"Hi, Mr. Jeremiah," Ashley said in her seductive school girl way, and what was strange was that she was wearing one of my white button shirts and one of my striped ties, and that's all she was wearing.
"Hi," I said, kind of dazed. Her legs were long and looked so tan next to my white shirt, and she pulled on the tie so it was stretched taut, and licked her lips, and walked over to me…
I snapped awake in the pre dawn hours in my empty bed. Empty except for me. I felt the shameful guilt of dreaming about my teenage step son's girlfriend.
Downstairs I started the coffee. The sun began its golden dawn glow, and the dream wasn't fading. I could see her smooth thighs, her big blue eyes, the way she licked her lips. I shuddered.
"Craig! Angela!" Both of them didn't wake up easily. I was the one who snapped awake before the sun was up. I'd woken up early ever since Julia died. While she was sick I got such little sleep, afraid she'd die and I wouldn't be there. I could never get any deep sleep then and it wasn't much better now.
Angela came down first, hair wild and fluffy, black curls everywhere. Pajamas wrinkled and rumpled, her eyes only half open. She sat heavily in one of the kitchen chairs and rested her head on her arms.
"Hi, sweetie. Is Craig up?"
She glared at me and nodded her head slightly. I heard him on the stairs anyway. His hair, lighter than Angela's but just as curly, was wild and fluffy from sleep. Both of them with the curly hair like Julia. I remembered twirling her hair around my finger, pulling it straight and watching it spring back to a corkscrew curl.
"These curls are your best feature," I'd tell her, and she'd smile her crazy smile at me.
Craig's flannel pajama pants flapped around him, the soft and faded tee shirt he wore getting too small.
"Good morning," I said, looking up at him. He was getting tall. Albert had been pretty tall.
"Morning," he said and poured himself some coffee. He was just 15, kind of too young to be drinking coffee. But it was kind of a choose your battles thing. I didn't quite know what to do with him all the time. When I first married Julia Craig wasn't over that much, and when he was he was Julia's responsibility. And when he came to live with me last year there was always Albert in the background and the thought that he'd eventually go back to him, once Albert straightened his shit out. That sort of blew up in my face when Albert hit Craig again and crashed his car, killed himself. Then it was all up to me, no safety net. What was I supposed to do? I wanted him to not skip classes and not steal my cars and not get girls pregnant and not get into fights, so could I really complain if he drank coffee or not?
"Joey, uh, Ashley's coming over after school," Craig said, not asking but just sort of informing me.
"Sure, no problem," I sipped my coffee. Craig dumped enough sugar into his coffee to cause diabetes and enough cream to destroy most of the flavor of the coffee. I drank mine black, one sugar, like a man.
I was glad he told me that Ashley would be over because my dream was still too vivid. I could almost feel the silkiness of her skin, the smoothness of her hair. I'' stay late at the dealership, real late. Hopefully Ashley would be gone by the time I came home.