Thanks for reading and reviewing! I had several people ask in the reviews about the songs in the last chapter and wasn't able to respond privately. The first song was "Say You Love Me" by Fleetwood Mac, and the second one was "It's Over" by Boz Scaggs.
This chapter is arranged like snippets from Thanksgiving week. I'm horrible with time transitions, so I just left them choppy and awkward, sorry about that.
There are also inconsistencies with Emily's and Ricky's ages/presence of a lounge chair on the balcony from previous chapters, but I no longer have access to the drafts of those chapters, and copying and pasting the chapter into document manager adds a lot of formatting characters at every different paragraph that would've taken forever to fix, so I'm being lazy and asking y'all to overlook the inconsistencies. :)
After dinner Tuesday evening, Andy went to a meeting, and Sharon and Emily each poured a glass of wine and went out to the balcony. Rusty had just gotten home, so he was still eating dinner. "I like the new furniture," Emily commented, eyeing the new lounge chairs Sharon and Andy had bought the week before. "But why didn't you guys wait until you find a house? This is just more stuff to move."
"I just, uh, saw it and liked it, so I went ahead and got it. Did I tell you we finally decided on a song for our first dance at the reception?" Sharon asked, desperate to change the subject.
"No! Mom, you've been holding out!"
Sharon scrolled through the songs on her phone until she found what she was looking for. "It was actually Andy's idea. I knew it, and I've always liked it, I just didn't think about it." She reached the song and hit play. One of the hardest things about choosing a song had been that most of her favorites reminded her of Jack in some way, but this one definitely did not.
Precious love, I'll give to you
Blue as the sky and deep
In the eyes of a love so true
Beautiful face, you make me feel
Light on the stairs and lost
In the air of a love so real
You can count on me
Count on my love
Count on me
Count on my love
To see you through
Emerald eyes and China perfume
Caught on the wheel and lost
In the feel of a love so soon
Ruby lips, you make my song
Into the night and saved by
The light of a love so strong
You can count on me
Count on my love
Count on me
Count on my love
To see you through
"Wow, Mom, that's perfect," Emily said when the song was over. "What took Andy so long to mention it? This had to be recent."
Sharon tucked her legs under her and looked out over the city lights. "I think he was kind of embarrassed, although he shouldn't have been. He heard the song on the radio before he'd even thought about us dating. He didn't hate me anymore, and actually was starting to like me, but not in a romantic way yet. Just in the same way the rest of the team was starting to like me instead of just tolerating me because I was their boss." She took a long sip of wine. "I think it made him think of how I'd never been able to really count on Jack and how hard that must've been, which humanized me a little bit, if that makes sense. I think he kind of started fantasizing about us dating. Not in an obsessive way, just in a 'she's my boss, I prefer women at least ten years younger than me and it would never really happen, but it's fun to think about' kind of way. Then, little by little..." Sharon shrugged. "We made it here."
The sliding door opened, interrupting her thoughts, and Rusty came outside. He wedged himself beside Sharon in her lounge chair. "Well, just make yourself comfortable," she teased.
"Oh, I am. Don't worry." Rusty wiggled against her with exaggerated movements before settling beside her.
Sharon brushed his hair back from his face. "How was your day?"
"Long. Andrea was trying to finish things up so she could be off for the rest of the week, and it took forever. I met my quota for my internship hours this quarter, though, so it was worth it. All I have left are finals, and then..."
"My baby boy graduates!" Sharon gushed, ruffling his hair.
"Ew, Mom, don't say that. That's gross." Rusty ducked away from her and smoothed down his hair. "And did you have to do that this morning?! My hair's felt weird all day."
Emily looked confused. "How can your hair feel we—never mind. I don't want to know. On that note, I need another glass of wine. Mom?"
Sharon drained the rest of her glass and gave it to Emily. "Thanks, honey."
A little while later, Andy was home, and Emily had gotten a second helping of the cucumber slices Andy had soaked in vinegar for part of dinner. Rusty wrinkled his nose. "How do you eat those? Vinegar is disgusting...No offense, Andy."
"None taken." Andy grinned. "Your mom loves my cucumber, that's all I care about."
Sharon shrugged disinterestedly. "I've had better."
Andy looked taken aback, but he couldn't further investigate what she was talking about with Emily and Rusty around. Rusty didn't miss the look on Andy's face. "What...Oh, come on, you guys! Nothing is safe around you anymore!"
Emily rolled her eyes. "Relax, Rusty, that stopped being funny in middle school. He's probably just talking about the cucumber."
"Get your mind out of the gutter, young man," Sharon agreed, trying to hold back a laugh.
"Andy, I like the song you picked for the reception," Emily said, changing the subject.
Andy nodded. "Well, your mom vetoed Superfreak, so..."
Sharon nearly spit out her wine. "Andy!"
Later that night, Emily was ready for bed and half-asleep on the couch, patiently waiting for everyone else to go to bed and give her some peace. Andy leaned down and kissed the top of her head. "Go get in your mom's bed, honey. You've had a long day. I'll sleep in here tonight."
"Thanks. Goodnight, you guys...Hey, baby brother, if any of your organs explode tonight, how about telling someone?"
"Ugh, too soon, Emily," Rusty groaned.
Emily yawned and trudged down the hall. She was happy about Sharon's and Andy's relationship, but she wasn't so happy about losing her sleeping spot.
When Rusty left the room to take a shower, Andy turned toward Sharon. "So, uh, before, what did you mean by you've 'had better?'" He couldn't help asking. If they hadn't had the "metaphorical produce" conversation a couple of weeks before, he wouldn't have thought anything of it.
Sharon gave him an innocent look. "I meant that I've had better. It's pretty self-explanatory."
"You know what I mean!"
Sharon shrugged. "I meant that I've had better cucumbers. I don't know what else I can tell you."
"Okay. You want to be that way? I'll remember that." Andy pushed her hair back from her neck and started kissing her.
"Ooh, that'll teach me," Sharon murmured.
A few minutes later, Andy tore himself away and went to the laundry room to find some pajamas, not wanting to disturb Emily. By the time he'd changed, Rusty was padding down the hall and flopped on the couch beside Sharon. "Andy, I'll sleep out here, and you can sleep in my bed," he offered. "I didn't think about it before, but Emily's probably passed out by now. I don't have a death wish, so I'm not waking her up to get in my bed."
"Thanks, kid. If she's anything like her mother, I don't blame you. The couch is hell on my back, but she looked like she was about to fall over." Andy grinned at Sharon. "And now I don't have to sleep alone."
"Oh, yes you do," Rusty insisted. "You and Mom are not sleeping in my bed."
Sharon rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Rusty, do you think we'd—"
"Stop, Mom, don't finish that sentence. That's just gross."
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On Thanksgiving morning, Sharon was finishing up preparations for dinner when Emily started stirring on the couch. As much as she liked the old arrangement of sleeping with her mom when she wasn't the only child home, Ricky had gotten the short end on sleeping arrangements. He'd been relegated from what was now Rusty's room to the couch after Rusty moved in, and he'd been demoted to an air mattress on the floor in Rusty's room after Andy moved in and Emily got booted out of Sharon's bed. She turned the TV on and turned it to the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, which was just beginning. She got up to take a shower so she wouldn't have to fight for one later and was prepared to veg out in front of the TV, but Sharon's motions in the kitchen made her feel guilty. "You need any help?"
Sharon rinsed her hands off and dried them with a dish towel. "No, I'm just about done. All that's left to do is fix a mimosa."
"Ooh, make that two, please."
"You got it." Still in her pajamas, Sharon joined Emily on the couch and handed her a glass. She'd obviously had the same idea as Emily, as her hair was wet and she was wearing different pajamas than the night before.
"Thanks, Mom. Mimosas are kind of like sandwiches. Even though I do the exact same thing, yours just taste better...Where's Andy? Is he still asleep?"
Sharon shook her head. "I decided to just buy a dessert instead of making something, so he ran out to do that. I doubt much of it will get eaten, so I didn't want to take the time to make one, but it just felt wrong not to have dessert." They lounged on the couch, sipping their drinks and watching the parade, as Andy arrived with the dessert and Rusty and Ricky eventually woke up and made their way into the living room. Just like any other time Emily and/or Ricky were home for a visit, there had already been a few moments that reminded Sharon that their usually-stalled house-hunting process needed to be stepped up a bit.
"Mooooom, I have to pee!" Rusty complained later that morning. "Andy's been in there forever! Can we, like, make him go down to the lobby next time he has to blow up the bathroom?"
"You saw him headed down the hall with the newspaper under his arm just as plainly as I did," Sharon pointed out. "He would've let you go first if you had asked."
"I didn't have to go then."
Sharon raised her eyebrows. "You didn't have to go less than ten minutes ago, and now you have to go badly enough to complain about it? I haven't had a conversation like this since Ricky was about four."
"Whoa, just sitting here!" Ricky protested.
"I didn't have to go that bad then," Rusty amended.
"Well, nothing's stopping you from going down to the bathroom in the lobby, yourself."
"But I'd have to put real clothes on, then. I don't have to do that for two more hours." Rusty looked at her like that should've been obvious.
"Well, then, I don't know what to tell you. Just don't potty in your pants."
"Mo-om!"
"Sorry. Wrong kid. And wrong decade, thank goodness." Andy finally emerged from the bathroom, and Rusty hurried down the hall.
"What's with him?" Andy asked as he came into the living room.
"Just another instance of the 'five people, one bathroom' problem," Sharon answered. "We have to find a house."
By 3:00 that afternoon, everyone had gotten dressed and dinner was mostly done. Provenza, Patrice, and Andrea were the only extras coming, and as much as she loved everyone else who had been invited, Sharon was glad to be having a reasonably quiet Thanksgiving. Provenza and Patrice were the first to arrive, and Sharon greeted them at the door.
"I brought wine," Patrice stated as they came in.
"Oh, good, you remembered the secret passcode." Sharon gave her a hug and took the two bottles from her. "Thank you! This looks great."
"You're welcome. Can I help you with anything?"
Sharon shook her head. "We're just waiting on the turkey. That's Andy's jurisdiction."
Once everyone had greeted each other, Patrice opened one of the bottles of wine, gathered a few glasses, and started filling them. "Emily? Wine?"
"Yes, please...I'll get that," Emily said after a knock at the door signaled Andrea's arrival.
"I'll go ahead and pour her a glass." Patrice rolled her eyes. "I know the answer to that question without asking."
After dinner, with the kitchen clean and the dishwasher humming, Sharon, Emily, Patrice, and Andrea escaped to the balcony with refilled wine glasses, leaving the men inside, yelling at the football game on TV. Well, Rusty didn't care enough about the game to get excited or angry about it, but he'd take football over "girl talk."
"Ooh, I like the new furniture," Andrea commented as she settled in a lounge chair. "It's kind of bouncy. I could get a man on here and—"
"Ewww, Andrea, I don't want to know," Emily interrupted her.
Andrea pulled Emily down to sit in the chair beside her. "Get over it, honey, you're 34. You're old enough to hear this."
"When Mom or her friends are involved, I will never be old enough to hear that. Unless I've had a lot more wine than I've had tonight, and I'm not in the mood to be hungover tomorrow."
"Oh, good lord," Andrea huffed. She turned her attention to Sharon. "I don't understand why you and Andy postponed your honeymoon."
Sharon shrugged. "Stroh seems to be getting closer, and I'm just not comfortable with being out of the country with him closing in on LA. I know Rusty will have protection, but I would still be too worried to leave him and wouldn't enjoy myself. If something did somehow happen to him while we were gone, I would never forgive myself." She took a long sip of wine. "I didn't really want to push radiation back, either. I'll start the Monday after the wedding, and I just want to get it over with. I'd rather go to Ireland after that's taken care of."
Andrea nodded. "That's true. I don't blame you."
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The day after Thanksgiving, Andy spent the day with a man he was sponsoring through AA volunteering at one of the homeless shelters downtown, as they'd done every year for the last five years. Sharon, Emily, Ricky, and Rusty had their own day-after-Thanksgiving tradition of watching Christmas movies, crammed together on the couch and not getting out of their pajamas. Although much of the rest of the country was shopping that day, there wasn't one thing Sharon could think of that she wanted that would keep her from sipping coffee and watching Christmas movies in a sea of pillows, blankets, and her children. Per tradition, Sharon always picked the first movie, which was always White Christmas. "All right, Em, your turn." Emily got up to make her selection and start the movie.
"Ugh, is it Ricky's turn yet?" Rusty complained when Miracle on 34th Street started playing. "This is a kid's movie."
"And Home Alone isn't?" Emily shot back.
"Who cares? It's funny. This is just sappy. And I always pick Home Alone because you guys won't watch Die Hard."
"That's not a Christmas movie!" Emily and Sharon retorted in unison. Just like they did every year.
"It takes place on Christmas Eve!" Ricky chimed in, like he also did every year when this argument inevitably started.
"'Now I have a machine gun, ho, ho, ho,' how is that not a Christmas movie?" Rusty demanded. "And have you even seen it?"
"No, but it's called Die Hard. No Christmas movie is called that," Emily insisted.
"This is a sweet movie, no matter how old you are," Sharon intervened before the argument could escalate. "We'll burn the 'Die Hard is not Christmas movie' bridge when we get to it. Yet again."
When Andy got home that evening, they were halfway through Home Alone. He had never actually seen Sharon the day after Thanksgiving before, for one reason or another, and although he'd heard about the movie-watching tradition, he'd never actually witnessed it. Leaning against the back of the couch, Sharon tilted her head up for a kiss, and Andy happily complied. "Hey. You weren't kidding when you said you guys wouldn't be getting out of your pajamas today."
"Nope. We've barely moved. How was your day?"
"We had a good day. Going to the homeless shelter always puts me in the right mindset for Christmas. And James is doing very well. He'll hit the three-year sobriety mark next month, and he's working on expanding his visitation rights with his kids."
"That's great."
Having been tasked with getting glasses of wine for Sharon and Emily, Ricky interrupted before they could give each other the sappy looks that made him want to vomit. He could always tell when that was about to happen. "Here, Mom."
"Oh! Thanks, honey."
Ricky gave Emily her glass, and an idea occurred to him as he twisted the top off of the Blue Moon he'd gotten for himself. "Hey, Andy, what's your favorite Christmas movie?"
"Is that even a question? Die Hard."
"Told you!" Ricky and Rusty exclaimed triumphantly.
An hour later, Die Hard was playing, and Sharon and Emily were sulking with their arms crossed. "I can't believe I'm watching this like it's a Christmas movie," Sharon moaned.
"This sucks," Emily agreed. The movie was actually pretty good, though, she had to admit. Rusty eyed her several times during the movie and could tell she was enjoying it.
"You liked it!" Rusty accused.
"I did not—I—whatever, it's still not a Christmas movie!" Emily huffed.
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Early Saturday afternoon, Sharon adorned the coffee table with appetizers, dressed in her UCLA best for the UCLA/USC game. Andy hadn't attended either school, and Ricky and Rusty shared Sharon's alma mater, so Emily was the lone Trojan, having graduated from USC. Ricky and Rusty were decked out in their blue and gold, too. Ricky was just as obsessed with football as Sharon and Emily, but Rusty didn't really care. He was in his UCLA gear mostly to irritate Emily. There was no way to survive living with Sharon in the Fall without enjoying football a little bit, but a football team's performance would never make or break his day, either.
"We are the mighty Bruins, the best team in the West," Sharon sang as she arranged the food. "We're marching on to victory to conquer all the rest."
"Ugh, Mom, all of that obnoxious blue and gold is disgusting enough," Emily moaned. "I can't handle those insipid fight songs!"
"We are the mighty Bruins, triumphant evermore!" Ricky and Rusty joined Sharon. "You can hear from far and near the mighty Bruin roar! U!" They each clapped three times. C!"
"Nooooo, not the clapping!" Emily lay down on the couch and pressed a pillow against her face. She hadn't been home for this game since she was a senior in college, and she briefly wondered why she'd ever thought that was a bad thing.
"Get used to it, baby girl. You'll be hearing that song a lot today. We're getting the Victory Bell back this year!"
"Mom, I still can't believe you have a child that went to USC," Rusty said.
"I tried, I tried." Sharon sighed dramatically. "I failed, I failed. It still hurts to think about having to write checks every semester to...that other school."
"Just be glad you have at least one child with taste," Emily loftily replied. "And good luck with the Victory Bell. You and Andy weren't even dating the last time UCLA won this game."
"All right, I think it's beer time," Ricky spoke up.
"I want one too, please." Sharon wasn't a huge fan of beer, but she did like a Blue Moon or a Guinness every now and then. "It's been a while since we've housed the enemy on this day."
A few hours later, Sharon and Ricky were sulking, and Emily was gloating. "Fight on for ol' SC, our men fight on to victory. Our Alma Mater dear, looks up to you. Fight on and win for ol' SC, fight on to victory. Fight on!"
"Oh, dear god. Mom, please turn her off!" Ricky complained.
Sharon covered her face with her hands. "I'd love to."
"Oh, come on, I did that one time!" Emily protested. "I lost count of how many times you guys did the same thing...But we Trojans are classy fans."
"Classy?!" Sharon gave Emily an incredulous look. "That's why you texted me after the game last year, asking me whether 14 or 36 was bigger? Because you were being classy?"
"God, Mom, you still remember the score from last year?" Rusty asked. "Please. Get some help."
I know this game was actually played before Thanksgiving, but I got the idea for this scene after the last chapter was posted. This is fanfic, so I'm allowed to make a football game take place a week later than in real life. :)