*
I made a quick two-day trip to Palo Alto for work the following Monday and Tuesday. It was weird not having to spend time buttoning up the house for departure, since Monica was there now. Convenient, but weird… and wonderful.
I came this close to being able to take Carrie-Anne with me as my sidekick. When the opportunity showed itself, I had pushed as hard as I dared to make that happen, I assure you. But in the end, she just wasn’t the right person to go. It was too bad, because her idea from my meeting was clearly gaining steam, and she had already gone out of her way to let me know she was quite grateful for my proactive insistence that credit went where it was deserved.
On the plus side, had I been distracted by Carrie-Anne, I would not have ended up spending a very rewarding evening with one of our VC’s consultants, a well-maintained woman of my own age with the filthiest sense of humor I had encountered in a woman in a decade… and the sort of life attitudes that meant a lot of her humor sprang from personal experience.
We each added to the other’s personal experiences. Monica was pleased when I got back.
*
The next week went by uneventfully. Things were smooth at work. Monica and I had great sex. We were old enough and experienced enough to not feel like we had to fill every waking hour with each other. I had drinks with Yancey. Monica went to a movie with Anne. We even had our first little fight, over how toilet paper is supposed to go on the roll. My position is, it comes over the top and down the front, just like God hung it for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I even won the argument. I banked that feeling away, because I am also old enough and experienced enough to know I would not win many more such over the rest of my life…
I could get used to this new normal.
Neither of us got up to any outside shenanigans either. It was the longest stretch where I could remember with that being the case in a long while. And it wasn’t because we were intentionally trying to ‘be good’, or anything. For instance, I was very aware that I had a finite window in which to let Carrie-Anne… express her gratitude where it could be easily controlled as just that, and not have to worry that I was giving her the wrong ideas. I was carefully considering options of how to take advantage of that window. She always looked hot in those Rainbow Sparkles shirts, but when she had rocked up Friday in a tight blue tee with a big red Supergirl S on the front, I had to bite my lip.
Monica had her own longer-term projects, of course.
We were sitting on the couch again the next Tuesday, watching the Braves play from our home instead of at BW3, for obvious reasons. I mean, we had better beer, right? The Bravos has clinched the division already, but had zero chance of getting top seed for the post-season, so this was a completely meaningless game, played mostly by AAA players. It was relaxing.
“Oh wow,” Monica said, reading a text. She typed quickly, frowned and typed more. “Mary and her boyfriend broke up!”
I made that ‘huh’ sound you make when you are unsurprised and unconcerned, really. “The dude that Becca and company have all been so lukewarm on, at best? Good for her.”
“He broke up with her!” Monica said, still typing.
“Did the moron take a blow to the head?” I asked. Any male his age with regular access to Mary Franklin should spend each morning making lists of ways to keep that access…
Monica agreed that a head injury was obvious, and kept texting for half an inning, fuming much of the time. Apparently, this was now a four-alarm Thing.
A new calendar event popped up on my phone.
‘MARY GET-TOGETHER’. The address was our house, and it was for Thursday. It was on Monica’s solo calendar, not our household one.
She looked at me. “I kinda think I need to throw you out of your house Thursday.”
“Our house.”
“Thank you. Then I’m kicking you out of our house from at least seven to nine on Thursday. We are going to have some girl talk.”
“Don’t give them too much alcohol,” I said in my best… me impression.
“Moi?” Monica asked innocently. “Those girls are still under-age!” she protested in a voice that wouldn’t melt butter.
I made a note to buy more White Claw on my way home Wednesday after happy hour.
“Mary is going to want her thanks for Stephanie soon, I imagine,” Monica said idly, snuggling up against me. My woman was definitely weird, because she was definitely getting horny at the idea.
“For crying out loud,” I protested, rolling my eyes–and thinking about the same thing, damn me.
“What?” Monica asked, all innocence… except for the way her hand had moved to my lap. “I mean, think about it. You are the perfect rebound date, Clark. You aren’t an emotional danger, and you aren’t a future opportunity wasted by coming along too soon. You are just a great fucking lay with zero strings.”
“Thank you,” I said drily, but flattered as hell nonetheless. “You do realize that I have to have drinks with her father, my best friend, tomorrow night, right?”
Monica just laughed. “I guess he does have his little edicts he likes to lay out.”
Yancey laid out edicts?
“The scrawny bastard has never, not once, actually told me to stay away from his daughter. Never even really tried to,” I said grumpily. Yancey would really make my life easier if he would.
“No shit?”
“No. Shit. Most he’s ever said was that he really doesn’t want to hear about it.”
“So if you have tacit permission, why are you so much more jumpy around Mary than the other two?” Monica asked perceptively.
“I…” I paused, then went on sheepishly. “I guess it’s that I’m gun-shy with Mary. We did get caught both times we tried anything, remember? If I let her get me alone again, I’m kind of certain that my mother is going to walk in on us. Or probably the Pope.”
“By the way, when do I get to meet your mother?” Monica asked, laughing at my nightmare image.
“When do you want to?” I asked back.
“Maybe give us a little while?” she asked, wisely.
“She’s gonna love you, but yeah, maybe not quite yet,” I agreed. “But another reason that I’m uniquely squirrelly about Mary is that I have never met any of Carol’s or Anne’s parents, I doubt I ever will, and I really don’t want to,” I went on in fervent explanation.
“Oh, I think you might like meeting Anne’s mother,” Monica teased.
“Pull the other one. Why?”
“First, she’s divorced. Did you know that?”
“No. Really? I did not know that,” I said, genuinely a little shocked.
“I didn’t know either. Anne’s handled being a child of divorce as well as Becca has. You should be proud of that, by the way.”
“Thanks, but why does that make a difference?”
“Do not tell me that you think there is any way that that hot little apple fell far from the tree,” Monica laughed.
Oh God. Monica was trying to open whole new avenues of guilt for me to labor under.
No way.
Still… I could easily imagine what a late-forties version of Anne would look like, and… Shiiiiitttt…
*
The concept of my daughter coming over to my house, while I was intentionally not there was… alien. But I went with it. Instead, I went over to Yancey’s and we hung out, drank beer, and watched UNC play a Thursday night football game while arguing about basketball’s impending season. Wanda had gone to my house. This Mary thing had turned into a summit.
I was glad to be absent, though in my heart of hearts, I was more glad that the first really bad breakup in a while had happened to someone other than my daughter. They all needed an object lesson that men are pigs.
You know, except for me.
“Holy shit, Clark!” Yancey exclaimed, as the football came back from commercial. “It’s your cheerleader!”
Sure enough, there was Stephanie, featured in a routine going on just as the TV came back from commercial. She was smiling like a lighthouse and the camera angle was from below her. That was because she was doing a complete split while being held high overhead, held aloft by an incredibly buff male cheerleader who was supporting her with just one hand placed firmly on her crotch, with his fingers brushing one of the world’s great asses.
She looked like eighteen and a half million bucks.
We both just sat there and stared for about nine glorious seconds. Then Yancey rewound the DVR.
“The sonofabitch is gay.” Yancey said flatly.
“Come on. That’s a stereotype and you know it,” I scoffed.
“He is standing there, with her legs spread like that while he looks directly upward, with his hand on her cooch and his fingers on her ass. You’ve had a better version of the same view, I assume, but it can’t have been all that much better,” Yancey chortled. “And the front of his fairly tight pants is un-bulged. Entirely un-bulged. He’s gay.”
I shook my head, and Yancey re-wound again.
“Yep,” I said. “He’s gay.” Monica would have been pissed, if she’d been watching.
If I’d been in that kid’s position, I’d have… I’d have never gotten Stephanie off the ground in the first place, and if I had miraculously managed that much, I’d have collapsed instantly, like a house of cards. But if I had been able to pull the lift off, I’d have ripped the front of those pants out like a chest burster in Alien.
When I got home, I was told that good humor had been moderately restored, all the White Claw was gone again, and I was shocked to discover that some cooler head somewhere had prevailed and I did not have a date with Mary already on my calendar. As far as I knew, at least. I trusted none of them, even Monica. Hell, not even Wanda…
I would be careful.
*
Saturday, Monica and I went to the park which was her favorite for taking a good woodland hike, and we took such a hike. The quiet, early fall day was lovely, with dappled sun coming through the still leafy canopy and warming us lightly as we walked. Even though, with no UNC game that afternoon, the park was fairly crowded, we felt like we were alone together.
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