Yep, I'm still the fastest gun in town when I want to be. BAM! Without further adieu, here's the next chapter, and I've almost made it to 1000! Thanks for that ladies (I assume you're all ladies).
Anyway, I hope you like what I'm doing here. I got a little silly. It wasn't supposed to be like this, but I think it works.
Hope you enjoy!
Sookie
When I picked up the kids Friday evening, I came home to a bit of a shock.
Two men, who should not have been drinking and laughing together in my overgrown garden while my kids ran around.
Bones and Eric.
I looked at them both sideways, as Ce wrapped herself around my legs and rambled on about her day. They both smiled innocently over their Guinness and continued chatting as if I wasn't there.
It was very off-putting. Wrong, in so many ways. But there it was.
"Okay, well, I'm going to go," I said, once the kids had packed up their school stuff and clothes.
Bones waved at me, an amused grin on his face. "See you, Luv."
Eric waved as well, and didn't even flinch at Bones' term of endearment. "I'll call you about Max's birthday party tomorrow. Maybe Sunday. Pam might stop by too. She hasn't seen the kids in a while and she's in the Hamptons this weekend."
"Okay then. If you're talking to her, get her to call because we might be at the beach. It's supposed to be a nice weekend."
"Yep, I'll tell her. We're meeting her for dinner in a bit."
I looked between them, both of them with smug, yet innocent smiles on their faces. "Okay, well have fun."
"Cheers," Bones shouted after me as I slammed the back door.
To say I was confused as I drove down to the Hamptons would have been an understatement. I knew Bones had dropped off his manuscript sometime this week, but I thought he would have just left it with the secretary, avoiding Eric altogether. Were they friends now? What the fuck had happened?
"Daddy wants to know how long he's on time out for," Ce asked, as we pulled into the driveway.
"No he doesn't," Max responded, glaring at his sister. "You want to know."
"He's not on time out." I thought about a way to explain it besides a mommy and daddy vacation, but came up with nothing, because a gigantic part of me had known that we were down, but not out. "Well, maybe we're both on time out. And I don't know."
"Bones called you Dad's old lady. What's that mean?" Ce cocked her head at me.
Fucking Bones. "What else did Dad and Bones say?" I asked, as I helped Ce out of the car and grabbed her bag.
Max piped up. "He said they'd drink until they didn't hate each other."
That was going to be a lot of drinks, I though to myself, as I unlocked the front door. "Anything else?"
"Dad said that he was too old for that many drinks."
I smiled to myself as I started dinner, spaghetti. That was certainly true. I doubted Eric's ability to drink that much and survive the weekend. "Yea, he probably is. We'll go get ice cream after dinner if you guys eat up."
Eric
Four beers later, I didn't hate Bones with the passion of a thousand burning suns. Maybe a hundred, but not a thousand. Sure, he was still cocky and obnoxious, but a little bit less so. And we both liked beer. And running. And Voltaire. We were about to leave to meet Pam at Gramercy Tavern when he got a call.
"Hey baby. Yes Luv, we're making nice. No, we're just going for dinner. I'll call you later. I miss you too Kitten. Kiss kiss."
I snorted, before breaking out into a full out roar as he shoved his phone in his pocket. "You're totally pussy whipped. Or 'kitten' whipped, or whatever."
He rolled his eyes. "Listen, prick. You're hanging out with someone you hate to make your wife take you back. Let's not throw stones."
"Fine," I replied, as I pulled on a sweater. "Have you met my sister?"
I'd already had the plan with Pam when Bones hatched his hair-brain let's be friends scheme, so I'd invited him along. I figured Pam might make it less awkward, having to spend an entire evening with him. We'd timed it perfectly though, both of us a couple of beer in when Sookie showed up so we didn't look too forced.
I'd seen the confused look in her eye, and found myself somewhat pleased. She'd figure out what I was doing.
I just had no idea how she'd react to it. Whatever she decided, it couldn't be worse than how things were now.
"No, I haven't met her. Wait, yes I did, at Thanksgiving. She's funny, yes?"
I shrugged, knowing that Pam was just going to love this. "She's something."
Pam was sitting there when we arrived, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. "So it's come to this."
I shot her a look. "Yes. It's not like we were able to come up with much else."
"I just think you needed to show up with some of that tiramisu she's into recently and that probably would have done the trick," Bones said, chuckling. "The look she got around that? I don't think she would have been able to stay angry at anyone. I even got her to sign off on a costing that was under forty per cent for a book on sex and the civil war. It'll sell like twelve copies. She was like oh, yes Bones, whatever you want. Give me the other piece."
Pam laughed, and I growled at him, before taking a step back and realizing something very important.
He was joking. I knew how to take a joke. I had no idea why I was being so sensitive with him. Bill and I joked all the time now.
"Well why didn't you just tell me that. We could have saved a fortune on this dinner."
"I'm writing it off!" Pam exclaimed, a little too excited. "Entertainment. Alcide's got a surplus entertainment budget, and I think this certainly qualifies. So, tell me, how does this friend thing work. First off, brother, Sookie is your only friend, and maybe Bill, but I think he's maybe just waiting for you to have a heart attack so he can win Sookie back by being close when it happens. Smooth move, finding a wife that has kids that yours like. He's sly, that Bill. There was Clancy, but, well, he fucked your daughter..."
Bones blinked at us. "Your mate shagged your daughter? And you don't want to be my friend? I'm hurt, Northman. All I did was mistakenly kiss your wife when I thought you were on the outs."
Again, joking. I took a deep breath. "I also kicked Clancy's ass, and got him fired from his job. Let's not forget that."
"You should have seen it. It was brilliant. First, Amelia and I planned a fake orgy, which was actually a real orgy, and then I..."
Bones put up his hand. "Amelia, from work?"
Pam smiled. "Yea. Anyway, then gagged and blindfolded him, and proceeded to cast him out of the orgy into the cold winter with no wallet, no nothing. It was really Stella, Eric's daughter that got him fired. She went to the paper after he gave her an STI. A treatable one."
Bones looked at us both, glassy eyed. "Where have you people been all my life? I feel like I was born into the wrong family. And Amelia swings?" He shook his head. "I always thought she was a prude with that haircut."
"Oh, no. I met my husband swinging with Amelia. We cut her out eventually. She's too needy."
Bones nodded. "Yes, she is needy. She's a real pain in the arse, that one."
I smiled. "I know. She's been a thorn in my side for like ten years now. She's actually how Sookie and I met."
"Right, when she used to come down off her throne and mingle with the commoners." Bones chuckled. "Seriously though, no one works harder than Sookie. I have no idea how she juggles all the things she does."
I smiled, thinking of Ce wrapped around her leg earlier. "She's really amazing."
Pam nodded for another round of some ridiculously expensive micro-brewed beer. "See, we agree on that too. I bet if you hadn't vanished all fall, we would have been friends from the start."
"I didn't have a choice." I looked at Pam and Bones, who both had an eyebrow raised at me. "It was for the good of everyone."
Pam glanced down and stirred her artichoke dip. "Right."
I narrowed my eyes at her. "What?"
"You went because you want to be the king of everything. That's why you went. It's never enough for you. So you would have had to teach a night class. Boo hoo. You would have weaselled out of it anyway. You just had to be right. " Pam rolled her eyes. "Mr. Have Your Cake and Eat It Too, and then expect us to all throw you a fucking pity party because you couldn't have everything at the same time."
Bones chuckled at her tone, which was incredibly irritating. "So you're that guy. Mr. Do It All. I'm not surprised. From what I heard, you were Mr. Do Them All too."
I glared at him. "Where the fuck did you hear that, anyway?"
"Sam Merlotte. And Niall Brigant. But more Sam. We went for drinks one night, actually the night before he was canned, and he spilled on all your escapades. Snogging that old former editor," he tisked at me. "She was kind of hot, in a Meryl Streep kind of way."
I nearly spat out my beer. "What? Maudette? I never fucked Maudette."
Bones shrugged. "That's not what I heard."
No wonder he'd thought I was an asshole. "Why would Sam say that?"
"Probably to make Sookie look like an idiot," Pam said, finishing off her martini.
"Let's go egg his house," Bones said, looking like a kid at Christmas. "I know where he lives. I went over there for dinner when I first moved to town and he tried to get me on side."
"We can't do that." I laughed.
"Yes, we can. Let's do it, in the name of bonding."
"Eric, that's totally something you would do." Pam said, a huge grin on her face. "Remember that Halloween in Sweden?"
I glared at Pam. "I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Remember? Ingrid's house. Three nights after her wedding. We went together. I loved that night." Pam looked at me, a reminiscent look falling over her buzzed face. "We both felt so much better."
I had felt a lot better. "No one calls me a whore and gets away with it."
"He also said Sookie was a gold digger."
I looked back and forth at my two dinner partners turned accomplices. "We'll have to get some eggs."
Bones shrugged. "That's no problem."
"And we can never speak of this to anyone."
The both nodded. "Deal."
Two hours later, after another beer or two at Pam's, we got out of a taxi five blocks from Sam's Upper West Side address, dressed in varying degrees of black from Alcide's enormous closet, none of which fit either of us, since he was far broader in the chest than we could ever hope to be. We were glad he wasn't around to point it out. Neither of us had mentioned our shortcomings in that area. We looked ridiculous. It didn't need to be said.
"How is he paying for this house still? He didn't take the retirement package," Bones remarked, as we looked up at a townhouse that was bigger than mine, and in a nicer area. We never would have been able to afford a house like that on both our salaries, and from what I heard about Sam's lady friend, she was the gold-digger.
"I have no idea. Family money?" I shrugged. "Who cares. It's not like we want to stick around long enough to ask. You're sure this is it, right?"
He nodded. "He's got that stupid gargoyle door knocker. Like he lives in a fucking castle or something. And look, there he is, with his fat head, watching the telly." He nodded to the illuminated window, and sure enough, there he was, shirtless, watching Jeopardy.
Jeopardy was something Sookie and I always shared. I was hit with a wave of egging fury. "Let's egg this motherfucker."
A carton later, major damage was done, and the three of us were running through central park like teenagers, laughing so hard that we could hardly breathe. Eventually we collapsed in the Sheep Meadow.
"I can't believe we did that," Pam gasped. "We egged the shit out of that asshole."
"That we did, Luv. That we did," Bones chuckled, sprawling out in the damp grass.
"You realize, Pam, that we'll never be able to discipline our kids for anything. Anything at all."
"We won't tell them about this until they're in college. We can be as high and mighty as we want until then."
I shrugged. "Fair point."
"You know why I love Cat so much? She doesn't want any of the filthy buggers. She wants a Jack Russell someday. Not even right away. Someday." He sighed. "Perfection."
"Children are the orgasm of life, Bones. You'll be missing out."
He raised an eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure I'll have enough orgasms to make up for it, thank you very much. Don't even try to tell me that those little buggers aren't cockblockers to the extreme."
"Amen to that," Pam said, pulling a flask out of her purse. "Tell me it gets better when you can ship them off for the day. Please, Eric. Lie if you have to."
I glanced at my sister. "You just have to work around them. Sookie and I..." I stopped myself. We had been really good at that. Had being the operative term. I needed to change that. "Okay, so plan for Sunday."
Pam nodded. "I pick up the kids at eleven. You call at eleven fifteen, arrive at eleven thirty. Make up by noon, and I'll keep the kids for the week and you'll grand gesture the hell out of her. And you'll owe me. Fashion week in New York, and Paris."
I nodded and glanced at Bones. "Pam likes to fuck models. With her husband. Fashion week is like her Christmas."
Bones looked at her with admiration."You're a cool chick, Northman. You know that?"
"I've been told a time or two." She smiled. "And you're not bad for a Brit. Eric, maybe you guys should be real friends."
"Let's not go nuts here, Pam." I raised an eyebrow. "I'm not giving you a free pass on kissing my wife, but I guess I can see how you would have thought I was a douche."
"I also heard you fucked Amelia." Bones rolled onto his stomach. "Which seemed off. I should have known. I knew there was something off about her. The carpet didn't seem to match the drapes."
"Doesn't that refer to pubic hair?" Pam said, grinning broadly as she passed her flask around.
Bones shrugged. "I think it could be used in a variety of situations. Anything exterior to interior related. The metaphor stands."
"What are we going to do now?" I asked, a pang of loneliness hitting me at the thought of going home to an empty house. The weekends were the worst.
Bones stood up and brushed the grass off his knees. "I've got some Northern Lights at mine. It's nice and mellow."
"Done." Pam said, struggling to get up with her heels on. I'd tried to convince her to wear flats with the egging, but she insisted that she ran better in heels, and she'd proven me wrong by peeling past both of us as we fled the scene of the crime. "I'm free and easy until Sunday when I head to the Hamptons."
"Me too. I'm in as well." I grabbed the bag with the cartons and discarded it in a garbage can. "Remember, let's never speak of this again."
"A lost night, if you will." Bones nodded. "I like it. I haven't had one of those since my days as a grad student male escort."
Pam looked at him, her mouth agape. "Now that's a story I'm dying to hear."
Sookie
Pam showed up around eleven on Sunday, after politely calling and requesting to take the kids to the beach and for lunch. I smiled after hanging up, pleased that Eric had told her not to be an uber bitch which was what I was expecting from her. Pam was great, and loyal to a fault to her family, which normally worked in my favour, but I knew when it came down to me or Eric, he would always come first. And that was completely understandable.
It didn't meant I needed to hear from uber bitch Pam though. I knew it wasn't going to help the situation.
I'd racked my brain for days, trying to figure out what was up with him and Bones, and unsure if it was something I should ask either of them about. I quickly realized that there was no way around it. I had to know what they were scheming. Max's spill had let me know that there was drinking involved, and I had the feeling that when it came down to it, the only thing they really had in common was me.
If it turned out that Eric had decided to befriend Bones, in an attempt to prove that he was over things, then it was a pretty grand gesture, considering how they felt about one another. I needed some time to process that.
As soon as I'd sat down to read the Sunday Book Review in the Times, the phone rang.
Speak of the devil.
"Hey."
He sounded chipper. "Hey. Do you have some time to talk about Max's birthday?"
"Yep. Your sister just picked him up."
"Okay, I'll be there in ten." And then he hung up.
Be here? It was then I knew I'd been Northman ambushed.
He showed up at the door, in a perfectly barely snug black t-shirt and a pair of grey chino shorts I'd bought for him the summer before. When everything had been much better than it was now. I sighed to myself.
"What are you doing in this neck of the woods?" I asked curiously, trying not to too obviously eye fuck my husband, who irritatingly got more handsome with age.
He leaned against the door, and the faintest hint of a tan was beginning to colour his face. I loved us in the summer. We'd had so many great summers. "I played nine holes with Alcide and Bones this morning. Alcide is terrible at golf."
"So are you."
"I'm better than Alcide," he said, a broad grin on his face. "But Bones is better than both of us put together."
And now he was complimenting Bones? Had I strolled into some bizarro universe? "Yea, he mentioned he used to caddy as a teenager once. Come on in. I don't have lunch or anything." I moved aside, and he followed me in.
He held up a bag. "I got us takeout from the Southampton Publik. Scampi and Salmon. I know you like both so you can pick."
I smiled. I did like both of those. "We can split them. How have you been?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. You?"
"Fi..." And then I stopped myself. I was tired of pretending everything was fine. "I've been better. But you know that."
He reached for a couple of plates and filled up two glasses with water. "You know, we don't have to do this like this."
His voice was calm, not in a way that he talked to Ce when he wanted her to understand something, but in a very mature, adult sort of way. When adults were having a rational conversation.
So I took a deep breath, sat down in front of my scampi and salmon and hopped on that train.
"Do you have any idea how much it hurts, you, of all people, not trusting me?"
He nodded. "I don't know why I said that. I do trust you. You've never given me any reason not to."
"But that really bugged you, what happened with Bones. I got over with with Mira, and it was the exact same thing."
He popped a French fry in his mouth. "We don't operate the same. You know that. My ego is the size of a hot air balloon. It eclipses the sun at times." He laughed. "It's really the cause of all of this. Why I went to Paris in the first place, why it bothered me so much, even though you did what you should have done, more than you should have done. You didn't even have to tell me, because it wasn't a big deal. I was the one that blew it up."
I couldn't argue with that. "I'm sorry I was a bitch about you and Max going into the house."
"You were kind of a bitch about that. I felt bad enough without you adding to it." He looked at me solemnly. "I never would have forgiven myself if anything had happened."
It was funny how true the Chaucer quote about time healing all wounds was. Mind you, I'm sure he wasn't imagining four weeks when he said, it, but when I looked at Eric, I felt optimistic that it had done at least the first part of that. I doubted that four weeks ago, we would have been able to lay it all out like we were doing now without getting much angrier, and making the situation even worse.
Ce was right. It really was a time out.
"So Max's birthday." I eyed the tiramisu that he'd left on the counter happily. "What are you thinking?"
"Pam's already planning it. Star Wars. She's got someone dressing up as Chewbacca. He'll love it."
Max was really into Star Wars lately, ever since he and Eric had watched them all together over January and February. "Oh."
"That was all an elaborate charade." He smiled boyishly.
"And your friendship with Bones?"
He shrugged at that. "Make of that what you will. I'm not going to tell you what to think."
I smiled back at him. "Being civil at the company Christmas party would have sufficed."
"He's not so bad." He looked down at his greens. "And as Pam so kindly reminded me, I have been friends with far bigger assholes."
Yep, Clancy certainly fit that bill. "What are we going to do here?"
He pulled a sheet of my work stationary out and slid it across the table. "I wrote out a plan while we were waiting for Alcide to get out of the sand. I know you like to-do lists. Feel free to edit as you wish."
I unfolded the paper and looked at the ten points he'd jotted down.
Talk as much as you want about what happened.
Kiss and make up.
Hopefully kiss and make up some more.
Talk again, if necessary (this will likely be necessary).
Pack the kids bags for a week with Aunt Pam.
Go to East by Northeast for dinner.
Watch three weeks of taped Jeopardy episodes ( I missed a week of DVRing).
Do what we need to do to get back on the same page (I thought we better figure this out together).
Come up with a reasonable thing to tell the kids about the last month.
Resume cohabitation.
"Aren't we resuming co-habitation if you stay here for a week?"
"That's what you're taking issue with?" He raised an eyebrow, and then shrugged. "I guess if that's it, then I did alright."
I smiled at the relieved and satisfied grin on his face. "I think it's a good first draft."
