“I’ll wait. Thanks.”
Nicole finished nursing Owen and then strode half-naked to her room to shower like an Amazon warrior returning home from battle. I had plenty of images to fuel my masturbation fantasies. And I agreed to do this every day?
* * * *
Surprisingly enough, I did get used to seeing Nicole topless every day. In fact, the post-work out nursing sessions were when we had our longest talks. We talked a lot about Owen and the new things he was doing. Nicole would tell me about her mom friends and I would vent about work. It was so glad I was able to vent to her the day I had to cancel my plans for a long-weekend visit to some friends because my manager scheduled me to work at the last minute. The view of her tits did give me plenty to think about during my jerk off sessions once Nicole left with Owen for some mom’s function. Still, I enjoyed the conversations more than the view.
At the end of June, I took her out for her nineteenth birthday. It was the only meal she had eaten out since she moved in with me. I gave her a Walmart gift card. I would have rather given her some clothes or music, but I knew what she wanted was money to spend on Owen.
“Thanks, Ryan!” she said after she opened the card with the gift card. She gave me a brief hug. “I’ve been having trouble staying on budget and this will be a big help.”
Nicole was very tight with what little money she had. The Corolla she had bought was nine years old. She bought most things at garage sales or off Craigslist. I had been shocked at how much stuff babies require.
I tried to figure out how to phrase asking about how much money she had. Before I could decide on the phrasing, she obviously figured out what I was thinking about and told me firmly, “DON’T. ASK.”
Several days later, Nicole asked me, “Why aren’t you dating anyone? And what happened to you and Mandy? You had been over the moon about her Christmas before last.”
“I was very happy with Mandy for a long time. She was a ton of fun and super cute. She’s from Madison, so she had tons of friends here whereas I didn’t know anyone.” She had been a freshman at Madison College when I had met her. We both had been working as wait staff at a big-chain restaurant. “We started dating in October and we moved in together in January. Her dad moved in with us too.”
“Her dad?”
“Yeah. He’s disabled and in a wheelchair. Mandy wanted to be able to take care of him if he needed help. He had one bedroom and we had the other. Life was good.”
“He didn’t mind you screwing his daughter?”
“I was going to screw her whether he lived with us or not.”
“So what happened?”
“I flunked out of Electrical Engineering. It was the first time I had ever failed at anything I tried hard at. It was a big blow for me, but Mandy didn’t consider it a big deal. She was struggling in her classes at Madison and it didn’t bother her. At the time, I blamed her because I neglected my studies to do stuff with her.”
“And you don’t now?”
“No. I never got double-E. Last fall, I switched to Civil Engineering and I get Civil Engineering.” I sighed. “However, if I was going to graduate this year, I had to up my hours from twelve to fifteen. I didn’t want to fail again, so I cut way back on the partying and stuff to study hard. Which is pretty ironic considering that I picked UW-Madison because of its reputation as a party school. Mandy didn’t like me studying all the time. New Years Eve was the beginning of the end as she wanted to get shitfaced and I didn’t want to get drunk. When I got serious about my studies again in January, we had lots of big fights. She said I wasn’t fun anymore. We broke up, I moved out and moved in with Curt.”