25. Spencer
25
SPENCER
It didn’t take a lot of thought to figure out a natural way for Lyss and Flynn to get to know each other better. He was an incredibly talented wood worker. She was a bright engineer. And we had a beloved next-door neighbor who was stuck in a glorified nursing home because her house wasn’t wheelchair ready.
Therefore, Flynn and Alyssa got to work. Rafe gave them a key, and they spent hours over at Nana’s place. At first, they said their work consisted of mostly decluttering, but after that, they began to make plans. Alyssa drew up a blueprint like she had for the twins’ fantastic treehouse. There were doorframes that needed to be widened, floors that went uphill, and more.
The biggest problem, they told me one evening, was the front walk. Nana had a rickety old porch that had steep stairs. The geography of her yard didn’t lend itself well to a ramp, but they were determined to figure out a way.
The truly bizarre part is that Flynn and Alyssa seemed to work well together. They’d disagree, endlessly debate, and occasionally fight, but in the end, they’d come up with a good, solid plan. Then through the magic of his carpentry skills, Flynn got started on making it work.
Wednesday evening, after I’d tucked the twins in, I found Alyssa sitting on the sofa, engrossed in the book she’d been reading the kids. “You’re not supposed to read ahead, you know.”
An adorably guilty look crossed her face. “I just wanted to make sure there weren’t any scenes that would upset them…” she trailed off, and I gave her my best principal look. “All right, I was curious about what happens next.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.” I cleared my throat as I looked down at her. She had her good knee bent and hugged to her chest. The leg with the cast was resting on the coffee table. She had to be dying to bend her bad leg by now, but she rarely complained about the pain or discomfort. “I was wondering if you could join me out on the deck in a few minutes. I mean, join us.”
She smiled at my rephrasing. “I’d love to join you guys.” She shook off my helping hand and reached for her crutches. “I have to learn to do this by myself.”
That was true, and she’d been doing a great job, but the sofa was really low and deep. I didn’t see how she could get herself up without putting any pressure on her bad leg, but she did it with only one grimace of pain.
“Your ribs?”
“My everything. Next time, I’ll let you give me a hand—but only when I’m on the sofa.”
She crutched her way to the bathroom, saying that she’d join us in a minute.
Raphael, Flynn, and I waited on the deck, sipping beer and not talking too much. We’d already done that earlier when we made sure we were on the same page. Things were still a bit awkward between me and Flynn, but they were better than they were. And that was thanks to Alyssa, and the way she’d been straightforward and bold as hell.
Now it was our turn.
Once she was seated and had a cup of tea in front of her, I launched into our plan. “We’d like to go on a date with you.”
“All three of you?”
Flynn gave a short bark of laughter. “That’s the deal, right? All for one and one for all?”
Alyssa giggled. “I guess that’s one way of putting it.”
“We’d love to take you to a restaurant, but that’s not very practical,” I continued.
“But I’m doing much better with the crutches,” she protested. “It’s not like you’d have to carry me in there.”
“It’s not that,” Raphael said gently. “It’s Spencer.”
I didn’t love his choice of words, but I didn’t say anything. However, he knew me well—possibly better than Flynn did.
“What I mean is, it’s Spencer’s job. He’s the head of an elementary school. Any hint of impropriety could jeopardize his career.”
“Oh my god, I never thought of that.” Alyssa was clearly upset. “We can’t let you risk your job. Maybe this whole thing is a bad idea.”
“Not if we have the date here,” Flynn said.
“But still, if there’s even a chance?—”
Raphael put his hand on her arm. “The whole town already knows you’re staying here while you recover, so there’s no point in hiding from that. We just need to be careful not to do anything that attracts suspicion.”
“Which should be easy since, right now, you’re pretty much homebound,” I said.
She nodded, but she still looked torn. “So the date would be here?”
“Yes—Friday night. The twins are going to a sleepover.”
“They are?” Her eyes widened at the idea of us having the house to ourselves. “They’re both going?”
“Yep, it’s coed. That’s not all that uncommon at their age. They’re both friends with Tina, and her mom is one of my second-grade teachers. I trust her with the kids.”
“So… the house won’t have anyone under five feet tall present?”
“Nope. Just us.” Raphael grinned. “We can’t go to a restaurant, but we can still dress up and have a nice meal down here.”
“That sounds nice,” Alyssa said, but there was tension on her face. I wondered if what I planned to say next would relieve it or make it worse.
“Then… if you’d like to, we could take the date upstairs.”
Her jaw dropped. She knew damn well that I wasn’t talking about the small office up there. “Really?”
“Really.” Flynn took over. “If you’re ready for that. We figured it might be the best way to determine if this can work.”
I heard her gulp from across the table. It was a big step. “If you’d rather do something else after dinner, we could?—”
“No,” she said, her voice steady now. “I want to see if this can work, too.”
“Are you sure, cher?” Raphael asked.
“I’m sure.”
“Then it’s a date,” I said.
We chatted a little more after that, but Alyssa soon excused herself, saying she was tired.
That was a valid excuse. Even though her ribs were better, using the crutches took a lot out of her. The full-leg cast was hard to maneuver, and it threw her balance off.
But something told me that wasn’t the only reason she headed back to her room. I was both a father and a principal. I was used to people not telling me the whole truth.
If I were a betting man, I’d bet that right now, she was in her room texting her friend Kylie. Whether out of excitement, fear, or just a desire for advice, I didn’t know, but I was pretty sure that’s what she was doing.
I didn’t share my theory with the others, though. We finished our beers in silence until Raphael spoke up. “Are we rushing her?”
“Yes,” Flynn said. “But we’ve all done things individually with her. We know we’re good one-on-one. What we don’t know is if we’re good as a group.”
That was true, but it didn’t sit quite right with me. “Don’t say group, that makes it sound like we’re aiming for an orgy or something.”
“Foursome?” Flynn said.
“Too clinical.”
“Family?” Raphael suggested. The three of us were family, and Lyss was already starting to feel like part of it, but that seemed too… something. I didn’t want to lump the words family and sex in the same sentence.
“Team. We’re a team.”
“That works,” Raphael said, and Flynn nodded.
“So let’s go over some ground rules for Friday.”
“This isn’t something you make a lesson plan for,” Flynn said.
“Maybe it should be. It’s not like there’s an instruction manual for this kind of thing.”
Flynn looked at me like I was the dumbest person on earth. “Have you ever even heard of the internet before?”
Yeah, right. Like I was going to find a gangbang online and use that to learn how to treat a sweetheart like Lyss. “I just mean, this is new to all of us. We should be on the same page.”
Raphael and Flynn exchanged glances that I couldn’t interpret. “What?”
“It’s not completely new,” Raphael said.
“What do you mean?”
“He means he’s had a threesome,” Flynn growled. “I have too, with two women.”
Even though Flynn had dated pretty heavily for years while I was raising my kids, that surprised me. “With who?”
“Lauren and her friend Liz, a few years ago.”
“Oh, crap,” Raphael said.
“What?” Flynn asked. “Who was yours with?”
“Lauren and her friend Marissa, back in high school.”
I scowled. “Maybe Lauren should write the lesson plan.”
Raphael waved off my suggestion, even though he had to know it wasn’t serious. “It doesn’t matter who did what in the past. This is a new situation. A unique situation.
“And I can tell you the lesson plan right now: we each focus a hundred and ten percent on Alyssa. Our only goal is her pleasure. Everything we do, we do for her.”
“Isn’t that a song lyric?” Flynn asked. “But yeah, that’s a good plan.”
“Are you going to be okay with this?” I asked Raphael. “Seeing me with her, I mean?”
He nodded and gave a small smile. “Sure. As you said, we focus completely on her. I won’t even know you’re in the room.”
He knew as well as I did that it didn’t work like that, but as long as he was game, I’d trust him to let me know if it was too much.
“We can’t just focus on her pleasure, though,” Raphael said.
“The hell we can't,” Flynn snapped.
“I just meant, we’ve got to be extra careful of her leg. That’s our absolute top priority—making sure we don’t hurt it.”
“Right,” I agreed. “The doctor could possibly deem her ready for a smaller cast at her next appointment. We don’t want to do anything to mess that up.”
“So we won’t.” Flynn drained the last drops of his beer and set the bottle down. “We good?”
“Yes,” I said, and Raphael nodded.
“Then I guess I’ll see you on date night.” He chuckled as he jogged down the deck stairs and disappeared into the night.
I looked back to find Raphael staring at me with a crooked smile. “That had to be the strangest family council ever,” he said.
“Yep.”
“Although Friday night might be so awkward that it makes tonight look tame by comparison.”
“It could be. On the other hand, it might be awesome.”
“Here’s hoping,” my brother-in-law said.
Hope.
That was a pretty damn good thing to have.