sweetheart? That was fine. Darlin’? Well, if he was from Texas that would be hot as hell, otherwise, no way. Baby? Always a win. But ‘Care Bear’? Nope. I was twenty two years old. Care Bear was cute for a five year old.

“Uh, hey Greg. I like the sunlight on my face. It’s the end of the fall, probably one of the last warmer days of the year before we get blasted with snow. It’s nice to be able to just enjoy the sunshine for a bit.”

He pulled me up and into a crushing hug. One that was a lot less hot and sultry boyfriend hug and a lot more long lost family member hug.

“I’m just so worried about my little Care Bear. I don’t want you getting sick from it being too cold for you!”

Gag me. I mean, seriously. I was gallantly fighting off my gag reflex. I pulled back a little, well, as much as his death grip would allow, to look him in the eye.

“Greg, you need to give me a little breathing room, buddy.”

His eyes darkened a bit at me calling him ‘buddy’ but I really needed some space.

“What do you mean, ‘breathing room’?”

How the hell did he get accepted to this college? I mean, it was supposed to be one of the best in the state. Granted, Massachusetts had a shit ton of really amazing colleges. But still, if he was so dense, how was he here?

“I mean, you sweet, soft man, that you need to back the hell off. You need to go to your own space and leave mine. You need to start eating dinners without me. And breakfast. And lunch. I guess what I mean is, that perhaps we were over before we really began. Done. Finite. Adios.
Over.”

I stood up and walked away, not bothering to look back. The fact that I didn’t care enough to look back at him spoke volumes. We weren’t meant to be. He wasn’t meant to be mine. Truth was, he was the equivalent of a Monday morning fluff piece in a small local paper. All flash and no substance. Filler. Something to hold a spot until something better came along.

I could hear his feet hitting the pavement as he ran after me, and just held my hand out behind me, palm up in total nineties ‘talk to the hand’ style. The footsteps came to an abrupt stop. Good.

I should have felt a twinge of heartache. A moment of mourning for the fledgling relationship that was ended before it really began. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even summon a fake tear over the loss of Greg. I tried to pull up a mental image of us strolling across the campus hand in hand with the gorgeous fall leaves that painted the canvas of New England in autumn as a backdrop. Nothing. In my head, I was strolling hand in and with a faceless man. He was taller than me. Slim but not
too
thin. Dark hair. No face. Odd. Maybe his face will be filled in at the right time and I would find my destiny.

I laughed at myself for my flowery internal language. I was known for being incredibly descriptive when writing my articles for the college paper. My journalism teacher in high school would tell me I needed to cut my word count when everyone else was getting nailed for not meeting the bare minimum. I might not be allowed to be verbose in ink, but I had one hell of a running internal dialogue on life.

I turned the corner around the old building that housed the majority of my senior year journalism classes. I’d known since I was a third grader that I was going to be a newspaper writer. Mom had sent me to one of these ‘gifted child’ college summer programs called ‘Projection Success’ when I was growing up, and I took enrichment classes during the hot and humid New England summer months while all of my friends were chilling next to pools or learning to shoot a bow and arrow at summer camp.

One of the classes that I had been enrolled in, note,
not
that I chose myself was newspaper journalism. I had a kicking, screaming temper tantrum over that one, but Mom held fast. Her rationale was that I had a slight flare for the dramatic. Also, a need to know everything that was going on with everyone. Okay, so maybe she worded it ‘gossipy drama queen’, but you get the point. I spent the summer with a little notepad and a pencil tucked behind my ear trying to get the scoop on all things Projection Success and the small campus I was spending three weeks on.

It was exhilarating, to say the least. I found out about the inner workings of the program, the behind the scenes of the professor’s lounge, learned about people, how they thought and reacted and interacted. I was hooked.

The first time I went home with ink splattered all over my new summer clothes, my mom balked a bit. She tried talking me out of the class that
she
picked for me, but I made it perfectly clear in a non-dramatic fashion that I would be staying in the class. I was allowed to return to class, but with strict instructions that I was never allowed try to help fix the small printing press that the college let us use. Well, at least not without proper protection. Ha ha, I was being taught to practice safe printing.

I giggled to myself at that lame little joke as I ran up the granite steps into the building that had been my refuge for over three years. I had about five minutes to spare as I walked into Specialized Reporting, so far my favorite class of the fall semester. Professor Statlin looked up and a quick smile relaxed his features as he saw me. I loved that man. Not in an unhealthy teacher fetish sort of way, more like a grandfatherly type of figure in my life. My roommate and friends made all sorts of crude comments saying I had an unhealthy fixation on him. Listen, I liked older men, I totally get that. But there was older and there was
old.
If you were older than my parents, you were honestly too old for me.

“Jensen, nice of you to join us.” An arched eyebrow and a twinkle in his eye let me know this was all in good fun. He called us all by our last names. He said it was to prepare us for working in a real newsroom. Some people grumbled. I think it’s because they had last names like ‘Cox’ or ‘Seaman’ and it always made people laugh. It worked well enough for me.

“Calm down, Stat, you know I’m early and we still have at least four people who will still waltz in after me.”

His low rumbling laugh carried to me as I watched a group of four girls slink into the room as the clock clicked past the three o’clock start time. I tilted my head smugly as I looked at them and back at him.

“You’ve always got the scoop, Jensen, don’t you? See me after class, if you have a second, I have something that I think you might need to investigate.”

He pushed himself back from his desk, smoothing his permanently wrinkled khaki pants as he started pacing in front of the class. I was scribbling notes along with him, trying to take them in shorthand, another one of my mom’s ideas of a great enrichment class for a pre-teen. I was absorbed in his discussion on business ethics, especially considering the latest bank merger and the questionable ethics that have been hashed out in the news as a result. I quickly reviewed the notes I’d taken, flexing and stretching my right hand to relieve the cramping that happened every class from gripping the pen too tightly.

I turned my hand over to look and sure enough, the side of my hand was streaked and splattered in ink. I shook my head as I pulled a cleaning wipe from my backpack and rubbed my skin until it was pink and ink-free. This was why I only used erasable pens, they cleaned up much easier, even if they had an odd smell that left me a little high after class.

“Jensen?”

I looked up to see my professor standing in front of me, with a questioning look on his face. I looked around and realized that we were alone in the classroom. A quick glance up to the clock showed that it was five minutes past the end of class.

Yikes.

“Sorry, Stat, was just looking over my notes.”

He shook his head in amazement.

“I swear, you are not only the only person who seems to pay attention, you take incredibly thorough notes and review them, as well.”

I shrugged.

“It’s why I’m your favorite.” I gave him a cheeky smile. Like I said, I saw this guy as a grandfather figure, and I gave him the same teasing I would give my grandfather. I was always trying to tell my parents that I knew I was their favorite. He would get no different treatment.

I suddenly remembered there was something he was going to tell me about after class and sat up a little straighter in anticipation.

“Soooo, what is it you wanted to meet with me about?”

He smirked at me and turned to return down to his desk at the front of the room. He searched through his ancient briefcase before walking back to me with a rolled up bunch of papers.

I waited.

He took his damned time unrolling the paperwork before placing it on the desk in front of me face down.

I tried my best not to act too interested, but I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and flipped the paperwork over.

Holy shitballs. My eyes were skimming over the paperwork as quickly as I could possibly absorb it, bouncing between the desk and looking at Statlin incredulously.

No way this was happening.

No freaking way.

I sat down.

The Boston Beacon was looking for interns.

My dream newspaper was looking for interns, and behind my back, he had applied for me and I was in.

“You start in January, with the beginning of the semester. It’s a six month program, and you could end up with a job straight out of college, if you play your cards right.

I just gave him a huge bear hug and burst into tears.