Just One (Dangerously Dimpled) by Emily Hemmer Read Free Book Online

again.” I push his spoon away from my pancakes.
    An amused grin splits his face. “Again?
Remind me to prepare my will beforehand next time.”
    The idea of a next time with Alex fills
me with an uneasy delight. As close as I feel to him at this moment, I’ve lived
in the South all my life, and I know that money can create an impossible divide.
A reality as true now as it was a hundred years ago. I push the thought from my
mind and offer him a bite of my pancake. “So, tell me something.”
    “What?” His spoon slides tantalizingly
from his mouth.
    “Anything. But not your name and where
you live or that kind of thing. Tell me something real. Something personal.”
    He’s contemplative for a minute, taking
my request seriously. “When I was seven my dad took me to a baseball game and
lost me.”
    “No he didn’t.”
    “He did.” Alex sits up and removes the
tray from my legs, setting it on the floor on his side of the bed. He lifts the
heavy comforter and joins me beneath satiny sheets. His feet are cold, but I
don’t complain. Reaching across me, he pulls the chain on the lamp, throwing
the room into darkness.
    “Come here.” He grabs my hip and pulls me
to face him. My eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark yet, but I can make out the
silhouette of his face. His breath tickles my nose.
    We’ve only known one another a few hours
but I feel so…connected, to him. “Tell me more.” I’m desperate to keep him
here, next to me for as long as possible. “Did your dad come looking for you?”
    Alex runs his finger gently down the arm
I’ve left on top of the bedding. The quiet mixed with his gentle touch makes me
shudder. “We went with a group of people, mostly my dad’s clients. I think he
must’ve brought me with him as some kind of marketing gimmick. He’s always
trying to sell himself as a family man.” His voice holds a grimace, as if the
words leave a bad taste in his mouth. “Anyway, he left me in my seat when they
went to go speak with some other big shot, and he never came back.”
    I wait patiently for him to continue.
    “This older couple sitting behind us
called over a security guard when he didn’t show up for the seven inning
stretch. The guard took me down to fan-jail.”
    My heart aches for him. “They threw you
in jail?” I stroke the shadow around Alex’s jaw, affronted on his seven
year-old behalf. I can feel the outline of a small smile.
      He shakes his head. “It’s the only place
they could put me while they were looking for the old man. The security guards
were nice. They gave me a hat, a hot dog, and they put the game on this little
TV set on their desk. It was pretty fun, considering.”
    “And your dad? When did he come to get
you?”
    “Sometime around the bottom of the
eighth. He was totally hammered, Charlie. His clients were a rowdy bunch and
he’d jumped right in the thick of it, completely forgetting me in the process.”
    Alex’s hand mirrors my movements,
touching the sweep of my jaw, caressing the expanse of my neck. The move is
intimate. His fingertips trail across my skin slowly, mapping every exposed
inch. I trace his.
    “I’m sorry that happened to you,” I
whisper.
    “It was a long time ago. Twenty-two
years.” His hand dips beneath the comforter and rests on my hip. His thumb
moves over the skin there, back and forth. “There’s more.”
    I hold my breath.
    “When Father Dearest came to get me this
guard, Jonesy, I think was his name, hit him. Punched him right in the mouth.”
    “Why?”
    Alex moves closer, resting his head on my
pillow. His face so close I can feel every word he says across my cheek. “When
he showed up, drunk and disorderly, he was really mad. I’d embarrassed him in front of his clients. Why couldn’t I just do as
I was told? All that shit. He shook me so hard, I thought that hot dog was
going to come up all over him. Jonesy pulled him off and yelled, “Hey, that’s your kid there, what’re you
doing?” My dad was