What a dick.
Who does he think he is that he can just come back here and expect me to fall for him? Expect my kids to fall for him?
And damn it, why is that happening already?
I can’t escape his persona, and the confident shit has not changed. Nothing’s changed. Not his jet-black hair, his teasing dark eyes, or his rebellious nature. He’s still got that square jaw and that lean body that makes my panties wet.
My panties are wet. In fact, I had to change them. Urgh!
Aly, gurrrrrl. . . you don’t need a man in your life. You don’t.
That’s my mind telling me that, not my va jay jay. She’s got something else to tell me because she enjoyed that little teasing game her and Ridge’s cock played at practice.
But while we’re on this, you see the girl there trying to open the pickle jar by herself? The one repeating the “I don’t need a man” speech, you’ve heard that from every single woman out there who’s been tainted by love, haven’t you?
It’s a fact. That’s what the past six months have taught me. I do, however, need dick. I need wine and for a man to tell me I’m pretty. And dick. I don’t know how lesbians do it.
When Austin and I separated, it had been three months since we had sex. Three long months. You do the math; it’s six months. Now do you understand why I can’t stop drooling over Ridge, the hot-bend-me-over-your-desk-and-teach-me-a-lesson teacher?
It’s bad. So bad.
Grady comes up behind me in the kitchen, pushes a chair toward the counter, and brings himself to the same height as me and motions for the pickle jar. “Give that to me. I can do it, Mama.”
He’s so adorable. I hope he doesn’t grow up to be a douchebag like his father.
I hand it to him, and he struggles for a moment, tiny dark brow drawn together in determination to open it. I want to cry because he’s trying so hard to be a man and no eight-year-old should have to try to be a man. He’s already growing up too fast.
“I can do it,” he mumbles, grunting and then sighs and sets the jar on the counter. He wipes his small hands on the front of his football pants, then tries again. When it doesn’t open, he frowns. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.”
Grady jumps down off the chair, runs around the corner and disappears down the hall.
I glare at the jar and with as much force as I can muster. “You better open!” I whisper and finally, after a few attempts, it opens. Quickly, I screw the lid back on and set it back where Grady put it.
He returns with his glove Ridge gave him at football tonight. “This should help,” he says proudly, jumping back on the chair and fastening the Velcro. Reaching for the jar, he holds it against his stomach and attempts to open it again.
He gets it, with a big grin on his face, and hands the jar back to me, confidently like he’s just managed to lift a car off someone. “That’s how a man does it.”
I burst out laughing at his sense of pride. “I never had any doubt, buddy.”
He smiles widely, two front teeth bigger than the rest and adorable as hell. The smile fades when he looks into my eyes, and I want to blink away the pain because if anyone senses how you feel, it’s little Grady Lance Jacob. Nothing gets past this kid.
“Mama?”
Tears burn my throat. “Yeah, bud?”
“Do you miss Daddy?”
No. I hate him. But I can’t tell my son that. “Sometimes. . . but you know what?”
“What?”
“I got the best part of him.”
“What part?”
“You and your brother.”
His cherry red lips finally pull back into the crooked smile his dad gave him, and his brown eyes that match mine gleam. “I won’t be mean like him. I’m not like that.”
“I know you’re not.” I take his squishy pink sweaty cheeks in my hands and kiss his forehead. “You’re all heart.” And then I level him a stern look. “Did he say I was mean?”
Why’d I ask that? I know better. I should never ever draw them into conversations about their dad and what he says about me.
“He said you were a liar.”
“Daddy’s a fuck face.” No, I didn’t say that to Grady, but you know I’m thinking it. How does he have the right to talk shit about me?
He cheated on me!
Is waterboarding legal? I have this vision of me standing in the backyard, my foot on Austin’s throat and the garden hose stuck in his mouth screaming at him to take back calling me a liar. While it’s graphic and actually somewhat gratifying to envision this, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s pulling our kids into this mess when he shouldn’t be.
I’ve made it a point to never ever say a bad thing to them about their father, and I certainly could have, couldn’t I?
Grady raises his eyes to mine, and I see so much of Austin in him I hate it, but at the same time, I love it because I have all of Austin’s good qualities in Grady. “Is he right? Are you a liar?”
“No, buddy.” I lean forward and kiss his forehead. “Time for bed.”
Every mother struggles to think they’re good enough. Especially when they’re raising little boys to be men.
I ask myself constantly, how can I give them what they need? How can I give them the attention they deserve?
Cash and Grady, though identical, are completely different. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine they’re brothers and shared a womb at the same time.
I don’t get it right. I forget to pack lunches. I forget to make them brush their teeth or shower every day.
Occasionally they have to remind me they haven’t eaten or they have homework they haven’t completed, but I’m not a bad mother, and I’m certainly not a fucking liar.
ONCE I HAVE the boys to bed, Tori comes over with a bottle of wine. We do this a lot, me and my cousin. Mostly since Austin moved out because they never got along.
Funny, he never got along with any of my family.
As we sit on the back patio, slowly sipping on my second glass of Ménage a Trois Moscato, I stare at the lawn I need to mow.
The night before Austin moved out, I ran over all his suits with the lawnmower. Made for nice fertilizer. Actually, no, it didn't. There are actually brown spots on the yard, like they’re outlining the scene of the crime. Like the shit he spewed about being an honest man leaked through his clothes and into the lawn.
My point? I love this house. Naturally, Austin hated it because my parents gave it to us and it wasn’t the style of home he wanted. He wanted to move out of Calistoga and to San Francisco since he graduated law school but I didn’t want to. I love this small historical town and having my family close by.
I’m looking through recipes on Pinterest of cute, creative kids’ meals I pin, but honestly have no intention of making when Tori gasps, clutching her phone tighter.
She’s beside me in one of the chairs surrounding my outside fire pit, scrolling through Facebook and Instagram when she twists her phone my way. “What a cunt cake. Brie changed her profile picture to one of the boys.”
“No way!” I grab the phone from her hand. I don’t have Facebook. I did, but once I found out about Austin and Brie, I’d spend all my time on stalking them and waiting for them to post pictures together. Austin never did, he’d never been much into social media, but Brie, she did to rub it in my face that she now had my husband. Everywhere they go, she tags him and her together. It’s sickening how easily she squeezed herself in.
There it is. A picture of my boys with Austin in the middle. She stole my family. Ripped it from my life and inserted herself in the middle.
I down the rest of my wine. “One of these days she’s going to meet me face-to-face, and the boys won’t be around, and I can finally say what needs to be said to her.”
I don’t want Brie touching my children let alone using their picture as her profile for fuck’s sake. It’s a jab at me. I know it is. And believe it or not, I’ve yet to confront Brie on her cock stealing. I don’t know what to say to her other than to scream, and I want whatever I do say to convey how badly she hurt me. The time will come.
Tori pours me another glass. “We could kidnap her. I have chloroform.”
I stare at Tori and her big blonde hair she has twisted around in a bun on the top of her head. And the Cheerios stuck in there. She does have a two-year-old at home. “Why do you have chloroform at home?”
“Everyone does.”
“Nope.” I reach for the glass on the table beside us. “They don’t.” And then I think to myself, why am I letting it bother me so much?
I am because she’s involving my children now.
“I shouldn’t have shown you that, I’m sorry. I know what we need to do. We need to find you a man,” Tori notes, filling her own glass now to the top.
“What do you mean?”
Something flashes behind Tori’s eyes, a realization? No, it’s not that. It’s a hidden agenda. I know my cousin well, and in the months since the separation, she’s tried to set me up with everyone, including my sixty-year-old neighbor and once, a lesbian. Sadly, I considered the lesbian for a good ten minutes before I decided dick was just too good to pass up. Just not sixty-year-old dick.
“Maybe start dating again,” Tori suggests, sipping her wine. “It’s okay to date. It’s okay to have meaningless sex with men.”
“The divorce isn’t even final yet,” I point out, but in my heart, I know it is, and I know it’s okay to move on. I’m just not sure I’m ready. Or if the boys are. Look what Austin’s doing to them with Brie. I don’t want to be that person forcing them into an unstable environment while they’re still trying to navigate all the changes happening at home.
But then again, I think about Tori’s words. Meaningless sex. Can I even do that? Can someone like me have meaningless sex? I know Ridge can.
Fuck, there I go thinking about him again.