30. Georgia

THIRTY

Georgia

We go over to his parents’ on a random weekend at the beginning of December.

I’m delighted. Thrilled, really, to see them again. I also wonder when I started referring to me and Oliver as the royal ‘we.’ A ‘we’ who casually goes to his parents’ house for Sunday brunch. He didn’t even ask, we just kind of ended up here because I was staying at his the night before. I find that I don’t hate it. Especially after weeks at work of pretending not to know each other, always separated by a distance of at least twenty feet.

I can’t help but think of Reggie and Vic once in a while. Do I like being hidden away, like some sort of illicit affair partner? It’s not great, but Oliver is pretty great, and what we’re doing is pretty fun. Do I like that it’s my job on the line, if we get caught? I mean, that’s not great. But he did say we just have to get through the winter. Which is only a few months.

I do wonder, for a short moment, when my self-destructive tendencies will rear its ugly head. But they’re all good for right now. I wonder for an even shorter moment if it’s because we’re still in the limbo-infatuation-I-want-to-bang-your-brains-out-every-time-I-look-at-you stage.

Anyway, this long winter hibernation thing isn’t sounding too bad, especially after hearing the way Gloria screams my name when I walk into their apartment, like I’m a long-lost relative or Jesus or something.

“Missed ya, bitch!” Izzy or Tala shriek from somewhere down the hall.

I can’t help but grin at their dramatics. “Hey, everyone.”

I bend in half so she can kiss both of my cheeks, moving down the line to bear hug everyone else in his immediate family—Ben, Izzy, Tala and her wife Jill. Their kids wrap themselves around my waist. I inexplicably find Gloria again at the end of the line, except this time she is holding a plate almost sagging in half with the weight of the food on it.

She shoves it into my hands. “Eat, na ,” she says.

Grimacing, I keep my mouth shut about the sheer amount of food on the plate that I can’t possibly eat.

I look over at Oliver for help, but I start a little instead, almost dropping my plate—at the way he is looking at me, with his beautiful face, with his thick eyebrows and freckles and crooked tooth, gorgeous eyes shining at me with something intensely warm, wearing a small smile like he has a secret.

He comes up to me with an empty plate, taking a spoon and dumping half of my plate onto his. Horrified, I look around for Gloria, but she is puttering around in the kitchen. “It’s better than her seeing you throw food away,” he reassures me, bending to drop a kiss into my hair.

I freeze. Even more horrified this time, I look around for his other family members, dismayed when I see every single one of them grinning at us, his nieces sounding like teakettles with the way they are squealing.

“What?!” Gloria calls from the kitchen.

“Nothing,” we all yell in unison .

After we eat, Izzy claps her hands, signaling the end of the meal. “We have to teach you how to line dance,” she informs me.

“Huh?”

“Line dancing at parties is like the national sport of the Philippines,” Tala says.

“I think that’s karaoke, actually,” Oliver chimes in.

“What party?” I ask, quickly losing the plot.

“Tita Tess told me she invited you to her seventy-fifth birthday party,” Izzy says impatiently.

“Oh… honestly, I forgot,” I admit, honestly too swept up in everything to even think about it.

Gloria gasps loudly. “I won’t tell her you said that. She thinks it’s the event of the year.”

Suddenly, all the furniture is being pushed to the side of the room, their living room becoming our dance floor.

“Okay, so there’s two basic types of line dancing that we can apply to songs of this beat, but the main song is Todo Todo,” Gloria explains, while pressing play on her phone.

The song plays over their living room speakers. Quicker on her feet than she looks, she shows me the first type of dance, which looks like a more complicated, salsa-ish version of the Electric Slide. The second version looks exactly like the steps of the Electric Slide, just with more spinning. Her daughters and daughter-in-law and granddaughters dance behind her dutifully, looking like a fantastic, multi-generational girl band.

Gloria drags me over to them. I fall over on my first attempt, crashing into Paloma, who screams with laughter.

Oliver and Ben chuckle from where they stand in the kitchen. Oliver holds up fingers on his hands—zero out of five.

“What is this, the Olympic trials of line dancing?” I shoot at them. “You two would never even make the cut. ”

Oliver and his father look at one another and smirk, identical dimples making an appearance on their left cheeks.

“Start it from the top, Izzy,” he tells his sister, and the Flores girls clear the floor, giggling.

The first few notes of Todo Todo play, and Oliver and Ben glide into a perfectly executed routine, light and graceful on their feet, hips popping out at just the right moment to make it look smooth. They twirl and clap simultaneously, as if they’ve practiced for this moment their entire lives.

I stare, open-mouthed, the other Flores women hooting and hollering around me, until Oliver drags me into the middle of the living room dance floor and moves my body through the steps.

“I hate you,” I tell him.

“I like you a little bit,” he says into my ear, while wrapped tightly around my back. I melt. “And don’t worry. There’s always a tita emceeing the line dancing, screaming out directions like a drill sergeant. You’ll be able to follow along.”

“Condescending prick,” I tell him.

He kisses me on the temple before twirling me around. I hear Mama Flores squeal from somewhere across the room, and I forget for a moment that I’m a secret affair partner with an anxiety disorder and ADHD.

That night, back at his place, he makes me cook him dinner while wearing only an apron and a pair of stilettos he made me bring over a few days ago.

We haven’t made it past the food prep stage, though, after I bend in half to retrieve a mixing bowl from the lowest cabinet.

“Stay like that,” he orders. “Use your hands to spread yourself. Show me your pretty pussy. ”

I do just that, feeling myself swell and drench, my body bent at a right angle. I hear his heavy, slow, confident footsteps. I hear his belt jangling, pants unzipping, feel him rub the tip of his dick from my clit to my asshole, spreading my moisture. He doesn’t touch me anywhere else.

He makes a few passes, holding the base of his dick and tracing my folds, teasing, pushing just slightly in, until I’m a pleading, writhing mess.

“So wet for me, baby. Your pussy is begging for it. But I want to hear you. What do you need?” he asks me.

“Fuck me, Oliver; please,” I gasp.

“Hold on to the counter,” he commands, before pushing his way in, slow and controlled and confident. “Mine,” I think I hear him whisper. His hands finally grip my hips. Long pulls out and quick pushes in, stretching me, forcing me to feel every inch.

He ends up cooking dinner after that, something elaborate and perfect that takes too long. I eat standing at the counter, because my ass is too sore to sit on. We both decide to keep our clothes off.

“We haven’t gone to look at any open houses recently,” he tells me. “Wanna go next weekend?”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “We?”

He is unbothered. “Yes, we. Reginald and Victoria Kensington. I thought you were in the market. I want to come. They’ve all been fun.”

Something in me feels twitchy. “Maybe,” I manage, turning to inspect my salmon.

I feel the heat of him standing behind me. “Hey,” he prods. “Where’d you go?”

“I’m here,” I mumble.

He turns me so he can see my face. “Talk to me,” he demands, in the same tone he told me to hold on to the counter .

I look at the floor. “That made me feel weird.”

“Why?”

“It’s a whole thing.”

“I want to know.”

I can’t escape the force of his gaze, feeling extremely naked, and not just physically. “My…” I blow out a breath, resigned to this now. “My ex was a controlling dick,” I start, but he cuts me off.

“You’ve mentioned that before. Is this a couch conversation?” he asks, gesturing towards his living room.

I nod, and he pulls me over there and drags me into his lap, wrapping his arms around me. “Okay,” he says into my hair.

I already feel better. Safer. I wonder how he knew. “I never knew how to handle money. I just… didn’t even want to deal with it. I’ve always had a bunch of savings because of living with Eloise. She doesn’t pay any rent, because she owns the apartment outright.”

I snuggle further into Oliver’s lap. “My ex was… really, really wealthy. Like, Old Money, Generational Wealth, Reggie and Vic Kensington wealthy. I thought that meant he knew how to handle finances, so I gave him control of my bank account.” I scoff. “He didn’t know shit. He lost a ton of my savings on insane stock market bets. I’d call him out on it, but he’d gaslight me into thinking I knew nothing. He was in full control of my finances. And then my parents died, and he gambled a bunch of their inheritance away. And that’s when I found out he had been cheating on me with an old family friend. For months. And then he dumped me and proposed to her.”

Oliver gives me a squeeze.

“I didn’t have much left after that, but I decided to take control of my life. I taught myself how to balance a budget. I clawed my way out of the hole, and I’m well on my way to being able to afford a down payment on an apartment. To me, it represents freedom. Independence.” I refuse to cry. “He really fucked me up. Now I do this insane thing where I test people, needing them to prove themselves to me, or something.”

He’s silent, rubbing my bare arms with his hands, and he thankfully doesn’t ask if he’s proved himself to me. “I think I understand now why you were so upset with me when you first started,” he finally says. “And also just a minute ago, when I asked you to go to open houses.” He sighs, his big chest expanding and shrinking. “I’m sorry that all happened to you. That sounds really hard, and you didn’t deserve it, but I’m so proud of you for taking control of it all, on your own terms. You’re an incredibly strong woman.”

He doesn’t say anything else, but that’s okay, because what he said was perfect. Because I am learning that he is perfect. “Thanks,” I say, and I let a tear escape this time.

“I always had issues with control,” he tells me.

“You don’t need to share anything, Oliver; this isn’t the suffering Olympics?—”

“Hush,” he says, nipping at my ear. “I want to share this with you. I also want you to know why I was such a dick when I first met you.”

“Fine,” I grumble.

“I’ve always felt the need to fix things. On my own terms. I hate feeling out of control. Ever since I was a kid. If my parents would come home and argue, I’d cook dinner or do the laundry or whatever until early in the morning. Just wanting everything to be okay.”

I pictured little Oliver folding shirts and matching socks until two in the morning.

“It’s actually how I ended up at PS 2,” he continues. “My dad got really sick. Prostate cancer.”

I freeze .

He notices and squeezes me tight. “He’s fine now. Cancer-free. But at the time, he was in and out of the hospital for his treatments. I was working in Brownsville, but I was taking the train over to Clinton Hill to help my dad get to his appointments.” He pauses, thinking. “I genuinely loved that Brownsville school. It was my baby. But the commute got to be too much. So I made a few phone calls to people I knew in this district and got myself the position at 2.” He laughs without humor. “I still don’t know if my family wanted or even needed that. I just did it.”

I understand. “Because you wanted to feel in control. You wanted to fix it.”

“Yes,” he says simply.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, digesting.

“I’m sorry I made you feel out of control,” I tell him.

“I’m extremely happy you made me feel out of control,” he responds softly. “I’m sorry I tried to control you.”

“I like when you control me in bed,” I say, snuggling my ass into his bare dick, until I feel it respond.

“And on the couch,” he says, collaring my throat with one hand and gripping my breast with the other.

“Yes,” I say simply.

I realize, later that night, after he’s fallen asleep next to me and I watch the rise and fall of his chest, the strong lines of his handsome face sharp even when slack with sleep, that maybe my anxieties and worries and self-destructive behaviors haven’t presented themselves because of what this man is to me. Someone who’s passing all the subconscious tests I’ve been throwing at him, passing with flying colors. Perfect.