Chapter 24
Mimi and I returned from the store with both the backseat and the trunk of my Cutlass Supreme filled to the brim with a number of items she—with the help of Cassie and Monica via text—deemed ‘essential’.
Candles, cleaning supplies, snacks, towels and toiletries for every bathroom, soap dispensers shaped like glittering pumpkins, extra blankets, and over a hundred feet of string lights in an assortment of colors.
They weren’t turning my house into a Spirit Halloween store as such, just adding a little extra zhoozh.
When asked if I should pick up some condoms while I was at it, Monica’s response, as per Cassie was, and I quote, ‘Fuck no.’
Naturally, I was the one trip wonder, who came in carrying every single bag at once.
An offended Monica came rushing into the kitchen to admonish me for it as we came out of the garage, hands waving frantically.
“Daddy, Daddy, no! That’s my job! Put it all down!”
I set all the bags on the floor with a heavy crinkly slump, then watched Monica’s bare ass bend over in her apron as she started rifling through the haul, then went to the business of bringing the perishables to the counter.
“Your old place must’ve been spotless,” I remarked as I looked around at all the immaculate kitchen surfaces.
“I wasn’t there very much,” Monica replied as she pulled the labeling off the mop and bucket set I’d bought. “I spent most of my time trying to get paid, crashing at friend’s houses—it’s a different life.”
Mimi said, “This is the most I’ve been outside in months!”
“Oh yeah?” Monica said without breaking her concentration. “How was it?”
“I’m still a weenie about the sun, but it was fun! Even with all the people…”
Monica chortled as she pulled out an eight pack of toilet paper, then hugged it against herself as she sighed up the ceiling. “The soft stuff…”
“You seem satisfied,” I noted.
“Of course I am!” Monica put the package on the counter and did a little booty dance. “Being all domestic and shit? This is fun for me!”
I looked her up and down. “It is for me too.”
Monica gave me a dazzling, brown eyed flirtatious stare, then flinched in apparent remembrance. “You wanna relax after I get all this put away? I got the hot tub ready.”
“I’m game,” I said, taking off my trench coat and folding it over my arm, retrieving multiple stacks of cash from its interior pockets before setting it onto the counter. “Set that aside in case I forget. It’s for your family. We’re moving them out of your old neighborhood. They’ll be safer.”
Mimi gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.
“You’re taking care of me and my whole family?” Monica gawked with an airy, incredulous voice.
“Tying up loose ends, right? One less worry so you can breathe easy. Just don’t tell them where it came from.”
“Oh my God…” Monica walked straight over to me and wrapped her arms around me. “You’re gonna make me cry!”
I returned her hug while enjoying the warmth of her body against mine.
A tell-tale meow got my attention as Cassie’s cat meandered out of the den. He’d been hiding from the moment we brought him home, and had finally emerged to scratches as he brushed against my ankle.
“Kitty!” Mimi exclaimed as she crouched down and scooped up the calico.
Monica let me go and wiped her eye with a sniffle, flinging her hands like she was trying to shake off her welling emotions. “Alright, I need to chill. Ten minutes and I’ll see ya’ll in the tub!”
“Five,” said Mimi. “I’ll help!”
“See you soon,” I rumbled, then headed to my room to strip into my swimming trunks.
Cassie’s absence wasn’t lost on me, and when I got out to the back patio through the sliding door pane, I was greeted with an idyllic scene.
Orange and purple hues hovered over the horizon beyond the rolling back field of my land, the green trees fencing us in from acres away.
The BBQ grill lay off to my right beneath a proper awning, and directly in front of me just off the edge of the patio was the hot tub, with incandescent string lights wrapped around them.
That’s where I found Cassie.
Except Jenna was in it with her.
And she was naked. Again.
I couldn’t see anything; the top of her bare breasts breached the surface of the bubbling water like floatation devices while Cassie wore her bikini.
And from the casual utterances of their silky voices, they’d been talking. I didn’t even bother sliding the door closed behind me.
“There he is,” Jenna spoke as she stared at me, sitting on the far left corner across from Cassie. “Nice ride by the way, I heard it over my own screaming. I’d ask if you were ready to go over the footage, but I can clearly tell you’re not.”
“By the end of the night,” I said as I climbed into the hot tub and slowly lowered myself into it with a smiling sigh. “So are you just gonna stay naked the whole time you’re here?”
“Maybe,” Jenna sassed. “It’s not like I brought a full wardrobe.”
“Uh huh,” I voiced, glancing at Cassie while she sipped on a frosted glass of lemonade. “She using her tits to shake you down for info?”
“Actually, I was shaking her down,” Cassie giggled.
“For what?”
“I wanted to know about some of her work, you know, for inspiration?”
“Still having trouble with that romance arc, though…” Jenna remarked as she turned her face away, flicking her fingers through the churning water.
Cassie frowned. “I’ll figure that part out later.”
“What are you having trouble with?” I asked.
Her frown faded into a look of reticent concern. “I guess I don’t know how to write a good relationship. The healthiest relationship I’ve ever had with another person is you.”
Jenna chimed in. “And as someone who loathes what they did with Benson and Stabler, platonic life partners just isn’t the sort of thing I’d wanna read about.”
Cassie protested, “That’s not what we are.”
“Isn’t it?” Jenna finally turned her dismissive gaze onto Cassie’s blue eyes. “You said you were best friends, you’re living together; although I’m still not kosher on the whole drunk blowjob thing.”
“I wasn’t drunk. I knew what I was doing,” Cassie argued, her cheeks turning increasingly red. “Why are you giving me grief over it?”
“Because I’m in a mad house with no sense of up or down, and the last thing anyone needs is you having a confused meltdown.”
“I’m not confused.”
“Aren’t you?” Jenna raised an eyebrow.
“It’s deeper than him being a guy,” Cassie snapped. “I’ve never felt safe around anyone, but he makes it easy. He’s been in my corner when no one else was, so I wanna be in his. He takes care of me, and that’s what I’m gonna do for him.”
Jenna pressed her line of probing. “Isn’t that what friends are supposed to do?”
“Friends can be anything. It’s different for everyone,” Cassie countered with a sigh. “I’m just tired of pretending we need boundaries when he’s obviously happy and so am I.”
“So you are sleeping with him.”
“Of course I’m fucking sleeping with him,” Cassie groaned. “I can’t let Momo have all the fun.”
I watched the two of them in silence, observing Cassie the most as her initial discomfort gave way to spilling her guts.
“Sleeping with your best friend is an ACME dynamite kit. What are you gonna do if he catches feelings?” Jenna questioned.
“Who the hell cares? I already love him.”
Cassie suddenly froze, her face betraying her shock at her own words. Then she suddenly stood up and sloshed her way to the edge of the hot tub in a panic, which is when I reached for her hand and held it.
“Wait, Cassie,” I said, looking up into her averted eyes as her chest rapidly respirated. “You don’t have to run.”
“I don’t know what’s going on with us,” she admitted with a bashful face. “I just want to be close.”
“Then don’t think about it. Just stay close,” I said, then slipping my arm behind her legs and swept her off her feet and onto my lap.
Cassie held onto my waist and searched my eyes, showing some measure of relief but with an undertone of nervousness.
“Remember that time you stayed ’til closing to give me a ride home because I didn’t make enough tips for a cab?” she asked.
“I remember.”
“I lied; I did make enough to get home,” she confessed. “We were having such a good time, I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye right away.”
Her admission got me to smile. “You never needed an excuse to hang out with me. The only reason I kept coming to that bar was because of you.”
“…I know,” Cassie uttered, tightening her hold on my obliques. “You know the worst part? I’m not even really all that upset about my ex. I mean yeah, cheating is fucked up, but… I was so glad I could just run away with you—do whatever we wanted without somebody having an opinion.”
She glared at Jenna, who lifted her hands out of the water to shrug with a grin. “Hey, you should be thanking me. A little clarity goes a long way, doesn’t it?”
I nodded in acknowledgment then turned Cassie’s face toward me. “You’re okay, right?”
“You’re not freaked out?”
“Not at all.”
She glanced at my mouth, then back up to my eyes.
“There’s something I wanna say… but I don’t know if I can say it in words.”
“Say it how you want.”
Cassie leaned her face forward and kissed me on the lips for the first time, eyes closed and nostrils inhaling with her hand resting on my shoulder.
It was a still, prolonged kiss, lips pressed together with the full force of her sentiment behind it. Gratitude, affection, promises made and promises kept, all of them rolled into a single act of intimacy.
“Oh my gaaawd!” Mimi and Monica squealed from the open sliding door, donning their bikinis.
We’d been caught.
Cassie pulled away with a loud pucker like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar, her face flushed with smiling embarrassment as she touched her fingers to her lips and looked away from them.
They rushed over and got into the hot tub, with Monica as far as she could be from Jenna while clapping her hands trying to get Cassie’s attention.
“What is this? What are you doin’ girl?” Monica questioned rapid fire. “How long has this been going on?”
“That was the first one,” Cassie confessed.
“But not the first time, huh?” Mimi questioned with narrowed, knowing eyes.
Monica gawked at Cassie, scandalized. “You mean?”
“We had sex this morning,” Cassie confirmed.
Cue girlish gushing and enthusiastic splashing. Cassie met my eye with an inquiring simper, to which I nodded.
“Go tell your friends about it,” I chuckled.
Cassie nodded, kissed me on the cheek, then interlocked her fingers in a three-person circle with Mimi and Momo to recount the tale.
“I got a confession. You’re welcome,” Jenna quipped with a begrudging smile, then rose from the tub as the steaming water cascaded down her wonderfully nude body, standing in front of me with a raised eyebrow. “I’m going back inside.”
From that angle, I could see the glorious details of her tidy slit, and Jenna’s stance was doing nothing to hide it. She kept an expectant hand on her hip as she went to grab a towel to wrap herself with, then looked over her shoulder at me on her way to the back door.
We still had another loose end to tie up, and my target was on those video boxes.
Might as well.
“Alright, alright,” I said while standing up with my erect dick poking forward in my trunks. “Let’s get this over with…”