by Gabrielle G.
“I’m just helping out a friend, Andrew. Don’t worry, we won’t get married or anything.” Barnabas walks over to Andrew to give him a hug.
“You know you could, Barn. If you really want to get married, just do it. I won’t ever blame you for breaking the promise you made.” The two guys hug, and something special passes between them. As usual, I have no idea what this is about, but one thing is clear, I’ll never marry Barnabas Topher Gritt. I mean, even his middle name says he likes to be on top of women. He repeated the joke enough times since middle school for everyone to know. “Barnabas Topher. Because I like to top her,” he used to say, and I think still does.
“Ave, do you want to go with Andrew to choose what you want to take, or do you want to stay here with Lex and give me the keys?” There is no way I will let those two sex-crazed assholes in my apartment without supervision. I can imagine them sniffing my underwear and trying on my bras.
“I’ll go with Andrew. Are you okay watching her a little longer?” I ask more to be sure he doesn’t abandon Alexis to go on the hunt for a pussy than to really know if babysitting her is an inconvenience for him. Andrew spins his keychain on his finger and heads to the door, signaling that he’ll wait for me outside.
“I’m fine. The hike got canceled after she found out I had a wife and a kid, remember?” Barnabas chuckles as if this isn’t a big deal.
“Rule number three, Barn,” I chastise him playfully.
“No fucking clients or anybody we know while I’m fake-dating you. I know. I’m not fucking one, I’m talking about it. I’m glad I fucked those last tits because I’m not sure how long you and I are going to be together, darling. And those,” he points at my cleavage, “ain’t ever gonna do it.” He shakes his head.
“Those, as you say, don’t have to do it, jerk. They’re not yours to touch or enjoy.” I start walking to the door, but Barnabas steps in my way to block my exit. His light blue eyes dip into mine, and his hand falls on my chin. My throat constricts with disgust while my body quivers by his proximity. He brings his lips close to my ear, his light stubble grazing my cheek, and slowly whispers, “Rule number four, darling.” I swallow hard.
“When Barn needs a favor, Avery will return it with no discussion,” I squeak.
“I’m gonna need a favor alright, Ave. Not tonight, not tomorrow because I can jerk a little to appease my needs, but I’m gonna need to be deep inside you at some point. That, my friend, will be returning a favor.” He bites my ear slightly, and to my horror, I hear myself moan.
“No sexual favors.” I try to untangle myself from the desire I suddenly feel. “There would never be anything sexual between us.”
“If you say so, Ave.” He simpers, stepping back. A thread of insults is on the tip of my tongue, but the pitter-patter behind me stops the words from leaving my mouth. There is no need for Alexis to know what cocksucker and pussywhore mean. He changes his behavior right away, respecting our rule number two of not pretending that we are together in front of her. It could only confuse my daughter, and I won’t let her think Barnabas could be anything more than a friend. And a friend to her, not me. Her.
“Bee, I’m going to the apartment with Andrew to pick up our things. And then we’re going to stay with Barnabas for a little while.”
“Yay!” she screams, running toward him. He scooches down to take her, bringing his hand to his back, wincing a little.
“What happened to your back?”
“Nothing,” he says, tickling Alexis who starts to giggle loudly.
“Lex, want to go see if Bella made some pies and check if she has chocolate milk?” Alexis' eyes go wide, and she nods furiously.
“You’re my bestest best friend, Banarbas. I hope you can be Mommy’s too!” She holds his neck tight and waves back at me.
“I’m trying to, Lex, but she’s not easy to make friends with.” He walks through the door with my baby, laughing at whatever she said to answer.
“He’s a good guy, you know,” Andrew tells me once we enter the apartment that soon won’t be mine anymore.
“I know.” I shrug. “I can see how he is with Alexis. It’s just, we are like oil and water. We always were.” I pick up the first box and place it at the door.
“That’s not true. You used to be friends in elementary school.” He takes a second box and brings it to the first one. Alexis and I don’t own much. The apartment was furnished, so all I need to take are the six boxes belonging to us. Three each. She barely has any toys or clothes, and I never really hang onto things because I learned when my father died that what you have doesn’t matter if you aren’t surrounded by the ones you loved. I wasn’t a materialistic girl, and I was fighting hard for Alexis to know people were worth more than any toy.
“So, were we friends when he pulled my ponytail and checked under my skirt? Because in that case, I prefer you and I not to be friends. I really don’t want you to pull my hair and check if I wear panties today.” I continue piling boxes on top of each other.
“We are now that you’re involved with Barn. And boys being asses to girls? That’s what we do when we like a girl, Ave. Come on, even you should know that.” I roll my eyes and shake my head.
“You’re going to tell me Barnabas treated me like a piece of shit for the last thirty years because he had, or still has, a crush on me?” I quirk an eyebrow in annoyance. Andrew nods. “Please, Andrew, if you ever have a daughter, don’t ever tell her a boy is bugging her because he likes her. That’s how grown up women like me stay with the wrong guy for years because they think it’s normal the guy mistreats them if he loves them. Barnabas and I never liked each other, and us dating now is more an unfortunate event than a real love story.”
“Jeez, Ave, lighten up a bit. He clearly hasn’t fucked you yet, or he did a terrible job.” Andrew laughs.
“I thought he never did a bad job?” I answer back, ignoring his jab. Andrew studies me for a while until he finds what he’s looking for. A victorious smile spreads on his face before he opens his mouth again.
“I thought I would never see the day when Avery Dubois would want to get Barned.”
My stomach churns at the idea of Barnabas on top of me. “I don’t want to!” I ridiculously stomp my feet like Alexis would.
“What did Shakespeare say? Whatever, whatever, protest too much not to want the dick?” He takes the last suitcase full of my everyday clothes off my hands and starts going down the stairs.
“‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’ It’s from Hamlet, and it never was about a dick!” I scream from the top of my lungs to Andrew at the bottom of the stairs. He laughs before pushing the door with his ass to take the suitcase to his car.
Andrew and I make a few back and forth trips until the boxes are piled in our cars and it’s time to close up the apartment where so many tears were shed but also where Alexis took her first steps. It’s with mixed emotions that I close the door and walk back to my car. Andrew already left for the Gritts, and I’m left alone to sort through my feelings.
“Are you okay?” I turn to find Luke, Barnabas’ brother, looking at me. Behind his beard, tattoos and biker attitude, he’s certainly the nicest of the whole Gritt clan.
“What are you doing here?”
He shrugs. “If you think my brother wouldn’t score a girlfriend like you and not start an insane chain of group messages, then you need to learn a little more about your new beau, Avery.” I grimace, and my body shivers at the idea the whole town will soon know I’m with Barnabas.
“I’m kidding.” Luke laughs. “Barn just asked me to check up on you. I was in town to get my man a coffee, but I thought I’d see if you needed me to talk to him about your custody case.” I look at him in surprise.
“Do the Gritts ever mind their own business?”
“We do when it doesn’t involve one of us. If Barn asked me to check on you, it means you’re a part of us now. Buckle up, Ave, it can only get worse. See you at supper tonight.”
“Supper?”
“Yeah, supper, everyone will be there to welcome you into the family. It’s going to be fun.” He rubs his hands together with a twinkle in his eye. “You have my number, call me anytime you need, and I’ll let Dex know you’ll talk to him this week.” He opens my car door and ruffles my hair while I slide behind the wheel. Closing the door, he knocks on the hood to tell me to go, and he stays on the sidewalk, waving at me with a smile on his face. It’s only then that I remember rule number five: Being in any relationship with Barnabas, means accepting the Gritt family and their shenanigans. There is no escaping family supper tonight. I just hope they won’t invite my mother as well. She’ll wet her panties sitting between Barn and Ridge and embarrass me with stories of the old times, or worse, disclose to whoever wants to hear what she told me many times, Barnabas was the right man for me. This relationship might make her the happiest she has been in twenty years. To tell her it’s fake would break her heart all over again, the same way it did when Dad died, Lou left, or when she heard Noah was already married to another woman. What’s a little lie between mother and daughter if it’s just to see her smile?
8
Barnabas
“Sit, sit,” my mother says when Avery, Lex, and I enter the main house. “I’m so glad you’re here.” Lex runs to the craft corner my mother keeps for when little girls are around. Avery uses it a lot for weddings, but in the meantime, it’s Lex’s kingdom of glitter. Everybody is late as usual, even my dad isn’t around yet, but everything is ready.
“Mom, I could have set the table.”
“I know.” She shrugs. She doesn’t do much since she and my dad retired and I transformed the farm into a more tourist-y attraction. She wants to travel, but my dad is a peculiar one. He likes to stay at the farm, checking on the land that mostly doesn’t belong to him anymore. Some years ago, they shared it between the four of us kids. Luke sold his share to Aaron so he could open his first parlor in Los Angeles. Aaron has his house and his restaurant on half the land. Salomé and Chris are building a house on theirs. And now that Luke is back here, I sold my part to him so I would have some capital for the adventure camp I’m running on the last piece of land my parents own. Luke is now building a house there too, even if he continues living thirty minutes away. He doesn’t want to be too close to the family yet, he says. I don’t get it, but to each their own. I bought my parent’s barn and live in it. It was my way to move out but stay close. The dream was to raise my kids in the house I grew up in. Of course, my parents could have stayed there with my wife and me until they died. I would have never chased them away from the house they built. But as fate decided otherwise, I took the barn. Maybe I’ll turn the house into a bed and breakfast one day, if I can afford to do so.
I count the number of plates. Thirteen. I know my nephew Adam and my niece Hailey aren’t in town. With my siblings, their significant others, my nephew Lawson, my parents, Avery, Lex, and I, we should be twelve.
“Who’s the thirteenth plate for?” I ask while kissing my mother on the top of her head. She’s so little. My brothers and I like to pick her up and leave her somewhere else in the house. It’s something Luke and Aaron used to do as teenagers. As I was growing, I tried for years to do it but failed every time. And finally, when I was fifteen, I was tall and strong enough. I haven’t stopped since that day.
“Marybeth, of course, we’re so glad you two are finally together.”
“Oh God,” Avery gasps next to me. I raise an eyebrow to inquire what’s the matter, but she shakes her head dismissively. Ain’t gonna work this time, darling. When I want to know something, I generally do.
“Ma, can you keep an eye on Lex for a minute? Avery and I need to discuss something upstairs.” My mother giggles behind us, unquestionably thinking I’m about to fuck my fake-girlfriend before supper, but I ignore her and take Avery’s hand to drag her to the second floor.
Once in the privacy of my childhood bedroom, I sit her on the bed and wait for her to explain why she closed off when she heard her mother was coming tonight. I’m not ashamed to say that this is the first time I really looked at Avery since we’ve been adults. Did I beat off to her imaginary ass when I was a teenager? Absolutely. She wasn’t my go-to fantasy, but she was still a girl, and her Virgin Mary look made her appealing in a very forbidden way. As a woman, Avery is beautiful. She has skin as pale as sugar with the hardship of misery surrounding her eyes. I don’t care much for the color of her eyes, they can be sky or ocean blue, for all I know, it doesn’t matter to me. What matters is their lack of intensity, their sadness, and absence of joy I can see in them. I like them when I see blue-love when she looks at her daughter or blue-irritation when she looks at me. I love seeing them blue-feeling, more than the void I have seen in the past years. I want her to be alive and stop being the shadow of herself. And right now, the shadow is back, and I can’t let this happen to my fake-girlfriend.
“Go on, darling, what’s bothering you?”
“This is so embarrassing, Barn.” Her cheeks flush, and my dick twitches at the sight. If I ever fuck her, I have to remember that her embarrassment is a big turn on. She’s looking at the floor, avoiding eye contact, and my dick awakens entirely thinking of the submission game I could play with her. She starts to pull at her hair, and I imagine my hand replacing hers, tugging a little while I get her ready to suck me off.
“Speak,” I say in a commanding voice. I need to bite my lip to suppress a grunt when I see her squirming on the bed. It seems stuck-up Ave has a submissive streak somewhere in her. If she needs, I can dominate her in bed, against a wall or anywhere I could fuck her. If only I was sure she liked it a little rough. I compile what I know about Avery’s sexual experience. When you grow up in a town like Springs Falls, everybody knows almost everything about you. Some think she lost her virginity to Jake when they dated in high school, and others think she was still a virgin when she met Noah. She would have been thirty though. I’m not sure how I feel about it. In a town where my friends and I lost our V-card faster than the icecap is melting, how could Avery Dubois’ sex life be a mystery.
“It’s ridiculous, really.” She shakes her head, eyes still down. I don’t like that. I want to tell her that nothing she feels is ever ridiculous. I want her to know she can tell me anything and everything, and I will never make fun of her vulnerability. If I make fun of the stick she has in her ass, it’s mainly because I want to replace it with my cock. At least, right now, that’s what I want.
“Don’t make me repeat myself, Ave.” My voice is deeper than usual. “Look at me and tell me what’s bothering you.” I shove my hands in my pockets to reposition my dick slightly. When her eyes finally meet mine, they are blue-desire, and her blush has crept all over her neck. She parts her lips slightly, and it takes all the self-control that I have left to not unzip my pants and shove my cock in her mouth. I know what I’m jerking off to tonight. That Avery is really arousing.
“My mother hoped for years you and I would end up together.”
“Smart woman.” I tease, but Avery is not in the mood for jokes.
“I was hoping to wait a little before telling her, you know, not to have to lie to her,” she continues, her chin shivering.
I step closer to her and try to keep check of my desire. For once, since she’s opening up to me, I won’t ruin it by making a move. She needs to trust me before taking my dick.
“We can tell her the truth if you want, Ave. It’s not a big deal if our families know.”
“I can’t.” Her voice fills with tears. “She’s going to be so happy that we’re together, that I finally found who she thinks is a good man to take care of Alexis and me. I can’t tell her it’s fake, Barn. It will break her heart.” A tear falls from her eye, and I wipe it with my thumb before bringing it to my mouth. I imagine her cunt tasting the same, bitter and salty, with a slight pinch of regret.
“You know it’s not your job to make your mother happy, right?” She closes her eyes and take
s in a deep breath.
“Well, I’ve been doing it for twenty years, Barn, I can’t just stop now that I have a fake-boyfriend.” She tries to smile, but it falls flat.
“Come here.” I curve my hand around her neck and make her stand. Pressing her against me, my erection nuzzles against her stomach. I never thought a chaste kiss would make me crave her. I can’t even blame it on the lack of pussy as I fucked one this morning. Avery Dubois is doing something to my dick. And just like that, I grow harder, and from the way she’s breathing me in, she’s not that indifferent to me either. Her scent of desire comes to flirt with my nostrils, and I close my eyes, imagining her glistening pussy soaking her underwear.
“What in that conversation made you hard?” she says, acknowledging my shaft poking at her.
“The same thing that made you wet, darling,” I whisper into her ear. She starts to protest, but I stop her by pinching her mouth. She whines against my fingers, and I let go of her lips, my middle finger caressing where it hurt. I can’t stop imagining biting her and hearing her complaints between moans. Our relationship became a hundred shades of fucked-up in the last fifteen minutes.
“Don’t lie to me, Ave. I can smell wet panties from across any room.”
She pushes me hard, and I smile at her reaction. She’s as conflicted by her desire as I am with mine. I want to fuck her, to hurt her, to soothe her all at once. I want to take her on all fours, spank her ass, and choke her a little. I want her to gag on my dick, squeeze my piercing, and pinch my nipples. I give myself a week before insanity takes over, especially with that stupid rule not to fuck anybody we know. I need a trip to New York City to bang a stranger and get over this temporal longing.
“You’re such a pig, Barn,” she says in disgust. I wet my lips and wiggle my eyebrow, trying to keep things light between us.