Bittersweets - Brenda and Larry: Steamy Romance

by Suzanne Jenkins

  “I really don’t think I need any more time,” she said. “Plus you just contradicted yourself. You said you were too old. Waiting isn’t going to make you younger. Plus I’m happy we can get a shore house.”

  “You were thinking about that, too? I guess we know what we want. A shore house.” He put his hand in the air and she hit it.

  “To a shore house!” she shouted.

  Chapter 12

  Riding on the back of a motorcycle was a new experience for Arvin. “Hold on around my waist,” Oscar yelled. “Then you’ll follow my body when I lean instead of fighting it like you’re doing!”

  Besides freezing to death, holding on to the handles at the sides of the motorcycle didn’t give Arvin the feeling of security he hoped for, and when Oscar leaned to the right, he automatically leaned to the left to stop the sensation of falling off.

  “Okay, but it feels a little creepy to hold on to a dude,” Arvin yelled into the wind.

  “In the ER, you had my dick in your hand,” Oscar called back. “I think you’re one up on me.”

  “I was checking it for damage, you asshole,” Arvin yelled, laughing. “You busted your pelvis, remember? Just keep your eyes on the road.”

  They stopped at a country store and Arvin, after wandering around for a few minutes, saw something that reminded him of Terry. He’d never bought her a gift in all the years they’d been friends. He hadn’t seen her in months, and she’d just recently started to take his calls again. It might be the perfect peace offering.

  That night, he called her. “Surprise, surprise,” she drawled. “What happened Arvin? Did your date stand you up?”

  He deserved her sarcasm and let her get away with it. “No, actually I was off today and Oscar took me for a motorcycle ride into the backcountry.”

  Changing hands, Terry got up to pace. “Arvin, your parents spent a small fortune on your education. Oscar already had one bad wreck. Do you really think it’s wise to get on his bike again?”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Arvin said. “Someone ran into him.”

  “Well I rest my case,” Terry said. “You have no control when you’re on that thing.”

  “Jeesh, if it bothers you that much, I won’t get on it again,” he said.

  “If I could believe you, that would be great,” she replied.

  “I promise,” he said. “Now if we can change the subject, I bought you a gift.”

  “You bought me a gift,” she repeated, disbelieving. “What kind of gift?”

  “You’ll see. I’ll leave it in the front door of your office in the morning. I have to be at work before you open.”

  “Okay! I’m excited now,” she said.

  “Don’t get too excited,” he said, laughing. “I saw it and I thought of you.”

  “That’s the best kind of gift,” she said. “I’m really touched.”

  “I have a feeling this will backfire when you see what it is so chill, please,” he begged.

  “I’m not going to be embarrassed, am I?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s possible. It’s not a dildo or anything like that,” he answered.

  “Great! You have a way with words, Arvin,” she replied, laughing. “I’ll call you when I get in then.”

  “And I want to take you out, but I know you won’t agree to it, so I might just show up.”

  “Right. I’d faint if you ever came up here,” she said.

  “Well, maybe not up there, but maybe to Brenda and Larry’s house,” he clarified.

  “Okay, well that might work,” she said, smiling at the phone. “Thanks Arvin. Thank you for calling.”

  They said goodbye and she hung up. The radiators were humming in her apartment. She noticed when she was sitting on the window seat, that two of her neighbors across the street had put up decorations for Christmas already and Thanksgiving hadn’t arrived yet. She wasn’t going to put up a tree; it was too much work, and it was too depressing. The summer before, she’d lost her mother and the thought of celebrating that first Christmas without Elizabeth Kovac was too painful. Picking up the phone again, she called her dad.

  “It’s late,” he said. “I was just thinking about calling it a night.”

  “I’m sorry. We can talk tomorrow,” she replied.

  “Were you thinking about Mom?” Harry asked.

  Sighing, Terry nodded her head. “I was. Shall we bypass Christmas this year?”

  “Oh no,” he said, chuckling. “I already have the tree we’re going to cut selected. You should come with me. Last year your mother saw it and said, ‘Next year this tree will be big enough for our living room.’ I tagged it then.”

  “Well, in that case, how can I miss it?” Terry said, smiling.

  “Are you going to have a tree?” Harry asked. “Because I have boxes and boxes of decorations for you to take. Your mother was a hoarder, you realize that.”

  “Oh, Dad, she wasn’t that bad,” Terry replied, laughing.

  “She was, too. You come and I’ll show you the basement,” he said. “Piled to the ceiling.”

  “Well, if I ever have a tree, I’ll take her decorations.”

  “You’d better get to bed,” Harry said. “You have work tomorrow, don’t you?”

  “Yep. I am getting a little tired I guess,” she said. “Love you, Dad.”

  “Goodnight, sweetheart,” he said, and hung up.

  Terry bowed her head to weep. Being an adult was too difficult. She longed to return to her childhood in the northeast, in her cozy girly bedroom, with hot cocoa and homemade peanut butter cookies as a bedtime snack.

  Looking at the clock, she called Brenda, needing someone to commiserate with.

  “Did I wake you?” she asked.

  “I wish,” Brenda said. “We had cheesesteaks for dinner so I have terrible indigestion. You sound sad. What’s going on?”

  “I have grownup-itis,” Terry said. “I miss my bedroom at home.”

  “Me too,” Brenda said. “Except the last thing on earth I’d want to do is go home.”

  “What’s going on with you and Larry?” Terry asked. “I didn’t want to ask too many questions lately.”

  “We had a breakthrough tonight,” she said. “It was either let’s put one hundred percent into it, or throw in the towel. Then I confessed that I’d missed my period.”

  “Brenda, you never told me,” Terry said.

  “Frankly, I didn’t know if I was going to have a marriage and if that was the case, I wasn’t having it. I know you feel conflicted about that and I didn’t want you to judge me.”

  “Brenda, I promise you I will never judge you. Ever. So did you do a test? I’m dying here!”

  “I told Larry finally and he insisted we do one and it was negative. So that started the dialogue about our marriage.”

  “What was the outcome?” Terry asked.

  “We’re buying a house at the shore,” she said. “Talk about a couple of shallow people.”

  They laughed together, Terry denying that was true. “That’s a perfectly acceptable goal for a couple to have! Not everyone wants kids.”

  “I also asked him about the text messages and he admitted there was someone but that it hadn’t gone too far yet. I don’t believe him, but I’m going to let it go.”

  “Wow, you are amazing, Brenda. I can’t say I know many women who would be so generous.”

  “It’s tit for tat,” she said. “He can’t very well haunt me about my past if he’s ready to jump into bed with another woman.”

  “Okay, I gotcha then. Thank you for talking to me,” Terry said. “I feel better now.”

  “Anytime. See you in the morning!”

  They said goodbye and hung up, this time Terry shutting her phone off. She switched off the small table lamp and took one last look out the window. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like rain or sleet was falling, the street shiny, reflecting the streetlights. The seasons changing checked off the passing of time. Another day over, a week, a month, a year.


  Terry was happy for her friend. Brenda and Larry had weathered a rough storm and were still together. It was obvious to everyone that they were really devoted to each other. Outside influences would do what they could to undermine a marriage. Hopefully, their relationship was strong enough to overcome anything else that would try to separate them from each other.

  The next morning, Terry arrived at the office earlier than usual, excited to get the gift Arvin was leaving in the entrance of her office. She saw it as soon as she turned onto the walkway; a brown paper bag tied with raffia, her name printed on the outside in black marker, his chicken scratch doctor’s penmanship announcing who the giver was. He hadn’t signed it with his name.

  Picking it up, she could tell right away what it was, and the hominess of it brought tears to her eyes. She pushed the door open with her shoulder and the office was dark, only the building manager there. Placing the bundle on her desk, she took her coat off and hung it on the coatrack, unwinding the scarf from around her neck. The steam radiators whistled. Outside, the early gray light of the day exposed a few snowflakes as they flew past her window.

  Untying the raffia, her eyes glistening, she opened the bag and lifted out a perfect pumpkin with a small, curved stem, the curlicues of the vine still attached. It was a meaningful gift from an old friend.

  Epilogue

  “Larry, hurry up. The car has been here for ten minutes,” Brenda called up the staircase.

  “I’m trying to get this stroller together,” he said from the second floor.

  Moaning, she ran up to their bedroom. “Just fold it up and stick it back in the box. The baby’s too small to take out in the weather anyway. Trust me on this.”

  She helped him wrestle the fancy stroller back into its folded state, stuffing it in its box.

  “What about wrapping it?” Larry said, holding a tube of Christmas paper.

  “Just bring the paper and we’ll wrap it when we get to Terry and Alex’s place,” she answered.

  They were headed to a weekend-long pre-Christmas celebration at Terry’s house in Mount Airy, only a half hour away, but as different from Center City as if it were out in the country. The first time they saw it they were blown away by the house; a veritable stone castle on several acres of parkland, it even had a turret. In the early winter, the light snow accentuated the rolling hills and woods along the Wissahickon Creek which ran parallel to Terry and Alex’s property.

  Loving the Christmas holiday the best, Terry’s husband, attorney Alex Hawthorn had decorated every tree in their yard that was taller than three feet with miles of twinkling fairy lights. He and his father-in-law, Harry had decorated the front door of the house, along with its massive granite porch, with festoons of pine roping, more lights, pine wreaths and red velvet ribbon.

  “Alex is on a first-name basis with the clerks at Michaels,” Terry said. “They even call him at home now to let him know when his favorite craft items are on sale.”

  Anytime Terry invited Brenda and Larry to visit, they accepted, often spending a long weekend in nearly royal splendor, with Terry’s dad and his girlfriend, Anna also in residence. Anna loved to cook and was the quintessential hovering grandmother, showering Brenda with the attention Estelle had been too busy caring for her large family to give her.

  Alex had started working at the firm just over a year before, and he said it was love at first sight for him. Their baby Elizabeth was born in late summer. Reversing roles, Alex was the stay-at-home dad, and Terry went back to work when Elizabeth was six weeks old.

  When Brenda and Larry’s car pulled up into the circular drive, Terry was waiting under the porte-cochere.

  “Hurray! You’re here!” she shouted, jumping up and down. She reached for the door and opened it, grabbing Brenda in a hug. “I’m so excited you’re here. Arvin and Tina got in early and you should see the food they bought; my father is in heaven. All stuff from the Jewish deli in south Philly.”

  Tina was the Israeli neurologist from the hospital that Arvin had fallen madly in love with. They were engaged to be married.

  “Who else is coming?” Larry asked, hoping no other lawyers from their office would be there to spoil his peace.

  “Rick and Jason will be here for dinner tonight,” Terry said, mentioning her old neighbor and his partner while she hugged Larry. “It’s a friends only weekend.”

  He stayed behind to pay the driver and lug the stroller inside. “An early Christmas gift,” he said, balancing the wrapping paper on top of the box.

  “Don’t bother with the paper,” Terry said, eyeing the stroller on the side of the box. “Did Alex put you up to that?”

  “Not at all. He mentioned he wanted to run for exercise when the baby was old enough so we thought it was the perfect gift for him.”

  “I know how much that thing cost,” she said, frowning. “It was very generous of you.”

  “Not really,” Brenda said. “Staying in this house is worth every penny. What room do we get this weekend?”

  “Your same one,” she said. “Top of the stairs to the left.”

  In spite of Terry’s original concern they’d never be able to furnish the many roomed house, the previous owner had made them a deal they couldn’t resist, selling the couple some of their furniture. The bedroom Brenda and Larry stayed in was full of ornately carved mahogany pieces including a four-poster bed that had a down-filled mattress. “One of these days I’m going to sink so far into this bed I’ll never get out of it,” Larry said. “You’ll have to bring me my meals. Or hire a crane to lift me out.”

  Terry and Alex’s room was the complete opposite. Containing the bed and nightstands, from her apartment, her dresser and another one from their favorite thrift shop, the walls were painted white, with white cotton bedding. “It looks so sterile,” Brenda whispered to Larry. “I feel selfish in this beautiful room while they have that hospital room.”

  “It’s what they like,” Larry said. “Plain and simple.”

  Next to the master bedroom was baby Elizabeth’s room, currently undergoing a transformation. Terry, convinced she was having a boy, had had the room painted blue with a train mural running around the wainscoting. Her father was in the process of painting the room pink, but leaving the train. “Just in case she likes trains,” they said.

  The big kitchen stretched across the back of the house, the other guests sitting around the island, talking and laughing. When Brenda and Larry entered, they stood, crowding around to greet them with warm hugs and expressions of love.

  After he observed the joyful reunion, a smiling Alex left his station at the stove where he was helping Harry’s girlfriend, Anna prepare lasagna, to join the melee of greeters. This was what he lived for, these house parties of friends and family where he fed them delicious food and gave them comfortable accommodations, like a hotelier. In the few months they’d been in their house, he’d already established the reputation of being the warmest host, usually with a tiny baby strapped to his back.

  “She won’t fall asleep now unless he puts her in that papoose thing,” Terry complained. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he ever goes on a trip.”

  “There’s no chance of that happening,” Alex said, reaching for Terry. “Less than no chance. I don’t even like to pick up the mail unless she’s on my back.”

  The loving group knew Alex suffered with a vestige of PTSD from a tour in Iraq, and that Terry and the baby had miraculously healed him. So added to the quirkiness of their diverse and wonderful neighborhood was the young father who was often seen with a baby strapped to his back, or running up and down the hilly streets pushing an expensive stroller his best friends had given him for Christmas.

  After Terry’s friend and neighbor, Rick arrived with his partner, Jason; the meal could begin in earnest. The beautiful dining room was set with china from Terry’s mother, candelabras at both ends lit, a roaring fire in the fireplace. Harry Kovac had cut down the Christmas tree, a nine-foot-tall spruce, and it was in
the bay window off the living room, visible from the dining table.

  “We’ll decorate this behemoth after dinner,” Harry said, proudly studying the tree.

  “It’s the biggest one we’ve had, isn’t it Dad?” Terry asked.

  “How beautiful everything is!” Tina cried. “This is my first Christmas.”

  “It’s not for another week, honey,” Arvin said, kissing her. “Don’t get overwrought.”

  “You can come back for Christmas,” Terry said. “Anyone who doesn’t have plans with family is welcome to join us. It will be more of the same, won’t it, Alex?”

  “Absolutely. With Anna and Harry’s help,” he said, sitting on a stool instead of a chair so he didn’t squash baby Elizabeth by accidently leaning back.

  “To family!” Harry called out, holding up a small glass of sherry. “Thank you so much for joining us tonight.”

  “To family!” they cried, tapping glasses, while a little baby slept soundly on her father’s back.

  The End

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  Bittersweets – Steamy romances set in Philadelphia. Bittersweets: Terry and Alex is the first stand alone in the saga, introducing you to Arvin and Tina, Brenda and Larry, Rick and Jason, Mrs. Dell, and the rest of the cast.

  Terry and Alex – A one night stand segues to a weekend of passion, leading to a lifetime of romance. A Philadelphia lawyer, tired of making the same relationship mistakes, falls in love at last, and with the advice of her aging father, Harry, traverses the mysteries of romance and heartache.