Colleen raises her hands. “Have fun, baby. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“In the…” Teyler tries to ask but the women ignore him and before he can get an explanation, his daughter is waving him off as Elliot pats his shoulder again.
“I’m crossing my fingers for all boys, man. That girl shit, right there, I won’t survive it.”
“Just bring me that pie.”
After sharing the piece, Teyler needing to encourage Colleen to take a few bites, he finally addresses her reasons for not wanting to eat the decadent dessert. It’s something that has been upsetting him since arriving in Falls Village.
“Hey, what’s up with you?” he asks.
“What?”
“You got quiet all of a sudden. You okay? Did I say something wrong?”
“No, um…what’s this about an app?”
“Oh, that?” Teyler chuckles. “Ah, I got a degree in computer science from UConn then, while playing ball, I got a graduate degree. I developed an app, released it after my injury. I always knew basketball wasn’t forever.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Yeah, of course. I still workout, but I need to baby my knee. It sucks, but honestly, I missed you more, Colleen.”
“Tey…”
“No, let me finish. I need to say this.”
Colleen nods as Teyler takes her hands in his. “I know we were young and maybe for you it felt like a game or whatever, a summer fling with the new kid. But for me, it was the real deal. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted you to transfer so we’d be together.”
“It wasn’t a game for me either, Tey. You have to know, I had feelings for you. What I did, about Taylor, not telling you…that was for you. I knew if I’d told you, you’d give it all up. I couldn’t do that to you.”
Teyler stands and offers Colleen his hand. He silently leads her to the car and opens her door. When he climbs in, he says, “I wouldn’t have seen it as giving something up. I would have viewed it as gaining a family.”
“Exactly,” she says. “And then what? Hmm? You’d be sitting here today miserable. You’d always be wondering what if.”
“I’m wondering that now. I’m wondering what would have been if I stayed. Would you see yourself differently?”
“What?”
“Would you enjoy a bite of pie or still only lick your fork like you did tonight?”
“Teyler, if you haven’t noticed, I obviously eat. You can’t hit this weight without overindulging.”
“If you’re not happy with yourself, Coll, then fix it. But don’t let what others dictate as beauty make you feel wrong. You’re not wrong. I happen to think everything about you is very right.”
Teyler shifts his hips behind the wheel to show her how very right he thinks she is. He groans as he palms the spot where his pants bulge from his trapped erection.
Colleen offers him a sad smile before the first tear falls and he pulls over the first chance he gets to face her and listen as she finally decides to open up to him.
She tells him about her weight issues when she was younger, before they met and then how, after he left and she was pregnant, it got out of control. She never lost the baby weight, didn’t have any motivation to. She realizes that she was depressed. Then her mother died, and she’d felt old when she was only the age Taylor is now. She gave up and instead of taking care of her, she threw herself into the store and being a mom.
“As I just showed you,” Teyler says with a gleam in his eyes. “You turn me the fuck on. If you’d let me, I’d have you naked and riding my cock right here. So, don’t ever think it’s about that. I want you to be happy, but I want you to be healthy, too. Nothing crazy, just us spending time together, walking. I hear that new age place is starting sunset yoga on the beach.”
“I don’t know, Tey…”
“Just to keep your heart pumping while I watch your ass and you get mine pumping in other ways. And while we’re on the topic of pumping, remember that device years ago that helped women with keeping their arms toned?”
That makes her laugh. He was always able to do that to her.
“Don’t…”
“Well,” Teyler continues anyway, “I have this device,” he says with a smirk. “You can wrap your hand around it and work your arm muscles. Up and down, a little twist at the top, down and up…”
Colleen falls into a small fit of giggles. “I’ve seen that device and I know what happens when I work it up and down.”
“Please say you want to do that again, starting now.”
Colleen grows serious and Teyler sucks in a deep breath to calm his raging libido down. He’s not a man who has denied himself the pleasure of a woman very often, but since his injury and his coming to reality about his life and happiness, he hasn’t gone near one. The tension in his cock was at an all-time high before he and Colleen started flirting, now he was damn near ready to burst one off in his pants like a novice. “Can we take things slow this time? Like date, maybe. Tonight was fun.”
Teyler pats Colleen’s leg then leans in to kiss her cheek. He tucks a strand of her silky hair behind her ear then kisses her temple. “Any way you want it, baby. I just want to spend time with you, be near you. My dick can wait.”
As Teyler pulls back onto the road to take Colleen home, she giggles once more and asks, “By waiting, can that maybe mean phone sex and mutual masturbation?”
“Fuck,” Teyler says as he hits the accelerator with his foot.
1992
Falls Village, Maine
They airlifted Teyler to a hospital in California where a specialist who worked with his father was practicing. He was taken into surgery to repair his injury upon arrival and woke up feeling like shit for being forced to leave Colleen so abruptly.
He’d wanted more time to work on her confidence and secure their relationship before they had to try to make a long-distance relationship work. He knew it was a long shot for anyone, even more so for two kids heading off to college, but he felt it deep in his bones that they were meant to be together and he was committed to making things work between them. He wasn’t kidding around when he’d suggested she could transfer to UConn or even another school in the area so they could be close. But something hadn’t felt right to him when they said their final goodbyes. He felt a distance with Colleen that hadn’t been there before and now that the drugs were wearing off, it was concerning him.
He forced himself through the pain, refusing any more medication, to process what they had said to each other as he was being taken away, but he couldn’t recall the memory much beyond the pain of his injury and the one that was forming in his heart. Unable to think clearly even now, Teyler succumbed to the pain once more and pressed the button for more medication. He sighed as he returned to the pain-free darkness.
Over the next few weeks, Colleen took his calls and even initiated a few of her own, but Teyler could feel the distance growing between them. They talked about nothing, nonsense shit like what she’d bought at the store to decorate her dorm room or how she wasn’t sure she would like her roommate. Teyler droned on about his therapy and expressed his concerns over starting on a team already injured.