39. Daisy
***Daisy***
“Ialways thought he was a giant piece of cow shit. And that sister of yours… I have words for her that would make a sailor blush.” Kacey growled out, her frustration clear.
“Why didn’t you say something four years ago?” I sat back in my lawn chair while the kids played with Hank at the edge of the lake. I finally had a moment to myself and had to call her.
“You would’ve listened to me and kicked Tyler to the curb and then you would’ve spent the next decade wondering if you’d let me talk you out of the best thing that’d ever happened to you. I can’t say everything I think to you, D. You’re too much of a people pleaser.”
I scoffed. “What? No, I’m- You’re right. I really am. It’s a condition, Kace. I need a pill or shock therapy.” I let the moment linger a bit too long and Kacey smelled tea like blood to a shark.
“You’re hiding something.”
I broke immediately. “I did a thing. It’s a big thing, Kace.”
“You? No way. You’re too busy doing everything for everyone to do something crazy.” She was just saying the truth but I didn’t like it coming at me while I tried to tell her a story.
“Do you want to know, or not?” My tone was sharper than I meant it to be and I instantly apologized for it. “Sorry, Kace. I’m apparently feeling a little sensitive.”
“Of course, I want to know, bitch. And save your apologies. I don’t need ‘em. We’ve been best friends for a million years, D. You have the right to get snappy at me every so often.”
I blinked back tears that came out of nowhere and watched as all three kids tried to get Hank to do different tricks at the same time.
I switched to a code Kace and I had used years earlier when her family was still under the impression that they could pray her gay away.
“I went to town with two bottles of water. The third bottle I couldn’t get open so I didn’t take it all the way.
But I took the other two bottles. In the same trip. ”
The silence on the line was oppressive. It lasted long enough that I had to look at the screen to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. Then Kace started screaming loud enough to burst an eardrum.
“Lily! Get in here! You’re never going to believe what my skanky best friend did!” I shifted in my seat as Kacey told her wife about my sex life. It almost sounded like they were jumping around together, cheering for my vagina.
I covered my mouth and the phone with my hand to whisper shout back at them. “Stop acting like I’m the forty-year-old virgin losing his virginity!”
It took Kacey another five minutes to get it out of her system before she could calm down and speak to me normally. Or as normal as she ever got, anyway. “I’m honestly amazed. That’s one way to tell Tyler to go fuck himself.”
I needed to do something with my hands so I pulled out my sunscreen and reapplied it to my legs as I spoke. “It’s not about Tyler, Kace.”
She paused and the pause said more than her words could have. “What do you mean, D?”
“I mean I didn’t think about Tyler once before or after. It had nothing to do with him.” I checked to make sure the kids were still happily playing out of earshot. “They’re good men, Kace.”
She snorted. “So, they’re nothing like their brother, then. Good to know. Are you telling me that you have feelings for them? All three? Or just the two you had kinky sex with?”
I took a deep breath and then a second one. I wasn’t sure I was ready to admit that I had feelings. I shouldn’t have had any feelings at all for them but…I did. “Kace…”
She let loose a creative string of curses. “You do. All three of them?”
“Yes.” I answered so quietly I was surprised she heard me.
“Okay, that’s fine. We can work with this. This is no big deal. You love three men at the same time and they just so happen to be brothers and your ex’s brothers, to be specific. Not a big deal at all.”
I sat up straighter. “I didn’t say love.”
“Come on, D. I know you. I know when something’s on your mind. You didn’t call to check on the bakery, which is doing great, by the way, so this is something that you needed to talk about.” She deepened her voice until it was comical. “You needed Dr. Kacey, personal therapist to the stars.”
I laughed and rolled my eyes at her antics. “Shut up and help me.”
“Are they good to you?” She lost all signs of teasing and jumped straight into it.
I didn’t have to think about it. “Yes.”
“How many times a week do you cook?”
“Three, at most. They won’t let me do more, even though I tried to tell them that I like-”
“How much time do you spend cleaning up after them?”
I got where she was going and groaned. “They clean up after themselves, Kace. Half the time when I go to clean the kitchen after cooking, one of them has already done it. They don’t let me do everything for them. I almost feel lost at times.”
“Because you aren’t getting to do your normal thing of convincing them that you’re worth loving?” She knew me too well. “They already sound like better men than their brother. Seems like they didn’t need convincing that you’re worth their time.”
Of course, they were better than Tyler. They were great men who had their heads on their shoulders despite some tough times in life.
They were each great fathers and had always treated me with respect, before the end of my relationship with their brother and after.
After a single week of going above and beyond to take care of them and try to earn my position in their lives they’d stepped in and taken over their fair share.
They were insistent on me not performing my normal song and dance.
“It hasn’t been easy, Kace. I’ve wanted to freak out so many times but one of them is always there, doing something else to make me feel seen.
” I closed my eyes and took a second to breathe.
My composure was slipping and I couldn’t let it, not in front of the kids.
“This is crazy, right? The summer will end and I’ll come home and this will all be over. ”
“Maybe. Maybe not. If it’s something real, maybe it won’t end because y’all won’t let it. I don’t know them but I know that any man who sees what you’re willing to do for them and won’t let you do it is a man I’d like to get to know. Seems like you’ve found three of them.”
I’d had hope for my relationship with Tyler, too. I didn’t trust myself to make the right choice. I didn’t trust that they could really want me without me doing everything I could to convince them that I was great.
“Honey. If they want you bad enough to share you, I’d say they’re worth giving a chance. Worst case scenario, you have a hot summer of sex and come home alone and heartbroken.” She heard my panicked sound and rushed on. “Or not heartbroken! You could come home not heartbroken, at all.”
“I’ve never been brave enough to take chances, Kace.”
“Bitch, you opened an entire business. You made said business such a huge success that you’ve got people begging you to let them give you money. You are brave.”
Was I? I stared down at the kids after the call ended and wondered if I could change. Who would I be if I didn’t spend all my time trying to be enough? If it was anything like the woman I’d been so far that summer it didn’t seem like such a bad idea…