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 afternoon. You're ... calmer, I think," she queried as she searched his eyes.
"Let me get this stuff away and I'll tell you about it," he offered.
"No, let us get 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 shrugged.
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 panted with disbelief.
"You're not fucking with us, are you Neil? I mean, this would be 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 got up and 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, I wouldn't be hanging clothing in your closet."
"Or having sex with us I'll bet," Sydney said with epiphany 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 softly, still a little dazed with wonder. "That makes this 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 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.
"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 yelled back at her. "I've never even been in fucking love before!" she added, tears filling 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 screamed at her. "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 that with you two!"
"So, we'll have our own ceremony," Sydney told her. "And we'll just 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 pounced.
"Just like that," Neil said, leading against the wall.
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 loose, 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 across his 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?"
"Meep," 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 just 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 told him. "See, we need to finish our MBA and start a business first, and then we can think about babies. Um, that’s 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 and how they were following more than a dozen companies.
After than they both had their laptops open, pizza ordered and were back sitting beside him, showing him reports and prognosis.
He asked some insightful questions, but mostly he just listened to them and Sydney was feeling a warm glow inside of her as she began to believe that their dream mattered.
"You've obviously been working on this for a long time," he finally said, after nearly two hours of purging on him.
"About seven years, yeah," Sydney told him.
"You aren't ready to try it now?" he asked.
"No," Sydney said. "There's still so much we don't know about running a business Neil. We 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 Bachelors. We’ll 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 just 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. In like two months we're 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 s
tables — 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 adds, "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 tells him.
"The top dealer," he corrects.
"What?"
"You two go through between six and eight kilos a week. Everyone else is three, max," he tells them.
"Wow," Sydney said.
"Not anymore," Shayla tells 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 explains, "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 agrees, and he looks deep in 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 electric, 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, not certain, but normally it would be no. Anton has been 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 out-of-line. If I was behind in dues or owed the club money, then I could see something like that, but 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 gets up 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 disappointed and said that you were pretty old."
"Maybe I don't want to meet your sisters," Sydney pouted and plopped back down on the couch.
* * *
Shayla drove their Shelby Mustang, following Neil to his mom's house the next Sunday morning. It was a nice burb, with trees in yards and kids playing on grass. Lots of SUV's in driveways. They decided to follow him over because the trike was for his sisters, and he should take them to the game with Neil. What they didn't count on, which seemed obvious now, was that Amanda was going to the game as well, in her Dodge Caravan, hauling equipment, and an ice chest of sandwiches and pop. It would have been silly not to ride over with her, but Shayla 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 starts as she's backing out of the driveway with Shayla in front, and Sydney safely in the back seat, jumping in there like a rabbit in to her hole, "I know what Neil does and that he rides for the Knights. I see the news and the Knights are talked about some times. 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, but she 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’re 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 Sydney', and that's it. Nothing!" Sydney throws herself back into the seat, and crosses her arms while looking rather grim at the memory.
Shayla peeps over at Amanda and finds 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 chimes in from the backseat again, looking out the side window like someone owes her money out there.
Shayla ignores 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.
"Exactly like that," Shayla tells her. "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 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 asked.
"Yes, we do," Shayla told her.
"Sexually?"
"Yes, but 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 chimes in, "We'd fuck each other senseless."
"Really?" Shayla turns on her, "That's how you speak to his mom?"
Sydney clamps her hand over her mouth and said with wide eyes, "Oh shit! Sorry."
"It's alright," Amanda laughs. "I take 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."
"Was his dad into motorcycles?"
"Cars. Hot-rods. There's a 67' Mustang in the garage. Well, the body is a 67' Mustang, everything else is high-end and high-powered. Even the engine. I don't think there's much 'Ford' left to the thing. His father was into street racing. You know, racing for pink slips?"
"What does that mean?" Sydney asked.
"It means that if you los
t the race, you lost your car," Shayla tells her.
"Exactly," Amanda agreed.
"Wow. That would suck!"
"He was in more than one fight after a race, that's for sure. A lot of passion goes into making those street racers. He won many more than he lost. When he died we had five hot-rods Neil helped to sell. Those brought in some serious money."
"Not selling the Mustang though, huh?" Sydney asked.
