Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
CONRAD
Two things compete for my attention—my wife, moaning with each bite of steak, seated beside me at one of the picnic tables; and my nephew, laughing as he chases Mom’s corgi around and around the new playground set Mom and Dad installed recently.
My heartstrings tug at the thought of watching my future children playing in this yard.
Merlin would never tolerate them running after him, though.
In fact, he’d be the one doing the chasing.
I laugh to myself at the mental image, though it quickly fizzles out when I remember that Merlin won’t be in the picture if I ever am blessed enough to have children.
I sneak a peek at Mirabeth, wondering what her children will look like, my thoughts turning sour as I imagine what kind of man she would actually want to be with, once I’m out of her way.
“He looks just like Andrew, doesn’t he?” Brad asks from across the table and chuckles, smiling from ear to ear as he watches his son play. “He’s a little terror, too, like his uncle, when he wants to be.”
“He is not. He’s an angel,” Alisa says, speaking for the first time since she and Brad joined us at the table. She stares at her plate as she cuts her chicken into smaller and smaller pieces, not really eating anything.
Brad gives her a come on, now look, disagreeing, and leans back in his metal folding chair.
“Why’d you name him Drew?” Mirabeth asks, cleaning some of the juice from the corner of her lips with the cloth napkin she has tucked into the front of her dress like a bib.
“After our younger brother,” Brad says, cutting his eyes to me and quickly away. “Hasn’t Conrad mentioned him yet?”
“Yeah. He also mentioned that he told you he wanted to name his first son after Andrew, which is why I want to know why you named your son Drew.”
I squeeze her left thigh under the table, surprised by the fierceness in her voice on my behalf.
Alisa looks back and forth between her husband and me. “I didn’t know that.”
Brad laughs instead of getting defensive, trying to ease the tension. “First come, first served. No hard feelings, I hope,” he says to me.
I clench my jaw to keep from unloading on him. Yelling won’t turn back time and have him pick a different name for his son.
“Seems kinda like a dick move, though,” Mirabeth says.
Brad sputters loud enough that Mom looks up from her seat beside Dad at the farthest table across the patio.
It seems Mirabeth isn’t done yet when she waves her sharp steak knife in the air, motioning to Alisa and Brad. “How long after Conrad went to prison did you two hook up? Probably not long, considering Drew’s age.”
“It’s ok,” I whisper, even though it’s not. I squeeze her thigh once more, hoping she’ll drop this line of questioning to keep the peace, though, in truth, I’d like to know the answer.
“What? I’m just making conversation with my new in-laws,” she says innocently, stabbing her steak. “We should get to know each other since we’re going to be family for the next three years.”
A rock sinks in my gut. Right. Three years. I need to remember that.
The color has drained from Alisa’s face when I look up, and she excuses herself from the table, claiming she heard Drew call for her. He hadn’t.
Brad’s smile is strained when he shrugs, “What does it matter? Conrad fumbled the ball. Figured I’d finally shoot my shot.”
“The hell does ‘finally’ mean?” I ask, careful not to raise my voice so I don’t upset Mom, who is still watching us, and Mirabeth lays her hand atop mine.
Brad chuckles, though it’s forced. “Come on. A woman as sweet and beautiful as her? She had a line of guys waiting out the door behind you, and you know it. Same as this one.” He winks at Mirabeth, and I want to pluck his eye right out of the socket.
“Better watch your back in three years. First come, first served,” he says again.
I’m going to etch that into his gravestone as soon as I put him in the ground. It’ll be over my dead body that he “shoots his shot” with my wife. Him or anyone else. She’s mine.
Shit, shit. I have to stop thinking like that.
Mom and Mirabeth stand when I rise, and Mirabeth grabs the back of my T-shirt to stop me from rounding the table.
“Hey, Brad? Eat shit,” Mirabeth says quietly, throwing down her napkin. She shoves me ahead of her across the yard and around the right side of the house. As soon as we’re out of view, she suddenly doubles over, her whole body quaking so hard I’m afraid she’s going to lose her footing and collapse.
“Whoa, are you ok?” I ask, hoisting her up against me, my voice even deeper than normal.
“I’ve never talked to anyone like that before,” she says with choppy breaths. “I’m going to puke.”
I hug her close and stroke her hair, my fingers snagging on the tangles after all her writhing in bed. “You’re not going to puke.”
“I wanna,” she says, wrapping her arms tight around my back, her body vibrating with anxious adrenaline. She asks in a small voice, “Do you still have feelings for Alisa?”
“Not even a little bit,” I tell her truthfully. “Anything I felt toward her died the minute I found out she started dating Brad.”
“Really?” She tips her head back. Even in her heels, her chin rests between my pecs. “‘Cause it kinda looked like you wanted to murder your brother.”
With Mirabeth looking up at me, right into my eyes, it doesn’t feel like I met her just yesterday. If anything, I feel closer to her than I did to Alisa, even though Alisa and I lived together for the last year of our three-year-long relationship.
“Yeah, but not because of Alisa. Because of him. Exes are supposed to be off limits to family. But I’m more pissed that he took Andrew’s name, even though those two weren’t nearly as close.” And also for so much as looking at Mirabeth, though I don’t say that.
“So he wouldn’t have gone to prison for Andrew?”
“Doubt it. He loved Andrew, but never once sat with him during any of his treatments like Bridget and I did. Said it was too hard on him.”
“That’s really messed up.”
“Tell me about it.” It’s like we’re the only two people in the world when I palm the nape of Mirabeth’s slender neck and drop my chin, her lips so inviting.
“You two are just the cutest! Smile and say ‘newlyweds’,” Mom says from the side, holding her phone up, squinting as she taps around on the screen.
“Oh shoot, my finger was in the way. Try again.” And so it goes that we end up having an impromptu photo shoot, Mom directing us to turn this way and that.
She goes so far as to pluck a bouquet of yellow roses from a nearby bush for Mirabeth to hold, snapping pictures until she has enough without her finger blurring them to fill a wedding album.
“Wanna get out of here?” Mirabeth asks while I drag my feet back toward the crowd once we’ve patiently explained to Mom how to send a photo via text.
“Hell yeah, I do,” I say with relief. “Love you, Mom. Thanks for the party,” I shout over my shoulder, sweeping Mirabeth up into the cradle of my arms. “Call you soon!”
Mirabeth whoops and laughs as I jog back down the strip of grass on the side to the wooden gate before Mom can ask me to stay, and then I hightail it down the street to the Beetle.
I’ve had more fun with Mirabeth in the past two days than I did in the five and a half years since Andrew first got his diagnosis, and I press a big, fat kiss to Mirabeth’s cheek before I drop her in the passenger seat.
“Where to, princess?” I ask, pushing her hair behind her ear, toying with her dangling, faux-diamond earring. Maybe one day I’ll be able to afford to give her real diamonds. She certainly deserves them after all she’s done for me in such a short amount of time.
“Home. I need a nap after that steak,” she says, rubbing her stomach, resting her bouquet on her lap.
“Coming right up,” I say, sneaking in a little pat on her lower belly before I lope around the car and head home, driving a whole three miles per hour above the speed limit.
“How’d it go?” I ask Mirabeth from where I’m lying on the bed, petting Merlin, when she arrives home from her doctor’s appointment.
I wanted to go with her, but she said that would be weird since she was due for her annual exam, whatever that entails.
I was kind of hoping to find out, which she said was even weirder.
She hangs her purse on the hook I attached to the wall beside the front door and kicks off her sandals, lining them up with the rest of our shoes with an eye roll after I raise a brow.
“Got it,” she says, holding up a small lunch sack-type bag with her new birth control prescription, then jumping onto the bed to lie beside me.
It’s a good thing she did, since we had another close call two nights ago when I had her on her back on the drafting table…
and also last night, when I slipped into her from behind while she was taking off her makeup, having propped her right knee on the vanity.
Her poor pussy has taken a beating over the course of our nine days of wedded bliss, but she hasn’t complained…
much. And now I won’t have to pull out to finish cumming on her stomach or ass any longer.
Although…I might from time to time, if only to rub it into her skin, which I’ve funnily enough come to anticipate.
I roll over on top of Mirabeth and flip her sexy pleated skirt up that she let me pick out for her this morning.
I wiggle until she spreads her legs for me, grinding my growing erection against her panties.
“You know what this means? I can cum deep, deep, deep inside you,” I say, pushing her white T-shirt up to nuzzle my nose between her breasts.
Her tits are just the right size for my palms, her cute nipples already budding in her nude bra.
I lightly nip one, giving it a little lick through the fabric.
When I try to unhook her bra, though, she pushes me away and says with a little giggle, “Hold your horses, mister. It doesn’t work that fast.”