by Lulu Pratt
Ethan takes the dolls away from Riley to start serving her food, and she fusses. At first it just seems like the normal fussing that kids do when they have to put their toys down for anything, but when Ethan’s dad makes a sharp comment to my dad, something about toys being taken away, Riley’s upset deepens.
“I think this is enough white meat and dark meat to start with,” I say, pitching my voice as lightly as possible and just loud enough to cut through whatever my dad was about to say back.
“Let’s all get settled in, and have some of this delicious food,” Ethan suggests. I agree with him and he and I end up settling ourselves at the end of the table, on either side of Riley, while his parents take up a position opposite my father, and all three of the older people in the room have this vibe of tension between them.
“Where Mommy?”
I look at Riley quickly. It’s been weeks, maybe even months, since the last time I can remember her asking for her mother.
“She’s not here, peaches,” I tell her softly. “But we’re all going to have a good Thanksgiving, right everyone?” I turn away from my niece and send a hard look around the table to remind these grown men and woman that their two-year-old granddaughter is watching them and reacting to them.
“We are surely going to try,” Josie says.
I make sure that Riley has a little bit of everything, and Ethan takes over helping her get the food to her mouth, while I serve myself. His parents and my father take pretty ample portions of everything, but I notice right away that Dad’s barely taken enough of anything that Ethan’s parents brought to qualify as a serving. Ethan’s parents, in turn, have skimped on the turkey, of all the things they could have gotten as little of as possible.
I start in on my food and try to rack my brain for what to say, how to get a conversation going that won’t have anything to do with the court case or the vicious, toxic drama going on all around us as a family.
“These greens are excellent, Josie,” I say.
“Thank you, Lara, I know you’ve always liked them,” she replies.
It’s so tense at the table that you could almost chisel through the stony air between my dad and Ethan’s parents, and Riley starts to notice it again. I can almost sense her realizing the atmosphere without knowing how to explain it or what’s going on. Instead she just slows down in her eager eating and, once again, asks where her mother is, which of course just tightens everything around us all even more.
Chapter Thirty-Four
ETHAN
If I thought that it would have been any easier to deal with the situation between my parents and Lara’s dad without Riley being involved, I never would have agreed to the Thanksgiving plan. Of course, now that we’re trying to make that plan happen, I almost feel like we both should have realized that our parents wouldn’t be able to hold it together enough for Riley not to notice.
“Where’s Mommy?”
I look at Riley and then at Lara. There’s nothing that we can tell my daughter that we haven’t already told her a dozen times, at least.
“She’s not here anymore, sweetie,” I tell Riley, the same as I’ve told her every time the question has come up. It hasn’t come up in weeks, not since a little bit before her birthday, even, but it always catches me off-guard because there’s no really good answer that a two-year-old can accept.
“Why?”
I look at Lara again.
“She can’t be here with us, baby girl,” Lara says.
“Why?”
If I thought it was awkward dealing with my parents and my father-in-law, it’s even more awkward dealing with my daughter’s sudden insistence in knowing what’s going on with her mother and why Alexis isn’t here.
“She’s gone, Riley. You remember how we saw the bug outside the other day, curled up and not moving, and we buried it in the park? It’s like that,” I tell her.
I know it doesn’t make any sense to Riley, and it’s probably appalling for everyone else at the table, but I have to give my daughter some kind of explanation, even if it’s one that she doesn’t really have the ability to get. My daughter nods but I can tell she doesn’t get it, she just wants someone to tell her something.
Riley turns her attention onto her grandparents, and I try to get her to get back to eating, pulling her attention onto the cranberry sauce I know she loves, or the turkey. My parents and Lara’s father are still eating, but the sheer level of the tension in the room is making even me uncomfortable.
“I have to say, I’m really grateful we could do this,” Lara says, trying to do her best to get through it, and I have to admire her ability to just keep going.
“Why Gramma mean?”
My mother pauses in her eating to look at my daughter.
I look sharply at Riley.
“What do you mean, little lamb?”
“Gramma mean face,” Riley insists, frowning at my mother. I know what she means, but of course, none of us can say anything about it. It’s that sour look that Mom gets every few moments, glancing at either Nathan or Lara.
“Why don’t we get you a little bit of pie, sweetie?” Lara says trying to change the course of the conversation.
Riley’s eaten just enough of her actual dinner to justify giving her dessert, and I want her out of the room as quickly as possible. In any case, she needs a nap, and she needs to get away from the tense atmosphere.
Lara gets her some pie, and we manage to get through the next few minutes as Riley makes pumpkin and pecan paste on her plate and finally gets some into her mouth. Mom and Dad talk about everything but the family, and Nathan is silent. Lara and I have to just try to focus on Riley without making it weird.
“Isn’t it good?” Riley nods in response to Lara’s question.
“Yummy!” She beams at Lara and I catch just the briefest glimpse of that sour look on my mom’s face again before she asks Dad about one of his clients at work.
“Can you say ‘pumpkin’, Riley?” I ask.
Riley screws up her face into a twisted expression of concentration, as she thinks about my question. “Punkin!”
“That’s pumpkin, that’s pecan,” Lara says, pointing them out.
“Punkin! Pee-kin!” Riley giggles, and I’m starting to think that we might just get through this, that things might be getting back to normal at least for an hour or two, long enough for us to finish the Thanksgiving meal.
Riley finishes her slices of pie and Lara looks at me as she finishes her own plate of food. We’ve been taking turns eating and supervising Riley’s eating, and I’ve managed one helping of the dinner. I want a little more, but first we need to get Riley down for her nap.
“I’ll take her if you want,” Lara says, once we’ve got Riley cleaned.
“Let’s both go,” I suggest. I know it’s probably not that great an idea, leaving my parents alone with Nathan, but I need to get out of the room as much as my daughter does, even if I understand the situation while she doesn’t.
Lara gives me a look, but after a moment, she nods for me to follow her into Alexis’ old room. Riley’s already looking sleepy, and as soon as we’re out of the grandparents’ company, she begins to relax in a way she hasn’t since we arrived.
“Nap time?” Riley yawns hugely, in spite of the tone in her voice that tells me that she wants to argue.
“Yes, it’s time to have a little sleep,” Lara tells her. Riley frowns but then yawns again, and I think to myself that it’s only going to take a few minutes to actually get her down.
We get her onto Alexis’ old bed. It’s awkward again for a minute or two, and I’m pretty sure that Lara is thinking of her sister, just like I’m thinking of my wife. But the moment passes as Riley asks for a story. Lara looks at me and then curls up on the bed next to my little girl, relaxing.
“There once was a smart, beautiful little girl named Haley,” Lara says, starting in on a story. I’ve heard her tell Riley stories before, but every time I see it, it’s just beautiful to me. Alexis
would read to Riley, but never made up stories like Lara, just out of the blue.
It’s a little bit of magic in a stressful day, watching Riley’s eyelids get heavier and heavier, listening to Lara while I sit at the foot of the bed, watching them both. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think that Riley was Lara’s daughter, instead of my wife’s. That opens up a thought that I should probably not be thinking. What would my life be like if Lara and I never broke up, or if Alexis and I hadn’t got together years after Lara dumped me?
Before too long, Riley’s given up any fight with nap time, and she’s not quite snoring, sprawled out on the bed with a little blanket covering her. I silently put up the barrier to keep her from falling off the edge while she naps, and Lara and I creep out of the room as quietly as we can.
By the time we get downstairs, though, it’s obvious just how bad an idea leaving our parents alone was, we barely get to the bottom of the staircase and I hear my mother’s voice, raised almost to a shout, and Nathan’s voice cutting through hers. Obviously, we’ve been away just long enough for them all to get into a fight.
Chapter Thirty-Five
LARA
“You are not going to take our granddaughter away from us,” I hear Ethan’s dad saying, and I know before we even get into the dining room that he’s talking to my father.
“I am not going to let your son get away with destroying my family again,” Dad says in response, and I look at Ethan. We both know that we can’t let something like this just slide, but we also both know that there’s no real point in trying to stop the argument.
“We need to get Riley out of here,” I say.
Ethan nods. “You go get her and put her in your car,” he suggests.
“What are you going to do then, Ethan?” I ask, dreading the response.
My heart’s beating fast, I can feel it at my neck and in my chest. Just the thought of what’s going on, how incredibly complicated and tense it’s become, the explosion that’s happening right now, is enough to send me into a kind of fight-or-flight mode.
“I’m going to tell them that we’re leaving, and that Mom and Dad can find their own way home,” Ethan says, sounding way calmer than I feel.
“That will go well,” I say sarcastically, but I’m glad that he’s taking care of that aspect of the situation.
“Just take care of Riley, and I’ll get us out of here,” Ethan says.
I head back up the stairs as quickly as I can, hoping against hope that Riley won’t wake from her nap, even while knowing how unlikely that is. I hear Ethan go into the kitchen and turn on the landing between the floors, shaking my head. This is becoming an absolute shit show, and for a moment, as I reach my sister’s bedroom door, I wonder if we shouldn’t have done things differently.
But then, I remind myself, something like this was bound to happen, no matter what we did. We had to give our parents a chance to do the right thing, and now we had. We just have to go on with things the way we talked about.
I manage to get Riley off the bed without waking her, and I pause at the door to the bedroom, listening to hear if the argument is still raging. It’s gone shockingly quiet downstairs, so I take advantage of the moment and just scurry downstairs as quickly as I can, grabbing my purse from next to the door and hurrying out to my car before anyone can say anything to me.
I get Riley into her car seat and she stirs for a moment, but she’s truly in a turkey coma. She goes right back to sleep, not quite snoring her deep breaths. Maybe three minutes later, I see Ethan coming out of the house, walking quickly to my car.
“I told them they can take my car home,” he says, coming around to the passenger side. I give him a wry grin and climb in behind the wheel, and start the car. Once again, Riley stirs murmuring something, but by the time we’ve pulled away from my father’s house and started down the road, she’s asleep once again, and for good.
We don’t really talk all the way back to Ethan’s place, and by the time we get there my nerves are calmed a bit and I can think some about what happened at the table.
I put Riley to bed in her nursery and when I come out, Ethan is standing in the living room, looking a little lost. Before I even know what I’m doing, I’m walking right up to him, wrapping my arms around him, holding him tightly. I bury my head against his chest and feel his heart beating against my cheek and for the first time in a long time I actually feel safe. Safe, comforted, and comfortable in a way I hadn’t expected to feel for years.
Ethan turns my face up to him and then he’s kissing me, his arms still tight around me, but I know, somehow, that if I want to stop, if I pull back and tell him we can’t do this, that he will stop. Just knowing that fact, and how much I really and truly need this right now, is enough to make me kiss him back.
Gradually, things heat up between us, and I find myself touching him all over, as if I have to memorize the shape of his body through his clothes by feel. Ethan is doing the same thing to me, cupping and squeezing my breasts, letting his hands drop down along my waist to my hips. The last time we hooked up, neither of us said that we could never do it again, not like the first couple of times, but we’ve both avoided, at least a little bit, being alone together like this.
I don’t stop him, and I don’t let myself stop to think about what we’re doing, and whether or not we should be doing it. Instead I just give into the moment, and when Ethan pulls my shirt over my head and reaches back to unhook my bra, the only thing on my mind is the concern that we get done with this before Riley wakes from her nap. I tug Ethan’s shirt off as well and then more and more of our clothes fall to the floor until there’s almost nothing between our bodies, just my panties and his boxers.
He pulls me onto the couch with him, and I straddle his lap, kissing him hungrily. I want this more than I want anything else in the world right now, whether it’s wrong or right. Even if part of my brain is listening for the sounds of Riley waking up, the rest of my mind is focused on the feeling of Ethan’s body against and underneath me, the strength of him, the sense of his muscles rippling under his skin and how good it is to have him touching me so eagerly.
I can feel the hardness of his erection, the heat of him, through Ethan’s boxers and my panties, and I’m rubbing against that ridge almost mindlessly, eager to feel him inside of me. Somehow we’re both taking our time, in spite of the fact that it’s almost like torture for me, at least, to keep waiting. Ethan slips a hand down the front of my panties and finds my clit by touch, stroking and rubbing me, making me moan.
I reply in kind, managing to reach past the waistband of his boxers and find his hard, throbbing cock to begin stroking him. We tease each other like this for what seems like hours, long enough for me to wonder at the fact that Riley hasn’t gotten up yet. We’re just touching and working each other with our fingers, kissing each other, trying to keep the noise down so that neither one of us manages to wake up the little girl down the hall from where we are.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore and wriggle free of Ethan’s hands, grabbing at the waistband of my panties and struggling to get them down over my hips. I want to be fully naked, and I want more than anything to feel him inside of me. But even as I start to climb back on top of Ethan, he chuckles lowly and tumbles me down onto my back onto the couch, pinning me there.
“Not yet,” he says. I pout up at him, twisting my hips, trying to get better contact with the ridge of his erection that I can feel against my thigh.
“Why not?”
“If I have you right now I’m going to come in like, two minutes, and I want you to get off, too,” Ethan tells me. I have to giggle at that, but as he kisses me he swallows down the sound, and I give up on the idea of feeling him inside me for a few moments longer.
Chapter Thirty-Six
ETHAN
I start working my way down from Lara’s mouth to her breasts, taking my time, as much as I’m able to at least, on the path to her hot, wet pussy. I know she’s already soaking. I felt as
much when we were playing with each other before. But what I told her is the truth — if I got inside of her right now, I’d shoot my load in a matter of minutes.
So instead of going straight to the main event I take my time kissing her neck, her chest and then sucking on her nipples, swirling my tongue around each one until she’s squirming underneath me, twisting and moving and moaning as quietly as she can. We both know that Riley could wake at any moment and part of me is a little ashamed that I’m getting ready to go down on my sister-in-law while my daughter’s taking a nap. A bigger part of me doesn’t think it matters, just so long as Riley never finds out.
I work my way down Lara’s body, remembering for a second the first few times we ever hooked up as high schoolers. I’m much better at certain things now than I was back then, and I’m more than a little proud of the way I’ve improved, even if I shy away from thinking about the reasons I’ve improved. I pull Lara’s legs a little wider apart, and then I bury my face against her soaking wet pussy, looking up at her face while I start licking. She tastes good, of course, I knew that already, sharp and sweet at the same time, and before too long I’m focused completely on teasing her.
I suck the little swollen bead of her clit between my lips and swirl my tongue around it, drawing letters with the tip of my tongue until I find the ones that make her struggle the most to keep from moaning out loud and waking Riley. I can feel her whole body getting more and more tense. I dip down to the well of her pussy, avoiding her clit for a few moments, just long enough for her to calm down a bit, and then I move up to the little button at the top all over again.
I keep at it until I can tell that Lara can’t stand holding back any more, working her clit with my lips and tongue and then moving down to her inner labia, over and over again. By the time I can tell she’s on the edge of climax, I have myself under control just enough to know I can last. I pull back and lick my lips clean, slithering up along her body to kiss her on the mouth.