Chapter Three
“ B een bitten by the baby bug yet?”
“What?” I stacked another bright red block on my tower, causing it to crash to the ground. Emily clapped and laughed like it was the best thing ever. I smiled along with her.
“Hasn’t that little girl convinced you by now to finally settle down and start a family of your own?” my sister said. “After you’re married, of course.”
She had to throw that last part in. Of course .
Christa choked on her lemonade, and I had to reach over and whack her on the back. “Perry married? Good one, Sam,” she said after her coughing fit was over. Emily also thought that was hilarious and redoubled her laughing efforts.
I looked away from my sister’s frown and watched my adorable niece toddle over to pick up a fallen block. She’d just learned to walk and it was awesome. I couldn’t wait to see what she accomplished next.
“As perfect and amazing as she is,” I said, “I’m just fine living vicariously through you right now. Well, for the most part.”
I heard her sigh. I’d had to toss in my own little caveat at the end as well. It was no secret that I didn’t care much for the man she called her husband. Emily’s father. Being married was bad enough, but to him ? Ugh.
“It’s ridiculous how you insist on clinging to a derogatory view of something you’ve never experienced.”
I shrugged. This was just one of the many things Sam and I would never be in agreement on. We were both raised by the same parents and turned out completely differently. I never wanted to get married. She couldn’t get married fast enough.
“Oh fu—”
I swung my head over to Christa and narrowed my eyes. She didn’t notice me because her head was down digging around in her purse. Luckily, she remembered to censor herself.
“Fudgsicle,” she said instead, glancing up at me. We both worked hard to tame our mouth around Emily. Sam couldn’t understand why it even took an effort, but why would she? She didn’t swear. Ever. “Do you have any tampons or anything? I feel like I’m going to get my period any second and I’m out.”
“Sure.” I tossed her my bag and she stood up.
“Thanks.”
We all turned our heads when the front door opened and Paul stepped inside. Sam went over to greet him, and Emily said, “Dada,” but quickly focused back on her blocks, knocking them around. After my stack fell over, she must’ve decided they were much more fun to look at. I didn’t blame her.
Christa bent down and hissed in my ear. “I thought you said he wouldn’t be here.”
Yeah, she didn’t like him either. I usually scheduled my visits around the times I didn’t expect to see him, but that didn’t always work out. After all, he did live there, unfortunately. When I’d asked Christa if she wanted to tag along, that had been her first question. “ Will Dickhead be there? ”
“Sorry, didn’t think so,” I whispered back.
“I didn’t think we were expecting company, Samantha.” The dickhead looked at us. “Perry.” He nodded. “Christa.” His eyes lingered on her much longer. She wrinkled her nose and headed to the bathroom.
“Hey,” I said. I did my best to keep things civil for Emily’s sake. If that baby girl weren’t a factor, I’d be searching the kitchen for ice picks. How could my sister not notice this shit going on right in front of her face?
“I wasn’t expecting you to be home this early,” Sam said.
He gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then swooped up his daughter for a hug. “Finished sooner than I thought.” Yeah, I bet you did . He set Emily down and she crawled over into my lap. I kissed the top of her strawberry-colored head.
“Are you hungry?” she asked him. “Can I make you anything to eat?”
“No, I’m going to take a shower. I’ll leave you girls to visit.”
“Okay.” Sam gave him a smile and then sat back across from me. Her expression dared me to make a comment. Just because I was thinking that he was a scumbag cheater who had to go wash another woman’s stench off his body didn’t mean I had to say it out loud. Sam knew how I felt, the stories I’d heard. But until I had definitive proof, she wouldn’t take me seriously. What I called denial, she called trust. Blech. I threw up in my mouth thinking about how he’d turned her into a wife-sized doormat.
“What?” I said.
“Don’t say anything, Perry.”
“Do you hear me saying anything? ”
“It’s called marriage and commitment. I don’t expect you to understand.”
I bit my tongue. But then again, she’d started it. I unclamped my teeth. “Isn’t faithfulness also supposed to be part of that deal?”
She sighed. “He is faithful. And a good father and provider. Unless you have something specific to tell me, don’t badmouth my husband.” I rolled my eyes. “Just because you’re afraid of commitment doesn’t mean you have to disrespect those who aren’t.”
“I’m not afraid of commitment.”
“Then why are you still single?”
“I’m only twenty-two!” Geez .
“Exactly. You’re no longer a kid, Perry. You should at least be thinking about a serious relationship by now. I don’t know what’s going on between that Andre boy and you but—”
“He asked me to move in with him.”
I hadn’t meant to blurt that out, especially because I wasn’t planning on actually taking him up on it, but I wanted to put an end to our conversation. I tried visiting as much as possible before I blinked and Emily was off to college, but I didn’t enjoy these sisterly lectures that seemed to be part of the package.
She looked horrified. “Please tell me you’re not considering it.”
“What’s the problem? You were just saying how I needed to commit to someone.”
“You know very well that’s not what I meant. If you live together, he’ll never put a ring on your finger.”
“Dre asked you to move in with him?”
I glanced up at Christa who’d returned to the room. Her eyes were bugging out. “Yeah.” I turned back towards my sister. “And you know very well that I couldn’t care less about a ring.”
Her gaze drifted from the sleepy girl snuggled in my lap back up to my face. “You’re crazy for her, Perry. Don’t you ever want a child of your own to love? ”
“Yes, I do.” Unlike a husband, I’d never been opposed to having a baby.
“Well then, you should care about getting that ring. Don’t blow your chances by giving him what he wants so easily.”
What the hell decade did I wake up in this morning? I loved my sister, even if it was painful to be around her most of the time. Her views on life clashed wickedly with mine. We often disagreed about one thing or another, but I felt like she was getting on my case more than usual. I wanted it to be over.
“Last I checked, ring fingers weren’t connected to reproductive systems. Fu—making love can cause a pregnancy the same whether or not you’re married.”
That seemed to shut her up. Sam gave me a disgusted look, but she didn’t snatch her child away and declare me a heathen. That’s all that mattered to me. She knew how much I adored Emily, and she’d never take that away from me. It was the one thing we had perfectly in common.
Otherwise, my sister and I would never see each other at all.
“Is something wrong?”
I flicked my eyes over at Christa before focusing them back on the road. We hadn’t stayed much longer at Sam’s since Emily had gone down for a nap, but Christa was exceptionally quiet during that time.
“Oh shit,” I said. “You didn’t have a run-in with Dickhead, did you?” I wondered if something happened when she came out of the bathroom. He’d never hit on her before, but that didn’t mean he never would. He just had to make sure he could get away with it first.
“No, I never saw him again. Thank fuck. God, Perry. How does your sister let him touch her without getting sick? I feel toxic just breathing the same air as him.”
“She believes his lies.”
I’d asked myself many times if I really was imagining things. If the rumors I’d heard were just that—rumors. But there were too many signs for it to be just a hunch. Too many occurrences to be a coincidence. Christa felt it too. He was a major womanizing sleazebucket. I just had to fucking prove it before my niece was old enough to know what was going on.
“Maybe I could try talking to her.”
“She’ll think you’re imagining it too.”
“I could set him up. Get him alone and then when he makes his move, you’d have your proof. We could record it or something.”
Hmm… I actually considered it a second. “And how would you feel being alone in a room with him?” She responded with a shudder. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’m not going to put you in that situation. And it probably wouldn’t work anyway. He’d just turn it all around and say he knew we were trying to set him up. No, it has to be completely random.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
I reached over and grabbed her hand. “But thanks for offering to do something so repulsive to help out.”
“No problem.”
She was silent once again for another several miles, taking me back to my original question. “So, if your mood has nothing to do with Paul, what is bothering you?”
Christa let out a loud breath. “I’m not sure if I should bring this up, but it does kinda fit in with the theme.”
“Uh, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The cheating theme.”
“Still no clue, Christa.”
“Did Dre really ask you to move in with him? ”
“Yeah, he did. I guess it was part of our whole ‘trying to be an exclusive couple’ package. But don’t worry, I told him no. I have no intentions of moving out.”
“Oh okay. That’s good.”
I turned off the radio. I could barely hear her as it was; she was talking so quietly. “And what does any of that have to do with cheating?”
“I just worry about you and Dre being in a similar situation. I’ve heard things about him too.”
I started laughing, then looked at her and stopped. Oh. She was actually serious? “Dre and I aren’t even in the same universe as Sam and Paul, much less in the same situation. And you do know it’s not cheating when the other person consents to it, right?” Of course, she knew. She knew exactly the kind of arrangement Dre and I had shared all these years. He could no more be considered a cheater than me.
“A girl I work with at the clinic, she belongs to Dre’s gym. She told me about this trainer there—can’t remember the skank’s name—but she and your, um, boyfriend seem to have been pretty chummy.”
“So?”
“So, how do you think that’s all going to play out now?”
“Not sure what you’re getting at, Christa. Who cares what he did before?” I took a second to let what I’d just said sink in. And why didn’t I care? It seemed like there should’ve been something wrong with that, but there just… wasn’t. “We only officially decided to change the terms of our relationship yesterday.”
“I’m just having a hard time figuring out how it’s going to work. I’m not sure you guys are meant to only be with each other.”
I gave her a funny look. “You don’t think I can do the monogamy thing?”
“I’m not talking about you. Remember what happened that summer right before tenth grade? That girl, um… Lila? ”
“Lena.”
“Yeah, Lena. You told me you made a pact and then she not only broke that, but also ratted you out and got you into deeper shit.”
“Okay?”
Lena and I had discovered how fun it was sneak out and party over at the older neighbor’s house. We’d sometimes stay out until morning, and we swore to each other that if one of us got busted, we wouldn’t get the other in trouble. Well, Lena got her ass caught halfway out her window one night and ended up spilling everything. Even about the bottles I’d swipe from the liquor cabinet, refilling with colored water later.
But I failed to see what a girl whom I had nothing to do with anymore had to do with my current boyfriend. I scrunched up my face. Boyfriend, really? That just sounded weird. I’d have to come up with a different title to describe him.
“Don’t you see, Perry? Just because you agree to do something doesn’t mean the other person is going to follow through. I believe that you can do this, but I’m not convinced that Dre can too. You know that ho-bag at the gym is just one of many.”
I reached over and squeezed her hand again. “You’re a good friend, Christa.” She just didn’t want me to get hurt. “It’ll be fine. He was the one who came to me, remember?”
A gurgle sounded in her throat. “Whatever. I won’t say anything more about it, then. Unless I find out that he’s not sticking to his end of the bargain.”
“Okay, but I’m not worried about it.” Another strange noise bubbled out of her mouth, and I eyed her. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah. Just promise me that if he continues to fuck around, you’ll lop off his dick with garden shears.”
I laughed. “Promise.”
“No, changed my mind. That would be too quick. How about a letter opener? ”
“Deal. And we’ll make it a dull, rusty one.”
Christa laughed along with me and the weirdness started to dissipate. She hadn’t been acting like herself the past several days, and I was relieved to see that changing. We spent the rest of the ride home plotting creative ways to castrate Dre should he stray from the agreement.
I couldn’t ask for a better best friend.