And I shouldn’t be trying to. It’s just that sometimes their bond with each other makes me feel like I’m on the outside, looking in.
Holly stops washing the berries and looks up at me, her hands under the running water. “We’ve talked about marriage, yeah. Does that make you think less of me?”
“Holly.” I set the knife down on the cutting board. Despite my selfish hesitation, I’d given Ray my blessing, freely. And I’ll give it to Holly now. Whatever sadness I have about that is my problem, not theirs.
“Just because I’m not into that sort of thing doesn’t mean you can’t be.”
She nods, smiling a little. “I think I might be into that sort of thing. With Ray, at least.”
I cover her hand with mine and look into her face. Her eyes are shining.
“I’m behind you, sister. One hundred percent. You know I’d throw one hell of a bachelorette party.”
She smiles at that and squeezes my hand. “I have no doubt.”
I drop the last of the pineapple into the fruit bowl, and Holly tosses the blueberries in on top.
“Now that we have my future planned out,” she says, “you can go sit in the living room and put your feet up.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll help you get everything ready.” I reach for the plates in the cabinet, but she swats my hand away and pours me a glass of lemonade instead. Then she spins me around and gives me a light shove through the doorway.
“Go.”
I make a face at her, but do as I’m told. My feet are feeling a bit sore, if I’m honest, after my shift at the store.
I head for the couch, and as soon as I sink down into the cushions, my phone rings.
It’s my mom, and when I see her name I feel a stab of guilt. I should have called her hours ago. She and my stepdad are heading out on a weeklong cruise to the Caribbean today, a gift from Holly for their twentieth wedding anniversary. They’re probably in the city already.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hija, I’m so glad I caught you.”
“How’s it going? You guys at the pier yet?”
Their cruise ship leaves from midtown Manhattan this evening. They’ll have their first dinner as they sail out of New York Harbor at sunset.
“Oh yes, yes.” She sounds ramped up and hyper. She travels so little, I’m sure even being in the city is exciting for her.
“How do you feel?”
An ambulance siren wails past, and she raises her voice to be heard above it.
“Oh, honey, I’m kind of worried, to be honest. I’m standing here thinking what if something happens to you while I’m so far away? Holly’ll be out of town, too, and I called your dad to see if he could check on you, and he said he’s going to be traveling for work. I just…should I come on home? I mean—”
“Absolutely not, Mom.”
“But what if you have a problem, or you get sick, or—”
“Mom, I’m only seven months along. I’ll be fine. You go ahead and have fun while you still can. I’ll be keeping you plenty busy once the baby comes.”
She hesitates. I can almost hear her fingers tapping nervously against the pier railing. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I say. “One hundred percent sure. I am completely fine here, and you are going ahead and having the time of your life. Okay? That’s an order.”
She laughs grudgingly. “You always were a bossy little thing.”
“You know it. Now get on that boat, please.”
I hear the muffled sound of her hand covering the phone, followed by a whisper. Then it clears, and she tells me that Donald said to say thank you.
“Tell him you’re welcome. Love you both, okay? Go have fun, and text me lots of pictures.”
“Okay, honey. If you’re sure. I love you, too.”
“Bye, Mama.”
I hang up and lean my head against the couch.
Outside, high-pitched voices are careening around the yard. Drew is back there somewhere, I think, along with Ray’s nieces, who I haven’t met yet. Their laughter is bright and tinkly—a sweet harmony with the starlings swinging through the trees.
Soon it will be my child out there in Holly’s yard, playing. My mom’s grandchild. The thought is equal parts terrifying and exhilarating.
I always expected that I’d have kids someday, one way or another. Marriage, I wanted no part of. But children were another story. I figured that when I was ready I would use a donor, or maybe adopt. I knew that at age thirty-three I would have to start making those decisions soon, but when I found out I was pregnant, I was still blindsided. I wasn’t ready.
After my initial panic, though, I realized that maybe it would simplify things. Many women I knew struggled through fertility or adoption issues, and here I was with an accidental pregnancy that cut right through all those obstacles. It was earlier than I’d planned, sure, but here it was. If all went well, I could become a mother now, free and clear.
The only problem was the father.
Claude is a nice guy—smart, good-looking, funny—but he’s also twenty-five years old. And French. And totally uninterested in parenthood. He was visiting town back in the spring to climb the Shawangunks and we met in a bar. It was a fun weekend, I’m not going to lie. He spent his days on the ropes and his nights in my bed, and on Monday morning, he drove back to JFK and took a plane home. When I found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t even sure I still had his number.
I managed to track him down, though. We struggled through hours of long-distance discussions, which wasn’t easy since we barely knew each other. In the end he decided to terminate his parental rights, although we agreed to be straightforward with the kid about his origins and keep the door open to Claude meeting him someday.
It’s a boy, and so far he’s got a clean bill of health, thank God. I’ve got all the support I need from my mom, from Holly and Ray, and from my job, and I’m doing just fine.
Well, mostly.
A terrible irony of pregnancy, at least for me, is that the bigger I get, the more sensitive I feel. Physically, I mean. Sexually. It’s like my insides are pushing outward—all my nerve endings bursting through my skin. So that the slightest touch makes me shiver.
Except there’s nobody here to touch. And frankly, I’ve never had this problem. I’ve always been a woman who liked sex and wasn’t afraid to go looking for it. I’m in decent shape, but more important, I’m not shy. If I want a man, I look him straight in the eye and let him know it. And off we go.
That’s not so easy to do when you’re seven months’ pregnant with another man’s baby. There’s a little something about that scenario that makes a guy pause.
And it’s not like it’s going to get any better. I’m growing more visibly knocked-up by the day, and once the baby arrives, forget it. I’ll be too covered in drool and breast milk to even think about sex.
That’s a sad thought. Especially since here I am, pretty much perpetually aroused in my last precious months before the baby, and there’s no action in sight. Of course, I do take matters into my own hands, but sometimes there’s just no substitute for the contact of another human.
As long as that contact is temporary. Because once we’re both satisfied, I like it best when the guy puts his clothes back on and leaves. I’m not one for prolonged visits, personally. Or long-term relationships. With friends and family, sure, but with men, not so much. I prefer to keep my options open. And plentiful.
When Holly first told me about Ray and admitted how hot he was, the first thing I said—jokingly—was, “Does he have a brother?” I found it very funny, the idea that the two of us would hook up with a pair of siblings and ride them off into the sunset. She called my bluff, though, and invited me to dinner with Ray’s brother, Tony. That was five months ago, and I remember him a lot better than I should.
He was wearing a crisp blue dress shirt, rolled up at the sleeves. Which I clearly recall because of his thick forearms. I could not stop staring at them. I wanted to put my hand on his a
rm, simply to feel the heat there, but despite my best attempts to draw him out, he hardly said a word all evening. Frankly, I was a little relieved.
Because I felt him, across the table—his breathing, his muted scent. And what I wanted—really wanted—was to know what it felt like to fuck him. Which was really inappropriate, even for me.
That night, back at home, I took a shower, got into my pajamas, and had a good old time with my vibrator before I went to sleep.
I thought that would be the end of it, but I woke up in the morning still thinking about him. It went on for weeks like that.
Which only proves my point about monogamy. Anyone could be fumbling along through life, minding their own business, and suddenly be thrown into sexual torment by someone they barely know. When something like that sinks its teeth in you, there’s no telling when it will let up. You just have to ride it out until it’s done. How are you supposed to do that when you’re shackled to one person for your whole entire life? People should have the freedom to fuck their obsessions away when they feel like it.
Unless the object of their lust is their best friend’s soon-to-be brother-in-law. In that case they should probably keep it in their pants.
That was slightly easier to do when said lust object was safely ensconced in Queens. It’ll probably be a little more challenging now that he’s here in the house with me. If I’m not mistaken, those are his daughters I’ve been hearing in the yard.
As if on cue, they come crashing through the kitchen doors and slide on bare feet into the living room. The first thing I notice is that their toes are green with grass stains, and their toenails are painted blue. They are tiny—one markedly more so—and their eyes are big and dark. They see me sitting silently on the couch and become immediately still.
“Hey, there.”
They stand side by side, wide-eyed, chests heaving from running, and stare at my face. Then, after a while, their eyes tick down to my belly and widen even farther.
“Gigante,” the smaller one breathes.
“Ana!” the big one says, turning red. “That’s not nice!”
I rest a hand on my stomach and chuckle. “Está bien. She’s right. And if this is Ana, you must be Sofia.”
She narrows her eyes. “How’d you know that?”
“I’m friends with some elves who spill secrets. Also, Holly told me.”
Sofia laughs her tinkly laugh. “Are you Aunt Holly’s friend? How come you speak Spanish?”
“Mi mamá taught me, and yes, I’m Holly’s friend. You can call me Beth.”
I reach out my hand and they each shake it in turn. Ana narrows her bright eyes. “Are you pregnit?”
I nod and settle back against the couch. “Yep.”
“Can I see?” She rushes forward and then stops a few inches away from me.
“Yeah, you can see.” I pooch my belly out a little so she gets a view, and Sofia comes closer to make her inspection, too.
“It’s like a ball in there.”
I smile. “The baby’s all curled up so he can fit. So it’s kind of a ball, I guess.”
“¿Puedo tocarlo?” The little one holds out her hand.
“Ana, no! Don’t ask her that!”
They’re more courteous than the old ladies at the supermarket, I’ll give them that. At least they ask before they give my belly a pat.
“It’s okay. You can touch.” I take Ana’s palm and place it gently on my stomach. Then I turn to her sister.
“Want to feel?”
She smiles and nods, and I bring her hand to my belly, too. The girls’ fingers are light and cool. They vibrate a little where they touch my skin, like sparklers at summertime. Their heads, bent so close to me, smell of strawberry shampoo.
I notice that Sofia is clutching several small Star Wars action figures in one hand. Ana has a purple mini-suitcase on wheels behind her and is gripping tightly to the handle.
“What’s in the suitcase?” I ask. They pull their hands away and kneel down together to open it.
“It’s a tea-party set,” Ana says. “Luke and Leia’s gonna have tea. It’s her birthday party.”
“Cool. What did you get her for a present?”
Ana looks worried for a minute, but then digs down in her shorts pocket and produces a stuffed mouse with one ear torn off. Its left eye is dangling precariously from a thread. “We got her a mouse. It’s actually a war mouse. It eats humans beings what are acting mean to princesses.”
I nod and scoot closer to the table, where they begin setting up their toys in a circle. Princess Leia sits in a seat of honor at the head, with her mutant mouse presented in the center like a sacrifice.
“Can I join you at this tea party?”
“Of course,” Ana says. She and Sofia kneel in front of the coffee table and get right to work.
We’re about ten minutes into this delightful enterprise when their father walks into the room.
And all the air goes out of it.
He’s wearing dark jeans and a black T-shirt with a thin gold crucifix necklace hanging past the collar. On his left wrist is a threadbare bracelet of twisted yarn, obviously made by one of his daughters.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up, like I’ve just been spotted across an open field by a wolf. It is impossible to convey how totally and immediately that arouses me.
The girls are chattering at him, introducing us, and I’m up and reaching for his hand before I have time to think. He presses his palm against mine, and the first thing I think is that I can smell him.
And it’s fucking intoxicating.
This is going to be a very interesting barbecue.
Chapter 3
Tony
I waste as much time as I can with Ray before I realize Ana and Sofia have gone inside and probably need supervision. They could be under Holly’s feet in the kitchen, or bothering Beth, who Ray says is trying to rest in the living room.
Part of me is hoping I’ll see her being mean to the girls—scolding or ignoring them, maybe. It might cool the fire that’s racing over my nerve endings. When I find them all together, though, playing quietly, it becomes fairly clear that I’m not going to be so lucky.
They don’t see me at first, engrossed as they are in a game that’s part tea party, part intergalactic treaty negotiation. Ana and Sofia haven’t seen Star Wars, but that hasn’t stopped them from learning all the characters’ names and creating their own fully developed alternate universe in which Princess Leia is actually an alien ruler with countless mortal enemies. At the moment she’s being counseled gravely by Ana’s stuffed mouse—voiced, naturally, by Beth.
“I may have only one ear, and an eye that is falling off, but I see and hear much in this galaxy, Leia. I have been sent in the guise of a birthday gift to offer you peace.”
“No, mouse! I will not do peace with your people!” Ana stamps Leia’s little plastic foot.
Sofia is about to interject in the voice of Luke when she sees me in the doorway. “Daddy!” She stands and pulls me over by the hand. “Come meet Beth. Es amiga de Holly. She has a baby in her belly. He doesn’t have a name yet. We’re gonna call him Bouncy because he’s like a giant ball and…”
She goes on, but I can’t hear her, because Beth stands and shakes my hand, and everything goes dark for a minute. There’s a buzzing in my ears, and the heat that’s been racing along my skin since I saw her in the driveway goes deeper. Into my blood. Into my brain. Into my groin, so that breathing becomes something I have to think about. It takes several seconds before I remember to do that.
Her hand is strong and hot, and up close I can see that her eyes are several shades of brown at once, like light shifting through fall leaves. Those eyes narrow a bit when she touches me, like she’s felt something, too. Except that while I struggle not to step back—from the shock of that touch—she leans in. “Hi, Tony.”
I admit I don’t know very much in this moment, struck dumb as I am, but I know that this is not how things usually wo
rk. I’ve been attracted to women before, sure. I’ve wanted sex as much as the next guy.
But not like this.
It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know her at all. There is nothing of any substance to justify the intensity, and yet here we are. And now I’ve got to sit down in Ray’s living room, with my daughters playing at our feet, and somehow make small talk with her.
“Hi.” I release her hand and back up to a chair across the room. “How are you?”
She gestures at her belly. “A bit bigger than when you last saw me.”
“Yeah—I heard about that. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. It’s a bit…you know.”
I take a seat. “Overwhelming, I’m guessing.”
She lets out a breath. “Yeah.”
Ana and Sofia continue their game, softly, and we watch them for a while.
“I’m pleased to tell you that I like your daughters,” Beth says.
I laugh, surprised. “That’s…good.”
She leans forward, amusement in her eyes. “It’s a relief, is what it is. I don’t always like the kids I meet, and then I have to pretend I do, and I’m not very good at pretending, so…”
“It gets awkward.”
She nods. “Exactly. It’s much easier this way. You hear that, girls?”
Ana and Sofia look up.
“I like you! Do you like me?”
They both nod vigorously.
“Good.” Beth smiles at me. “We’re friends, then.”
“Yeah,” Ana says. “We are.” Then she grabs Princess Leia by the neck and runs out of the room. “Attack! Attack!”
Sofia follows with Luke in hand, riding the back of the war mouse, which has suddenly developed the ability to fly.
“Guess that’s settled.” I lean back in my chair, aware that I’ve just been neatly handled by her. She’s sensed my discomfort, and put me at ease, by way of my children—probably without even thinking about it.
Just Give Me a Reason Page 2
