I’m about to agree, that Rose is superior with me, when a door bangs upstairs. Muffled voices echo, and I leave Lily’s side to reach the staircase. She follows close behind with Ryke and Daisy.
“You think I wanted to see that photo? I wish to God I could forget what I just saw.” The edged voice belongs to Lily’s husband, Rose’s brother-in-law, and my best friend.
Loren’s subtitle could also be Rose’s sworn enemy, which is why I skip two stairs as I ascend.
4
CONNOR COBALT
“What the fuck are they talking about?” Ryke asks no one in particular.
“Connor…uh did something to Rose,” Lily tries to explain. She points downward, towards her crotch. And when she sees me glancing over my shoulder, her face reddens. “Not my vagina, just to be clear. You know, her vagina.” Lily crinkles her nose. “In my head, this conversation was a whole lot smoother.”
“And clearer,” I say.
Ryke keeps shaking his head. “I’m so fucking confused.”
“Connor waxed Rose,” Daisy guesses with a goofy grin. “Or you made another baby.” She wags her brows.
I arch mine. “Someone’s feeling better.”
“Indubitably.” She bows. Very swiftly, Ryke picks her up and tosses her body across his shoulder. She laughs, her head hanging upside down near his ass. “Best view,” she muses.
I stop midway when I have a clear visual of Rose and Lo. Both of them hold their respective children, their eyes heated and their stances strangely open for two people who hate each other.
I begin to smile. Their bickering is amusing three-quarters of the time. The one-quarter where one of them drags the other in an undertow always alarms me.
“Oh, so someone forced your eyes to a tabloid page that said, Connor goes down on Rose? Was it Moffy? Let me see your five-month-old son put you in a chokehold. I will laugh.” If she wasn’t holding Jane, she would’ve crossed her arms in triumph. She raises her chin instead.
“What the fuck?” Ryke says below me. Rose and Lo are too entrapped with their conversation to even notice the four of us on the staircase, Ryke and Daisy at the bottom.
“You’re so funny,” he says dryly. “I bet Connor laughed into your pussy.”
Rose fumes, her shoulders rigid and tense. I climb two more stairs, my smile fading. Rose steps towards Lo but he has another sentence, to try and retract the other. “Rose, I’ve been actively avoiding your sex tapes for years—”
“Which proves my point that you actively looked at that photo!”
Lo grips his cellphone in one hand, his other arm supporting his son to his side. “I don’t know why you’re yelling at me,” he retorts. “You’re the one who drove three goddamn hours on Thanksgiving just to be eaten out.” He cringes at his own words and even mouths fuck. He’s trying not to sling verbal insults her way, which I appreciate. But it’s what he’s good at and what he’s been conditioned to do.
Rose jabs a finger towards his face. “I’m yelling because Celebrity Crush took a photo of me orgasming and put it on their fucking website. For one second, can you please be sympathetic?”
Lo clenches his teeth, lifting Moffy higher on his waist. He’s only in drawstring pants, his cheekbones sharpened, hair shorter on the sides, fuller on the top. His son wears a blue onesie and kicks out for Lily, but she’s frozen one stair below mine, not wanting to interrupt Lo and Rose’s fight.
“It’s hard to be sympathetic when you left to knit a sweater and decided to tell no one your plans. That’s fine, you know, none of us were concerned about either of you. No one fucking cared…”
I feel my lips pull downward. Rose and I are always diligent about keeping tabs on everyone, and never did it cross my mind that they’d be upset if we snuck out. I thought they’d shrug it off, laugh and joke. When we returned to her parent’s house, Lily rushed to Rose and hugged her tightly while Rose stood stiffly in shock.
They all thought we’d been in a car accident.
“We’ve already explained this,” Rose says. “When we left, we thought we’d be gone for five minutes, but each store was closed and I needed lace for Jane’s dress, not yarn. I didn’t want to go out today with the Black Friday crowds.”
“Wait,” Ryke says, more to me than anyone else. He drops Daisy carefully on her feet, and his voice finally captures Rose and Lo’s attention. “You’re fucking telling me that you two snuck out and had a quickie in a parking lot last night?”
“Relatively speaking,” I say.
Ryke’s nose flares. “I called six fucking hospitals, and you two were getting off?” Daisy wraps her arm around his waist in a comforting hug.
Lo gapes. “Jesus Christ, there’s a photo of Connor getting off too?”
“No,” Rose snaps.
“This has really traveled beyond the point,” I announce.
I hear Ryke mutter, “Unbelievable.” Normally I’d have another response for him, but since this is a much different scenario, with Rose and me at the center, I let it go.
Lo lifts Moffy to his ear, his son now concentrated on him. The pale-skinned, dark-haired boy touches Lo’s jaw and actually presses his lips to his father’s cheek. Lo nods in mock realization. “That’s right, little man. There are liars amongst us.”
I find it more amusing than worrisome. For now, at least. Jane murmurs something in Rose’s arms, the straw hat back on her head, covering thin, wispy brown strands.
“She said you’re wrong and I’m right,” Rose retorts.
I rub my lips, trying to hide my grin.
“Just say the words, Rose,” Lo tells her. “You. Left. To. Get. Off.”
I wait for Rose to accept this partial truth as the whole story, but it’s not the truth she’d usually tell. We did it for you, is the one that’s sitting on the tip of her tongue. But some things have to be kept secret. For the betterment of Lily and Lo and the simplicity of this entire process. Rose and I don’t want four other voices in this ordeal. It’s easier constructing plans without them.
Rose inhales sharply, raises her chin again, and says, “Fine. I left to get off. Do you feel better, Loren?”
“Yeah.” His amber eyes drift to me now. “If you needed a private location to go down on your wife, I could’ve directed you to the Calloway girls’ clubhouse. Backyard. Perfect place to fuck.”
I can’t hide my escalating grin. “Then why haven’t you ever invited me, darling?”
“My door is always open.” The innuendo is clear.
I tilt my head in thought. There was a time where I truly believed Lo wouldn’t understand me, maybe even act different towards me if I told him about my experiences with men. I have a natural, undeniable fear that the relationships I’ve cultivated will somehow morph into tangled, uncertain strands, made up of cold-shoulders and cautious glances from them to me. All because of past hookups and short-lived flings that have no basis on what I do today, now, with my wife and my friends and my child.
I told Loren the truth, not long ago. He’s the second person in my life to ever know.
He barely flinched. I doubt he knows this, but how he acts towards me now—like nothing has changed, like our lighthearted jabs have the same exact connotation as I want them to—has made me revere him and respect him even more.