Here is the next chapter of Unblended. The story is almost finished in draft form. For now, I'll still be updating every two weeks, but if I finish another chapter in the next few weeks, updates may move to once a week.

Again, this is rated M for the issues (and the language) that show up in the story. If you have access, I recommend listening to Everything But the Girl's "Piece of My Mind" while reading this chapter.

As always, I love and welcome reviews.

Unblended

By: December

Chapter 2 – I'll Give You a Piece of My Mind

"'I'll give you a piece of my mind. And you're not too old to take it.' Oh, just a piece of my mind."

- Everything But the Girl, "Piece of My Mind"

April 3, 2043

Fredericksburg, Virginia

United States of America

10:45am

Keith looked across the table at Derek. "So Casey called you when she got back?"

"Yeah," Derek confirmed. "It's a good thing she did, because she had no idea how to mount a job search in London at all. You'd think it'd be second nature to a keener, but not so much."

"I take it you helped her look?"

"Helped her look, antagonized her while she was looking. One of those. It depends on who to talk to about it."

Keith fell silent for a second, not sure where to go from that point. But then he remembered the question he asked that got Derek to tell the story of the phone call in the first place. "I take it that your wife was very against the idea that you helped Casey."

"Not initially, no. In fact, at first, she was all for it. Saying it was my family responsibility, or some nonsense like that."

Keith blinked. "Your 'family responsibility'?"

Derek sighed. "My father remarries when I'm fifteen and suddenly all I hear all about responsibility from more females in my life than I ever cared to."

Keith laughed. "That grousing right there sounds like something my Amanda would say. But she doesn't like her stepmother at all."

"Hey, hey. I like my stepmother a lot. Nora is great. Put up with me and my sibs when we were younger. Has been an amazing grandmother. Of all the females in my life, she is the last one to bring up the r-word."

"Okay," Keith interrupted. "So your stepmother is amazing and Sally was initially all for you helping Casey. Did something change? I'm still not connecting point A to point B."

"Hell," Derek said as he ran a hand through his hair. "I have problems making those connections. One day, Sally just snapped on me and that was the beginning of the end."

"Just snapped? You had no warning at all?"

"Not really," Derek shrugged. "I mean, Sally had been having a few more drinks over the course of the week. And she had begun to whine that I wasn't home enough, but as she had done passive-aggressive whining since we started dating in high school, I didn't pay attention to it. Maybe I should have, but I don't think that would have changed anything."

March 20, 2020

London, Ontario

Canada

7pm

Derek sighed and he let himself into the house. It could not be this hard to find a house in London. Casey insisted that she didn't want to stay in her current apartment for the rest of her life, but she had found something wrong with every place the realtor had shown them. The realtor was beginning to have problems dealing with Casey's special brand of crazy. Next week, when they went out, Derek was going to make Casey pick something.

"I'm home," Derek called as he closed the door behind him.

"Daddy!" Mike shouted and he ran from the kitchen to hug him.

"Hey, Mikey. How's it hangin' slugger?" Derek asked as he ruffed his son's hair. After his son broke away from the hug, Derek took a closer look at him. "Um…why is your face covered in peanut butter and jelly?"

"Because you interrupted dinner," Sally said as she came out of the kitchen. "Dinner that we put off an hour waiting for you to get home."

"Sorry about that," Derek apologized. "Nut Case was going back and forth with realtor over some zoning housing thing with the last place he showed us. And, since she hadn't eaten anything since we set out this afternoon, I had to make sure she ate so she didn't wreck driving back to her apartment."

Sally snorted.

"Okay, so she might wreck anyway. Casey's driving skills have gotten interesting from the years she was in the States, but at least she won't total her car because her stomach was growling."

He expected Sally to laugh at that, not to say, "I can't believe you!"

"Wait, what?"

"You are late for dinner because you were spending time with Casey again?"

Derek looked at Sally, knowing that he probably looking as confused as he felt. "Um…didn't I just say that? You knew I was being dragged all over creation because Casey's looking for a house. You were the one who said it was a good idea."

"Yeah, what the fuck was I thinking?" Sally muttered.

"Sal-" Derek raised an eyebrow and he looked over to Mike, who was still in the hall listening to them avidly. Okay, maybe not avidly, as he seemed to be hopping from one foot to the other. But he was an active little boy and jelly had sugar in it, according to Casey.

Sally belatedly realized Mike was there as well and, apparently, didn't want to have the rest of whatever she felt she needed to say aired in front of the boy. "Michael, go back to the kitchen and finish your dinner."

"I am finished," Mike returned.

"Then go up to your room and play with your toys," Sally said.

"But, Daddy just got home! Can't I hang out with him?" Mike asked.

"Michael, don't talk back. Just go," Sally insisted.

Mike turned to look at Derek, almost as if Derek could over-rule Sally. Well, he probably could, but Sally obviously had something on her mind, and Derek had learned over the years that it was better to let her talk it out on the early end than to listen to her huff and whine about whatever the problem was for weeks. "Listen to your mother, slugger. Okay?"

"Okay," Mike didn't sound happy, but he dutifully trudged up the stairs.

"So, Sally," Derek turned to face his wife, "now that our son is on his way to his room, care to explain what caused you to drop the f-bomb back there?"

"Like you don't know," Sally countered.

"Um…I don't know," Derek replied. "That would be why I'm asking."

"I need a drink," Sally said as she walked away from him to the living room, where she poured a glass of wine from an already opened bottle.

"How many have you already had tonight, Sal?" Derek asked.

"Uh-uh. No. You don't get to lecture me about my drinking when you were out for hours with Casey."

"You make it sound like there is something wrong with me being out with Casey."

Sally turned to him, suddenly irate for some reason. "You are married, Mr. Venturi. You said vows in a church."

"I realize that, Sally. What does that have to do with me helping out my stepsister? You were even the one who said I needed to step up and do some things for my family occasionally."

Sally snorted again. "Casey is not your stepsister."

Derek looked at Sally like she had grown three heads. "Excuse me, what?"

"Derek, you forget that I know you. I've lived with you for years. Marti is your sister. Elizabeth is your stepsister, especially after that big brother act you pulled with her fiancé last year. But Casey? Casey is something else to you entirely."

"What are you saying, Sally?" Derek asked.

Sally walked away from him to look out the window for a few minutes. Before Derek could press her again, Sally began to speak. "You know how, before we had Michael, I was a community reporter for 'A' News?"

Derek nodded, although Sally couldn't see him from her position. It seemed that he was only confirming a rhetorical question, because Sally continued to talk.

"A year or so before I left to have Michael, I did something on open houses and local realtors. I met Jan Stanford through that story. We stayed friends. We still get together for lunch. I thought he was a great realtor, it's why I recommended Casey use him-"

"I'm not sure where you are going with this, Sally."

Sally went on in a scarily detached voice. "We met for lunch last week while you and Mike were out at that video taping you had to do. As always, he started talking about his clients. He was complaining about two in particular." Here Sally laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. "He said – he actually said – that he didn't mind that they were so couple-ly during the showings, but between the guy's snarking and the girl's dithering, he wasn't sure he'd ever make a sale. He told me that he even felt weird watching them discuss a showing. 'When they weren't fighting, they were baiting each other. I wasn't sure if they were about to jump each other or kill each other,' he shared."

"So the man has several weird clients. Explains why he has the patience he has with Casey, but what-"

Sally just shook her head. Derek could see the hand holding her wine glass tightening. "The kicker for me was when Jan said he wasn't even sure that the couple liked each other. 'He called her spacey, spazzy, and prudish in the space on twenty minutes,' Jan told me. He thought it was some strange kind of foreplay. He thought I agreed with him when I didn't say anything."

"Um…okay, so the over-worked realtor was complaining that Casey was driving him crazy. He got some stuff wrong in there – not surprising, given what he showed us today – but I don't understand-"

"Derek, you'll tell me the truth if I ask you a question?"

Derek blinked as Sally turned to face him. "Um…of course."

"Are you sleeping with Casey?"

Derek stared at Sally in shock. What in the hell prompted that question?

"Answer me, Derek."

"Are you accusing me of cheating on you?"

"Answer the question!" Sally shouted back.

"You are accusing me of cheating on you! With my stepsister?! Is that what you think of me?"

"You have never thought of Casey as your sister," Sally retorted. "At least admit that much. Casey has never been your sister."

"Okay, fine," Derek said. "I have come to see Casey as a friend. She used to be the bane of my existence. But to accuse me of being unfaithful to you? Or to accuse Casey of doing anything like that to you-"

"Do NOT sing Cassandra's praises to me right now," Sally warned.

"I'm not singing 'Cassandra's' praises. I'm pointing out that you should trust her character, since you can't seem to trust mine," Derek growled back.

"You still haven't told me if you are sleeping with Casey," Sally pointed out.

"Because I'm not going to dignify that question with a response!"

"So you are sleeping with her?!"

"Sally, seriously, what the fuck-" Derek began, but Sally interrupted him with a strange laugh.

"Patrick warned me about this."

"Patrick?" Derek asked. "You ex Patrick, who basically treated you like shit the last time you ran into him?"

"Patrick," Sally began, "told me that even if I married you, Casey would always hold first place in your heart. He said that no one like me could ever turn you from Casey. I told him he was wrong," Sally knocked back the rest of wine. "But what the fuck do I know? I thought Patrick loved me at one point, too."

"Sally, that's fucking unfair. I married you-"

"Only because Casey was going out to the American West and you didn't have the guts to marry your stepsister and move out of the country."

"So, she's my stepsister now?" Derek sneered.

"Get out," Sally said softy.

"What?"

"Get the fuck out of my house," Sally said in a louder voice.

"It's our house and I've done nothing wrong-"

At this point, Sally threw her empty wine glass at Derek. He ducked and it crashed into the wall and broke. "Get the fuck out now or I'll make a scene."

"Fine," Derek backed away from Sally toward the front door. "I'll leave to get you some time to calm down. And to sober the fuck up. When you are thinking normally, you'll be surprised we even fought over this."

"When I'm sober, I'm contacting my fucking lawyer. Now get out of the house before I call the cops."

Derek left after that. He had wanted to stop and talk with Mike before leaving, but Sally was behaving erratically and she screamed at him not to speak to Mike. Not wanting his son to see this ugly fight, Derek left for the night, leaving a note in Mike's school bag saying he'd see him in the morning.

April 3, 2043

Fredericksburg, Virginia

United States of America

11am

"Holy shit," Keith said quietly.

"Yeah," Derek agreed.

"And she just jumped to the idea that you were cheating with your stepsister?"

Derek nodded. "It came out of left field for me. First, she said to go help Casey find a job, find a place to live, find a house. Then, she accused me of cheating on her because I was doing what she told me to do." Derek shrugged.

Keith nodded in solidarity. Even men who never divorced or remarried had stories of when the woman in their lives made no sense, or when they "went off" for no understandable reason. "So, she threw you out?"

"For the night, yeah."

"Where did you go?" Keith asked.

"I ended up at Casey's," Derek shared after a pause.

Keith merely nodded. It was silent for a few moments. Then Derek asked, "You aren't going to say anything else?"

Keith shrugged. "What else is there to say? You ended up at Casey's."

Derek laughed. At Keith's puzzled look, he shared, "If you were a girl, you'd probably said that going to Casey's didn't help my case and made me look guilty."

"It probably didn't help your case, but it's not like you went there to start cheating because your wife thought you were."

"You trust that much in the strength of my character?" Derek asked.

"Nah. You just don't strike me as the 'you think that? Well I'll show you' type of guy. I think you like messing with people's head more than confirming their stereotypes. If Casey really was your friend at this point and you were confused, you probably went to your female friend to see if she could explain to you what happened."

Derek smiled. "I did try to talk to Casey about the fight. I think I may have even said, 'You're a girl. Maybe you can translate this from girl to English," but I couldn't talk about it. I didn't want to voice what Sally thought of me. Of her. Of both of us. And I was angry."

"This did lead to you marrying Casey, though?" Keith asked.

Derek sighed. "Eventually, yes it did. And that just pissed Sally off more. It really wasn't my plan. Sally filed for divorce after that fight…and the divorce proceedings were hell. And then there was the appeal of the decree. The fights were legendary in a bad way. Casey, for whatever reason, stood by me through all of that crap. At the end of it all, I asked her to marry me."

"And she said yes?"

Derek shook his head. "Not at first. She seemed wary about it. I guess a divorced man is damaged goods in a way. I told her she had to marry me. She said this wasn't a case of Venturis always winning. I told her she had to marry me for my sanity. She said she couldn't marry me solely to preserve the sanity she wasn't sure was there. It wasn't until I used the l-word that she relented."

Keith laughed. "Don't talk about your feelings much, do you?"

"Don't even like the f-word. You?"

Keith smiled. "More than you, but Amanda had to work to get me to admit to the l-word out loud when we were dating. It wasn't until we had Imani that using the l-word got to be easier. But we are guys."

"Exactly."

"We'd rather fix stuff than talk about our feelings."

"True."

"So," Keith said after a pause. "What happened with your son after the divorce and your remarriage?"

Derek groaned. "For about three years, I lived in a purgatory called joint custody. I had so many fights with my ex-wife I lost count. And visitation weekends were hell. But one weekend when I went to pick up Michael, everything changed."

"Changed how?"

"That's…a long story."

Keith signaled a waiter as he sat back. "We can order lunch and I have all day. Tell me about the weekend that changed everything."

- to be continued -