response on Kinkbook. What if Kelly was Aaron’s gateway drug to greener pastures that included all the pain play he could stand without all the headache that came with being married to me?
And as much as I loved what Kelly could bring into our bedroom, the reality was that this was temporary. Play partners came and went. That was how arrangements like this worked. He could be here for a few weeks, or he could stick around for a few years, but sooner or later, he would be in our past.
So where did that leave us?
Trailing my fingers along Aaron’s arm, I tried to make out his silhouette in the darkness.
One way or the other, Kelly won’t be with us forever.
I drew him a little closer and kissed the side of his neck.
When he’s gone, will I be enough for you?
Why did I commit to teaching a morning class again?
Likely for the same reason I’d done it in the past—because somehow when it came time to let the powers that be know when I was available to teach, I’d magically forgotten how much it sucked to actually have to be on campus and ready to teach at ten. I was getting better about that, though. It had been a solid four years since I’d subjected myself to a class that started at seven. I’d done that once and only once, and even I wasn’t scatter-brained enough to forget it.
But somehow I always thought “ten o’clock start time? That’s not so bad,” forgetting that that meant I had to be on campus by nine if I wanted a place to park, which meant being out the door by eight-forty, which meant getting my insomniac ass out of bed by eight at the latest. Fuck. That. Noise.
I was going to remember. This time, I’d even written myself a note and set a reminder in my phone so that when they asked me about my availability again, I would not be committing myself to fucking up my already wonky sleep patterns.
For now, though, I had to be here, caffeinated and alert enough to teach two dozen tired undergrads the basic principles of three-dimensional design. Which was a challenge, because this early in the day, I barely felt three-dimensional, but whatever, this was what they paid me to do.
At least the summer term meant the sun was up and I wasn’t going to work in the dark. And it helped that this part of the curriculum was relatively easy to teach. It was an introductory course for undergrads and the term had just started, so I was still getting my students acquainted with the software, and I could use these programs in my sleep. Thank God, because today in particular, all I was good for was going through the motions.
That wasn’t because of my stupid schedule, though. Not entirely. I just couldn’t get last night out of my head. Had it been a good thing? A bad thing? A step in the right direction? A recipe for disaster? How did Aaron feel now that he’d slept on it? How did Kelly feel about it? How the fuck did I feel about it? Should we do it again, or should—
“Mr. Taylor?” a student asked, sounding concerned.
I shook myself and looked up, realizing to my great embarrassment that the entire class was watching me with puzzled expressions. Aw, fuck. Had I spaced out mid-lecture again?
Clearing my throat, I glanced down at my notes and remembered where I’d left off. “Sorry.” I put on a smile. “I thought I’d missed a step. Anyway.” I gestured at the image being projected onto the screen behind me. “Before you render your design, you want to be sure…”
I made it through the rest of the lecture easily enough. By the time the class was over, I was exhausted from trying to keep my head in the game, and now that I didn’t have to, I couldn’t. Aaron had once described my concentration as a human pyramid, except made out of squirrels—it would hold together, but the second something jostled it, the squirrels scattered and there was no getting them back into the room, never mind into a pyramid formation. It wasn’t that bad most of the time, but there were days when that analogy wasn’t far off the mark.
Now the squirrels were running for the hills, and as I packed up my laptop to head out, I tried not to think about all the work I had waiting for me