Read Online Object of My Affection by Tracey H. Kitts - Free Book Online

I’d forgotten I was wearing. “You done Thriller yet?”
    “Oh.” I removed the hat. “Yeah that was about an hour ago.”
    “So, who pissed you off this time?” he asked.
    “What do you mean? Do I look angry?”
    “No, but every time you break out Michael’s greatest hits, someone has really chapped your ass.”
    “If you must know, there is a perfectly rational explanation for that,” I retorted.
    “Do tell?”
    “When I am faced with a situation I can’t see an easy way out of or something that is out of my control, I revert back to a better time and place. This music helps to take me back to a time when werewolves were something I’d only heard about, when I still saw some good in the world, and when people knew how to keep their fucking mouths shut.” I smiled sweetly.
    “At last we come to the point,” he said. “I knew you were angry.”
    “Forget that, it’s petty. What’s wrong with you?”
    “Before I get started, do you really want to know the answer to that question?”
    “No. I was just pretending like I cared.”
    He looked shocked.
    “I’m kidding. Of course I want to know, why else would I ask? Come on in.” I took a good look at him and added, “I’ll fix you a drink.”
    Richard followed me into the kitchen and sat down with a heavy sigh while I took a bottle of chilled rum from the fridge.
    I looked at Richard again and took in the circles under his eyes and the fine tremor in his hands.
    “You want this straight?”
    He seemed to consider it for a moment, but Richard was not a hard liquor kind of guy.
    “Better put some coke with it.”
    I handed over the drink and took a seat opposite Richard while he launched into what proved to be one of the most unusual stories I’d heard in a while.
    “Remember me telling you several weeks ago how weird things were getting at work?”
    I nodded.
    “Well, they’ve gotten worse. First of all, Mallory is one crazy ass bitch,” he said vehemently.
    Richard wasn’t a saint, but for him to use that kind of language showed just how upset he really was. In regards to Mallory, it was understandable. Mallory was about six feet tall with a strong chin, manly voice, plain-Jane greasy hair, and built like a line backer. Unfortunately, her personality wasn’t any more appealing than the rest of her.
    “What’s going on?”
    “Your guess is as good as mine.”
    “Why don’t you start from the beginning? When did this, whatever it is, all start?”
    “Well, it started a few months ago, at least that’s when I noticed it. Mallory has always been really unpleasant. Well, you’ve met her.”
    “Yeah.” I grinned. “And that’s putting it mildly.”
    “So anyway, she gets worse, right? Then the next thing I know I start catching the brunt of her frustration.”
    That pissed me off. I thought of Richard as an older brother and was very protective of him.
    “Why, what did she do?”
    “Well, I can’t directly prove she’s done anything except be nastier than usual and, unfortunately, that’s not a crime. But, rumors have been flying about me lately and I’m so sick of it I could throw up.”
    “Rumors?”
    He leaned forward and I could see small veins becoming visible across his left temple. “They’re saying I’m fucking my students!” he hissed.
    “What? That’s outrageous!”
    “Tell me about it. You haven’t even heard the worst of it yet. Apparently the last time we took a field trip we were all having an orgy on a nude beach!”
    I choked on my ice water.
    “Oh, wait! It gets better,” he said nastily.
    “You remember Lisa, right?”
    Lisa was a friend of Richard’s. She was a former student that was now teaching biology at my old high school. Some of the instructors where Richard worked had done everything within their power to keep Lisa from completing her teaching degree. Lisa was an attractive African American female and it had been the most blatant case of racism I’d ever seen. Of course that had all been