The Panty Melter

by Lili Valente

Violet: The goose wasn’t dangerous. She was so sweet. Didn’t give me a bit of trouble on the way to shore. I hope she’s all right. I tried to call the vet in Guerneville to check on her, but they didn’t answer.

  * * *

  Mina: Don’t try to change the subject. I don’t want to talk about waterfowl. I want to talk about when you’re meeting up with the big sexy firefighter for a twenty-four-hour sex-a-thon.

  * * *

  Violet: Never! He’s awful. Are you even reading these texts?

  * * *

  Mina: I’m reading between the lines, sugar, and what I’m seeing is lust. Lots of hot, sticky, rampaging, unsatisfied lust. And the longer you delay the inevitable, the crankier you’re going to get.

  * * *

  Violet: I am not cranky! ARGH!

  * * *

  Mina: *skeptical eyebrows emoji*

  * * *

  Violet: Okay, so I’m cranky, but not because of Deacon Hunter. Pansy threw up in my running shoes again while I was gone, and I just spent twenty minutes cleaning cat vomit off of my hundred dollar arch supports.

  * * *

  Mina: I’m sorry about that. And that your ancient cat has an anxiety disorder. But again, I must insist we stay focused on more interesting topics. Deacon is the perfect guy for this stage in your life, Violet! You’re not looking for love or big emotional upheaval. You’ve had enough of that in your marriage. What you need is a fine-assed man with a functional dick who knows his way around a pussy.

  * * *

  Violet: Must you be so crass about it?

  * * *

  Mina: Yes, I must. We’re too old to be coy, sister. And you’re the one who told me to fuck, fuck, fuck until I ran out of dicks.

  * * *

  Violet: No, I didn’t, LOL!

  * * *

  Mina: Well, someone smart said that. Oh, it was Gabrielle Union! In her memoir. Anyway, it’s so true. You’re in the prime of your life, and so is that gorgeous poose of yours. It’s a tragedy that you’ve kept her under lock and key for so long. Set a date for dong with Deacon.

  * * *

  Violet: Again, I’ll remind you that I can’t stand him.

  * * *

  Mina: All the better! That way you know you won’t get in too deep. The rebound danger is real with your first guy post divorce, Vi. You don’t want to get emotionally attached just because you’re naked with someone new for the first time. Yes, naked used to mean making love to a person who cared about you. But now naked just means naked. Best to go in a little pissed off at your new boy toy. It’ll help keep your head on straight.

  * * *

  Violet: That sounds so…depressing.

  * * *

  Mina: It’s not. I promise. There’s great fun to be had in the dating jungle as long as you don’t take any of it too seriously. And it’s great that he’s older. He might actually be able to last longer than five minutes the first few times. I adore my hot babies, don’t get me wrong, but there are definite advantages to having a full-grown man in your bed.

  * * *

  Violet: He’s certainly full-grown…

  * * *

  Mina: Oh yeah? Do tell? Is he hung like a sperm whale?

  * * *

  Violet: More like a banana slug. They’re hermaphrodites with penises as long as their entire bodies. Also, they occasionally bite them off their partner when they’re finished mating. True fact.

  * * *

  Mina: Repulsive. I’m so glad you work at an animal shelter and learn such horrific things to share with me.

  * * *

  Violet: It’s Zoey’s fault. She has a way with gross animal facts. They get stuck in my head and I can’t get them out.

  * * *

  Mina: Right. That reminds me, we should have a talk before you and Mr. Well Hung get down to business. Make sure you’re prepared for the big event. Pun intended.

  * * *

  Violet: Ha. Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not going to call him, Mina. It just doesn’t feel right. If I’m going to be intimate with someone, I want it to be a person I have more in common with than chemistry, no matter how combustible it is.

  * * *

  Mina: All right. Fine. Maybe I’ll swipe right on that bad boy. See what all the fuss is about.

  * * *

  Violet: Swipe him and die, woman.

  * * *

  Mina: LOL! See, I knew you liked him!

  * * *

  Violet: Grrr… I do not. And he isn’t online anyway. He thinks online dating is dumb and that I’m dumb, and I’m sure he’s fine with never seeing me again.

  * * *

  Mina: Negative. It’s only a matter of time, Violet. You can fight it all you want, but sooner or later something’s going to happen between you and Deacon. I can feel it. My IUD is tingling.

  * * *

  Violet: I prefer to have my fortune read in tea leaves, thank you.

  * * *

  Mina: Joke all you want, but my birth control knows. It always knows…

  * * *

  Violet: Goodbye, Mina. I’ve got more cat vomit to clean.

  * * *

  Mina: Goodbye, my little sex kitten. Hope you get some sleep tonight…

  CHAPTER 8

  VIOLET

  C ursed…

  I’ve been cursed…that’s what’s happening here.

  A part of me wants to blame Mina for jinxing my sleep with her text yesterday, or Adriana for not getting home until almost midnight on a school night, forcing me to yell at her like a responsible parent before sending her up to bed, but I know who’s really to blame.

  Deacon Hunter and the hex he’s put on my sex drive. He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who practices the dark arts, but it’s always the ones you least expect. He’s probably holed up in a creepy witch doctor shed right now, sticking pins in a voodoo vagina stuffed with strands of my hair and plotting all the ways he’s going to shatter my resistance to his banana-slug penis.

  Only it’s nothing like a banana slug. It’s not gross or slimy. From the feel I copped down the front of his pants the night of the party, I know it’s long and thick with a sweetly plump head, and that I want to kiss it almost as much as I want to kiss the man it belongs to. I want to return the oral favor he so generously bestowed upon me so much it makes my mouth water every time I think about it.

  I’m dying to give a man a blowjob. I can’t remember the last time that happened—if it’s ever happened at all.

  “Black magic,” I grumble as I throw leftover tuna fish salad and crackers in Addie’s lunch box. “It’s the only answer.”

  “Mom have you seen my water bottle?” she calls from the top of the stairs. “It’s not in my backpack.”

  Scanning the kitchen countertops, I spot Addie’s purse and her massive, sticker-covered water bottle sticking out of one side. “Yeah. I see it. I’ll rinse it out for you. But you need to hurry, Adriana, I have to be at a meeting in twenty minutes. I don’t have time to drive you if you miss the bus.”

  A beleaguered, “I know, Mom. Please and thank you,” drifts down the stairs in response, making me roll my eyes.

  “If you know, then why do you miss the bus at least twice a week?” I mutter to myself as I grab the water bottle, sending a sheet of notebook paper inside Addie’s purse fluttering to the floor in the process.

  I bend down, grabbing the page, intending to stuff it back in with the rest of the mess and move on to water-bottle rinsing—not to read it or to invade my daughter’s privacy; I’m not that kind of mom, never have been—when I see it.

  That four-letter word…

  Love you. Drive safe and text me when you get home. Had a blast with you this weekend and can’t wait to see you again, sexy. Xo, Jacob

  By the time I’m done reading, my eyes are about to bulge out of my head. What the fresh hell is this? As far as I know, Adriana isn’t even dating anyone seriously, let alone in love with some kid who calls her “sexy.”

  Oh God…

&nbs
p; Sexy…

  It’s happening. Again. My last virgin daughter is about to have a close encounter with a penis. Heck, judging by the tone of this little love note, she may have already had a close encounter with a penis. She hasn’t asked me to make her an appointment to get birth control sorted out, the way she swore she would when she was ready to take that next step, but that doesn’t mean she’s not sexually active.

  Adriana is all about breaking her promises lately.

  And lying to her parents like it’s her job. This note is hard evidence that she didn’t spend the weekend at Six Flags with her girlfriends the way she said she did. She spent it with a boy doing God only knows what and who knows where.

  Thankfully, she made it home safely last night, but if she hadn’t, I would have had no idea where to tell the police to start looking for her. I didn’t know who she was really with or where she was going. This Jacob person could have killed my baby, buried her in an abandoned mine shaft somewhere outside of Sacramento, and walked away without ever being forced to pay for his crimes—all because Adriana decided to go through a sneaky phase before heading off to college.

  The protective mama bear inside me wants to storm up the stairs, confront Adriana with the note, and ground her for the rest of her natural life.

  Instead, I tuck the scrap of paper back into her purse and cross to the sink to rinse out the water bottle. Addie is eighteen. In seven months, she’ll be leaving to work as a counselor at a track and field summer camp and then heading to Cal Poly to start her freshman year.

  She’s slipping through my fingers, so close to gone that I have to play this carefully. Yes, she’s still living under my roof for a few more months, but if I want to continue to have any influence over her behavior in the long term, I have to get to the bottom of what’s behind this rebellious phase, gather her back into the trust fold, and make her think it was her idea to start telling her mother her secrets again.

  So even though I’m dying to shove a box of condoms into her bag and remind her that we Boden women are excessively fertile—which is why she needs a backup form of birth control in place at all times—I bite my tongue. And when she hurries down the stairs in jean overalls and braids, looking way too young to be having sex, I simply hand over her water bottle and kiss her cheek.

  “Are we doing dinner? Or do you have late practice again this week?” I ask, grabbing my purse and keys and following her out of the kitchen.

  “Late practice, so I’ll just grab a sandwich out,” she says, snagging her jacket from the hook by the front door. “But I should be back by eight if you want to watch a movie or something.”

  “I’d love to watch a movie. I’ll have popcorn ready when you get home.”

  Addie smiles at me over her shoulder. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best. Love you.”

  “Love you, too,” I say, heart twisting as I watch her bound down the porch steps and jog to the end of the block where her friends from the neighborhood are already waiting for the bus. And for a moment, I don’t see her as she is, but as she was, that giggling, wide-eyed, bundle of energy I sent off to kindergarten for the first time thirteen years ago with a Pokemon lunch box and a ponytail in the middle of her forehead she called her unicorn horn.

  She’s still my baby, and she always will be. And if necessary, I will hunt down this kid who’s so eager to get his mitts all over my little girl, put that box full of condoms directly into his hands, and promise to personally cut off his nuts if he doesn’t use them properly.

  But hopefully, that won’t be necessary. I just need to figure out what made Addie start pulling away from her dad and me in the first place, yank that weed out by the root, and get our love garden back in tip-top shape.

  Which, unfortunately, involves talking to my ex for longer than five minutes. I slide into my Prius with a sigh, punching the power button and rolling out into the early morning downtown Santa Rosa traffic.

  We’ve had this coffee date scheduled for over a week. Grant wants to discuss Addie’s dipping grades—he thinks a B-plus in Calculus is reason for alarm—and I want to discuss the missing hours between Addie leaving my house and showing up at his for her weekend visits.

  Now, however, I’m pretty sure I know what she’s been up to when she disappeared.

  The question is…do I share it with Grant? I pull into Nitro Joe’s a few blocks away from the Big Bad Bank where he works, debating the pros and cons of telling my infamously unreasonable ex that his baby girl has a secret lover, and find Grant already sitting at a table in the front garden.

  He’s early, something that hasn’t happened in….

  Ever?

  Grant is always late. Chronic tardiness is ingrained in his DNA, a trait sadly passed on to two of our three daughters. But here he is, dressed in one of his eight hundred dollar suits, with his silver and black hair perfectly swooped up in front, and two lattes on pale blue saucers on the café table in front of him. He’s even grabbed one of the sugar bowls with cubes in it that I like, instead of the packets of diet poison sweetener he prefers.

  Something is definitely up…

  My ex-drama sensors are blaring out a Code Red warning—lifting all the hairs on my arms as I step out of the car into the cool breeze—when my phone starts barking in my purse, signaling a Code Red of another kind. It’s Virginia’s ringtone, and she never calls this early unless there’s trouble at the shelter.

  Lifting a hand with an I-have-to-take-this finger raised to Grant, I bring my cell to my ear, “Hey, Ginny, what’s up?”

  “Violet you have to come quick! They’re after our salamanders!”

  I squint into the morning sun, my yet-to-be-caffeinated brain struggling for a moment before I remember the little guys we discovered living in some abandoned ground squirrel burrows behind the shelter last winter. Virginia is a big amphibian fan, in general, but the beauties in our backyard are endangered California tiger salamanders, a fact that made the discovery even more thrilling.

  But now, apparently, someone is “after them?”

  “They’re going to rip all the shrubs out and kill them, Violet,” Virginia continues before I can ask who is after our ’manders and why. “They can’t survive without groundcover. They’ll get too hot in the summer, and their burrows will flood and collapse in the winter. We have to do something, but I know they won’t listen to me.”

  “Who, Virginia? Who won’t listen to you?” I ask, plugging my other ear in an attempt to hear her better over the roar of early morning traffic on College Avenue. “Is Tristan there? Can you get him to intervene? Or Zoey?”

  “Zoey’s out on a food run, and Tristan is part of the problem.” Virginia makes a pitiful whimpering sound that makes me wish I was there to give her a hug. Ginny can be a prickly pear when you first meet her, but underneath the bluster, she’s all heart. “Please, Violet. I’ll stall them with coffee, but you’ve got to get here before he goes for the bulldozer. Hurry!”

  “Bulldozer?” I frown-blink. “What on earth—”

  I’m cut off by a scuffing sound on the other end of the line as Virginia hangs up. I sigh, the arm holding my phone dropping to my side.

  So it’s going to be one of those Mondays. Lovely.

  I lift an arm to Grant as he pushes through the wrought iron gate surrounding the outdoor seating and says, “Hey. You should sit. The coffee’s getting cold.”

  I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t stay, after all. There’s an emergency at work. Virginia’s freaking out, says I need to get there right away.”

  “Can’t someone else handle it?” Grant asks, fingers tapping nervously on my ancient Prius’s hood, near the patch of missing paint I know must be driving him crazy. “I need to talk to you.”

  “I know. And I know you’re worried about Addie, but I really have to go. If I don’t, endangered salamanders could lose their habitat.”

  Grant arches a brow. “Seriously?”

  I nod. “Seriously.”

  He sighs, clearly
not thrilled, but not wanting lost amphibian lives on his conscience, either. Grant might not always treat people the way I’d prefer, but he’s an animal lover from way back. He never put up a fuss about adding another critter to our family, no matter how many battered creatures the girls just had to rescue.

  “All right,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “But we need to talk soon. Not just about Addie. There’s…other stuff, too.”

  I turn my head, studying him from the corner of my eye as fear whispers through my thoughts. Grant is in incredible physical shape, but he is getting to the age when scary things can start to go wrong. “What other stuff? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he says, banishing my cancer and infected hair plug fears. “I’m just…” He shakes his head, apparently at a loss for words for the first time in his life. “Some things are happening, things I’m not sure I can walk back now that they’ve started and I… “ He stretches his head to one side. “Maybe I haven’t thought everything through the way I should have the past few years, Violet. Maybe I’ve taken a hard right when I should have stayed the course. You know what I mean?”

  “Um, not really.” I toss my purse back into the passenger’s seat, secretly grateful for an excuse to jet. Whatever’s got Grant worked up it sounds personal—which isn’t my business anymore. “But I’ve really got to go, Grant. I’ll text you about Addie later. I’m sure, between the two of us, we can get her back on the right track.”