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“Early enough for a quickie.” His teeth found my earlobe, and I gave him a firm push.
“What time is it?” I repeated, sterner this time.
With a sigh, Neil rolled off me and reached for his phone. He disconnected the charger and blinked at the screen. “Ten.”
“Then, it’s not early enough for a quickie.” I sat up and tried to run a hand through my hair, but thought better of it when my fingers tangled in the hairspray-bound strands. The last thing I needed on top of everything else was split ends. “Church gets over at noon, and they’ll be expecting to see us at the house when they get back.”
He groaned and reached for me as I pushed back the covers, but I evaded him.
“We could be having wake-up sex,” he protested. “We never have wake-up sex, anymore.”
“I promise there will be other opportunities.” I reached for my bathrobe; even in June, the mornings could be chilly. “You’re going to have to be happy with wake-up masturbation.”
While I would usually stay and watch, I headed to the shower, instead. It wasn’t just that I needed time to get ready. My head was still spinning from the night before. We were about to go to my grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner. Extended family would be there for our visit. And everyone would ask me how the reunion was. Sure, I had the “I got sick” excuse I could use, but it wasn’t the answer I was dreading. It was the question.
Sleep had done nothing to solve my problem. Rather than using my unconscious time to sort through my complex feelings, my stupid brain had opted instead to make me dream about having a birthday sleepover with Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. I had no more insight now than when I’d cried myself to sleep last night.
The water was nice and hot, though the pressure wasn’t what I was used to. Once I’d become accustomed to a multi-head shower blasting me with water from every conceivable direction, I’d been ruined for all other shower experiences. But I could get clean and lose myself in the sound of the water hitting the plastic tub surround. I probably wouldn’t get a chance to be this mindless for the rest of the day.
Maybe I should have had quickie morning sex, after all. It would have given me a few minutes without anything on my mind.
I was shampooing my hair when the bathroom door opened and Neil stepped inside. Over the sound of the shower, I heard him say, “I needed that.”
I smiled to myself as I rinsed my hair. “Well, I’m glad one of us is relaxed.”
“I didn’t say I was relaxed. How many people are going to be there this afternoon?”
“No telling. But not as many as Christmas. I’m assuming it’ll be Aunt Marie and her kids, at least. Maybe Uncle Doug, if he’s back from Arizona.” My great-uncle and great-aunt did the snowbird thing, way out in the desert. They said it was good for their arthritis, but Mom said they were actually staying winters in a nudist colony. I couldn’t even look them in the eye after that revelation.
“I don’t remember anyone’s names,” Neil complained. “Usually, I’m so good with names.”
“No one will care. We know we’re overwhelming,” I promised him. “I’m just not looking forward to telling Mom about the whole—”
“Right,” Neil cut me off, so I wouldn’t have to say it. “Have you made any decisions on that?”
“Yeah, actually. I have.” I took a deep breath. “I’m not going to mention it to Mom until we’re back in New York. We’re not here for much longer, and I don’t want to spoil the rest of her visit. And I don’t want to have to explain things over and over to the whole family and get everyone’s input. I need extra time to think about all of this.”
“That is completely fair,” Neil agreed. “And have you spoken with your mother about the trip to Las Vegas?”
Oh, shoot. “I can’t believe I forgot.”
“So, the plan is to wake her up, throw a black bag over her head, wrestle her into a van, and drive her to the airport?” he teased. “It’s a gift, Sophie, not a prison sentence. But she’s going to need to know about it, soon.”
In a few weeks, our lover, El-Mudad, would be coming for an extended visit. We’d timed everything out perfectly; Olivia would be with Valerie as per the shared custody arrangement we’d set up together. The only wildcard was my mother and her boyfriend living in our guesthouse.
Tony already knew that Neil and I were unconventional people. He’d been our driver in New York before he’d started dating Mom, and I cringed whenever I remembered the number of times Neil and I had gotten dirty in the backseat. But to my knowledge, Tony had never told my mom any of that stuff, thank god.
