Chapter Two #3
“Because she likes it.” I think Fiona was still trying to wrap her head around Yukiko.
“When the video leaked, Kiki's the one who told us we shouldn't hide,” Samantha explained.
“Before the wedding, we had everything planned out.
Kiki is Jack's legal wife—not that that matters to any of us, the decision there was unanimous—and she was going to be the public wife.
The CEO's wife. The power couple. And Marcie and I would just... stay in the shadows. Loved, but never acknowledged.”
Fiona nodded.
“And then the whole world blew up and she looked at Marcie and me and said, no. Absolutely not. They deserve to shine, too.” She swallowed hard, momentarily overcome with emotion.
“We're all getting used to having our most intimate moments thrust into the spotlight.
With the whole freaking world knowing I'm Jackson Avery's babygirl. But I'm proud of that—”
“This is something I actually wanted to talk about,” Fiona said, cutting in.
Samantha's eyebrows went up.
Hmm? I wondered.
“You've got the whole Daddy/babygirl thing going on, and—not gonna lie—totally hot,” Fiona said, giving Samantha a confiding smile. “But, like, correct me if I'm wrong here. But I swear I've seen clips from that video with Marcie in them where she’s getting called babygirl?”
Oh. Oh no. I closed my eyes.
Samantha was already grinning. “We're both babygirl.”
Any question but this one, I thought. Please move onto something else. Do not talk about the contest...
Of course Samantha was going to talk about the contest.
Fiona looked stunned. “He calls two of you 'babygirl'.”
“He does.”
“To your faces?”
Samantha laughed. “Among other things.”
Fiona put her hand up to her temple and mimed an explosion. “Okay. How the hell does that not cause a homicide?”
“Oh, it was a whole thing,” Samantha said, looking fully in her element now. I swore she was enjoying the way this line of questioning made heat rise from my collar. “An incredible thing, actually.”
“I smell a story here.”
Samantha nodded. “Marcie was ‘babygirl’ first,” my wife explained. “She's known Daddy for, like, forever—he worked for her Dad, was set to take over the firm when he retired, all that stuff. And then I became babygirl, too, way before Jack and Marcie admitted their feelings for each other.”
Fiona followed. “So when Marcie joined your group...”
“We'd both laid claim to the same term of endearment,” Samantha finished for her. “I was jealous, Fiona. I freely admit I was jealous.”
“You were not.”
“I was president of Delta Rho for three years, Fiona. Do you know what that does to a person's ability to share?”
Fiona chuckled. “So how did you resolve that? Catfight? One of you cut the other's brake line?”
Oh, they are loving this, I thought.
“Simple,” Samantha said, drawing out the moment. “We had a competition.”
“A...” Fiona choked. “I'm afraid to ask what kind of competition.”
“Two of us. Same room. No rules. Daddy as the judge. Winner takes all.”
“Your future husband judged this.”
“Well, Daddy was less the judge than the finish line,” Samantha said, working her way around the euphemism with evident pleasure.
“He had his watch—a Tag Heuer Monaco, which is this square blue thing he says is cooler than a Rolex because Rolexes are for assholes—and he set it for two minutes at a time. Back and forth. Marcie and me.” Her grin was pure joy at this point.
“Whichever babygirl got him there first got to keep the name.”
Fiona looked like she was about to fall off of her couch.
“You're...” She looked like a woman who'd opened her purse expecting the hundred-dollar bill she'd put inside and found a dozen of them staring back at her. “Holy shit, this man timed the two of you!? With a chronograph?”
Samantha shrugged. “He's an engineer,” she said, like that explained everything—which, God help me, it kind of did.
Fiona turned to the camera and said nothing for several seconds. I could almost feel her counting the video’s eventual views behind her eyes.
“Okay,” she said at last. “Who won? You, I'm assuming, if you're—”
“Nobody won,” Samantha said.
The noise Fiona let out was almost beyond description. “Clearly somebody won—”
“We went back and forth,” Samantha said, a knowing smile spreading across her face at the memory.
I had to admit that particular film reel was playing inside of my head, too, and the fact that I had to cross one leg over my lap was proof positive of how powerful the memory remained.
“A few times. And at some point, we stopped being two girls competing over the same man and it turned into a threesome, and we just sort of—” she let out a guilty little giggle, “—got over it.
So we both won, and we're both babygirl. Marcie got it longest, I got it deepest.”
“Deepest,” Fiona echoed, as if she were thinking about something else entirely.
“Neither one of us wants to give it up,” she said. “There's enough room in Daddy's life for two babygirls.” She leaned in close, her eyes narrowing as she pursed her lips in a pout. “But Jack's not Daddy to Marcie. So it's just a little bit more special. But I didn't say that!”
“You know what's crazy?” Fiona laughed. “That's a healthier way to resolve conflicts than most of my past relationships.”
“I know, right?”
Fiona shook her head with a grin. “I hate you so much right now.”
“Oh, you do not,” Samantha insisted. “You're just a little jealous. You can admit it.” She batted her lashes. “Are you trying to become my husband's third babygirl, Fiona?”
I put my hand over my eyes.
“I don't know,” Fiona said, cackling. “You seem pretty fierce, Mrs. Avery.”
And she really did. In that moment, Samantha looked fierce—and about as happy as I'd ever seen her. This was her element, and not just because she was such a big fan of the format.
Fiona Hall was letting her be herself.
Samantha Avery. My babygirl. Being fully herself in front of the entire country.
Yukiko was my princess and my partner. She could show up poised and ready to Morning Harbor and withstand the storm when everything exploded. And Marcie was the beating heart of our entire harem—the girl who made our house into a home. But Samantha...
Samantha's gift had always been this. She was so completely, ferociously herself that you couldn't help but look at her and want her to be your lover, or your friend, or your sorority president. It's why she'd been so successful at Delta Rho. It was why the entire harem was head-over-heels for her.
It was why Mona had queued this up for her, instead of Kiki or Marcie.
She was killing it. Every few minutes she was sneaking me a glance like she couldn't believe she was getting away with this, then she'd go right back to Fiona's questions and continue setting her episode of Call Your Daddy on fire.
It was beautiful. It was brilliant.
And Fiona Hall was about to blow it all up.
“Okay, we're about to take a short little break,” Fiona was saying. “Traditionally the host and the guests do shots at this point in CYD, but as you're expecting, you're exempt.”
“Next time,” Samantha promised, confident as ever. “Promise.”
Fiona laughed genuinely. “But when we come back, I've got a little surprise for you.”
Across the room, my whole body went cold.
“We've talked a lot about you, your fellow wives, and your husband,” Fiona said, her voice speeding up with just the slightest hint of nervousness. “But I'm sitting here the whole time going, okay, but who raises a woman like Samantha Avery?”
My babygirl didn't flinch. “I see.”
Don't do it, I thought. Cancel it. Can't you hear it in her voice?
“I do a little background research on all my guests,” Fiona chuckled. “And I found that maybe this unconventional life of yours isn't as completely out of the blue as everyone thinks it is. Hmm?”
“Fiona—”
“Relax, babe,” the host chuckled. “This is going to be fun, I promise.”
And that was when it hit me.
She believes that.
I'd assumed that Fiona was in on all this. How could she not be? It was her show. But I could see it in her face, and when I did, I could practically picture how it all came together.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
That was the whole bit; that's what Fiona was expecting to happen.
She'd bought it, and she believed—God help her, she believed it with her whole chest—that she was setting up the fun twist of the episode.
Mom and daughter, both a little wild, both a little scandalous.
Two generations gushing over their crazy lives.
Fiona had absolutely no idea what she was holding.
I looked at Samantha. We could stop this, my look said.
I knew we could. We could head it off at the pass. One sentence was all it would take.
And Samantha looked back at me for a fraction of a second.
Just long enough to say I've got this without moving a single muscle.
“I think I know what you're planning,” Samantha said mildly.
“Believe me, you don't,” Fiona chuckled. She was already turning to the camera, setting up the ad break, preparing for the spot where the streaming services would insert their own commercials at the halfway point. “Folks, in just a moment, we are going to blow Samantha Avery's whole-ass mind…”
As the cameras tilted, Samantha turned to me one last time.
Here we go, Daddy, she mouthed. Love you.
“Love you too, babygirl,” I whispered back.
Somewhere near the back of the set, a door opened.