AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Theo muttered. “The him knowing me part.”
“Thee, I told you how it went Wednesday.”
“Him being cool, and him being cool with us doing each other are different things.”
Yves didn’t know what to say to that.
Then he figured it out. “He doesn’t know specifics.”
“He’s still going to know we’re doing each other.”
“I haven’t told them I’ve gone there. Just that I’m gay.”
“Your mom will convince herself you’re a virgin until the day she dies. You told me she’s in denial about Sah.”
“I didn’t say denial, I said she refuses to talk about it, and it takes her at least ten minutes to look any of his girlfriends in the eye.”
“Denial.”
Yves smiled again.
“Your dad, though. You told me he told you when he gave you the sex talk that he’d lost his virginity at sixteen and he understood the sex-on-the-brain thing. Just be smart about the sex-on-the-brain thing. So he gets it, he’s a guy, he’s been our age, which means he’ll totally know we’re fucking.”
“Shit,” Yves muttered. Theo was totally right.
“Tell them about me and then text me if it’s cool to come over, okay?” Theo said.
“I don’t want it not to be cool,” Yves admitted.
“You want to force their play so they’ve got no choice but to play it cool with me when you gauged shit wrong the last time and hurt your dad’s feelings. Don’t do that again, babe. I think you learned benefit of the doubt is the way to play this.”
“But you don’t think he’ll be cool with you?” Yves asked.
“What I think is, it’ll be a shock to him, and you need to give him a beat to come to terms with that before I’m in his space.”
Yves saw the wisdom of this, so he said, “Okay, you’re good with being standby until I text you?”
“Fuck yeah. I can’t wait to try these crab cakes.”
And again, Yves smiled.
CHAPTER 7
Yea
Wyn
“I’m a yea,” Kara stated, leaning into her island with her martini glass coasting over a plate of brie and thinly sliced apples.
Not a surprise, as Kara was my take-no-prisoners, eat-no-shit girl.
She was also petite, red-haired, wore glasses, had two children in their late teens who were more intelligent than our collective group, and thus they scared me, even as I adored them. She was also so good at makeup, a couple of times when our artists let us down and didn’t show up, in a pinch, she had shown up, and done a beautiful job.
Her full-time gig was as a pediatrician, though.
“I don’t know. I say nay and a meeting,” Bernice stated, sitting back, one arm wrapped around her middle, the other one holding up her martini glass.
Not a surprise, as Bernice was my heart-of-gold girl.
She was also delicately boned, dark-skinned, had a mass of fabulous braids knotted up in killer ways I took note of, because I wanted some of our models with that style for a future List and I was going to need to talk to her stylist. She had two boys who were the light of all of our lives, and she’d met her husband Cornell in a very traditional way: he was a pilot, she had been a flight attendant.
Since then, they’d made babies and she’d made a move that kept her close to home.
She was now air traffic control.
“I’m the newbie, I abstain,” Noel put in.
That night, Noel had been there when I got there, and he explained his presence by saying, “I’ve waited six years for a seat at this table to open, I wasn’t missing my chance.”
He was, of course, the perfect addition.
But now the vote of whether to oust Bea by just ghosting her (Kara’s “yea”) or to see if we could work on current issues by sitting her down and talking about why she was so negative all the time (Bernice’s “nay and a meeting”) was down to me.
“You know, I have to say, as much as it makes me sound like a bitch, I’ve been going through the motions with her for a long time,” Kara said. “Having her around, calling her for Cock and Snacktails, inviting her to things was just habit. But in thinking on it these past few days, when she is around, I try to avoid her.”
“She’s a good soul,” Bernice said.
“She is?” Noel asked.
It was, as we were showing, arguable.
But in some senses, she was.
This was why I piped up.
“Once, when Remy was in Houston visiting a site, I got sick. Weather flared up there and he couldn’t get back. The kids were little, I’d had all three by then, and I had a really bad flu. Like, nearly delirious, pass-out-and-lose-three-days flu where you just sweated out a fever and hoped. After waiting for a flight to be cleared for takeoff, giving up, renting a car and driving, it took Remy thirty-six hours to get home. In the meantime, Bea came over, took care of the kids and me, and she was there the whole time.”
