For the next week, Paiten and I continued in this fashion, not quite a couple but not the strangers we once were.
We never spoke about it though, we just did stuff. We’d kiss in the mornings after breakfast, Paiten pushing her hips into mine and my arms grabbing onto as much clothed flesh as possible to bring her as impossibly close as I could, her lips urgent and sugary-sweet against mine.
She’d crawl into my lap on evenings while we watched TV, later flipping me onto my back and pressing her knee against my core as we devoured each others lips.
It was exhilarating and exciting and I felt every bit like a teenager drunk on lust. Yet at the same time, I couldn’t help the guilt that threatened to eat me alive the moment I laid down at night to sleep in Rob’s bed because I dreamed not of him, but his daughter every single night.
It plagued me at work when I was distracted by the image of Paiten in her short school skirt that showed off her marvelous long legs and a betraying thought would infiltrate these thoughts, taunting me as to why I wasn’t thinking of my gorgeous boyfriend instead?
Why didn’t I miss him? Why was I in no rush to call him and check up on him? If I was so utterly smitten by the man? Why had he never made me feel the way his daughter did?
Paiten didn’t seem to be bothered by what we were doing and if she did, she did a damned good job at hiding it. I wasn’t intent on finding out by asking, because, like I said, we didn’t talk about it.
The first crack appeared soon after when I knocked off of work earlier than usual and decided to pick Paiten up from school. It was a chilly Thursday afternoon. It was the first of May and winter was fast approaching and today had been one of those miserable days where the cold hadn’t let up for the entire day.
Paiten was downcast when she made it into the car, with a pitiful pout on her pretty face.
“How was school?” I asked.
“Miserable and cold. I hate winter,” Paiten grumbled and folded one leg beneath the other. Today, she wore her school skirt and a pair of matching blue pantyhose, a blazer and a scarf.
Her hair was tied in a high bun, although it had been neat and done to perfection that morning, a few loose strands shrugged down her back and the sides of her face.
“It’s still autumn,” I said.
“Tell the weather that,” she replied with a grumble.
“Don’t worry, we’re well on our way home now and then you can have all the hot chocolate you want.”
“I don’t think we have any of that.”
“Okay, well we can stop at a Checkers and buy it. I’ll make you my special hot cocoa recipe.”
Paiten’s frown melted into a cute little smile, “I’d like that very much.”
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