Chapter 43 Maeve
MAEVE
Aloha was still trying to break into the phone a week after Apex. We’d spent the first couple of days pacing the loft, like that would make it all happen sooner, but Aloha had warned us that there was no guarantee he could do it at all, and even if he could it would probably take a while.
So we’d gone back to our lives, Ethan Todd still in the background like a shadow we couldn’t shake.
I was relieved the next weekend when Olivia invited me along for a thrift trip to furnish her new room. She and my mom were going to make a day of it and after the conversation with Olivia about life after June, I was determined to be there when she wanted me around.
Still, I was nervous. I’d been avoiding my parents because I didn’t know how to talk to them about my new roommates, especially since they didn’t realize there was more than one of them.
I also knew I needed to talk to them about it, needed to be honest. I was too close to my family to think I could get away with never introducing them to the three men I was in love with, too close to my family to want to keep them separate.
I wanted the Butchers to be part of my life — my whole life — and that included my parents. I just didn’t know how to tell them the whole story without making them think I’d gone off the deep end.
Luckily Olivia kept up a steady stream of chatter through the first thrift store, and then through lunch.
I was more than happy to defer the conversation with my mom in favor of details about Olivia’s life, including her latest extracurricular, Debate Club, and a boy she’d been crushing on for the better part of a year who finally seemed to notice her.
It was nice to set aside thoughts about Ethan Todd, to remember when things were simple and all I’d had to think about was my next exam or my high school boyfriend.
After lunch we headed to another thrift store three towns over.
We’d bought a new dresser for Olivia at the last store, plus a bookcase and a full size mirror with a gold frame, all stuff that would have to be delivered.
Now Olivia wanted to pick up some smaller things to decorate the bookcase and the floating shelves she was keeping.
She took off as soon as we stepped inside the store, a cavernous warehouse-like space filled to the brim with furniture and metal shelves stacked with glassware, dishes, books, art, clothes, and pretty much anything else a person could hope to find.
My mom laughed. “And she’s off.”
“I bet we could go have a coffee, come back, and she wouldn’t even know we’d been gone,” I said.
“That’s a bet I wouldn’t take.”
We started down the first aisle, stacked with all kinds of glassware.
“Wow, this is a lot of stuff,” I said.
“At least it’ll be reused instead of ending up in a landfill.” My mom picked up a green glass vase. “This is pretty.”
I agreed. “You should get it.”
“I don’t need more stuff.”
“But if it makes you happy…”
I knew why my words hung in the air: it had been a long time since my mom was happy, and a pretty green vase wasn’t going to change it.
We rounded the corner into the next row of shelves, which were stacked with pottery.
“You’re going to have to tell us more about this man at some point, Maeve.” She picked up a rustic-looking plant pot. “It’s not right that you’re living with someone we’ve never met.”
“I know.” Some families might be that way — everyone living their own lives, lots of privacy — but we weren’t like that. We were friends. We told each other things, let each other into our lives.
Or we thought we did anyway. Before June and Chris.
My mom held onto the pot and we continued down the aisle. “So? Why haven’t you?”
“It’s complicated.”
She sighed. “I can’t do complicated, Maeve. I don’t think any of us can.”
She was thinking about June. About June’s relationship with Chris, which had deteriorated and turned violent and angry in the last year of June’s life.
“Not that kind of complicated. Just… complicated. I’m not sure you’ll understand.”
How was I supposed to tell her that I was living with — sleeping with — three guys at once? That it worked and we liked it that way and it wasn’t just a fling?
And how was I supposed to introduce her to the Butchers without scaring the shit out of her?
“Try me.”
“Promise you’ll hear me out?” I asked.
She frowned. “When have I ever not heard you out?”
Okay, fair. We didn’t always agree, but she’d always listened.
I took deep breath. “I’m not living with one guy, I’m living with three of them.”
“There are roommates?”
“Um… not exactly.” I licked my lips and tried again, my heart hammering in my chest. How could I be an adult in every other aspect of my life and suddenly feel like I was six years old having a difficult conversation with my mom? “I’m living with all of them. Like living living with them.”
She turned her gaze on me. “You’re sleeping with them, you mean.”
I hesitated, then nodded. “Among other things.”
“So it’s… polyamorous?”
I wasn’t surprised my mom knew about polyamory. She wasn’t that old. Plus, she was a professor. Her mind was young, and she was up on cultural and social shifts.
“Yes.” I didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified that it was finally out. “We’re all together and I didn’t know how you and Dad would take it, which is why I haven’t said anything.”
We came to a furniture grouping at the center of the store and my mom dropped onto a tapestry covered chair like the information had literally knocked her off her feet.
“Does Bailey know?”
I nodded. “She’s met them. She likes them.”
“Then why haven’t we met them?”
“I just… didn’t know what you’d think. I guess I still don’t.” It wasn’t just the fact that there were three of them. I imagined bringing Bram, Poe, and Remy home to my family, watching them fill my parents’ house with their hulking bodies.
“You obviously don’t think we’ll like them,” my mom said. “Shouldn’t that be a warning sign for you?”
My face heated with anger. “No, it should be a warning sign for you. I don’t think you’ll like them not because they aren’t good for me but because you won’t like the look of it. You won’t like the look of them.”
Now it was my mom’s turn to be mad. “You should know better, Maeve. We’re not going to judge anyone based on the way they look.”
She said that now, and she probably even meant it, but what would she say when she laid eyes on Bram? The rest of the world couldn’t even look at him. What about my parents, who’d lost a daughter to a rage-filled misogynist?
“You wouldn’t mean to, Mom. I know that. It’s just… they’re not like the guys I’ve dated before, and…”
“And?”
“I’m just not sure you’ll understand. I’m not sure dad will understand. And what about Simon and Olivia?”
Oh god… Simon and Olivia.
We wouldn’t talk about the sex part (obviously), but they would know. They would know I was fucking all three of the huge inked guys I brought home to mom and dad.
“Simon and Olivia aren’t babies,” my mom said. “And they’re certainly not an excuse for you to keep something so important from us. You’re living with them for god’s sake!”
A young mom with two toddlers in tow turned to look as my mom’s voice rose on the last sentence.
My mom took a deep breath. “Do you understand why we’d be concerned after… after…”
“After June,” I finished for her.
She nodded.
“I do, but I think the fact that you can hardly say her name is a bigger problem than the fact that I’m in love with three men at the same time.”
Her eyes widened, but I wasn’t sure which part shocked her more, my confession about being in love with the Butchers or the fact that I’d finally called her on her avoidance.
She pressed her lips together like she was fighting to keep herself from crying.
Or screaming.
“I say her name,” she said quietly. “I say her name all the time. You’re just not around to hear it.”
There was an accusation in her voice, one I deserved. “I know. And I’m sorry for that. I just… I needed to step away from it all for a while, at least at home. But I’m here now. I’m trying to fix it now. And Olivia and Simon need to talk about her. We all need to talk about her.”
Her eyes welled. “You have no idea how hard it is, Maeve. No idea.”
I wasn’t offended. June was my sister and it cut me to the bone that she was gone. But my parents had lost a daughter.
There was no loss like that kind of loss.
I reached for my mom’s hand. “I know. I mean, you’re right, I can’t know. Not really. But I get it, and I’m so sorry, Mom. I’m just so fucking sorry it happened, so fucking sorry we — you — lost her.”
Tears slipped from her eyes, and she pressed her free hand to her mouth to stifle a sob.
“But it doesn’t help not to talk about her,” I continued. “I know it seems like it does, but it doesn’t, because she’s always there anyway. Don’t you feel her?”
She was crying openly now but she nodded. “Every second of every day.”
I squeezed her hand. “I do too. I even hear her.”
Her face lit up through her tears. “You do?”
“All the time.” I laughed through my own tears. “She tells me exactly what she thinks. About everything.”
My mom choked on a laugh. “Sounds like June.”
I nodded. “Yeah, and the more she talks to me the more I realize she’s not gone. I mean, she’s gone. We can’t hug her and stuff. But I don’t know… I feel her everywhere, and I don’t want to forget her, Mom. I want to remember her. And I think we all need that.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right. June would want us to keep living. As for the rest…”
She was stopped mid-sentence by Olivia, rushing toward us with a blue-gray bundle in her hand. “Look! Look what I found! And it’s brand new! It still has the tags!”
My mom stood. “What is it?”
“It’s a comforter from that store in the mall,” Olivia said. “The nice one. And it’s brand new, Mom!”
My mom checked the original price tag, still dangling from the label. “Wow, what a deal!”
“Right?” Olivia hesitated. “And it’s June’s favorite color.”
My mom swallowed hard. Then she smiled. “You know what? You’re right. That was June’s favorite color. She always said blue by itself was boring…”
“And gray by itself was even more boring,” I added.
“But together they were something special.” We said the last part together, all three of us.
There was a long beat of silence. I think maybe Olivia was waiting for my mom to run from the room, which was what she sometimes did when remembering June was too much for her.
And me? I was waiting for my mom to retreat again, to busy herself with something else like paying for the comforter so she didn’t have to think too long about June and how she wasn’t with us.
Not in person anyway.
But this time my mom didn’t do either of those things. She pulled us into a hug instead, Olivia and me. And then we were all crying because we missed June and she was never coming back and things were never going to be the way they were, but we had each other.
And together, we were still something special.
You did good, M.