Gemma and her father joined us, making the space unbearably crowded.
“We can do that,” Gemma said, probably overhearing us from her bedroom. She grabbed my arm so I wouldn’t waste the chance to ditch the parents.
“Rick, you should help the girls. I can make the coffee.” Mom patted the unopened Mr. Coffee box Ava had bought me yesterday. Gem only drank tea.
Cormac signaled time-out. “I’m hopeless in the kitchen. I’ll help. And Sally, you look like you could outlift all of us.” He put his meaty hands on my mother’s shoulders. “What do you think, Ava? Should I start taking aerobics classes?”
Ava removed a checkered apron that she’d hung on a hook next to the fridge and slipped it on. “Good Lord, you would give yourself a heart attack. When’s the last time you saw your toes, let alone touched them? Even when sitting down?”
Cormac laughed, scratching his chin. “Before I met you. Come on, girls. That includes you, Sally.”
Dad flicked his fingers with too much relish, dismissing Mom.
Gemma and I exchanged a good grief look. If Mom was jealous of Gem’s mom, the most non-threatening woman on the planet, Mom was heading for a heap of angst since Dad still hadn’t moved back home. Nor had they discussed the future, as far as I could tell. Not that I asked much. I didn’t think it my place to ask questions. Besides, if I didn’t interrogate them about their living situation, I prayed it meant they wouldn’t question mine. Mutually assured silence was my new life motto.
Outside, when Cormac handed me a medium-sized box, reality struck me. While I was moving in with my girlfriend, my parents were back to square one in relationship lingo: dating. The thought of two people who were married with grown children reentering the dating phase was difficult to wrap my head around.
It took three trips for the four of us to carry the rest of the boxes inside.
While Dad and Ava chatted over coffee and cinnamon rolls at the small table tucked into a corner of the front room, my mom pretended to be engrossed in emptying a box sitting on the couch on the opposite side.
Cormac and Gem entered right when Mom pulled out a turkey feather. “What’s this?” If she was attempting to mask her disgust, she failed miserably.
Cormac smiled. “You kept it.” He took the feather from my mom. “Last year, I included this turkey feather in the package containing Gemma’s formal invite to Thanksgiving. We sent packages to her every week, since Gem wanted to stay in touch with Keller by reading the Sunday paper.” He ran his hand over the feather.
Gemma had kept it for two reasons. She was sentimental. And, sometimes she loved to trace the feather on my flesh before sex as a way to rev my engines.
My jaw dropped, when Cormac tickled his wife’s face with the feather. Just last week, it had touched my cooch. Did it have my pussy juice? Oh, God, did it smell of poon?
Ava giggled, pushing it away from her.
“Of course, I kept it.” Gemma snatched it from her dad’s hands, quickly tucking it behind her back. She locked eyes with me, and I think she tried to communicate that we should unpack the rest of our belongings on our own.
“Man, I’m starving. Anyone else ready for dinner?” I rubbed my belly for emphasis.
“It’s only four, and we had a massive breakfast at Denny’s,” Mom said. “And your father just devoured a cinnamon roll.”
“I offered to share.” Dad’s eyes twinkled for some unknown reason. He rose. “Everyone has been up since six. Let’s eat, team!” I half expected him to break out into a rallying cry of, “Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate?” However, I think Mom’s withering glance killed the mood.
If she wasn’t careful, she’d lose him permanently.
***
The six of us sat at a large round table in the back of Applebee’s. UB40’s version of “Red Red Wine” played.
“I feel like someone is telling me to have a glass of wine,” Dad joked. “If only Meatloaf sang it, followed by Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’ I wouldn’t have to think at all about the three Ds: dinner, dessert, and drink choice.”
The waiter had already taken our orders, so this made zero sense to me. Was Dad nervous around Gem’s parents? Or was he this much of a cornball and I’d never noticed until now? Since the separation, he’d been coming into his own.
Mom pursed her lips. “If you ate all that, you’d grow Double Ds like—”
There was a scuffle under the table, my dad probably desperate to shut Mom up before she could reference my breasts. On second thought, maybe it wasn’t Dad. He never ever mentioned my boobs, and I was of the opinion he hadn’t noticed I’d grown up. Ava seemed too petite and well-mannered to deliver a swift kick. Gem? Nah, she was two people over and didn’t have the length. Did I have a guardian angel? If so, why’d she wait so long to protect me from these barbs?
Cormac didn’t notice or ignored the slight. His shoulders heaved up and down as if Dad was funnier than George Carlin. “If you like apple pie, you’ll have to visit. Ava’s is the best.” Cormac rubbed his protruding belly without a speck of shame on his face.
“I can’t get my pie crust right,” Dad said to Ava, sitting to his left.
“Do you use ice water?” Ava asked.
“Ice water,” he repeated as if that tidbit was the key to cracking into a secret society he’d always aspired to join.
“It helps. And for the filling, add a quarter cup of boiled cider.”
Dad reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small notebook with a miniature golf-size pen in the wire binding. Licking a finger, he thumbed the pages to find an empty one. “How much ice water?”
“Tegan, where’s the restroom?” Mom asked me with a determined look.
I pointed to the neon sign that blared: Restrooms.
“Does anyone need to go?” She eyed me, Ava, and Gemma.
Gem’s mom was too busy swapping baking tips with my father, and Gem looked petrified as if the demon in The Exorcist just screamed, “Your mother sucks cocks in hell!” No matter how hard she tried to act relaxed around my mom, Gemma struggled on occasion, making me wonder if it had been Gem who whacked Mom in the shins.
“I think we’re good,” I said.
“Okeydoke,” Mom said without a dash of cheer.
“Don’t tear the door off the hinge, Wonder Woman.” Cormac winked at Mom.
“Do you girls do aerobics?” Cormac asked Gem and me, not paying any attention to his wife schooling Dad on the best brand of butter to use in pastries.
“Mrs. Ferber has been giving us private lessons.” Gem laid a hand on my thigh under the table.
“Be careful you don’t get too…” He glanced over our heads as if looking for the right word on liquor bottle labels sitting in the middle of the bar behind Gem and me. “Enthusiastic about exercise.”
A bark of laughter escaped my lips. I was fairly confident Cormac wasn’t going for a double entendre. “No worries, there, about exercise.” I stressed the word for Gem’s benefit, causing her to flick my leg under the table. “For me, at least.”
Gemma offered an innocent smile, knowing how much I complained about most forms of exercise that didn’t involve getting naked and sweaty with my redhead.
“Good. I hate this obsessiveness to be skinny. If you ask me, it’s not healthy. One of Bridget’s classmates, who’s only fourteen”—he raised his bushy eyebrows over his wire-rimmed glasses—“ended up in the hospital last month. If she’s not careful, she’ll end up like that singer Karen Carpenter and die of heart failure in her thirties.” He leaned over the table. “I know I’m not the best for healthy living advice.” Cormac glanced down at his midsection. “But you two girls be careful. Both of you are perfect the way you are.” He squeezed his daughter’s hand.
“Are you praying?” Mom asked as she retook her seat with a hopeful glint in her eye.
“Every day,” Cormac replied, staring kindly into his daughter’s face.
&
nbsp; I felt moisture in my eyes.
Dad caught my attention. “Look at all these notes.” He tapped the paper with his silver and blue Boeing pen. “Next time you’re here, Ava, let’s have an apple pie challenge.” He squirmed in his seat as if having a light bulb moment. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
Mom’s face paled, and she quickly retook her place as if afraid she may pass out.
Undeterred, Dad continued. “We can host you this year. It’d be a shame to separate the girls over the holidays. Goodness knows they’re joined at the hip. What’s Nebraska like over Christmas?”
Mom shifted in her seat and curled her fingers around his forearm. “Rick, you can’t invite yourself to their house on Christmas.”
My parents weren’t the type to have soirees with my friends’ parents and as far as I knew holidays were small family affairs in the Mahoney household.
Dad seemed to realize his error. “I didn’t mean—”
Was he already dreading the holidays and more time with Mom?
Cormac cut him off. “He sure can!” He eyed Ava. “Right?”
Smiling, Ava said with wistful reservation, “It’s a lovely thought.” She added after a moment, “Gemma moped last Christmas.”
“Tegan did as well,” Dad said in such a way I was certain he knew I was head over heels in love with Gemma.
“That’s because she broke up with Josh,” Mom said.
“It was not!” I said, instantly regretting my vehemence.
Mom, not willing to push about the true source of my despondency last Christmas, waved a hand that conveyed Whatever, it’s in the past.
“So, Thanksgiving in Colorado.” Cormac was the only one who seemed gung ho about this holiday twist.
Dad nodded, color returning to his cheeks as if growing used to the idea he apparently blundered into. “All of you, including Bridget, can stay with Sally. We can play Christmas by ear.”
I was impressed Dad remembered the name of Gem’s younger sibling, who was camping with friends back home. But, I was still struggling to understand his motives. Was he trying to be the opposite of Mom’s parents when they didn’t approve of them dating? Or had Dad always wanted to expand his social circle?
Mom visibly bristled.
Ava looked upon my mother with such kindness. “That sounds lovely. Bridget has been wanting to try her hand at skiing.”
Dad bonked his forehead with his fist. “I’m so stupid! We should rent a condo in Breckenridge over Christmas so there’s more snow. One with a kitchen so I can teach Ava a thing or two about cooking meat.”
“I thought Christmas was going to happen in Nebraska?” I asked. “Does that mean Thanksgiving and Christmas will be in Colorado?”
No one, though, paid me any attention.
Cormac leaned forward to look my father in the eyes. “I’d like to see you try. If you’re talking about burgers or brats, she won’t go near a grill,” he said, missing my father’s innuendo.
Maybe there hadn’t been one, and I was reacting like a teenage boy in a John Hughes flick.
Then again, from the fire shooting out of my mother’s eyes, she thought there was.
Ava’s cheek tinged pink. “What type of meat are you talking about?”
“Prime rib so no fear about a grill. It’s the only meat to be served on Christmas.” Dad wiggled about. “Do you know how to make Yorkshire pudding? Whenever I have an overnight in London, I gobble them up like candy.” With both hands, he pantomimed shoving pieces in his mouth.
“Yes, the key is…”
The two of them huddled their heads close, lost once again in swapping food tips, Dad’s notebook and pen making another appearance.
Mom sighed a little too dramatically.
“Do you play poker, Sally?” Cormac asked. “Something tells me you and I will be spending a lot more time together.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to me. “What about you, Tegan? A poker face is key in life, not just in Vegas.”
I laughed, wondering if Cormac had ever stopped telling stories to concentrate on anything. “Can we do Vegas next Christmas?” I asked in all seriousness. Who knew when both fathers would be so pliant about making plans?
“Tell you what.” He leaned back for the waiter to place a steaming plate of ribs in front of him. “If you win this year’s first annual Mahoney-Ferber Christmas poker tournament, you can choose where we celebrate Christmas in 1994.”
I shook his hand before he could take it back. “You’re on.”
Mom blinked, unable to speak. Dad and Ava didn’t pay attention to Cormac’s offer.
“Oh boy,” Gemma said with a look of proceed with caution warning on her face.
Was she warning me or her father?
The waiter set my ribs down, and I immediately swept one to my lips, but Mom’s clearing of her throat stopped me cold.
“Tegan, would you like to say grace?” she asked.
I glanced around the restaurant, which was surprisingly full considering the early bird hour for dinner. “Here?”
“Would you prefer doing it in the restroom?”
Reluctantly, I wiped my fingers clean on a napkin and gripped my mom’s and Gemma’s hands and muttered grace, my face growing hotter with each word.
“Lovely,” Mom said, not meaning it. “Living in your own place doesn’t mean you can cut the strings completely, not when we’re still paying for your education.”
Startled, Dad tried to soften the mood. “Including your cooking classes. Your future hus—spouse will thank me later.” His eyes bounced off Gemma like a covert apology.
Mom dipped her fork into her southwest grilled chicken salad, the dressing on the side. “Unless of course you become as big as a house.”
Dad’s intake of breath was clear, but just in case Mom missed it, he added, “Not everyone is addicted to Jane Fonda videos.”
“Addicted,” she scoffed. “I remember a time when you told me I could lose a few pounds.”
Dad tucked his chin against his plaid Eddie Bauer shirt. “And look what that got me.”
Ava scooted forward in her chair. “Gemma, would you like to take extracurricular classes? Your father and I would be thrilled to pay for any.”
Gem scratched her forehead. “Uh, I prefer sports. Oh”—she smiled—“Jenny and I will be coaching a softball team this spring. Bernie will be team mom.” She made quote marks.
“Since when?” I asked.
“Yesterday. You were at work, and I forgot to mention it. That’s okay, right?”
I plastered on an I’m proud of you smile. “Of course. I’ll be the official orange slicer.”
“Just don’t eat them,” Mom teased.
Dad snapped his napkin loudly, tucking it into his collar. “Oranges. What do you have against fruit?”
Mom blanched. “Don’t you remember the time Tegan nearly choked to death on a slice at a soccer game?”
Dad’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh, yeah. That was when I started taking first aid courses.”
“I took mine after Teeg choked on a cherry,” Gemma said.
He bobbed his head as if completely understanding.
“Gawd, you two make me sound like a moron.”
“Chewing can be tricky.” Gemma smiled.
“And swallowing,” Cormac tossed in, causing my mom to choke on her water. He patted her back. “Even Wonder Woman struggles.”
Chapter Two
Gemma and I returned to our apartment around eight at night. I opened the front door and stumbled over a box but avoided wiping out completely.
After ensuring I was fine, Gemma said, “Maybe we should get a night-light to make it easier to see the switch right next to the door frame.” She grinned mischievously. “Better yet, get you a miner’s hat. It’s hard, which will protect your noggin, and it has a lamp. Two birds, one stone.” She mimicked throwing a stone with the most adorable shit-eating smirk.
�
��Oh, so funny,” I said with sarcasm. “I got us this.” I touched the base of the glass hooded lamp on the table by the front door, and it flicked on.
Gemma nodded her head appreciatively. “Pretty cool.” She touched it again, shutting it off, and then touched it again, turning it back on.
I stepped out of my leather sandals, leaving them on a small shoe rack by the entrance. “So, dinner with both sets of parents may not have been the best idea.”
Gemma toed off her black Converse. “Your dad’s funny.”
We both collapsed on the robin egg blue couch, our arms and thighs touching.
I rested my head against the back of the couch. “What time are we having breakfast with your parents tomorrow?”
“Seven.”
I groaned.
“They want to get an early start to beat the traffic.” Gemma ran a finger down the side of my neck, blowing stray hairs out of her way. She kneaded my shoulder. “Want a massage?”
“Maybe.”
“Just maybe?”
I rolled my head to face her. “Not sure I have the stamina for a massage and…”
She traced my earlobe with the pad of her thumb. “And?”
“Naked time.”
“Is that what we’re calling sex now?” She licked my neck right behind my ear.
“You can call it whatever you want as long as you don’t stop doing what you’re doing.” I closed my eyes, concentrating on her touch.
“What if I do this?” She snaked her hand under my sweater and T-shirt, cupping my bra all the while peppering my neck with kisses.
“Yes, more of that.”
She squeezed by right breast. “Which room should we break in first?”
“My bed doesn’t have sheets yet. Does yours?”
Gem nodded.
I rose and motioned for her to lead the way. “Your love lair wins.”
Inside, the first thing I noticed was her bedspread. “It has flowers on it!” I spun around, taking in the absence of all Cornhusker memorabilia. “Wh—?” I faltered. “What’d you do with my Nebraska-obsessed girlfriend?”
“Do you like it?” Gemma motioned to the bedspread. “Mom helped me pick it out.”
“It’s so grown-up,” I said in a reverent whisper.
Girl Love Happens Boxed Set: Books 0-2 Page 37