“Jacob!” Jennifer exclaimed, and the hysterical note in her voice made Mercy laugh a little. “I swear if you mess with our children’s minds any more, you’re gonna put them into therapy. And that money is not coming from me.”
“Well, the only account I keep for myself is the savings for the boat.”
“Exactly.”
“What? Baby, please! That was a joke, right? Baby? Jenn?”
At that exchange, Mercy opened her eyes in time to see Jacob toss a giggling Jessica over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and then chase his pregnant wife back into the house.
After Jacob left, Mercy noticed that she had been correct in assuming her entire family was standing on the porch, staring at her and the guys with shit-eating grins. Well…at least that was better than disgust or horror. The expression that came closest to horror was Tucker’s confused frown.
“Does anybody else find this weird?” Tucker asked, pointing around. “This is weird, right? I mean…there are two of them. That’s not normal, right?”
“Stap yer havering, ya numpty,” Mac said, throwing his arm around Tucker to give him a noogie.
“This is America, you Scottish bastard. Speak English!”
Tucker pushed him off with a whiny moan before retreating to the safety of hiding behind his pregnant wife’s back. Laura rolled her eyes at his antics but smiled when his hands wrapped around her to rest on her distended belly.
“All right,” Oliver announced, stepping off the porch to face the family. “Give them a minute to collect themselves before we hound them with questions and teasing. There are children inside who will, of course, suffer greatly if we do not give them our undivided attention.”
“Please.” Quinn laughed, hugging his wife Diane’s shoulders. “They’ll only suffer if there are no more presents to open.”
“That’s when you start feeding them,” Barney called—her only sibling who wasn’t engaged or married—and followed them inside.
The porch emptied until only her mother and father were left, holding each other’s hands and gazing at Mercy and her two lovers. She felt like she’d been caught necking in her room with her high school boyfriend.
“Mom, Dad.” Mercy stepped forward, not knowing what to say to them until she felt Austin and Dylan take her hands in theirs, supporting her and giving her love and warmth…not unlike what her father did for her mother on a regular basis. Mercy cleared her throat and said in a much stronger voice, “Mom, Dad…Dylan, Austin, and I are…” Austin squeezed her hand, fortifying her. “In a relationship. It’s a bit unconventional, but we don’t care. That’s it.”
Dylan snorted a laugh behind her. Did he expect some grand speech?
Her parents waited a moment until her father echoed her words. “That’s it?”
“I didn’t think you wanted details—”
“No!” Her father coughed, waving his hands in a crisscrossing motion. “No, thank you.”
“I want details,” Danica said.
“Danica! We do not want details.” Devin covered his wife’s mouth and vehemently shook his head at the trio. “No details necessary.”
He bopped his wife on her butt and guided her back into the house. Just when Mercy thought they were safe, her dad stuck his head back out of the door and said, “You boys better be good to my daughter, or I’ll sic her brothers on you. All eight of them…and their significant others!” Then he was gone.
“Well,” Austin said, cupping her face and attempting, unsuccessfully, to hold back his laughter. “Your family is fun.” Dylan snickered, wrapping his arms around Austin’s waist and burying his head in his boyfriend’s shoulder.
Mercy pushed Austin’s hands off her face and pouted, foreseeing years of ribbing from her family for this. But as she watched Dylan and Austin hold each other and laugh at her family’s reaction to their budding relationship, she thought that maybe this time, the teasing and ribbing wouldn’t be so bad with them to bear it with her.
“Can I ask you fools a question once you’re done cackling?”
“What is it?” Dylan asked, pulling her into the circle once more. He buried his cold nose into her neck. The shock of ice thrilled her, but not as much as the realization they were starting a journey, the three of them together.
“You guys were so mad at me,” she said, needing to know what made them come this morning. “I never would have thought you’d show up after I treated you so…especially so soon after what happened. The things I said…”
“Honestly?” Austin asked, entwining his fingers with Dylan’s and smirking at her as though he knew all her secrets. “We were going to give you till the end of the day and come after you. I knew you were panicking and figured a day at home would help cool you down.”
Dylan wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her in close and kissing her forehead. “I was mad. I didn’t want to come at first, but…I know what I felt last night, and there’s no point in letting anger and hurt feelings take control of what could be an amazing thing. And this is an amazing thing. It’s worth fighting for. That’s why I yelled earlier. I was fighting for you.”
“Then Danica called.” Austin laughed, rubbing his lovely hair and mussing it up, making it even sexier.
Attempting to recover from Dylan’s beautiful confession, she asked, “What did she say?”
“She said something like ‘I know you boys took my Mercy home last night. Come over for Christmas morning to get the initial grilling over with.’”
“So…my mom endorsed a ménage relationship with you guys?”
“Seemed like it,” Dylan said. “So we thought, fuck it, we already have the delightful Mrs. Danica Johnson’s approval. How hard could it be to get the rest of the family’s?”
Mercy saw the movement from the corner of her eye and began to slowly back away, keeping her steps nonchalant.
“Aw, you poor, sexy, unsuspecting bastards.”
She reached the large tree she’d used many times in her childhood to hide behind and began to creep around it. Austin and Dylan were oblivious to everything happening in the yard except her, watching her like predators on the prowl. “You have no idea.”
And before she could even blow them a kiss, a barrage of snowballs came raining down on them from the roof. Poor, unsuspecting bastards indeed.
Dylan and Austin tried to run for cover, but the snowballs were everywhere. They were falling from the sky and shooting from behind the trees. There were small children barricading the front door to the house and holding an ice bucket filled to the brim with preformed snowballs.
Once Austin and Dylan realized they were surrounded, they made the only decision left for them. They ran after Mercy and then flipped her over Dylan’s shoulder and used her as a hostage.
The snowballs stopped for a second as Austin scooped up a large pile of snow. He held it threateningly over Mercy’s head. “We’ll take her out!” he warned, a mad smile on his face. They were way too into this. “We want all your snowballs, in exchange for the girl.”
“Don’t you do it!” Mercy yelled to her family positioned strategically throughout the yard. “Take ’em down!”
With that cry, she grabbed Austin’s packed pile of snow and then dumped it over her head, valiantly sacrificing herself for the cause. A unanimous war cry echoed into the surrounding trees, and the Johnson family took up arms against Austin and Dylan once more.
Dylan laughed, dumping Mercy into the snow, covering her, protecting her from getting hit by the snowballs. Austin flopped down as well, admitting defeat and sprawling on top of her.
Lying on a fluffy cloud of freshly fallen snow, and amid the hail of snowballs, Austin and Dylan smiled down at her and leaned in for a three-way kiss that could have melted the snow they were being buried under by her family’s snowball ammunition.
“Daddy, she’s kissing them again!” Jessica cried out over the ruckus.
“She is a bad, bad girl. Do not be like Aunt Mercy!” Jacob cried from the roo
f.
“Therapy bills, Jacob! Therapy bills!” his wife scolded from somewhere off to the right and in the trees.
Best Christmas ever.
Loose Id Titles by Ceri Grenelle
A New Resolution
* * * *
“Christmas is Love”
Part of the anthology The Gift of Three
With Kaitlin Maitland and Allie Quinn
Ceri Grenelle
I’ve always had an active imagination. That imagination usually took form in the real world by zoning out in the middle of conversations. I eventually decided it was time to share my daydreaming with the world and began to put my musings on paper, a decision I have yet to regret.
I am currently living it up in Northern California after a big move from New York City. And by living it up I mean staying at home with my cat, obsessively watching episodes of my favorite TV shows—all of which are extremely geeky—and simultaneously reading the next book on my constantly expanding reading list. I do all this while trying not to pig out on unhealthy snacks. As you can tell, I lead a busy life.
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