Epilogue
Victoria
Things had never been simple between me and my family.
I hadn’t realized the full extent of it until Bridget opened my eyes—until one fateful move back home had put it all in perspective, a year ago now, which felt like just a few days and like a lifetime at the same time.
I’d always known family was a sore spot for me, but I just thought…
well. I thought it was like that for everyone.
Thought that the sinking dread, constantly walking on eggshells and hiding who I was—thought all of it was what family always looked like.
If it weren’t for Bridget, I think I’d have gone all my life existing in a halfway state between understanding and not.
But things had never been simple because there had always been these things, these little bits of joy, memories of laughing and of inside jokes and talking to them feeling like I wouldn’t be able to be that version of me with anyone else in the world.
And of course there had always been ideas of home, of simple comforts, and like here, now, gentle and relaxed Christmas dinners.
With our holiday tacos.
They had always been my comfort food. Sitting down at the table next to Bridget while they were served was like coming home, and I blissfully dug in. Bridget made a noise next to me, and she cleared her throat, coughing into her arm, and I looked over at her, my brows knotted in concern.
“Are you okay, darling?”
“Oh, yeah, just… just something on my plate. Hang on, I’m going to go wash it off in the sink.” She picked up the plate, taco and all, and Mom half-stood, reaching for it.
“I can take care of it, Bridget, sweetheart,” she said, and Bridget shook her head, eyes wide.
“Oh, no, no. I would never dream of interrupting your time with your favorite meal. Oh—Sam, I think you have it on your plate, too.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re right,” Sam said, across the table, frowning at his plate, picking at one point. I didn’t see anything there. “I’ll go with you.”
Kevin made a face at Sam as he stepped around him and headed for the kitchen, Bridget pausing to kiss my cheek as she left with the plate in hand, moving quicker than usual.
I wasn’t sure why the hurry… was it a bug on her plate or something?
I hadn’t seen anything, and neither had Kevin, judging by the look we exchanged, both shrugging.
But they at least got to enjoy the dinner anyway, because when they came back a minute later, they’d already polished off their plates in the kitchen, saying how they couldn’t help digging into their tacos while their plates were drying off.
“Do you want another?” I said once Bridget was sitting next to me again, gesturing to the platter of tacos, and she shook her head quickly.
“Oh, no, god, I can’t… couldn’t possibly eat another. They’re so filling.”
Sam nodded. “So filling. I think it’s all the protein from the… turkey…?”
Bridget nodded too, both of them bobbing their heads along. “Just going to sit here and digest a bit before dessert.”
Nan, sitting down the table a bit, chuckled. “Not often you’re turning down taco from Victoria, is it, Bridget?”
Bridget—who had gotten used to Nan’s, well, Nan-ness—just smiled tiredly at her.
Mom, on the other hand, stiffened and turned white along with half the family, who had—I was pretty sure they all knew by now what Bridget did for a living, but nobody ever talked to her about it, all pretending it wasn’t a thing.
Of course, that was with us having never sat all the adults at one table since then, and now here we all were, and Bridget’s attempts to brush off Nan probably weren’t enough, with, “We have had a lot of good food over the last year! Victoria and I are like proper foodies now.”
Nan nodded. “Oh, I’ll bet you’re getting the best food in town with that good smut money.”
Mom cleared her throat hard. “So, Victoria, Bridget, darlings, why don’t you tell us all about California? I know you told me and Kevin and Sam, but this is the first time most of us are hearing the details.”
It was a bold choice of topic change, given we’d taken that trip to Sacramento to meet Gina and her girlfriends.
Despite all of her insistence, Bridget and I did not join her for messy five-way sex, but we did, well…
have sex in the same room. One thing had led to another, and Evie had started fondling Gina in the middle of a conversation in their living room, and I could tell Bridget was getting turned on watching it, so I’d just…
helped her. And then she’d helped me. But I wasn’t inclined to tell Mom that part.
She’d clearly done some work to come around on Bridget’s job, but she still avoided talking about it.
“California was beautiful,” I said.
“The mountains are amazing,” Bridget added.
“Great hiking,” I said.
Grandpa chimed in. “California’s too expensive by far. Do I even want to know how much you spent on a hotel room?”
“Oh, we stayed in a friend’s extra bedroom,” Bridget said. Nan cut in.
“One of your porn star friends?”
Aunt Ines spat her drink back into her glass, muttering something about needing some more vodka. Bridget sighed. “Yep,” she said. “The one with a lesbian throuple who posts lots of videos.”
“Bridget, darling,” Mom said, her voice ashen.
“Oh, what’s a throuple?” Nan said. “That sounds exciting.”
Mom waved her off. “Don’t worry about it, Grandma.”
“It’s like a couple, but, you know, three,” Bridget said. “She has two girlfriends.”
Nan shot Mom a look. “Oh, you thought I couldn’t handle that, did you?”
“Let’s talk about something more appropriate,” Mom said.
My cousin Daniel finished drinking his third Old Fashioned and said, “Who’s this friend who posts lesbian threesome videos? Where’s she post them?”
“Daniel,” Mom said, at the same time Grandpa said it, and Aunt Ines got up to rummage in the liquor cabinet for the Grey Goose. Bridget beamed at him.
“I’ll send you her page. I’ll tell her she owes me a finder’s fee.”
“I hear they’re building new developments in Bolton,” Mom said, her voice a little louder than usual, changing the subject with the subtlety of a slap to the face, and this time it worked, the rest of the table going along with it.
It was a relief when the kids came around for the afternoon and we got to fully zip up the topic of Bridget’s job, and we had a normal Christmas—a Christmas as a family, where even though I still felt nervous sitting together with my mother and some of the other family members, I was starting to settle in.
Starting to feel like I was allowed to be here, like I didn’t have to stay constantly on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And I got to sit on the sofa with my arm wrapped around Bridget, the woman I was so unbelievably in love with pressed into my side, and I held her close and owned it for all to see.
Maybe it was a benefit of that Bridget made smut for a living.
The fact that I was dating a woman was buried and forgotten under the fact that I was dating someone who half the family still considered a porn star despite Bridget’s insistences that wasn’t the term for her, and nobody wanted to say the words porn star, so nobody confronted us about any aspects of our relationship.
And it had worked out for Kevin and Sam too, who were far from the most controversial couple in the family now.
Once Mom had learned about Bridget’s job and then gone to a reconciliation dinner with me and the two of them, it was clear Sam was no longer the biggest problem in her mind.
It helped that Uncle Rob and Grandpa liked him so much, and at this point, anybody who’d had issues had given up carrying them, and the kids loved Sam, too.
He was great with them—naturally a little bit on the flamboyant side, he dialed it up with the kids, and they all laughed and played along and told him they liked him much better than they did Kevin.
While Kevin was in earshot. Kevin took it well.
Once we’d finished opening presents—Bridget got me a thin silk scarf that was barely even pretending to not be about bondage, and I worked to keep a straight face—and we gathered together sharing stories and trading old jokes and banter late into the evening by the fireplace crackle and warm drinks, it was Grandpa who ended the evening, unceremoniously going upstairs to signal that he’d had enough conversation.
Kevin and Sam went with me and Bridget to the front doors after rounds of merry-Christmas wishes and goodbyes all around the family, and Kevin smiled softly at us on the front stoop as Sam stayed inside getting bundled up in the thirteen or fourteen layers he needed for the frost of the night that clung to my face when we got outside.
“Successful Christmas, I think,” he said, his breath forming little clouds that glistened in the porch light glow.
“I didn’t realize you had a mission to accomplish here,” I said, and he rolled his eyes, smiling wider.
“I always do, and it’s to survive. But mostly I’m impressed we had zero blowups over my boyfriend or your girlfriend.”
Bridget tossed her hair back over her shoulder. “I mean, of course they like me. What’s not to love? Except apparently for the fact that nobody knows what a porn star is.”
“Well, Nan’s on top of it,” Kevin said cheerily. I wrinkled my nose.
“I don’t want to know if Nan’s made progress trying to break into the industry.”
“How are you feeling?” he said. “You know, back from California.”
“Cold,” I laughed, but I softened knowing full well what he meant.
He always knew I’d wanted out, even if we never talked about it outright.
Even though I was so happy with Bridget, staying with her, being together with her, part of me had panicked that I was failing when I got in touch with Mark Castle again and took the job back in the old office.
If I was losing part of myself by signing up to stay here.