by Leigh Lennon
“I know he’s not my conventional hot guy but the geeky academia look works for him. And as you know, too, he has a very hot body.”
“I thought you hadn’t slept with him?” I ask curiously.
“No, but I have seen him without clothes on, I mean in just shorts. Oh, good Lord, this is not working the way I wanted it to.” And I see Lila, my confident Lila, is nervous, her hands are shaking as she picks up her coffee.
“I can’t say I’m not a little surprised by all of this. I gave up the right to Jones when I picked Brody and if he makes you happy then you have my blessing. But can I be frank with you?” I ask.
“Yes, please do.”
“Jones loves with all his heart and wears it on his sleeve. I never knew you could be with someone like him.”
“Are you afraid I’ll hurt him?”
How do I answer this without destroying my friend? The answer is of course yes, however, I see a different Lila in front of me. The fact is I love both of these people and I want them to find happiness, yet I can’t bear to think of Jones hurting again. “I don’t want either one of you to be hurt by the other.”
“Rose, I get what you’re trying to skirt around. You’re afraid I’ll throw him out like I did every other guy,” Lila says.
“You were honest with all those men but you have said it yourself, you aren’t in for a long-term commitment.” There, I said it, now I wait for the backlash but Lila only smiles.
“Yes, you’re right, but I never found a guy where friendship was the true basis and these feelings could emerge from that. Although, I always thought he was built well, for a shorter kind of guy.”
“So, not to be too invasive, but why haven’t you slept with him?”
As Lila takes in a deep breath, I know I’m in for a long answer. “Right away, I could tell he was different. We met for dinner just like two old friends and then I told him I would help him move into his apartment. Then we went shopping for household items for him, then he brought by pizza the next night. To say thanks for my help, he took me out for Chinese and we continued to spend time together each day after work. It just continued until he asked me point blank why I was spending so much time with him. He didn’t believe that I could like him, I mean he knew my history and all. I leaned over and kissed him and from that point on, we have been pretty inseparable. But I had to talk to you. I mean, Rose, my best friend. I couldn’t hurt you.”
“But I hurt Jones. Why would he care about me?” I ask.
“Because he’s Jones and he cares for you and he doesn’t want this to change our friendship, which is important to me. I know I come across as a selfish bitch and I am, I suppose. But you’re my person in life and I don’t want to ever ruin it.”
“I appreciate that. But you’re my best friend. If he makes you happy then you have my blessing, if that is what you’re seeking.”
“Thanks, Rose.”
“Anytime, but just so you know, because I know you—comparing notes about how good he kisses or if he’s good in bed is not a subject I want to partake in.”
“Well, is he good in bed?” Lila asks eagerly.
I only laugh. I can’t be mad at Lila—this is her in a nutshell.
35
Brody
I’ve never been exposed to so much baby stuff in my life. Yellows and greens explode around me as I’m reminded by both Hildy and Rose, that this is what I get for not finding out the sex of the baby. I wasn’t really sure how a couple’s shower would work but I’m happy Hildy insisted on this. It gives me an idea of the excitement I have for the upcoming birth. I can’t wait to meet him or her.
At the shower, I find that Lila is more annoying than her normal self. I need to find a way to include her in our life because she’s important to Rose though honestly, she’s really just a pain in my ass.
On the way home from the shower, Rose is excited over all the baby items we received. We have all the essentials and then some. I didn’t realize one little tiny person needed so much stuff. Replaying the whole day in my head, I finally ask Rose, “What is up with Lila? She was acting stranger than normal. My mom got a kick out of her, by the way.”
She laughs at me and says, “I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet. By the way, you may want to brace yourself for this.”
“Well, you can never be fully prepared for Lila anyway, so I guess nothing will surprise me.”
“I beg to differ.” She laughs. “Lila and Jones are dating and I guess it’s serious.”
“Jones who?” I ask. “No, not your old Jones?” I say as I about miss the turn to our home.
“Brody, how many people named Jones do you know? Of course, it’s my old Jones.” Rose pauses for a moment, “Okay, I don’t want to refer to him as that ever again. But yes, it’s that Jones. Are you surprised?” I see her smile. Why does she think this is cute?
I can feel the redness ascend onto my face within seconds. I grip the steering wheel as if I could unhinge it from the car at any second. Taking in a deep breath, I try to not yell at the woman I love. “Toots, I’m a lot of things right now. Surprised, mad, shocked, mad, mad, mad, mad. Oh, and did I mention mad?”
“Okay, I think we should wait on the mad part for later, when we have more time to talk about it,” she says.
“First, this has more to do with Jones than you. I want him out of our lives and not because he’s your ex-boyfriend. We had an understanding and he took advantage of you. Now he’s with Lila. He will always be a part of our lives now.” I pause, realizing I’m borderline yelling. “Then there is the fact that you’re so beautiful and he just doesn’t seem like your type. And Lila, though she was never my type, she’s attractive, too, and Jones is just your geeky kind of guy. I just don’t get how he lands such hot girls.”
“Well, first off, thanks for referring to my best friend as hot. I appreciate that in the state I’m in.” She pauses, pointing to her large stomach as I silently curse myself. “I’m not sure but they have always been good friends, we always did stuff together, normally a random guy Lila was dating was with us. They had the baseline of friendship they built on.”
“Oh, really, now two people I don’t particularly like are together. That’s wonderful,” I say as I pull into Rose’s reserved parking spot. Turning away from her, because this is not her fault, I don’t want her to mistake the anger in my eyes as anything she did.
“Lila is going to try not to antagonize you so much,” she says as if that is my main problem now. No, that’s not it. I hate that fucker for what he did to Rose. He used her to get into her panties. I can’t think of that or I will put my fist through her window.
“Well, there is still the issue of Jones taking advantage of you when he told me he would fight fair and then slept with you,” I say.
“It wasn’t like that.”
I now turn to her and I see in her reaction that she sees the rage in my face. My hands are animated with gestures as I begin, “Really, Toots? Because he came to me and told me he would be fair, sleeping with you with the history you have was not the right thing to do and by the way, I understand you may have pursued it, but you did that with me too and I was not going to use the fact you were carrying my child as a reason to justify it. You were so emotional and hormonal and horny, I wasn’t going to take advantage of that and he did.”
“It doesn’t sound like you’re over it,” Rose says, as I now see I’m making her cry. Great, I’m the asshole who makes my pregnant girlfriend cry.
I grab her hand gently, bringing it to my mouth to kiss it. “As far as it concerns you and me, yes, I’m over it. But for him, I was cordial the night we bumped into him because I know he loved you but this is how I feel, especially understanding that you and Lila are a package deal. This is too much.”
She doesn’t say a word and we sit in silence as I place her hand on my lap. I finally break the tension in the car when I say, “In hindsight, I should have made clearer boundaries. But it doesn’t matter with you and me. We are together now, co
mmitted and happy. I just don’t have a lot of respect for Jones, but I hope he’s content and if Lila is who makes him happy, then God bless them.”
“I wish you would try with Lila.”
I’m still far from okay but Rose doesn’t need to concern herself with this. “I will try with Lila, Toots. But I’m not ready to have them over as a couple for dinner anytime soon.”
When I’m mad, I clean. It’s my little quirk that helps to get out all of my frustrations. My mom interrupts me and says, “What are you doing?”
Rose pokes her head up from the couch and to offset the frustration I feel from the news, she says, “Maybe he’s nesting?”
Now, that is my girl. She’s so peculiar and funny. I adore that about her. “I heard that!” I say, winking. She has kept her distance from me since returning from the shower. Walking toward the couch, I take her in my arms. “I’m sorry,” I say humbly.
“No, I never saw it from your view, I get it. I do.” My heart melts. She’s the most giving person I know.
My mother finally says, “Now that you’re done angry cleaning, we need to talk to you.” Settling on the couch, my mom grabs a couple of envelopes out of her purse.
“First, we want to give you and Rose a check to help cover any expenses you may incur over the next couple of months. This is for you.”
My eyes bug out as I see a check for three thousand dollars. “Mom and Dad, thanks so much. I can’t even tell you how much this will help.” I can see a peace land on Rose as she lets out a deep breath of air and takes her hand, combing it through her hair. In the time I have gotten close to her, I know how she’s and I’m imagining her with a virtual calculator already making plans for the money. I, too, am a little relieved because the baby’s deductible will be higher than we had thought. I reach over and give her a squeeze then she nearly attacks my parents.
My dad looks at me and hands me another check, “We have one more thing.”
“Really?” I’m surprised, three thousand is a lot for my parents. Surely, I can’t accept any more from them.
“As you know, when your grandpa and grandma passed away, they put a trust together for you.”
“I knew they gave me something but you never told me what, I thought it was for the house.”
“It’s true, but we see where your heart is. We were not able to help with your college tuition but we hope this will help.” I’m a little hesitant as I take the check and my mind races at the number five followed by four zeros.
Rose leans over and gasps. Again, it is as if I can hear the human calculator of Rose adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. We look at one another and instantly, I break out in a sweat at the amount of money that is basically sitting in my hands. Though it won’t pay off all my debt, it will cover a good portion of it.
“That is actually half of your trust. You can have the rest when you’re ready to buy a house.” As a child, we never went without, yet my parents never had a lot of extra money. I see by the large grin on my parents’ faces how happy they are to be able to help us.
My mom continues, “The trust still has a little more than fifty thousand and will continue to draw interest.”
Rose reacts the same at the unexpected news and when she grabs my hand, I notice her palms are sweaty. Still sitting next to one another, I see she starts crying. “I can’t tell you what this means to me.” And it means more to me because she has not been the one to incur this debt yet she has been more than willing to help me claw my way out. Now, the burden—or at least a good portion of the burden—is off of us.
I lean in and whisper to Rose, “Should we tell them?” When she shakes her head yes at me, I turn to my parents. “Listen, Mom and Dad, Rose and I are talking about that, we aren’t quite ready to have you sell that house. We can’t make any promises and we have a lot to talk about, but we are considering Pendleton just as much as we are considering Spokane. We feel that Rose can stay at home sooner with the baby on one income and that is our goal.”
My mom’s eyes tell me what I need to know. She’s already visualizing moving us in. “Well, I think you know my preference,” Ruth says.
“Son,” my dad begins, “Would this get you fully out of debt?” Now my mom is crying as she looks away, not wanting me to see her emotions take hold of her.
“It would get us close to being out of debt,” Looking at my mom, I continue, “Mom, it’s only an idea. Don’t get your hopes up. I mean, Rose may hate it!”
“We are so proud of you and the family you’re building for yourself,” my dad says.
“Thanks, Dad, I have this little mama over here to thank for pushing me along in a lot of ways.”
36
Rose
After a couple weeks of Lila being MIA, I finally receive a phone call from her. As I’m folding clothes in my room, I look at the incoming call and answer with irritation in my sarcastic response, “I’m glad you’re gracing me with a return phone call, finally.”
“I know,” Lila says, apologetic. “I really don’t have a great excuse, except…well, fuck, Rose. I share everything with you and this, well, it’s a bit awkward. I can’t call you up and share things because well, again, it’s weird.”
“Do you love him, Lila?”
I know she told me once already, but those feelings were still new, so I need to ask again because my response depends on it. Abandoning the clean clothes, I lay on the bed and wait.
“I love him with so much passion and desire. It’s weird and odd and you don’t know how many times I wanted to call you up and shout it from the rooftops. But this is uncharted territory for me, both with loving him and not being able to share it with you like I would.”
“I want you happy, Lila. You need someone that will do that for you. Yes, I won’t lie, it is a little odd because, well, I know him so well.” I don’t go on to explain how very well I know him. “Hell, you know things about him that you only know because of me.” I stifle a laugh at all the times I shared with Lila about our own sex life. “But I want you happy so it may be awkward but we have to climb this steep new trail of ours together. We have to be honest when something should never be discussed.” Lila laughs and I suddenly calm. “So, tell me, what’s new with you?”
Lila starts in a happy voice, “Jones and I have taken some time to ourselves.” She continues to tell me about a vacation they took, then asks me why Jones always has money when he doesn’t work. This is that first lesson in awkwardness.
I can only snicker at her forwardness. “You know, in relationships, people talk about stuff like this. I would ask him, that’s how you’re able to go to the next level, Lila.” I’m not going to divulge Jones’ wealth to her. It makes him uncomfortable for other people to know about the trust his grandparents set up for him.
“So that is code for you aren’t going to tell me.”
“Yes, and that’s not fair by the way. This is what people in real relationships talk about. This is how they establish trust.”
“Okay, thanks for the advice, you know I’m new to this.” I hear Lila sigh.
“Yes, and you can ask me for advice anytime.”
After I resume the laundry, Brody finds me. “Hey, what was all of that about?” I look back at him and he looks so good right now, without a shirt and his jeans slung down low at the V of his torso. Leaning against the door frame, I can’t help but feel flushed at the sight of him.
I don’t want to talk about Lila and Jones right now because it sends him into his angry-clean mode and I would rather feel him inside of me. But I’m not going to lie. “Lila asked me a question about Jones and I told her to ask him, not me.”
“Oh, do I want to know?”
“Lila asked how come it seems like Jones always has money when he doesn’t work. I know the reason, but that’s not for me to tell her.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“It isn’t anything big. But it is something he doesn’t want others to know about him. Long story short
, he has a trust fund that can be used while he’s in school to live off of, well, more like live very well off of. However, when he came back, he wasn’t in school and didn’t have access to the trust. When he started medical school, it must have started up again. I never understood the terms of the trust. I mean, it’s millions of dollars and not my place to tell Lila.”
“Wow, who knew. I guess you could have been with a millionaire?”
“Oh, stop, that stuff doesn’t matter to me and it was not a contributing factor in my decision.” Though I always felt safe with Jones, it was never about the money, never. I walk up to him and see that at the mention of those two, he doesn’t have a scowl on his face. “I see you have no shirt on right now.”
He raises an eyebrow at me, pulling my head close to his, a little bit authoritative but still with the tenderness that Brody always exudes. “You’re right. Is there something you have in mind?”
I love that Brody is not one of these men that gets weirded out at sex while I’m pregnant, especially as far along as I’m. My co-worker’s husband wouldn’t have sex with her because he swore the baby could feel it. Brody’s response when I told him this a couple of weeks ago was merely, “Better our child learns early on I can’t keep my hands off his or her mama.”
As Brody unbuttons one of the only shirts that still fits me, he turns me around, leaning me against the door jam. I look at him and point at his belt and he only shakes his head ‘yes’ with a small smirk. I have learned that asking permission in the bedroom turns him on. I’m all about sex with him in a hot and bothered type of way. Sure, we make love a lot but to get fucked by him is hot, especially since this is not the mild-mannered Rose most are used to. But for Brody, I become a beast of passion because he’s fucking everything to me.
Pulling down his pants as far as I can, Brody takes me to the chair in the far corner of the bedroom. He has this weird fixation on ripping my underwear. I joked with him after sex last night that I will have to create a whole new budget just for new undergarments for me. As he rips my last pair of comfortable panties, he takes my legs and spreads them as wide as they can go. Looking up into my eyes; I’m lost in the ocean of his.