"Sarah," he repeated as if he just liked the way her name sounded on his tongue, "the way I treated you was wrong. I was a complete bastard, and I never truly apologized. Not sincerely anyway. I think about you all the time, wondering if you're still in the same office. I've thought about dropping by, just to give you the sincere, heartfelt apology you deserve. But I didn't know if you'd throw me out or call security or what..." He was clearly opening the door, feeling out her response.
Sarah sighed. "I don't hate you, Garrett. I've certainly moved on with my life. I'm married now," she answered. "And you don't owe me anything."
"Oh, wow, married?" The smile stayed plastered to his face, but Sarah thought she witnessed his lips quivering ever so slightly. "I'm not surprised. I was always blown away that you were single in the first
place. Who's the lucky guy?"
"James McAllister," she answered. "I was seeing him before I met you, then he deployed to Afghanistan."
"Right, I remember." He took her hand into his. "Congratulations. And I mean that."
"Thank you,” she acknowledged.
"Are you still poly?"
"Poly isn't something you turn on and off. You either are or aren't," Sarah laughed. "Although, I guess you could decide not to practice it for a time. But, anyway, yes, I'm still poly."
"Oh, of course," Garrett replied. "You're right again."
"Well, it was great to see you, but I need to go pick up my son from school."
"I really hope our paths cross again someday. Can I give you a hug?" he asked, his arms outstretched.
I guess this is the closure I never got before, she considered. She slowly walked into his arms and felt them close around her, strong and tight. She felt so short all of the sudden, even though Garrett only
had three inches on James. There was something about his presence and wild hair that always made him seem even taller than he was. She could feel him breathing in the scent of her, taking it deep into his nostrils with his lungs expanding against her head. It felt weird to
be there. Foreign.
"I missed you, Sarah," he whispered.
She pulled back from him abruptly, realizing the hug was a mistake. "I have to go, Garrett, sorry."
***
Abby didn't get a chance to talk to James about the situation with her father before he left for his training in Texas. Sarah advised her that it would be better to wait until he returned to broach the subject. "I'm sorry your dad is like that," she sympathized with her daughter. "Maybe you could remind him that when he was in college, he smoked weed, regularly passed out drunk, and enjoyed sharing his girlfriend with his buddies."
"Oh, god, Mom, don't remind me!" she shrieked in horror.
But Abby was actually relieved for the delay. Not being able to talk to James meant that she could consciously justify delaying the conversation with her father. And there was something else giving her pause as well. And that was Mia herself.
Abby loved this woman, this woman a few years her senior who was wise in the way of the world and so laidback that sometimes Abby wished she could borrow her thick skin that she allowed worrisome things to bounce off of like rubber balls. Other times, she wished she could pull some strings as if she were a marionette and make her do her bidding. Not that she would be selfishly manipulative. She only wanted things that she felt should be happening anyway - without her intervention: simple things such as picking up her clothes, throwing away her trash, stocking the refrigerator on occasion, completing her own homework assignments and actually going to class.
The more time Abby spent at Mia's, and the less time she spent in her cramped but cozy and meticulously neat dorm room, the more crazy she thought she might go if she had to stoop to pick up one more empty water bottle or wet towel, or scramble to find new toilet paper to go on the roll that had been empty for three days straight. Abby didn't want to know how personal hygiene-type tasks were happening in that apartment.
Mia lived by a simple philosophy: if she didn't want to do something, she didn't do it. Abby lived by a simple principle too, which was instilled by her mother and grandmother: sometimes you don’t want to do things, but you suck it up and do them anyway because you want to be a productive member of society. The clash between those two paradigms was beginning to cause some discord.
One night, Abby nearly threw in the towel, literally. She went to the bathroom and could barely make it to the toilet, which was, thankfully stocked with toilet paper. Her path was full of obstacles such as three used towels, an empty shampoo bottle, and a pile of dirty clothes including shoes and smelly socks. And they weren’t Book’s items. They were Mia’s. She’d simply come home late, showered before bed, and left everything in the bathroom untouched.
As Abby started to pick up the towels and clothes, she began to grow angrier by the second. Even still, she tempered her frustration with the over-analytical, empathic tendencies she had inherited from her foremothers. Am I being unreasonable? she asked herself. Do I do equally annoying things she doesn’t mention? Should I just pick this stuff up joyfully because I’m happy to have such an amazing woman in my life? For better or worse, she couldn’t overcome her resentment and marched straight back into the bedroom to give Mia a piece of her mind.
She threw the clothes and damp towels on top of the still-sleeping figure in the bed. There was a scramble, arms and limbs flying both on top of and under the many layers of blankets, and then finally dark eyes opening to face her accuser. “What?!” she hissed.
“Really getting tired of picking up your shit all over the house!” Abby yelled.
“So you decided to wake me up by throwing it on me?” she retorted. “Real mature of you. You know I worked late last night!”
“Well, I was up studying last night, which reminds me, you haven’t been to any of your classes all week.”
“What are you, my mother?” Mia screamed.
“Seriously? That’s the best you’ve got?” Abby fired back.
All the sudden, Mia began to explode in riotous bouts of laughter. The sound gurgled up from deep within her core and sounded like a zillion happy bubbles as it poured out her mouth. “Oh my god,” she said between her hearty giggles. “I don’t mean to laugh. I mean, it’s not funny!”
It was contagious. Despite her best efforts to remain serious, Abby caught the infectious laughter too. Mia pulled her down onto the bed and they both tangled themselves in the covers, their bodies shaking with fits of mirth.
“So much for fighting with you,” Abby finally said as she regained her breath. “I guess I can’t stay mad at you.” She stroked her finger down Mia’s cheek.
“I’ll try to be neater, babe, I’m sorry.” She made an adorable little pouty face.
Abby squeezed her knee and then pulled her face close enough so that their lips could brush against each other. Lasting only a few minutes, it was their first fight. But not their last.
***
James was gone, and Sarah’s bed felt lonely. Her house felt too quiet, and Rachel was texting her about how annoyed she was with Jack. “Just come over!” Sarah suggested after the four hundredth text. “Owen is bored. Bring Thomas/Tom -- whatever you’re calling him these days.”
“I have to bring Amethyst and Gia too. Jack is going to play poker with his buddies tonight.”
“So be it,” Sarah replied, anxious to have some noise in her house. The more the better. It would reverberate off the walls and ceilings and drown out the crazy voices carrying on in her head.
While straightening up the house, she noticed that James didn’t take his tablet with him to Texas. He takes that thing everywhere he goes, she thought. All his e-books are on there. She had bought it for Christmas to replace the e-book reader she’d given him before his deployment to Afghanistan which had finally bit the dust. Pardon the pun, she added in her head, remembering his descriptions of desert sandstorms. He’s probably bored out of his mind without anything to read.
She hadn’t spoken with
him much since he’d been gone. He had long days of training, dinners out with his classmates, then homework to do for the next day’s class. He complained he was only getting four or five hours of sleep a night, and his roommate snored relentlessly. “It makes your snoring sound so cute and innocent,” he told her, laughing. Well, maybe he doesn’t even have time to read, she shrugged. She decided to move the tablet to higher ground where Baby Amethyst couldn’t reach it.
She turned on her gas log fireplace and baked a batch of brownies. There’s just nothing cozier in the winter than a fire and warm, gooey chocolatey goodness, she thought to herself. That and knowing Rachel and her brood were on their way combined to lift her spirits immensely.
Sarah and Rachel waited till the older children were all occupied in other rooms before talking about the situation with Jack. “So, seeing the therapist is a no go?” Sarah asked. The only child within earshot was Amethyst, and she was sitting in a booster seat at Sarah’s kitchen table smearing chocolate brownie all over her face.
“Nope,” Rachel replied, her face tense with frustration just hearing her husband’s name. “So, I’ve decided on a new strategy.”
“What’s that?” Sarah asked. Rachel was always a bit of a wild card, but when she strategized, she could be downright dangerous.
“I’m going to take a lover,” she announced as if she were a character in Dangerous Liaisons.
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” she reiterated. “And basically I am just not going to have sex with Jack anymore. I’m tired of cajoling him, begging him, guilting him and whatever else…just to have him reject me or try and not be able to keep it up. I’m simply going to get it elsewhere.”
“Does he know?”
She nodded, “Hell yes, he does. I don’t do the sneaking-behind-the-back thing. You know me. All my cards are on the table. I told him, either we go to see Sarah’s counselor friend, or I’m finding a friend with benefits.”
“So did you break out your Rolodex or what?” Sarah laughed.
Rachel shot her a smirk. “Nope, I started a new profile on AdultFriendFinder.”
“AFF?” Sarah asked, incredulous. “That place is scary to me. I thought it was overrun by basement dwellers, players, and dudes with rampant STIs!”
“I think thou doth protest too much!” Rachel teased. “Seriously, though, I’m finding some pretty quality guys. I think it’s changed a bit in the past couple of years. Here, let me show you!”
If AFF ever needed to cast a spokesperson, Rachel is their girl, Sarah thought with a smile. That just sounded like an infomercial.
She reached for James’s tablet that Sarah had stashed on the kitchen counter. “Can I use this?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Sarah said, half shrugging.
Rachel flipped over the black leather cover of the tablet and hunted for the browser. She typed in the url of the site and waited for it to load. Sarah watched a confused expression spread across her face as the screen materialized. Instead of the familiar login screen, Rachel saw a profile. Someone was already logged in.
“You have an account?”
“What?” Sarah grabbed the tablet away from her friend and the color immediately drained from her face. The profile picture was a torso, a familiar one, with broad shoulders, bulging biceps and strong abs. It was James. The username was armyguy1981.
Sarah’s skin went from cool and white to burning red with anger. “What the fuck is this?” she asked, scrolling through the profile. Her voice would barely work, as every available ounce of energy in her body was going into fueling her fury. Rachel could see her visibly trembling as she explored the text and photos her husband had put on an adult dating site without her knowledge.
Finally, she dropped the tablet on the counter. “I can’t read it,” she said. “I’m invading his privacy.”
“Like hell you are!” Rachel retorted. She grabbed the tablet again and peered at the screen, her hazel eyes rapidly darting back and forth as she read his words. “He left this here and left the account logged in. It’s not your fault you stumbled across it; it’s his fault he wasn’t up front with you. So here’s what he says: ‘Married man in open relationship seeking hot, sexy times with a local woman. You won’t be disappointed. Drop me a line and let’s get to know each other’”
Sarah instantly felt nauseated, as if the brownie she had just consumed was knocking on the door of her esophagus, wanting to come back up. And it was bringing a nasty acidic bile taste with it. She poured herself another glass of wine and downed it in one swig, hoping to quell her queasiness.
“Let’s check the inbox,” Rachel suggested, already tapping the icon to open it. Her eyes grew huge as she saw a list of emails that James had sent to various women on the site with the subject line “rendezvous?” She was rendered speechless, and that was not an easy feat to accomplish.
Some of the accounts were obviously fake, the responses directing James to other pay sites. But there was one that had a long thread of emails back and forth. It was a woman in her late twenties whose location said Washington DC. Her profile shot showed her cleavage pushed up in a lacy red bra, but she had also sent him a photo of her face, revealing she was a strawberry blonde with layered, shoulder-length hair and bright blue eyes. She reminded Sarah of the actress Amy Adams.
Sarah felt like she had stepped into an alternate universe. She had never fathomed that James would cheat on her. After he broke up with Maggie, he seemed completely devoted to her, and she never witnessed even an occasional lustful, wandering eye. True to form, she immediately looked within herself to ask what she had done to cause his infidelity.
Rachel finally broke the looming question: “What are you going to do?”
“I can’t be certain he’s even done anything yet,” Sarah answered with an exhale of nervous air from her lungs. She began to read through the messages he had exchanged. The last one was a phone number. She immediately suspected it was the same phone number that had popped up that morning when she’d used his phone to check the time, the one sending the text that read: See you soon.
“Sarah, he made a profile on an adult site and is trying to meet women behind your back. That in and of itself is wrong, whether he’s stuck his dick in some strange or not!” Rachel argued. “You have to do something. You can’t just let this go, Sarah.”
The shock of their discovery was wearing off, and the deep despair she thought she had finally defeated had returned. Just when she thought she was getting her footing and returning to her former state of strength and independence, this crushing blow had knocked her back to the ground. She felt herself being swallowed by a monstrous beast of sadness. And this time she was not sure she could escape.
***
Chapter Twelve
Second Chances & Threesomes
"Do you ever miss being with a guy?" Mia asked. It seemed like an innocent enough question. She was combing out her newly-dyed hair -- back to black with a turquoise streak this time -- and looking in the mirror on her closet door.
Abby looked up from the textbook she was reading for her sociology class. Every time she thought about how boring that class was, she thought about how lucky the students in her mother's classes were to have a professor who tried so hard to make the material engaging and interesting.
"Hmmm," she answered. It was a stop-gap measure. She would have to think about that, and more Mia's motivations for asking than her actual answer.
"Oh, I don't mean because of his personality," she clarified. "I mean the cock. Do you miss the cock, Abby?"
She laughed at Mia's bluntness. Another time that she reminded Abby of Rachel. "Well, I've only had the one," Abby answered. "And to be honest, I wasn't overly impressed."
"Maybe you just need an upgrade," Mia determined. "Seriously, you should have a good experience with a guy before you fully commit to this lezzy thing." She laughed.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Abby asked, trying not to let her jaw drop in shock. "I love YOU. I
don't want to be with another man – or woman, for that matter."
She got a calculating look in her dark eyes for a moment. "You know your mother is a swinger, right?"
"What?! Why would you say that?" Abby asked, her eyes reflecting her outrage.
"Rachel practically told me outright that she is. And, I don't know, just a few things I saw around your mom’s house gave me that impression. She has a copy of The Ethical Slut displayed right there in the living room alongside her own book, which I took a gander at, and... well, all I'm saying is that your mom knows what's up."
"I cannot believe we're having this conversation." Of course Abby knew. She and her mother had never had an open conversation about it. It was more like one of those things gradually internalized in childhood and before long, acceptance settles in: like how to behave at weddings and funerals and that your grandmother is the person to ask for money.
"Are you seriously mad that I'm bringing this up?" Mia asked. She turned away from the mirror and toward Abby with a grin spread across her face. "I'm not trying to make you upset."
"Then what are you trying to do?"
"Well," she stalled. She looked down at something on her fingernail, then back at Abby's blue-green eyes. "I met this guy at work; he's another server. And I kinda wanna fuck him." Her southern twang always shone through more when she was trying to get her way about something.
Abby was too stunned to speak for a moment, but it was starting to make sense why Mia was bringing her mother into the conversation. My girlfriend just told me she wants to sleep with someone other than me, the situation rang out in between Abby's ears. She didn't know how angry she should be.
"Say something, please?" Mia's black eyes had gone from jovial to soft and pleading.
The Mountains Trilogy (Boxed Set) Page 85
