Quick Study Read Free

adjusting to post-deployment, for real this time, can you believe. . .”
    Paul had begun to pull away as soon as he realized who was talking, and by the time the man was crowing into the phone with obvious love and joy, Paul was on his feet and buttoning his jeans with shaking hands.
    “Are you there?” the man went on. “Babe, I miss you so much—”
    She was married. With a kid. And the dad was coming home, from war or whatever, he was a hero, a decent guy who didn’t deserve this. 
    What kind of woman was she, to keep looking at him like she didn’t want to stop?
    Through an ashamed, resentful, angry panic he remembered his jacket and stumbled over to it, forcing himself to look at Bonnie again. 
    She didn’t look ashamed so much as embarrassed. “It’s not what you think,” she said, but didn’t get up to stop him. She crossed her arms over her chest.
    By then he was already backing up into the hall. “Sorry. I can’t do this,” he said. “Thanks—” But that was lame, so he shut up, gave her a pathetic wave, and shut the door between them. His chest was heaving. His stomach wanted to.
    Holy fuck. That was horrible. What had he almost done? Some poor guy was out serving their country and Paul the overcompensated computer geek had almost slept with his wife, whose full name he didn’t even know, with their little boy’s toy cars all over the carpet and—
    His sister had just called him an aging adolescent that morning, and she was right. He hadn’t even considered who he might have been hurting, following his dick around like a GPS. Turn left. Turn right. Take this one all the way to the end.
    Out on the crappy suburban street, the early morning haze was burning off, and he scowled at the January sky and strode up the street to his car, his body awash with adrenaline, lust, and self-loathing. 
    At least it would be spring soon. The woman and her child wouldn’t be freezing to death in their own home—even California got cold at night, especially to a little kid. Hopefully by the time fall came around again the dad would be back home, helping out. If he could find work, if he hadn’t gotten PTSD from serving his country.
    Shaking his head with disgust, he tossed his jacket onto the passenger seat next to him before zooming as fast as his Prius would take him out towards 680, away from her suburban gulag apartment building, past the mall and south out of Pleasant Hill to his cozy five-bedroom custom-built house in the hills of Lafayette. Spent a fortune on a castle, he should enjoy it. Alone. No more impoverished, vulnerable, lonely, married women with small children for him—let alone one belonging with a man risking his life overseas.
    He knew a warning bell when he heard one. From now on he’d be a goddamn monk, even if it meant never leaving the house, and the only woman he’d touch would be carefully screened for husbands and children and poverty before he so much as shook her hand.
    Just as he merged on the freeway, he smelled Bonnie's pussy on his fingers and nearly swerved into a hedge of oleander along the on-ramp.
     
     
    Bonnie pulled her t-shirt back on and sighed. Guess he wasn’t as shallow as he’d seemed. Her lips were swollen and her hair was falling in her face and she her teeth were chattering—from the sexual arousal, the come-down, and her neighbor’s unheated apartment. And she still wanted him.
    Compiling her research was going to be harder than she expected.
    She sighed and combed her wild hair with her fingers. That was nice for little Jake, having his dad come home. Hopefully for Shannon, too. Bonnie cleaned up the untouched coffee, barely able to focus on the cups she washed, then locked up and walked next door to her place. 
    Her roommates wouldn’t have appreciated her having company over so early in the morning.
    She should have told him, of course. But now she was too embarrassed, and maybe it would teach him a lesson. Until he’d been confronted with a