by Carmen Faye
“That was the idea, yeah,” he admitted.
Shayla came over to him and kissed his lips. “So, what changed? You’re different than when you left Friday night. You’re… calmer, I think,” she mused as she searched his eyes.
“Let me put this stuff away and I’ll tell you about it,” he offered.
“No, let us put this stuff away. You get a beer and then tell us about it while we’re unpacking you in the bedroom,” Shayla told him, taking the laptop from him and handing it to Sydney and then dragging the duffel back toward her bedroom.
“Ah, alright,” Neil said with a shrug.
Beer in hand, he sat on the foot of the bed and watched the girls put his things in the closet and drawers.
“Well?” Sydney prompted.
“Ah, well, I talked with my mom about you two,” he offered.
They both spun around. “You did?” Sydney gasped.
“What did she say?” Shayla demanded, surprise and worry in her voice.
“She said that you’re both welcome to come over for dinner next week,” Neil told them, taking a long drink from his beer.
“What?” Sydney exclaimed with disbelief.
“You’re not fucking with us, are you Neil? I mean, this would be really cruel if you are,” Shayla told him.
Neil told them the story, starting with Jill and Sandy’s love radar picking up Shayla on the phone. As he talked the girls sat down on the foot of the bed and he started putting away his clothing. After he finished with the conversation with his mom, he said, “So, the girls have a soccer game next Sunday, and I thought dinner after would be nice.”
They looked at each other, both of their mouths open. “You take us seriously enough to introduce us to your family?” Shayla asked softly.
He hung up another shirt and told her, “Yes, I do. If I didn’t take you seriously, I wouldn’t be hanging clothing up in your closet.”
“Or having sex with us, I’ll bet,” Sydney said with realization dawning in her voice.
Neil nodded and said, “Wouldn’t have spent the night, that’s for certain. Shayla, you told me you were all-in. Well, so am I. I figure we’ll have enough problems without creating more by pussy-footing around with this. I’m into both of you, and you’re into me, so…”
“So, we meet your family next week,” Shayla added quietly, still a little dazed with wonder. “That makes this so much more real. I mean, it was all behind closed doors until now, but we’re going to meet your mom and sisters, as a threesome. That’s… wow.”
“My mom will probably understand,” Sydney said. “But not my dad. I think he would rather me be a lesbian than one of your wives. He’ll probably want to kill you. Just saying.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Neil told her with a grin.
“I could give a fuck what my parents think,” Shayla told him. “They’re both alcoholic fucking losers. I worked my ass off to get my academic scholarship so I could get the fuck away from them. I won’t be inviting them to the wedding.”
“There you go mentioning marriage again,” Sydney sighed.
“What? You’re the one already naming babies,” Shayla said, getting up from the bed. “You hungry Neil? I was thinking pizza.”
“No, I’m good. Maybe a slice, but I had a lot of pot roast at dinner.” Neil said.
“What did you have to say that for?” Sydney blurted as they left.
“Well, you are! I saw you looking at the damn website,” Shayla said and left the room.
Sydney turned and looked back at Neil, biting her lip, but Neil seemed unaware of their conversation. “Shayla! Fuck!” she said, chasing after her lover. “Why are you always so fucking brutal?”
“Brutal? ‘There you go talking about marriage again,’” she quoted snidely. “How fucking brutal is that?”
“But you do! You keep bringing it up and… Well… Which one of us marries him? We can’t both marry him!” Sydney yelled at her.
“How the fuck should I know?!” Shayla snapped in return. “I’ve never even been in fucking love before!” Tears began to fill her eyes. “And stop fucking cornering me!” she ordered, pushing past her out of the kitchen and going to the living room.
“I’m not cornering you! I’m trying to talk with you!”
“I don’t want to talk!” Shayla cried, exasperated. “I want to order a pizza, and watch a movie, and snuggle on the couch, and eat popcorn, and then go to bed! I want to feel like I did Friday morning!”
“How was that?” Sydney asked, a little softer.
“Loved!” Shayla yelled. “I don’t want my parents to know about this, and I don’t want your dad trying to kill Neil and the whole fucking world pointing fingers and telling me I can’t feel like this with you two!”
“So, we’ll have our own ceremony,” Sydney told her. “And we’ll change our names to Jackson. No law against that. And if we’re asked, we’re married. As long as we don’t say that to the IRS, who the fuck cares about anyone else?”
“Just like that?” Shayla asked curtly.
“Just like that,” Neil said, leading against the wall and startling them both.
Shayla turned on him and then started crying. “I’m sorry Neil! I don’t know why I’m so fucking upset.”
Neil took her in his arms. “Because you have something to lose, that’s why.”
“God damn it!” she bawled, and beat her fists feebly against his chest.
After a few minutes she calmed down, and they sat on the couch together. Shayla sat comfortably in Neil’s lap and Sydney knelt beside them on the cushion, kissing Shayla and running her fingers through her hair.
A good twenty minutes went by, and the comfort level was back to normal when Neil said, “So, baby names?”
“Eep,” Sydney whimpered.
“When did this start? Friday morning?” he asked.
“Actually,” Shayla told him, “We’ve been building up quite a romance with you for the last few weeks. You haven’t had any say in it, that’s all.”
“Ah,” Neil said with the sound of understanding. “So, are these babies coming any time soon?” he asked Sydney.
“Um, well, actually, no,” Sydney replied. “See, we need to finish our MBA and start a business first, and then we can think about babies. Um, that is, if you want babies. Do you?”
“Not right now,” he told her. “But by then, yes, I would like to have babies, with one or both of you. What’s this business you are going to start?”
They started with trickling answers about the new energy field and vague ideas, not wanting to bore him. But he listened so intently that more details came pouring out of both of them. Soon they were sitting on the edge of the coffee table in front of him, talking about various areas of new energy being explored now, and how they were following more than a dozen companies to see how they are doing.
After that they both had their laptops open, pizza ordered, and were back sitting beside him, showing him reports and prognosis. He asked some rather insightful questions but mostly he listened, and Sydney was feeling a warm glow inside of her. She really began to believe that their dream mattered to him.
“You’ve obviously been working on this for a long time,” he finally said after nearly two hours of discussion.
“About seven years, yeah,” Sydney told him.
“You aren’t ready to try it now?” he asked.
“No,” she replied. “There’s still so much we don’t know about running a business, Neil. We really do need and want our MBAs.”
“Also,” Shayla added, “It will be easier to get business loans if we have an MBA instead of just a Bachelor’s. We will also qualify for more government grants.”
“So, you aren’t looking to raise money for this with cocaine,” he put out there.
“Oh, hell no, “Shayla told him. “I mean, we would have to launder the money before we could get it into a real business, and that’s always a hassle, and sometimes it doesn’t even work. No, this was
supposed to be a party time. You know, enjoy our youth and then get back to real life.”
“Yeah,” Sydney agreed, “We never thought it would be this big. Kilos? Seriously? We were just looking for a good time and some free coke when Jacques brought us in. But then in two months we were pushing out ounces instead of eight-balls. We got a client list full of high-dollar call girls and gigolos. We’re being invited to parties where we go through a whole kilo in sales. Then we start getting the stables—guys who want one or two ounces every week. We have, like, sixty of those now—that’s two kilos right there. They get theirs on Friday night. We have to do those. A few are on Thursday night.”
“All the rest,” Shayla added, “Is just party money and regulars calling in. We stick with regulars mostly. Any new client can be a narc, and that’s heat we don’t want. Even if someone calls us and says that Joey sent him and Joey’s a solid, we tell him we don’t know what he’s talking about and to get back with whoever Joey is. Then we call Joey and say ‘not cool, thanks, but no thanks.’”
“We never expected to be one of the top dealers,” Sydney told him.
“The top dealer,” he corrected.
“What?”
“You two go through between six and eight kilos a week. Everyone else is three, max,” he explained.
“Wow,” Sydney said.
“Not anymore,” Shayla informed him. “We already talked this over and we’re going to continue with our stables—that’s two kilos — and have one for Friday night regulars. That’s it. Close to the Fall semester, we’ll sell our lists of stables and regulars to someone, and we’re out.”
“See,” Sydney explained, “We fucked off a lot of money. Serious amounts of money. We want to nest egg some before we get out, but we don’t want the risks any more either. It would suck to get busted at this point.”
“True,” Neil agreeed, and then appeared to fall into deep thought.
“What’s up?” Sydney asked him.
“Oh, probably nothing. I was just thinking that going from eight to three a week might raise some ire with Anton,” he mused.
“Well, fuck him,” Shayla said. “If he gives us shit then we’ll just quit now. We are paid up with this apartment for the next two years, and have a huge deposit on electricity. Same with our cable. We won’t even see a bill for the next eighteen months. On top of that, we have close to two hundred grand in our safe. We’ll just fucking quit.”
Neil nodded, but still looked thoughtful.
“You think he’ll hassle us about quitting?” Sydney asked.
“Hmm? Um, no. Well, I’m not certain, but normally it would be no. Anton has been fairly whacked out lately and saying some fairly strange shit. Like the other day he tells me that he has a job for me, and I tell him I’m not interested, which should have been the end of the conversation. I’m a patch-holder, not a prospect that has to do whatever comes his way. But he said, ‘are you part of this club or not?’ Which was seriously out of line. If I was behind in dues or owed the club money, then I could see something like that, but I’m not and I don’t. I’m paid up for the next two years, and I’ve been a member for over ten. So, what the fuck?”
“How old are you, Neil?” Shayla asked.
“Thirty, just turned as a matter of fact,” he told her.
“So, we are, like, six years younger than you,” Sydney teased.
“My sister Sandy thinks you’re both pretty old,” Neil told her, and then stood to get another beer.
“Old? When did she say that?” Sydney gaped.
“I told them that you were a little young for me, and she asked how old you were. When I said twenty-four she got really disappointed and said that you were pretty old,” Neil explained from the kitchen where he picked up a slice from the pizza box.
“Maybe I don’t want to meet your sisters,” Sydney pouted as she plopped back down on the couch.
CHAPTER TEN
Shayla drove their Shelby Mustang, following Neil to his mom’s house the next Sunday morning. It was a nice suburb, with trees in every yard and kids playing on grass. Lots of SUV’s in driveways. They decided to follow him over because the trike was really for his sisters, and he should take them to the game with it. What they didn’t count on, which seemed very obvious now, was that Amanda would go to the game as well in her Dodge Caravan. She’d be hauling equipment, and an ice chest of sandwiches and pop. It would have been silly not to ride over with her, but Shayla really did try to come up with a reason not to be trapped with Neil’s mom in an SUV for twenty minutes each way.
“Well,” Amanda started as she backed out of the driveway with Shayla in front and Sydney safely in the back seat. She’d jumped in there like a rabbit in to her hole before Shayla had the chance, much to her dismay. “I know what Neil does and that he rides for the Knights. I see the news and the Knights are talked about sometimes. So, I’m guessing you two sell cocaine.”
Why was it so fucking embarrassing to have her say that to them? “Yes,” Shayla told her, and was intending to just keep it there. Fucking have some balls, she told herself, and added, “But we’re getting out soon. This fall. August, actually.”
“I wish Neil would get out. It’s nice that he gives us some extra cash since Robert passed on. But I would give it all back and twice more if he would get out of that life,” Amanda said.
“He is,” Shayla told her. “He’s even talking about getting out of the club altogether. Which is one of the reasons we’re getting out.”
“That and the fact that he didn’t notice us at all when we were still in the life,” Sydney chimed in with a bit of spite.
“No?” Amanda said with just enough interest to keep Sydney going.
Shayla sank down in her seat as Sydney said, “No, not at all. We flirted, we joked, we used innuendos… hell I even walked out in nothing but lingerie! Light blue, see through, nipples showing lingerie! Did he notice? Nope. Just gives me a ‘Hey Syd,’ and that’s it. Nothing!” Sydney threw herself back into the seat and crossed her arms while looking rather grim at the memory.
Shayla peeked over at Amanda and found the woman desperately trying to control her laughter. She didn’t know what to expect from Amanda after such a revealing tirade, but laughter wasn’t one of the options. Shayla relaxed a little, thinking that maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
“So, how did you hook up with him? Together I mean. Did you all get drunk and wake up together and just decide to keep it going?” Amanda asked.
“God! I wish!” Sydney chimed in from the backseat again.
Shayla ignored her. “No, it was planned, definitely planned.”
“You mean that you two decided that you were both going to have him from the start?” Amanda asked in surprise.
Shayla nodded her head in agreement. “Exactly like that. We knew that we both wanted him four weeks before we finally got a first date out of him. It was only about a week ago that we accepted the fact that it wasn’t going to be her, or me, but both of us together.”
“So, you two love each other,” Amanda mused.
“Yes, we do,” Shayla replied.
“Sexually?”
Shayla sat a little straighter, not completely comfortable with this confession. “Yes, but really only because Neil wasn’t noticing us and we didn’t want any other man. Well, at first it was that. But now it’s much more spontaneous and less of a head trip.”
“So, you’re lesbians?”
“No, we’re two women in love with the same man and in the heat of passion, things happen, and they feel good,” Shayla told her.
“But if Neil went away, say for a month on some business—”
Sydney replied, “We’d fuck each other senseless.”
“Really?” Shayla turned on her, irritated. “That’s how you speak to his mom?”
Sydney clamped her hand over her mouth and said with wide eyes, “Oh shit! Sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Amanda replied with a laugh. “I tak
e it you get a little aggressive when you are nervous.”
“Yes,” Sydney said meekly.
“Don’t worry about it,” Amanda told her. “I made a complete fool of myself with Robert’s parents. They were both in their seventies. I was barely twenty.”
“What was Neil like when he was little?” Sydney asked, coming forward in her seat again, and Shayla found herself more than a little interested.
“I thought I was going to have more trouble with him than I did. He was thirteen at the time we were married. You know he lost his mother when he was eight. I thought he would resent me trying to take her place, but we became friends pretty fast.”
