by Kent, Julia
Something about that phrase—“the other one”—thrown out so casually, and with a kind of dismissal that bordered on contempt, made Darla’s hackles rise.
“That’s like ‘you people’?”
“What?”
“You throw it out there, like she has one real boyfriend and ‘the other one.’ Sounds like you disapprove. Here you are, Ms. Old Lady Dom with a butt plug fetish, tricking out with Alex’s grandpa and being all badass, and you’re judging your granddaughter for being in love with two men at the same time?” Darla could feel the curve of her neck extend, could taste the bile in the back of her throat, and as the air slid into her body slowly through her nose, inhaled like a battery charge, she knew that it was on.
Death Match at Jeddy’s.
News at eleven.
Laura and Josie’s eyes flew wide open in alarm as Madge turned slowly to her, a look of condescending disgust on her face, and said, “You’re judging me? I shat pieces of corn this morning older than you.”
“When you act like the life your granddaughter has chosen for herself out of a drive for love is something to sneer at, you bet your flat ass I’m judging you, lady.”
Madge leapt to her feet. “Fat ass? You are calling me ‘fat ass’?”
“I said flat. Flat. The Gravity Fairy done visited your backside plenty of times, huh? Looks like Kansas back there.”
“And the Oreo Fairy visits you twice a day, it seems.” Madge craned her neck ostentatiously to pointedly look at Darla’s admittedly lush ass.
“I have a Knuckle Fairy who’d like to—”
“Enough!” Laura shouted. “Both of you! I’d expected it to come to fists today, but not at this table!” The women all looked over at the guys, who were huddled and laughing, looking like something out of a Polo Ralph Lauren ad.
“Jesus Christ,” Madge muttered. “I break up enough fights. Don’t need to flatten some pissant little shit like you and bring on more trouble here.”
Darla’s heart threatened to shatter her breastbone like the giant pitcher of Kool-Aid crashing through the fence.
“Then quit denigrating your granddaughter’s relationship with her boyfriends while claiming to be nonjudgemental. Because all you’re doing is shaming her behind her back.”
Madge looked like Darla had just whacked her with a coffee pot.
Good.
Laura tilted her head, and Josie watched them with narrowed eyes, a look Darla knew all too well. She was ready for a throwdown if need be. Back home, Josie had her back. Not that Darla routinely got into catfights with eighty-year-old waitresses in dive bars.
Okay, maybe once or twice. And maybe she won.
Most of them.
Madge was a tough old bird, but a reasonable one. Her face sagged with sadness as she turned to Laura and asked, “Is that shaming? What I said?”
Laura’s eyes filled with tears. Darla fought hers back, too, because the genuine befuddlement and caring in the old bat’s voice made it clear she deeply loved her granddaughter.
Laura reached for her hand and looked at her. “Yes, Madge. When you call one of her boyfriends ‘the other one,’ it strips him of an identity. She has two boyfriends. Two. Both are as important as one.”
“But I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just a joke.” Maybe Darla had been to quick to anger.
“Just ’cause you think it’s a joke doesn’t make it funny,” Darla fumed, conflicted inside.
Madge ignored her and focused on Laura. Darla’s field of vision began to speckle, a furious cloud of rage taking over. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up charged with assault, hauled off in handcuffs, humiliated for beating down a woman old enough to be her great-grandma, and she’d lose her job.
Add a surprise pregnancy and a dead dog and she’d have a really boring country music song.
“I don’t understand why you can’t just be kinky and have one guy. Why two? Why does my granddaughter Lydia need two? Two at once, no less. I get wanting some variety, but that’s not a buffet. It’s an overloaded plate with all the different delights touching each other, blending into too many flavors in one bite.”
The food metaphor went over Darla’s head. “You’re comparing threesomes to a buffet? I ain’t all you can eat.”
Josie broke out into a nervous, barky laugh at that one. Even Laura giggled.
“That’s not what I meant!” Darla protested, though Madge started snickering, too. Alex gave them a weird look, and Darla’s balloon of anger popped, a slow hiss deflating her.
“Madge,” Laura finally said. “If Lydia could be happy with just one of them, she would be. It’s not like we choose to love this way. It just is. Society turns it into some shameful thing, but not us. If we could be happy with just one of them, I think…” She shot Josie a helpless look.
“Why are you looking at me?” Josie squeaked. “I’m the one who’s living with one man, and he’s a pantry hog.”
“I heard that,” Alex said casually, then stood and looked at Darla. “You and Madge done? Because I’ve been here on the periphery ready to jump in and protect you.”
“Me?” Darla exclaimed.
Josie and Laura gave her a sympathetic look as Alex said, “Yeah. You. Who do you think would win in a hair-pulling contest?”
Madge shot her a shit-eating grin.
“Aw, hell no,” Darla drawled. “You come to central Ohio and meet Aunt Marlene sometime, Madge. That woman could take him down,” she added, pointing to Alex.
Josie’s turn to flush bright red at the mention of her mother and Alex.
His eyebrows shot up, and he looked at his girlfriend. “You’ve told me stories about your mom, but…”
“Mrs. Tucker, the town clerk, had to have plugs put in after she and Aunt Marlene got into a nasty fight over the plumber’s son, and Marlene ripped half her hair out,” Darla added helpfully, enjoying someone other than her experiencing the crippling humiliation of this entire conversation.
Josie stood. “You beeped?” Her words were aimed at Alex, who was looking at his phone.
“I did.”
“Then let’s go.”
“He beeps and you need to go? You an obstetrics resident suddenly? Need to deliver a baby?”
“Not until it’s our own,” Alex said merrily.
Josie turned the shade of cream as Laura gave her a look. “Something you want to tell us, Josie?”
“He just moved in! Pantry hogger.”
“My Eddie does that, too, sometimes. I find him wearing my panties, one pair around his hips, another one clenched in his fist while he’s—”
“Pantry, Madge! The woman said pantry!” Alex choked out, grabbing Josie’s hand. “Not panty!”
The four men at the other table gawked at them. “I want to talk about what they’re talking about!” Dylan announced. Two people at a table across the way turned, all eyes suddenly on Madge, Darla and Laura.
“This is not going exactly how I thought it would,” Laura groaned, picking through the remnants in the sundae dish and stuffing a chocolate chip cookie covered in caramel sauce in her mouth. Darla was jealous.
Madge had some weird sort of food radar, like a bat has echolocation, for she picked up on Darla’s thought and raced away, shouting, “One more Orgy for the table, coming up!”
“Now I really want to sit over there,” Dylan said, struggling to shove Trevor out of the booth. Trevor scrambled out, too, and came over to Darla, hands on her shoulders, kneading muscles made of stone.
He bent down and whispered, “You okay?”
All she could do was nod.
“And you could totally take her,” he added with a raspy voice that made her grin.
Damn straight.
Laura
As Madge returned with an enormous sundae that made Laura’s stomach ache, her phone buzzed again. Alex and Josie disappeared, and the table was overrun by penises at the appearance of the delectable ice cream extravaganza.
“Ours wasn’t nearl
y as good as this,” Joe moaned as he bit into chunk of toffee brownie.
Worried it might be Cyndi, Laura reached into her purse and retrieved her phone. It was an email, but it looked like the second email from the same address. Weird. While the guys picked the sundae clean, and Darla relaxed with Trevor and Joe on either side of her, Laura figured this was as good a time as any to let everyone de-escalate and calm down.
She still wanted more of a talk with Darla—they’d talked about everything but their respective relationships—but the entire group could do with downtime.
The email turned out to be anything but relaxing for her, though. Whatever her face looked like as she read it must have triggered something inside Mike, because he came to her side and touched her arm.
“Something wrong?”
“An email. From my uncle.”
“The one you haven’t heard from in years?” Laura had told Mike about her Uncle Frank. She hadn’t heard from him since her mom died. And even then, he’d only reached out to her for one thing: money.
“Yes. Him.”
“Uh oh. That’s really weird. I was just mentioning him…”
“You were?” she asked in surprise. Frank wasn’t exactly a common topic for discussion.
“We were talking about how our parents handled learning about Jill.” Laura reached out to touch him, knowing how painful that subject was. “And Joe asked about your parents. I just mentioned you had a crazy uncle.”
Even Mike knew what this might mean. Frank was, in the kindest of terms, a ne’er-do-well. Her mother had kept him at arm’s length after he’d ruined her credit rating when Laura was in high school.
“Yeah. Crazy uncle. I’d just ignore it, but…” She held up the telephone screen and let Mike read the email:
Dear Laura,
You haven’t had any contact with me in so long, my dear, and so I thought I would reach out. I recently came across news footage about your new life and am so pleased to learn about your happy circumstances. And I have a great-niece, from what I’ve read! I should like very much to meet with you, your daughter, and your husbands. Your old uncle Frank doesn’t have quite the exciting, luxurious life you now lead, but perhaps you can find time for me to see my only living niece and grand-niece. Family is so important, and as I age I realize that blood is all that matters.
Your loving uncle,
Frank
“Ah, shit,” Dylan said from behind her. “Is he money grubbing?”
Because it had been so long since she’d seen him—since her mother’s death, when he’d convinced her to hand over part of her mom’s life insurance for his pain and suffering—she hadn’t really talked much about Frank. A few conversations boiled down to the simple point that Frank used people. Mostly for money. And her mother had taught her to keep him at as much of a distance as possible.
And now he was back, with more knowledge about her life than she was comfortable with him having. A cold chill began at the base of her spine and spread up as she reread his words. The thought of him being part of her life, of Jillian’s life, left her with an unsettled, mildly frantic feeling that he knew would reverberate through her, pinging and ricocheting endlessly until this was resolved.
Dylan and Mike could feel it, too. They crowded around her, safe and solid, a big, impenetrable wall of protection.
The threat, though, was so much more than physical.
“Ignore it,” Dylan and Mike said at the same time.
“Delete it,” Dylan whispered. “You don’t have any obligation to him.”
“I know,” she whispered back. Mike set his chin on the top of her head, arm wrapping around her, the warmth a comfort. She was suddenly cold.
And just as instantly, she needed to hold Jillian. Touch her. Embrace her. Be with her.
Protect her.
Frank’s words looped through her head. “Happy circumstances” and “luxurious life” and “blood is all that matters” all set off alarm bells in her head.
Why now? Why was he appearing now? She’d been with Mike and Dylan for two years. They’d been all over the news in the early stage of their relationship, though more the guys than her. Nowadays she was featured in small news articles on blog sites, mostly, talking about alternative lifestyles. No one ever photographed Jillian—all three of them were fierce about her privacy in that respect—so Frank couldn’t know that much about her.
But she bet he knew 2.2 billion reasons why he wanted to reconnect with his niece and grand-niece, dammit.
Laura stood abruptly, Mike and Dylan on their feet in seconds, the three a unit. “Darla,” Laura said, her own words breathless, the panic coming out in her voice. “I’m so sorry, but I have to go. There’s an emergency.”
“Is the baby okay?” Joe asked. Trevor and Darla gave Laura a look of such concern that it made her feel instantly overwrought. What was she so anxious about? It didn’t make sense, but the feeling fluttered inside her. She couldn’t deny it. All she could do was get home and hold her daughter. Then she’d be able to think and act clearly.
Until then? Everything she did was pointless.
“Jillian is fine,” Laura said, more to calm herself than anyone else. That seemed to allay the younger group’s fears. “It’s just, something else has come up, and I need to cut this short.”
She reached for Darla, who stood, and the two shared a deep, long hug. “Let’s do this again, but only the two of us.”
“Yes!” said the men in unison.
Laura and Josie shot them dark looks. All four of them shrugged. It was like a human wave of flesh relief. If Laura weren’t on high alert, so triggered by her uncle’s email as to be in a different plane of mental existence, she would have laughed.
Jillian.
All she could think about was wrapping her arms around that sweet little toddler and taking a long, deep breath.
Mike and Dylan saw the unease in her, and within seconds they were out the door, headed for the parking garage, where Mike’s Jeep would take her to sanctuary.
“You’re shaking,” Dylan said in a clenched voice, his jaw muscles tight, eyes like a hawk’s. “Did your uncle do something else? Threaten you?” They climbed in the car, and Mike peeled out of the parking structure, the squeal of tire on painted concrete making her feel like they were moving faster than they really were.
“No! Oh, no. Nothing like that. I just need her.” Laura’s throat began to close with tears, eyes joining in waterworks. “It seems so silly, I know…”
“Not silly,” Dylan said evenly. He was in the back seat with her, arms enveloping her as Mike drove. “You feel what you feel. And no one can hurt you.”
“Or Jillian.” Mike’s words came out like a growl.
“Or any of us,” Dylan assured her. She felt so safe with them both. Secure.
Fine.
A deep breath helped. Dylan’s warm hands on her hip made his words sink in. This was fine. An email out of the blue could be ignored. Frank wasn’t any sort of threat. In fact, she’d just let a stupid email interrupt a very important lunch date.
“What am I thinking?” she blurted out. Mike was weaving through traffic to snake through Arlington and get to Route 2 and home. “This is silly. We don’t need to rush. Maybe we should go back so I can talk to Darla some more.”
Mike caught her eye in the rearview mirror. “Don’t do that.”
She startled. “Do what?” Dylan was so warm, so hard and secure, like being hugged by a muscled teddy bear. The afternoon’s conversation, the sparring between Madge and Darla, the talks about threesomes as if they were normal and just another way to love, all pinged through her mind.
Overwhelm.
She was living in overwhelm. And that was why Frank’s email was sending her home.
“Don’t try to convince yourself that your first instinct is wrong,” Mike elaborated, driving with his eyes on her through the tiny mirror. “You’re doing that female thing. Don’t invalidate yourself. Believe in whatever�
��s driving you to get home to Jillian. It’s important. It’s worthy. You’re valid for believing whatever’s in your gut.”
That made her tear up even more.
Traffic was backed up—no surprise given that it was already nearly five o’clock. By the time they got home it was well past six, and Cyndi was fine with their lateness, always reasonable and understanding. Closing her arms around little Jillian’s chubby body, legs like chunks of soft dough, cheeks the color of freshly picked cider apples in late October, made Laura feel like her heart was safely behind her ribs again.
It really was okay.
“I gave her a bath when you texted, and she already ate dinner. Given the time”—Laura knew it was 6:45 p.m.—“she’s probably ready for bed soon enough,” Cyndi declared. Short and thick, with steel-gray hair, the nanny’s piercing blue eyes were troubled, if no-nonsense. “And it looks like you could use a good night’s sleep as well, Laura.”
All Laura could do was bury her face in Jillian’s neck.
“Mama seepy,” the little girl said. “Zzzzzz.” It was a game Mike and Dylan played with her, and Laura laughed that her daughter had made the connection between Cyndi’s words and the dads’ game. Every day, little changes like this made her marvel. She hadn’t given birth to a baby.
She’d brought a little whole human being into the world.
Now that’s a superpower.
“Mama’s sleepy, yes,” Laura repeated as Jillian rested her brown curls on Laura’s shoulder, snuggling in like she was molded to live there. Which she was.
“Is everything okay?” Cyndi asked quietly. “You seem anxious. Did something happen?”
“No,” Laura rushed to say, not wanting to deal with anyone else’s emotional state right now. A dawning realization made her elaborate.
More than she wanted to.
“Did anyone call the house while we were gone?”
Cyndi’s face lit up. “Oh, yes!”
Oh, no.
“Your Uncle Frank called. I didn’t know you had an uncle!” Cyndi hurried over to the counter that separated the large, open-concept kitchen from the living room and picked up a slip of paper. “Here. He asked that you call him as soon as possible. Said he might swing into town for a few days and would love to see his favorite niece.”
