I wonder if it’s more than I can handle.
A few minutes later, everything is in the wash and churning along, and I exhale, feeling my emotions start to ebb a little. I can do this. I can.
One step at a time. And next? There’s still a mess in the sink that I have to deal with.
“Might as well do it now,” I say, my mood starting to lighten as I wonder when I started talking to myself. Had I done that back in New York? I don’t think so. Maybe it’s living with someone for the first time.
I adore sharing the house with Dylan, and I guess I’ve gotten used to having someone there to hear me when I need to get something off my chest.
I start to head back to the kitchen when my phone begins to ring.
Please, not Margaret with her professional trainer recommendation. I look at my phone and groan. The way this morning has gone so far, it only makes sense. Not Margaret… it’s even worse.
My mother.
I take a quick second to debate whether or not I want to throw the phone in the wash as well, but it’s too important to my future livelihood. I indulge in one more sigh, then answer.
“Good morning, Mother.”
“Is that all you have to say to me, Caitlin?” she snaps, forgoing a greeting or any pretense of maternal affection.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, rolling my eyes. Really, it could be anything. Or, more precisely, everything.
Has she ever approved of anything I’ve done?
“It’s been two weeks since you went off on this little tantrum of yours,” she says, her tone clipped. The words sting; she always knows how to make them sting. “And now I have to hear about how rude you were to Margaret St. John this morning? What on earth is your problem, young lady?”
I didn’t think the day could get any worse, but I’m rapidly being proven wrong. I wedge the phone between my shoulder and ear, crossing my arms over my reddened breasts. I should get ice, but right now, I just want to get this call over with.
“Mother, that woman called up specifically to make jokes about my business and my weight,” I tell her, my patience running thin. “But despite that, I was perfectly civil.”
“If you consider hanging up on her to be civil, then yes, you did such a lovely job,” she says, sarcasm set to high. “It’s time for this nonsense to end, Caitlin. I’m sure your savings have to be nearly gone by now, and I know you haven’t gotten a job yet.”
My blood starts to boil at that. It’s all too easy to hear the smug satisfaction in her tone. What kind of mother wants her daughter to fail?
“All of this personal training business is cute,” she goes on. “But you need to face reality, dear. No one is going to hire a chubby girl to train them. Especially one who overcompensates for the deficiencies in her appearance by being a smartass with her own flesh and blood.”
And suddenly, I’m done. I’ve been brought to the highest of highs in the past two weeks, and now I’m at the lowest of lows. I feel the tears coming to my eyes, and I don’t make any effort to stop them this time.
“Julianne MacMillan,” I say sharply, refusing to call her anything motherly right now. “Did you put Margaret up to that call? Are you that cruel?”
She sucks in a sharp breath, but of course her response isn’t an apology.
“You will address me as Mother, you little brat,” she snaps. “And of course I told Margaret what you were up to. I never really thought she’d hire you; we both know how ridiculous that idea is, so I didn’t bother sugarcoating the facts when I explained your situation.”
“You’re so, so mean,” is all I can manage to say, choked up, tears streaking down my cheeks. I sniffle, but she talks right over me, not acknowledging my words any more than she does my feelings.
“You will end this nonsense now, Caitlin, and come back home immediately,” she says sharply. “I need you to work on our new summer seasonal presentation, and it’s too late to hire anyone else for the job.”
“I’m not coming back to New York, Mother,” I say raggedly. “I am home.”
Before she can respond, I hang up the phone and shut it off completely.
Fuck this.
Fuck all of this.
My entire body is racked with sobs as I struggle to fathom how anyone could be so cruel, or how any one day could turn so awful, so quickly. Forget coffee, forget cleanup, forget doing anything productive today. The only thing I want now is ice cream and pie, and I don’t give a shit about anything else.
Dylan, my best friend, my sweetheart, he’ll know what to do when he gets home. All I have to do is hold out until then. He’ll fix it, or at least he’ll listen to me vent it all out.
I head to the kitchen, on a comfort mission now. It’s all I have the capacity for anymore. I’m done with this day already, and it’s barely gotten started. I’m so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I don’t immediately realize that I’ve stepped on the tiniest piece of broken glass from the shattered coffeepot.
When I do, the pain hits me way harder than it should.
“Fuck!” I scream. “Why? Motherfuck!”
I start crying all over again, and I can’t help myself even a little bit. I gingerly remove the tiny piece of glass, crying openly and loudly while I do so, and toss it in the sink. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve any of this. And sure, it’s a pity party, but right now? I really can’t find it in me to hold it together.
“Grandpa, just fix it, please,” I find myself wailing crazily. “Just fix it and take it away. I can’t anymore. I can’t right now.”
I get no answer… of course. My Grandpa Sully is dead, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.
Still crying, I move to the freezer and dig out the container of cookie dough ice cream, then pull the leftover strawberry pie out of the fridge. Dylan made it from scratch, and it tasted like heaven.
I put the ice cream and the pie platter on the counter, dig out a spoon from the drawer, rip off the ice cream lid, and dig in for a bite. The sweet vanilla mixed with the bit of cookie dough hits me like the hardest drug I’ve ever done in my life, and my sobs intensify for just a second longer before subsiding.
Oh my God. I’ve never tasted anything this good in my life before.
Not a single thing.
With the spoon still in my mouth, I pick up the container in one hand and the pie platter in the other, and limp tenderly toward the kitchen table.
And of course, there he is.
Completely unannounced and big as life, Jack stands in the kitchen doorway. Staring at me without my robe on, no makeup, face blotchy from crying, in my ratty underpants, my tear-and-coffee-stained bralette, giant tub of ice cream in one hand, big plate of strawberry pie in the other, and a spoon dangling from my mouth.
Fucking perfect.
Everything snaps. I’m flooded with emotions, all at once. Rage, desire, humiliation, regret. I can’t help it anymore. I’m done. Really, truly done. I spit the spoon out of my mouth and it clatters unceremoniously on the floor.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Jack?!” I scream, lobbing the pie awkwardly in his direction.
Jack jumps, avoiding the crash of the pie and the splatter of the filling, though it still manages to get all over the bottom of his slacks.
“Jesus, Cate,” he starts, building up his own rage-filled voice. “What the hell’s a-matter with you?”
“You! It’s always you!” I shriek, slamming the ice cream container down to the floor with a gigantic splat. It gets all over my ankles, and I’m so beyond caring. “The last two weeks, it’s just you throwing your dick around, you barging in unannounced, you refusing to work with us on the townhouse, you turning your back on this family.”
Jack’s eyes widen. “Cate, I don’t know—”
“This is the one thing that anyone who’s ever mattered to you has asked you for!” I yell over him, cutting him off with my hands balled into hard fists at my sides. I lean into it. In for a penny, in for a pound. “This
one thing! You don’t need the money from selling the townhouse! Why the fuck are you stonewalling us at every turn?” I start sobbing into my shrieks. “Why the fuck haven’t you called? How dare you come in here and fuck me that way, then leave without another word? How could you? What kind of monster are you?”
I start to feel my legs go weak, and I realize that the only thing I’ve eaten today is a single spoonful of ice cream. Sobbing, I pull a chair out from the table and sit down, burying my head in my hands.
Even so, I still find reasons to yell at him through my fingers. There’s too much inside me. It has to come out.
“You can’t treat people like this, Jack! You can’t just walk into my life like this and use me all up, then drop me the second you get scared! You know how hot I think you are; how hot you’ve always been to me! But I’m not that shy little girl anymore, and I’m not afraid to tell you exactly what I think of you! I don’t care how ugly you always thought I was. You bastard, you fucking asshole!”
I continue to sob, but I’m coming down from the peak now. The righteous fury drains from my body, and all that’s left is sadness and hurt.
“I’m so tired of always doing my best, and getting nothing in return,” I weep. “I’m so exhausted by all of it. I’m done. I’m just done.”
I drop my head on the table and get the rest of the tears out, a heaviness coming over me.
I’m too tired to cry; I’m too tired for anything. I just want to sleep and make it all go away. I know Jack is going to start raging at me any second now, and I’m going to feel even more like trash than I already did when he walked in on me.
So I wait for it.
And wait.
And… wait some more.
But Jack’s rage never comes. What does come is a warm hand on my bare shoulder, and another sliding into my hair to gently cradle the side of my head.
“Hey, Duchess,” Jack says softly, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him sound genuinely kind and concerned. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, I mean it. It’s going to be okay.”
My heart constricts in my chest, so hard I can’t breathe for a moment. And then… warmth rushes through me. Not the hot need I’ve felt around Jack ever since returning to Boston, but something sweeter.
I love this man.
Him and Dylan.
I’ve loved them since the beginning, and it’s overwhelming to be confronted with that realization, all at once. It’s something I could never tell either of them, not in a million years, but it’s… nice.
I pick up my head and look up at Jack. “I’m a hot mess right now. I’m so sorry.”
He smiles. “It’s okay, Duchess.” It sounds like a genuine term of endearment, rather than the insult it always was in the past.
Jack’s comforting me. Soothing me. And I… I want him. I want him more than anything right now. But I’m also tired. So, so tired. I turn toward him, feeling his arms come around me as I press my face into his hard stomach and let out a shuddering breath. A couple more sobs shake my body as I get the last of it out, but for once, I feel safe around him.
Relief.
Trust.
“I’m here, and it’s okay,” Jack says, over and over. “I’m here and it’s all going to be okay.”
And with that lovely warmth in my heart, the strength of his arms around me, I start to think that it really might be, after all.
14
Jack
When Cate starts to unload on me, I almost can’t help myself. My first reaction is always rage. It served me well when I was a kid in the slums, and it serves me well today. But this is beyond the pale. I don’t know what’s wrong with Cate, but I’m clearly not the first bad thing in her day.
That moment gives me pause, though.
Am I a bad thing in her day? Is that what I really want to be to her? And… goddamn, is that blood on her toe?
Seeing her hurt does something to me. And tears… fucking-A. They get me every time, too.
I know something is very wrong right now, and even if she’s doing her best to rip me a new one, I can tell that whatever set her off is beyond just me.
I open my mouth to speak, but she cuts me off before I can.
“This is the one thing that anyone who’s ever mattered to you has asked you for!” she shouts at me, and it hits me like a slap in the face. “This one thing! You don’t need the money from selling the townhouse! Why the fuck are you stonewalling us at every turn?”
I start to open my mouth, but think better of it. It’s not going to end well if I try to argue my position, not right now.
I think back to what Dylan told me at that lunch he’d caught me off-guard with, that she has nothing of her own and worked for every scrap. It’s hard to believe, given that she’s a MacMillan, but why would she be so upset about me not wanting to keep the townhouse if she had the money to just buy me out?
And it’s not that I don’t want to keep it…
“Why the fuck haven’t you called? How dare you come in here and fuck me that way, then leave without another word? How could you? What kind of monster are you?”
She seems finished, and I watch her sink into her chair and cover her face. Her gorgeous face. It’s something that I’ve kind of missed all these years.
“You can’t treat people like this, Jack!”
Okay, so I guess she wasn’t done. I can listen, though. She matters, and I can get past my knee-jerk reaction and do that for her.
I want to.
“You can’t just walk into my life like this and use me all up, then drop me the second you get scared! You know how hot I think you are; how hot you’ve always been to me! But I’m not that shy little girl anymore, and I’m not afraid to tell you exactly what I think of you! I don’t care how ugly you always thought I was. You bastard, you fucking asshole!”
Got to admit, that one sets me back a bit. Does she honestly think that I find her ugly? Impossible enough that, in the past, I’ve brushed it off as her just giving me shit. But now, based on the look on her face, I start to maybe she does think that.
I’m dumbfounded, but I guess now isn’t the time to try and have an actual conversation. It’s not what she needs.
I can tell she’s running out of steam, and I look down to the floor. It’s an absolute mess, and these slacks of mine are probably ruined, but I find myself not really caring. Cate’s right. I have the money. I can replace them. But I get the feeling that if I fuck this up with her right now, I’m not going to be able to replace this.
To be perfectly honest, I’m still conflicted about how I feel about Cate. No matter how good things were with her the other night, there are too many years of bad blood for me to easily say I like her, even in the privacy of my own mind.
Even if I’m pretty sure I do… once I get over myself.
And, regardless, I know that I like Dylan. It would kill him if I fucked this up yet again, and that’s reason enough to keep biting my tongue. Keep shoving down the part of me that wants to lash back in self-defense. Keep listening. Trying to hear her. Take in what she’s saying.
Listen with the part of me that really does care about how she’s feeling.
The part that maybe even hurts a little bit at seeing it.
“I’m so tired of doing my best and getting nothing in return,” she sobs. “I’m so exhausted by all of it. I’m done. I’m just done.”
Is this a good time to comfort her? I’m conflicted, not sure if my presence here is doing more harm than good. I could just leave her be. I assume Dylan is out, but he could be back any minute, and Lord knows he’s better at this shit than me.
What do I really have to offer? Dick, sure, but this other stuff… these feelings.
I swallow, the look on her face killing me. And what if Dylan’s not coming back soon? Then she’d be alone here, just soaking in her own tears.
I step over the mess to avoid tracking pie and ice cream over the floor, going with my heart for once, even though it’s scary as shit.<
br />
“Hey, Duchess,” I say, setting my hands on her as gently as I can manage. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, I mean it. It’s going to be okay.”
She looks up at me, and in that moment, I see her very clearly for who she is. Who she really is, not the version I’ve made up in my head all these years. Self-loathing, confusion, determination, they’re all over her face.
I should know, I recognize them ’cause I see them in the mirror every day.
Right now, I can also see the high color in her cheeks, and how her perfect breasts heave with every single breath... fucking gorgeous.
I swallow, refocusing so I can be here for her the way she needs. This moment ain’t about my dick, it’s about her heart.
And maybe mine, too.
“I’m a hot mess right now,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Duchess,” I say, rubbing her upper back in slow circles to help her calm down. “I’m here, and it’s okay. I’m here and it’s all going to be okay.”
I’m repeating myself, but I don’t even care. I don’t know if it matters to her that I’m there, but right now, it’s all I’ve got to offer.
And I will make it okay.
I don’t know how, I just know that I need it to be okay for her. And after a while, she calms down. Once it feels like she’s more herself, I stroke her cheek lightly with my thumb. “Hey, you. You got it all out?”
“I think so,” she says in a high-pitched, heartbreakingly sad voice. “I made a big dumb mess, Jack.”
I laugh a little, I can’t help it; she’s so damn cute right now, even tear-stained and sniffling.
“Yeah, Cate, you sure did, didn’t you? How about we go to the couch. Come here.”
She relents, and I carefully hoist her up in my arms. It’s easy, and she feels warm against my body. My cock stiffens up in my slacks, can’t help it, but I do my best to keep it suppressed. I would love nothing more than to take her to bed right now, kiss all the tears away and soothe her and then, yeah, fuck her deep enough to put her right to sleep. But behaving like teenagers is part of why our relationship, whatever it is, is in this tangled shit show.
Mine: MMF Bisexual Menage Romance Page 17