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asked, “How can you be so certain?”
Brianna looked at him with her brown eyes shining with her excitement about the memory. “They don’t get that many women as hot as or hotter than the strippers getting lap dances.”
One of the twins made a small sound that made Brianna look at them, which made me follow her gaze. The twins were bouncing in their seats. The twin in yellow was waving her arms excitedly, and the other twin was listening very seriously. Were personalities set that quickly? Did we come into the world already so formed, so us?
Brianna unwound her legs and turned at the waist to take a coaster out of the small container of them on the side table. She set her soda down carefully on it and then got off the couch. How could someone careful enough to use coasters let the floor get this messy? She picked up some small toys off the floor and put them on the babies’ trays. The Cheerios had long since vanished. The twins seemed happy with the toys, staring at them as if they were brand-new and awesome. I guess when you’re that young, every day is Christmas, because there are so many new things to see, touch, do.
Coming back to the couch, Brianna stepped on a toy and cursed, then looked guiltily at the babies, who were ignoring us, focused instead on the new toys. “The living room doesn’t usually look like this. Promise. But Daryl, my husband, and I thought maybe if our families see how much they’ve bought the girls, they’ll stop. The twins are the first grandchildren on either side of the family, and both sets of grandparents have gone crazy buying things for them. We’re just out of space.”
She was suddenly worried and anxious and not at all the sparkling, excited woman of a few moments before. Did having kids always do that to people, make them less of who they were and turn them into parents? Did you have to give up what made your eyes light up to have kids? Surely it didn’t have to be that way, or I hoped not.
“It is good to know that this is not typical for you,” Olaf said, his deep voice as serious as his tone.
Brianna smiled in his direction, but her attention was still on the babies and the mess. She picked up her can of soda and curled back up on the end of the couch, but before, her posture had been effortless and sexy. Now it was more like she was huddling around herself. She sipped the soda and looked at us, but the look on her face said she wasn’t really seeing us. Whatever was in her head at that moment wasn’t happy.
I finally prompted her with “So you, Jocelyn, and Marcy Myers all paid for lap dances.”
Brianna focused on me, but it was like her internal dialogue was having trouble catching up with the conversation. What had just happened to make her go so serious? I had missed something. I’d ask Olaf and Nicky later, but if I didn’t understand a woman’s reaction, I doubted they would be much help.
“Yes, yes”—she gave a tentative smile—“it was so fun to watch Jocelyn with the dancers.”
The light started to return to her eyes. She sipped the soda like it tasted better than I knew it did, or maybe that was just my opinion. Maybe she actually liked it. I felt the same way about most alcoholic drinks, too, so maybe I wasn’t a good judge. One friend who liked both diet soda and alcohol suggested that I’d drunk so much coffee that it had ruined my taste buds for anything else. Maybe, or maybe coffee was just yummy.
“Why was it so much fun to watch Jocelyn?” I asked, because the only other thing I could think to ask was if she liked to watch, but that sounded like flirting or like I’d learn things about Brianna that I didn’t really need to know.
“She likes attention. It brings out something in her that is . . . I don’t know how to explain it, but she puts on a show. She knew one of the dancers well enough that they had planned to have her up onstage. It was so hot.”
The last sentence brought back her earlier happy energy. Her face and eyes were alight with the memory of watching her friend onstage. It made me wonder if she and Jocelyn were friends with benefits or at least something more than just friends.
“It must have been a real moneymaker for the dancer,” I said.
Brianna nodded happily and gave that little wiggle again like a happy, sexy puppy. I didn’t think I had a wiggle in me like that, but one of my sweeties did. He was both a serious voyeur and an exhibitionist. I’m not saying the wiggle meant all that, but some of her mannerisms made me think of Nathaniel, and I knew what he liked. If Brianna was anywhere close to him in her preferences, I wasn’t sure how well being a straight, suburban, married mom was going to fit her. Of course, maybe she and her husband were practicing some form of consensual nonmonogamy. It was more common than I used to think before I joined the nontraditional crowd. But I didn’t ask Brianna if she was nonmonogamous, because some people found it insulting, and others took it as flirting. I didn’t mean either.
“The men just ate it up, seeing two hot women together onstage, and one of them being a customer . . .” She sighed and did that little wiggle movement again.
“It was probably the closest that most men will ever get to the fantasy of having two women at once,” I said.
“Most men don’t know what to do with one woman in bed, let alone two,” Brianna said, and then she caught herself. She looked startled, even embarrassed, at the men. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t aimed at either of you, just my dating history.”
She rolled her eyes and looked at me. I feared she was going to try for a moment of girl bonding that might not work with me. I was trying to think what to say to stop her from attempting to get me to admit to something that wasn’t true for me, but Nicky stepped in and took the heat off of me.
“You dated the wrong men,” he said, and he gave her that flirting smile that could make strange women blush. He was still wearing the sunglasses to hide his eye, so it was a very movie star moment.
Olaf surprised me by adding, “Do not judge us all by the failures of a few.”
Brianna laughed, and I couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or pleased. “Maybe. Where were you before I married and settled down?”
“Dating all the wrong people,” Nicky said.
“Perhaps I, like you, was chasing the wrong people,” Olaf said.
Brianna swallowed and seemed to catch her breath for a moment. “I didn’t chase my husband. He chased me.” Her words were good; she’d reminded them she was married and desirable enough to pursue.
“But you allowed him to catch you,” Olaf said, his voice lower, almost husky. Was he doing the voice thing on purpose?
“Yes, but don’t tell my husband that. It makes him feel good to think he seduced me.” She gave a nervous little laugh at the end, though I wasn’t exactly sure why.
“You lured him in with your beauty,” Olaf said in that deep growling voice.
