Chapter 10
10
DES
I place my cup on the coffee table in the center of the living room and plop down on the couch, putting my feet up next to it. Marla eyes me over her phone and pops another chip into her mouth from the bag at her hip and chews as I hold out a hand.
I pull up the picture Alex sent me of his open suit pants, his hands on his boxers. I could definitely develop a thing for smart suits if he's in them. And the way he blushed when he had a thought that might be embarrassing, but then said it anyway. I curl my toes in my slippers.
"By the way, Dessy, Mom's coming over later."
Oh God. I eye the detritus spread across every surface in the apartment and glance at my watch. Some warning would have been nice! Will I ever get to sit down for five minutes? And I need to work today. A visit from my mom involves copious amounts of wine or gin and tonic and lots of indiscretion.
"She's bringing Lorna." She chows down on another chip and her lip curls. For some girl-related unknown reason, sister number five does not get on with sister number two. Although it's not exactly a surprise because they are like oil and water.
"I think I'm going out," she grumbles.
"You don't want to hang out with Lorna?" I say with a grin.
Tutting at me, she swings her hair. "She's a bitch to me."
I hold up my hands and shake my head as she opens her mouth again.
Warmth percolates through me at the idea of Lorna coming over. She's a lawyer downtown, and I don't see her as often as I'd like. Mom's a crapshoot—we could get tears, hysterics, or rapturous joy—but Lorna is as straight as they come: chatty, loud (as we all are), but sensible. Sort of. Thank God. Maybe she can give me a view on Alex because he's so far outside my dating playbook that I might as well be on the moon. Her long-term boyfriend Brad wasn't exactly Mr. Wade-in-and-sweep-you-off-your-feet, more like bland as a boiled potato, and boy do I need some advice on dealing with a guy like Alex.
"What time?"
She wrinkles her nose. "Two, I think."
Jesus, it's one-thirty now. I lean toward the table and sigh, downing my coffee in a gulp. Then I scoot around the apartment, throwing laundry in and loading the dishwasher as Marla sits on her ass. As I vacuum under her feet, my patience snaps.
"Marla, you are living here. Can you not get off your backside and help?"
She rolls her eyes theatrically, and leans forward hissing, "It's Mom, Desmond, not the pope. Why the hell are you cleaning up for her?"
"Um, because it's more pleasant for them to come to a clean and tidy environment, rather than somewhere a tornado rolled through." I wave my hand around at all her stuff on the table and the couch and her pile of shoes by the front door. Even in the short time she's been here, I don't think she's put one pair away in the closet.
"Well, I think …" she starts.
"Do I give two fucks what you think, Marla? No, I don't. Clear your shit into your room and the closet. Now."
Her mouth drops open. "Who trod on your toes?" she mumbles under her breath, rising from the couch and flouncing over to where her stuff is strewn all over the dining table and disappearing into her room. I blow out a slow gust of air. I'm not sure how long I'm going to be able to tolerate her living here.
The buzzer makes me jump, and I tell our doorman Darius to send the entourage up.
My mom enters the apartment arms stretched out, eyes brimming with tears.
"My only son!" she croons, dragging me into a warm hug and I'm drowning in Joie de Vivre perfume. I grin at the nude picture on my wall behind her head, before pulling back and smiling at her.
Lorna pushes past me into the kitchen.
"You got anything to eat, Dessy?"
Marla has now reappeared and she tuts from a barstool.
Lorna opens her mouth and puts her hands on her hips. Lorna spent all her teenage years studying, holed up trying to get into law school. There was no time for exercising and, despite my best efforts to reassure her, she has been sensitive about her weight all her life. Whereas Marla has an active social media account where she shows off her figure and poses in freebies that companies have sent her.
"Will you two not start!" Mom says.
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Marla says and flounces off into her bedroom.
"She's staying here?" Lorna says, eyebrows raised in horror before she sticks her head in the fridge and comes out holding a bottle of white wine.
I laugh at her expression. "Yeah, yeah she is. Caught me at a weak moment. Shoot me now."
"Des, honestly," she says, "you were always too soft with her."
She places the bottle on the counter and opens the cupboard above my head, pulling out three glasses.
I widen my eyes at her. "Treat me like her parent, why don't you?"
A grin creeps over her face. "Okay, I'm sorry. You put up with us all and did an awesome job," she leans in and kisses my cheek. "I heard a rumor there's a new man on the scene?"
She pours out the wine and hands one to me and I take a sip. I wasn't intending to drink today, but there's no avoiding it with these two.
"And thank God for that!" Mom says loudly. "That George character was way too caught up in his own problems and good looks."
Her description of George echoes my own thoughts so precisely that I want to laugh.
I circle my finger at the pair of them. "And who told you that …?"
Lorna smirks before bending down and pulling a large bag of chips out of the cupboard. "You should know by now that Marla can't keep her trap shut about anything."
"I heard that!" Marla shouts from her room.
Mom glances up from her screen and tuts. "Don't talk about your sister like that."
I pull out a bowl, and Lorna empties the chips into it, catching my eye and I immediately want to giggle. Mom can't keep her mouth shut either.
"So that's the reason for this sudden visit?"
"What do you think of these nails?" Mom says, turning her phone around to show us a lady having some rainbow acrylic nails put on.
Did she just change the subject? I stretch out my hand. "What do you think, ladies? How well would nails like that go down at work? I think the two new homophobic members of my team would love it, don't you?"
"I didn't mean you, Dessy," Mom says, slapping my hand gently.
At the same time Lorna says, "You have homophobes on your team? In a tech company? I thought they were all chichi and LGBTQ+ friendly."
"They are the worst bunch of people who have ever been put together in the history of time, and that's no exaggeration," I say.
Lorna laughs, and oh! the joy of being able to complain about this outside the office.
I fill them in on the three categories of people I've come up with, along with all the dreadful things they've said.
Mom belatedly catches up. "That homowhaty thing, I thought that wasn't allowed nowadays."
"It isn't," Lorna says, raising an eyebrow at me.
I flap my hand at her. "It's fine. I'm their boss. I can sort them out if I need to."
Mom peers at me over the reading glasses she's perched on the end of her nose from around her neck.
"Mind you do, Dessy. No one treats my son like that and gets away with it."
Mom occasionally comes out with statements like this, but she wouldn't defend me if her life depended on it. She's not one for a showdown at all, which is why we all ended up so headstrong. She likes to pretend that she'd step up to the plate if any of her children were in trouble, but in reality I was the one who argued with the schools, with the benefits people, with everyone. Gah . The office is the last thing I want to think about, it's bad enough living it without talking about it, too.
"So, you've come to visit because Marla told you I was seeing someone new?"
I hadn't thought about this aspect of having my sister here. Is it going to seriously cramp my style?
Mom pops a chip in her mouth. "Apparently, he came around to watch some TV the other night."
Honestly, the gossip hotline with this lot.
I point my finger at the pair of them. "He did, but it is not a thing. We've only just met, and I still haven't worked out whether he's my type or not."
"What's wrong with him?"
"Nothing's wrong with him. I think he'll find me too high maintenance, that's all. He's very chill, and a bit hesitant. He's not well versed in the whole gay thing. He's not out to his family."
Mom purses her lips. "Oh, I always think it's ridiculous when people say that kind of thing—about their family not knowing." She waves her hand around. "I mean, as a mother, you know. How could you not?"
Lorna catches my eye again, and a giggle sticks in my throat. All the things we all hid from Mom.
"Must be really hard though, hiding like that," Lorna says. "You'd expect a bit of caution."
"Yeah, I guess so," I say.
She taps my hand. "He sounds lovely to me," she adds. "I'm not sure you were finding the right type of person on the scene. And Dessy, you're not high maintenance; you're very chill yourself."
"Only a member of my family would say something like that."
Mom makes owl eyes at me.
Lorna laughs and ruffles my hair. "Lovely to have you back, Des."
I make a face at her, and Mom beams. "Definitely, and we want to hear all the gossip from that club you go to. Lush? I love hearing about the things you get up to."
"Crush."
"Like the threesome he had the other night?" Marla shouts from her room.
My stomach turns over. "You weren't even here then. How the hell did you find out about that?" I yell back.
"I heard you on a video chat with George."
Jesus Christ.
Mom puts her hands over her ears, conveniently after she's found out the information. "La-la-la-la," she sings loudly. "I don't need to hear about my children's sex lives."
"Three guys?" Lorna queries. "Did it include this new one?"
Mom has now stopped singing and is no longer covering her ears.
"Oh my God, Marla," I shout over to her room, "I'm going to murder you later."
"You're welcome!" she shouts back.
"No, it did not include the new guy. Yes, three guys." How can I explain this to them without looking like a giant slut?
My mom's eyes are round.
I laugh. "You guys! Stop looking at me like I laid an egg, okay? Threesomes are not unusual on the gay scene."
Lorna puts her head in her hands. "God, I wish I was gay. Nobody does threesomes when they're straight."
"That's because a guy's ego would be too fragile to put up with another man," Mom pitches in. Look who's talking about this now? I point at her. "Who said it would be two men and not two women in this imaginary straight threesome scenario?"
"Then they'd just be worried about having to do the business twice," Mom adds.
Lorna is grinning. "There speaks the voice of experience."
"Lorna!" Mom pretends to make an outraged face. "I have no such thing, and anyway, what about Brad?"
And Lorna, to her credit, lets Mom off the hook. "Sometimes I would just like my life to be exciting," she says mournfully.
Fuck, is that how it is with Brad? This taking it slow thing is going to be as dull as dishwater. Then I think about the quiet joy of puttering around my apartment last Sunday on my own.
"Believe me," I say, "excitement is overrated. It always comes with a side dish of backlash and betrayal."
At this point, Marla decides she's had enough of listening to this conversation from the bedroom and saunters out to join us.
"Ooooo," Mom says, "tell us all about the backlash and betrayal."
I skewer her with a glance. "I thought you didn't want to hear about your children's sex lives?"
She gestures at Lorna to open another bottle of wine. "When did I say that?" she says.
And when Lorna and Mom get up to leave, I pull Lorna into a hug as Mom goes to the bathroom. Stepping back, I study her face.
"You and Brad took a long time getting together," I say.
Lorna snorts as she bends down to pick up her bag. "We were both too busy with our careers to put time and effort into anything else."
That sounds familiar. "Too busy for sex?" I say.
She straightens and purses her lips at me. "Are you asking me how quickly we did the business?"
"Gah! No."
Her eyes sweep over my face as she chews her lip. "If you're asking about long-term relationships and your new guy, you're asking the wrong person. I think not being out is a very different thing from what Brad and I did."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"What's up, Dessy?" She circles my face. "I'm getting major reluctance vibes. You're usually very easy about guys."
"Not reluctance exactly. I like him. But he wants to take the whole thing slow."
"Ohhhhh." She studies my face for a minute, then a sly smile curls over her lips. "Not having sex every five minutes—you should try it some time." She bats her eyelashes at me, and I make a rude gesture at her.
Everyone is always racing along at a hundred miles an hour: their careers, money, relationships, sex. I don't know why Alex wants to take whatever we're doing slowly: I really like him, but I'm still not quite sure what I've got myself into here.