Eric
“I can’t talk long. Aunt Sylvia’s expecting me for dinner and I have to leave soon.”
“It’s a cell phone.” Lizzie didn’t even try to hide the exasperation in her voice. “You can take it with you.”
“Marcus is a cop. Can’t get pulled over for distracted driving. He’d never let me live it down.” He’d also go all Daddy on me and I’d end up grounded or something. I just wasn’t going to say that part. Since we’d started dating, I’d been much more careful about anything that could get me in trouble. Besides, I figured I might need a good excuse to get her off the phone quick.
She snickered, “Yeah, that’s your biggest fear.”
Sometimes it sucked having a friend who knew all the good stuff about you.
“I’m leaving soon, remember?” I might have been avoiding her again. Three phone calls in ten minutes guaranteed she was going to keep calling until I answered the phone. I loved her like a sister, but every time we got on the phone lately, she wanted answers I didn’t have.
Some were easy, but others required me being more open than I was willing—or maybe it was able—to be. She generally started off with an easy question, and I was counting on being able to get her off the phone before they got harder.
“You keep forgetting to tell me how your dates are going.” The frustrated tone in her voice let me know she was done playing nice.
“It’s going great. I told you that.” Making a last-minute sweep of the house to find my keys, I tried to pay attention. “We went out several times this week.”
I was back to a normal schedule, so we’d been able to spend real time together. We’d gone to dinner and done some traditional dates. He’d also made me dinner while I colored at the table again. We’d spent so much time together lately I’d hardly seen my own apartment. Not that I was complaining. I liked being over at his house. Even though the nursery made me…nervous, I was still drawn to it.
“That’s not what I was talking about.” Her dry tone made me wince. Damn it. What had I done with the keys? The frustrated sigh coming from the phone pulled me back to the conversation in time to hear it get worse. “Have you been…playing…or whatever it’s supposed to be called? That was the point of you looking for someone on the sites and at the club.”
Damn.
Found the keys but I was going to lose my mind. “Lizzie!” She was going to make me crazy. It was not what I needed right before Aunt Sylvia was going to give me the third degree. “He and I are good, but I’m really not going to talk to you about this.”
If I managed to draw the line somewhere, it was going to be there. She did not need to know about how I played at Marcus’s house or how he was Daddy more often than he was Marcus. “I know you want to look out for me, but that’s classic TMI.”
“No, it’s—” She started to fuss, but I jumped in again.
“Yes it is, and you know it.” Mentally shaking my head at her, I tried to change the subject. “Have you been looking for a new job? You keep saying you’re going to start putting your resume out there, but I don’t think you are.”
She was quiet for a moment—then she started laughing. “You know, if you’d had this much of a backbone about online dating to begin with, I could have never talked you into it.”
It wasn’t that funny.
It was, however, true.
“Possibly.” That was all I would admit. I was going to hear I-told-you-so forever, anyway.
“I’m glad whatever you two are doing is giving you this much confidence. So no more bugging. Well, at least not much.” She gave a little snort. “We both know any more than that would be a lie.”
A big one.
“I think you’re nuts, but thank you for the privacy.” I didn’t see that much of a change in myself, but I was glad she was backing off. I had to acknowledge that I was getting more comfortable with talking about the age play side of my relationship with Marcus—but that was just with him. Other than having to write it down on the application to join the club—which had nearly given me a heart attack—I still couldn’t talk about it with anyone else.
Not that Daddy was willing to let me hide for long.
I pushed away the errant thought and tried to focus on the conversation. “I have to go or I’m going to be late.”
“All right, I’m going to pester you later, though.” She huffed and I could almost hear her frown. “And answer your phone when I call or I’ll come visit you!”
“Here?” My voice went high-pitched and panicked.
She just gave me a wicked villain-in-the-movies kind of laugh and hung up. She was going to make me crazy. Just what I needed to be able to obsess over as I was heading to Aunt Sylvia’s house.
****
“I’m sorry I’m late. It’s Lizzie’s fault. She wouldn’t let me off the phone.” The hour’s drive wasn’t bad on a Friday night, but it felt longer.
I tried not to let the door slam behind me as I walked in, but something about the wind caught it every time. Just as the door banged shut, I heard her holler from the kitchen.
“Don’t let the—”
Bang!
“Sorry.” I did it every time. When I’d first moved in, I’d been terrified that it would actually make her angry. It hadn’t taken long to realize that nothing would set her off. She was the most let-everyone-live-their-own-life person I’d ever met.
“That’s alright. Come back here in the kitchen. I’m finishing up this sauce and I don’t want it to scorch.” Her warm voice was so much different from my father’s cool detached tones that it always surprised me they were related.
I could still remember the first couple of weeks at her house. It’d felt like I’d been dropped off in another universe. I’d always known my mom and dad didn’t react the same way that my friends’ parents had, but it wasn’t until I started living with Aunt Sylvia that I realized how difficult things had been.
Walking through the older, boxy home, I followed the smell of homemade alfredo back to the small kitchen. Her small house had never been meant for a large family, and even with just the two of us, it felt cramped, but I wouldn’t have changed it for anything.
Knickknacks and cookie jars filled the small space, some cute and some slightly naughty, like the one that was shaped like a gnome who was mooning the room. His butt lifted off so you could reach in and grab the cookies. I’d long since learned to ignore anything like it because calling attention to it would only make the conversations harder.
Why does the gnome make you anxious?
Why does his bottom make you uncomfortable?
Everyone has a bottom, Eric.
Yup, ignoring it was the only way to survive with my sanity intact. The fact that she’d known all along but hadn’t said anything was still throwing me for a loop. I’d been so relieved when I’d thought my parents hadn’t told her, but now it was like everything was tilted on its side.
“That smells great.” I walked over to the small table tucked in a corner and sat down. I was supposed to keep her company when she cooked but not get in the way. “I love your alfredo.”
“Thank you, Eric. I’ve been thinking about making it for ages, but now that it’s just me, I don’t feel the need to cook.” Her voice was dramatic and sad, clearly designed to manipulate.
“I’m not falling for that.” I shook my head and smiled. “You got your freedom back when I moved out and we both know it.”
She’d been amazing, turning her life upside down to accommodate an emotionally scarred teenager, but it hadn’t been easy. Nights out with her friends and trips around the world turned into late nights harping over homework and trying to get me to have a social life.
She sighed and smiled but didn’t argue with me. “I just booked a cruise around Asia. It’s going to be wonderful. I’m going to leave in February and be gone at least ten days.”
“At least?” Didn’t cruises have set dates?
“Well, there are some other ships that leave from New Zealand and since I’m going to be on that side of the world anyway, I thought I might look into a few other things.” She shrugged and tried to look casual, but it wasn’t working.
“Is this your way of telling me you might be gone several months like the time you went to London and had so much fun you decided to drag out your trip at the last minute? You were gone six months backpacking around Europe.” I hadn’t been on my own long and suddenly her week trip to London turned into months of travel. It had taken entirely too long to realize that she’d been testing me to see how I did with her being gone for a little while before springing the rest of the trip on me.
“Of course not. You’re a grown man now and I know you can take care of yourself. Besides, you have that nice gentleman you’re seeing, don’t you?” She gave me a wily look. “I’m sure he takes care of you just fine when you need something.”
Damn nosy woman.
“I’ll be fine.”
She kept stirring the sauce, but I could see her reflection in the microwave and I knew she wasn’t going to drop it. Her steely eyes had a glint to them that said she wouldn’t back down. She was like a little terrier that way. “Tell me more about him. You said he was a police officer?”
That was easy enough, so I nodded. “Yes, he’s almost ready to retire, actually. He’s trying to figure out what to do next.”
“A little bit older, huh?” The words were innocent, but I didn’t like the look on her face.
“He’s not ancient. He started out fairly young when he joined the police force.” He didn’t feel that old. Sure, he was older than me, but I liked how steady he was and how he knew what he wanted. There’d been time for Marcus to figure out who he was, and that made me feel secure. Safe.
“I think someone a little older is a good idea for you.” One eyebrow went up. “Didn’t I say that before? When you were trying to date that young man who was so…boring.”
“He wasn’t boring.” He was just really normal. And, well, maybe a little vanilla.
Alright, a lot vanilla.
“Yes, he was.” She shook her head. “You just had to experiment. Everyone goes through that phase. Some just get stuck in it, like your father.”
This was different.
She’d made a few comments about how conservative—stuffy, in her words—my parents were, but this felt different. “What do you mean?”
She rolled her eyes and changed spoons to stir the pasta. “One relationship with a swinger goes wrong and all of a sudden he’s Mr. Normal. It was sad to watch.”
What?
It was like I’d landed in the Twilight Zone. “A swinger?”
My voice cracked, and she gave me a curious look. “Don’t you know what that is? I swear kids today can be so—”
I broke in before she could go on a rant. “I know what it is. I just don’t know what that has to do with my dad.”
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
She started moving around the room, draining the pasta and finishing up dinner as she spoke. “He was dating this feisty young girl before he met your mother. She was…Abbey, maybe…or was it Aubrey…Andie…Oh, I don’t remember, it was too long ago.”
Aunt Sylvia waved her hands in the air and shook her head, frustrated with her memory. “Well, she wasn’t really the settled-down, traditional type. Everyone loved her. Your father didn’t mind the lifestyle, but they had some kind of blowup one weekend. He never said about what, but I have a feeling it was—well, never mind that.” She gave me a curious look and tilted her head. Whatever she was thinking, I didn’t want to know.
She must have realized that because she went on without explaining it. “Needless to say, he did a complete turnaround and was married to your mother in six months. He was drawn to her, I’ll give him that, but he was firmly convinced that he wanted someone more traditional to settle down with. He went a bit overboard on that.”
What the hell?
“Um…” Was I supposed to respond to that?
“Oh, don’t look at me that way.” She started gesturing wildly, the spoon in her hand flinging splatters of sauce around the room. “It’s not like you’re still a child. You’re a grown man in what I’m assuming is a unique relationship. You don’t need to have the truth locked away. It’s about time you understood why he’s so nuts.”
If I could look at it objectively, it made a lot of sense. I just wasn’t sure I could see it that detached. “It’s…it’s hard to wrap my brain around.”
It was all I had for her.