A/N Hello! So for those of you still with me, I think we're nearing the end of this one. So I'm looking for suggestions of anything in particular people want to see. I have a couple of ideas, plus something I'm going to do as a bonus chapter, but feel free to chuck stuff at me, and you can go as far into the future as you want. I have a lot of stuff worked out.
The toddler says 'sniff' as she has a cold and is a bit sad. There's lots of 'pick up me!' around here at the moment. The cat is in disgrace for using the kitchen for the ritual killing and dismemberment of two field mice. It's kind of weird to find two little corpses laid out side by side missing their heads.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
EPOV
Just after we got rid of the buyer Sookie had found for the house, that fucking odd woman who wanted me to think she was buying the place out of the goodness of her heart, I ran into Pam, who was just arriving home again.
"Did you have fun?" I asked her.
"Yes!" she said enthusiastically. "Smell me!" She held up her arm and I almost took a step closer to it but instead I got assaulted by a cloud of synthetic sweetness right where I was. "Um, yeah. Very nice" I said.
"You didn't smell" Pam accused. "You have to be closer."
"No. No, I could smell it. It's, uh, very sweet" I said.
"It's Miriam's Hello Kitty body spray. This arm's Strawberries and Cream, and this arm…" she held up the other arm, "…is Bubblegum. But I liked the Strawberries and Cream the best."
"Um…yeah" I said. I hated all of it. Pam stank quite frankly and I just hoped I was sitting down-wind of her at dinner.
"And look!" she said, holding up a red can with a white cat on it. "Miriam gave it to me!"
"Oh" I said. "That's nice." It really fucking wasn't because that stuff was giving me a fucking headache. I loved Pam, but she needed a shower really badly now.
"Yeah" Pam said. "So I'll always smell like Strawberries and Cream now! And then I'll think of Miriam. So that's good, isn't it Daddy?" She looked up at me expectantly.
"Um…yes?" I said. I wasn't overly convinced. I hoped like fuck she used all of that shit up before anyone had to sit next to her on a plane.
"Oh God, what's Mum been cleaning with?" Felicia said, as she came in to the kitchen.
Pam shrugged. "I wasn't here" she said. "I was next door. With Miriam."
"Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, Miriam, blah, blah" Felicia said, opening the fridge door. "Why isn't there any Sprite?" she asked the room at large.
"Someone drank it" Pam supplied.
Felicia sighed. "Should have bought more when we were out, Dad" she said. Fuck, I didn't know it had all gone. She looked around and spied a glass. "Mum took it all!" she said.
"She's allowed, Felicia" I pointed out. "And you can have water and be happy with it."
She walked over, before picking up the glass and sniffing it. "Smells weird" she said. "But not weird like the other smell."
"I smell like Strawberries and Cream!" Pam said, and Felicia turned around. "You sti…" she started to say, but she was cut off by Sookie arriving in the kitchen with us. "Don't drink that Felicia!" she said.
"I was just checking what it was" Felicia said, grumpily. She put the glass back on the counter.
"It's got gin in it" Sookie said.
"Gin?" Felicia said, wrinkling her nose up. "Ugh." She shrugged and then walked back over to the refrigerator and peered inside again. "I guess I'll have juice then" she said, pulling some out.
Sookie looked over at me, and looked a bit embarrassed. "I found the alcohol stash" she said. "But I didn't have any tonic."
"Uh-huh. Has the day been that bad?" I asked.
"Well…it's a bit full-on" she said. She sighed and took a swig of the drink. "There's a lot to do around here." She just stood there with one hand on her hip staring down the hallway. "We really need to get a move on with clearing the place out. Especially if we're going to be selling the place soon."
Yeah, fuck. That wasn't a job I was looking forward to. Going through all of Dad's shit in his closet had been bad enough. Trying to make a decision on what to do with every individual thing in the place, was just...fuck. Too much to contemplate. And the garage would be worse. I decided not to worry about it and just try to do something for Sookie instead. "OK. Well, I'll make dinner then" I suggested.
"You will?" Sookie asked, then she shrugged in the same way Felicia just had. "Alright then. You're on dinner."
"Well, I'd hate you to be so stressed you have to drink your way through all the alcohol Dad had stashed around here."
"Yeah, ha ha. I was just hot and needed a drink. And I know you're only doing it so you can make sure you don't really get salad for dinner." Sookie smiled at me, and I ignored the comment. I was pretty sure she wasn't going to really make a salad for dinner, but there had been a lot of salad stuff on that shopping list she'd given me earlier. Luckily, I had back-up plan.
Sookie took another drink. "Oh, and speaking of stressful, can you go down and find the boys and make sure they're not setting fire to anything or anyone?" she asked.
"Yeah, OK" I said. "Come on, Pam. You can come too." Hopefully a walk in the fresh air would get rid of some of the stench that was clinging to her.
"OK" Pam said, and she pulled out the can of spray and gave herself another once-over for good measure, while I tried very hard not to breathe any of it in accidentally. Fuck, that stuff was strong.
"Oh, God Pam" Felicia said, as she left the room holding her nose with one hand and a glass with the other.
"Is that the smell?" Sookie asked and I nodded. There was no missing Pam at the moment. "OK, come on Pam" I said, and I walked down the hallway and out the front door. I could tell Pam was following me, because I could smell her.
Still, I probably didn't have to worry about any dogs jumping out at us.
"Miriam said I can come back tomorrow" Pam said, as she skipped along beside me.
"That's nice" I said. At least Pam had a built-in playmate while we were here.
"Yeah…I really like Miriam." There was silence for a bit and I realised that maybe I was walking slightly too fast for Pam because her little legs were working quite hard to keep up with me. I slowed down and Pam stopped breathing quite so hard.
"Who was that lady?" she asked.
"What lady?" I couldn't see a lady. Fuck knows the humans around here were probably giving Pam a wide berth too at the moment.
"The one you were talking to before. When you waved at Miriam's daddy? Who was that?"
"Someone your mother met. She wants to buy the house."
"What house?"
"That house, Pam. The house we're staying in. The one my dad used to live in."
"She does?" Pam asked. "But it's not that great."
"Nope, but that doesn't matter as long as she gives us what it's worth."
"And then, where do we live?" Pam asked.
"We go home Pam" I said. "We don't stay here."
Pam stopped skipping. "But…" she said. "I like it here."
"I know you do" I said. "But it's not home."
"Could be home" Pam said, jutting out her chin. "Didn't you used to live here?"
"Yeah, but that was a long time ago." And even then I'd wanted something better. "It's not my home now."
"But…" Pam thought for a moment. "You sound like all the people here. Well most of the people. Miriam's dad sounds a bit different. He's from New York. Can we go there? In the van?"
"No" I said, trying to imagine exactly how that would work. I figured we'd make it as far as Vegas and then we'd lose Tray in a casino while I was trying to stop Sookie wallowing in a pit of alcoholic despair at being cooped up with her children any more. And I might be tempted to leave Amelia behind at a gas station if she whined too much. And currently there was the possibility that we'd all die anyway, choked in a cloud of Pam's noxious perfume. No, Pam was shit out of luck on that one.
Pam sighed. "Can we drive to Disneyland?"
"No. Not this trip." It was just too far and too expensive and wasn't going to happen. Not when we had so much to do at the house, which I wasn't going to even think about now.
Pam sighed. "I don't get to do anything I want!" she half-yelled. "I want to stay here and you're not letting me!"
"No" I said, as reasonably as I could, while pretending the whole idea of staying in that house any longer than I had to didn't give me fucking heart palpitations. "No, we're not staying here. We don't live here. We live in New Zealand."
"Why?" Pam asked. "Why do we live in New Zealand? We could live here."
"Free dental care, Pam."
"Dental what?"
"Yeah. The dental nurse. It's free. You don't fucking get that here. And teeth are important."
"But, no" Pam said. Fuck, she never just shut up and admitted she was wrong, did she? "That's not a reason to live there."
"It is, Pam. Until you can pay for your own dental treatment, it definitely is. Come on, let's keep walking."
"I don't think that's right" Pam grumbled, but she did at least start walking again, although she wasn't skipping this time. That was a pretty big indication of what kind of mood she was in.
Sure enough Sam, Tray and that kid from next door were down at the park around the block letting off firecrackers and generally looking like they might be trouble. The kid's dad was there with them, standing well back, but when he saw me arrive he kind of nodded and then said "If you're OK, I might head back home", and then he took off, leaving me in charge. Fucking nice for him. It was tempting to just keep walking and pretend that none of the juvenile delinquents were mine, but Tray ruined that idea by yelling out "Dad! Dad, watch this!"
Fuck. Why was he so fucking loud?
"Yep" I said, walking closer to them. "Just don't set fire to yourselves. Or anything else."
Tray turned to the kid from next door. "Chair got burned at our house" he said.
"Yeah. I saw it" the kid said, solemnly. "And I got to see the fire truck when it came to put it out. The sirens were really loud."
"You did?" Tray asked him. "I didn't. That kind of sucks."
"OK. Enough about the chair. Let's see this" I said.
"That chair looks weird" Pam grumbled. Yep she was in a fucking mood now.
"Don't get too near them, Pam" I warned her. Fuck, she still smelt horrific and I didn't need her going up in a ball of flames as a result of being doused in so much whatever-the-fuck those chemicals that were producing that stench were.
"Why?" she asked.
"Just don't" I said.
"You make the rules for everything" Pam complained.
"Yes I do."
Pam sighed. "You don't care about me!" she wailed.
"No, I do care Pam. I care very much that at the moment you are highly flammable and I would hate to have to take you back to Sookie as just a little pile of ashes."
Pam looked thoughtful, and we watched Tray light one of the firecrackers. "Stand back!" he yelled, running away from it giggling. It made a kind of bang, and there was some fizzing, but not much other than that happened.
"What's high-lee-flam-bibble?" Pam asked.
"Things that burn really well" Sam said, as he came over to join us. "Like the chair."
"Nah, the chair didn't burn that well until he threw the bottle on it" the kid from next door said, pointing at me. "Then the flames got really big. That was kind of cool." He looked up at me and seemed kind of impressed. Fuck. I had not known there was an audience.
"You burned it?" Sam said. "I thought it was an accident?"
"OK" I said. "Tray, pack that up. Time to go home."
"No…but…" Tray looked around. "But I was…"
"Nope. We're going now. We're making dinner. Well, I am. You're helping."
"What'd I do?" asked Tray, sounding distressed.
"Nothing. But your mom said she's over cooking and it might be salad."
"Salad's not dinner" Sam said. "Salad's just…salad."
"I know" I said. "So in the interests of not having salad for dinner we are going home to make something else."
"What?" Pam demanded.
"Something. Something that isn't salad. So, come on before your mother runs out of gin and there's a real crisis."
"OK" Tray said, shrugging. He and the kid packed up the remaining firecrackers and we all started up the street. At least they'd all stopped talking about the fucking chair. Pam skipped alongside me, so she seemed to be feeling better about things, and the boys followed along behind.
"We can't do this at home" Sam complained. "You only get about five days a year for fireworks."
"Really?" the kid asked.
"Yeah" Tray agreed. "It's the law. Dad says it's 'cos we live in a nana state."
"Nanny state" Sam corrected. "It's nana-naps. You know, when he falls asleep on the couch and Mum says 'oh, look he's having a nana-nap again'." Fuck. Did she?
"You don't look like a nana" Pam whispered to me. "They have cardis."
There was a lull in the conversation for a while. "So were the flames really high? When the chair burned?" Tray asked. Fuck. It was too good to last, wasn't it?
"Yeah" the kid said. "They were. I thought the house might get burned too. But your dad was really brave and he helped them put it all out. It was a really good night."
"Dad killed someone once" Tray confided. "He is very brave. But we don't talk about it. Why don't we talk about it, Sam?"
"You're talking about it now" Sam grumbled. "Because it upsets Mum, is why."
"Oh yeah. So don't tell Mum. Although I think she knows. She knew the guy. But there were serious amounts of blood, everywhere."
"Awesome" the kid said,
"Yep" Tray agreed.
Oh, fuck it. I wasn't going to get involved in that one. It was too hard to explain.
Pam sniffed her arm. "I'm going to need more spray when I get home" she muttered.
"You're great as you are, Pam" I assured her. Yep, some things you could ignore, but some things you needed to put a stop to.
SPOV
I came out of Amelia's room where I'd had to vacuum around her and put up with much sighing and moaning that I was making it 'hard to concentrate on her assignment'. Yeah, she had the laptop out, but I suspected that mostly she was just emailing her friends.
I was alerted to the fact Eric had come back with the boys and Pam when Tray came running up and said "Dad's making nachos!" He sounded really excited about that, despite the fact it wasn't like it was the first time Eric had cooked. It wasn't even the first time he'd made nachos. It was possibly the hundredth time; he didn't have a huge repertoire of dishes, after all. Supermarket surprise happened on Eric's watch for a reason.
But somehow whatever Eric made, there was rejoicing in the hills. I was pretty sure that at this point I could have roasted a whole swan and the most I'd get would be a "Huh. Swan. Again" out of someone, before they all went back to arguing over who had the most potatoes and pestering me for ice cream afterwards.
"That's nice" I said to Tray.
"It's not salad!" he said to me. Loudly.
"No" I agreed. "It's not salad."
"So it's a real dinner, eh Mum?"
"I think salad's a real dinner" I said, and Tray looked at me like I was barmy. "No it's not" he argued. "It's just salad. Dad said, and Sam said."
Oh terrific, so both of them over-ruled me now. That didn't seem fair. "Tray, salad's a real dinner. It might not be your first choice for dinner, but it's still a real dinner."
Tray looked intensely sceptical at that. And then he shrugged. "But it's nachos tonight" he said.
"Courtesy of the Eric Northman School of Fine Cuisine" I added.
Tray looked a bit perplexed at that one. And then he gave up and ran off.
I put the vacuum cleaner away and went into the kitchen to see if I could help. Eric was in full supervisory mode watching Sam as he stirred the pan of minced beef and whatever else was in there. "Going OK?" I asked, as Eric helped himself to a corn chip out of an open bag that was sitting on the kitchen bench.
"S'OK" Sam answered for Eric, seeing as he had his mouth full. "We found the spices and stuff. Need more cayenne pepper though."
"Uh-huh" I said. Crap. Eric tended to work on the idea that everything just got chucked in. And sure, that was mostly the way I tended to cook. But he could be a bit heavy-handed. I just hoped that there hadn't been a lot of cayenne pepper when he'd used it up.
"But we added some of that chilli stuff in too, didn't we Dad?" Sam asked, and Eric nodded. "So it'll be OK."
"OK" I said, wondering if I should taste it. Or if maybe the chef would do it. Executive chef, judging by the way that Eric was kind of standing around watching the actual work being done.
"Can I put the chips on the plates now?" Pam asked.
"Yep" Eric said, handing her the bag. Well, they seemed to have it all under control, so I went to move some washing from the machine into the dryer. "Anyone want to help me?" I asked. There was total silence.
I wasn't all that surprised.
Dinner was nice, although slightly on the spicy side. Poor Pam looked a bit tearful part-way through. "You OK?" I asked her.
"Yeah" she said, as she took a big gulp of water. "I'm fine."
"I like it" Tray said, shovelling more food into his mouth.
"There's a lot of meat" Amelia said, pushing her food around. "I don't know why we have to eat so much meat? Why can't we have something good? Like salad?"
Everyone else ignored Amelia, it was clear she was as loopy as I was. "I like salad" I said to Amelia and she gave me a look, the one which said 'please don't pretend you and I are anything alike as it's clear that you're really old and don't know anything about my problems'. Yeah, I'd seen that one before.
After dinner it was the same as the previous night, there was running around, and shouting and arguing over the TV. This was followed by some arguing over the TV vs. the PlayStation. General complaints about the lack of TVs in the house. A lecture from Amelia about the benefits of reading. A small rant from Felicia about the stupidity of the stuff Amelia chose to read. A long drawn-out recitation from Pam of everything Miriam had in her bedroom and how pretty it was. A discussion about how much Pam stank now and how she needed a shower. Some tears from Pam which could only be stopped by Eric hugging her and telling her she didn't stink while he made a weird kind of face that suggested he was trying to talk and hold his breath at the same time. There was a fight between Tray and Sam over the 'rules' for using the PlayStation and then there was a fun game of 'find the kids' when it was time to get them to all to take a shower.
There was an argument between Eric and Pam when she tried to take her new body spray into the bathroom to re-apply after her shower which ended with Pam stamping her foot and yelling "You don't get to boss me all the time!" This was followed by a strongly worded, and loud, lecture from Eric as to why he did get to boss her all the time and would until she could afford to buy her own house and move into it.
Around this time Sam came to me and asked if he could take Tray for a walk around the block because they didn't have Ivan (no, he couldn't). Then Felicia arrived and wanted to know if she could ban Pam from the room they were sharing as she smelt (no, and she had to be nice to Pam). Amelia wanted to know if she could borrow my credit card to top up her phone (yes, but not for too much), and then Tray came back and asked if there was anything to eat (no, because it was bedtime).
Bedtime involved telling Felicia to let Pam in the bedroom, telling Pam to let Eric in the bedroom to say goodnight, telling Sam and Tray to stay in their bedroom, telling Amelia that tomorrow she had better come out of that bedroom and be sociable, telling Pam that it was perfectly reasonable we wanted to sell this house and all its bedrooms, telling Tray that no, he couldn't move the TV and the PlayStation into the bedroom he was in just because he wasn't sleepy, and reiterating that no, Daddy wasn't going to let Pam buy this house with the money from her piggy-bank even if she had 'quite a bit' in there now. And then finally, finally, most of them seemed to get the message.
Sometimes I wondered what the houses with fewer children were like. I suspected that Miriam's mum and dad had long since reached the part of the night where they could sit down with each other.
I took the basket of clean washing into the bedroom Eric and I were using and put it on the bed. Eric was sitting on it with the laptop balanced across his legs, muttering to himself. He was trying to catch up on some work, but that seemed to involve saying "fuck" a lot. I guessed he'd missed a few days of sitting in his office swearing to himself. It wasn't really an activity that needed an audience so I decided to go and see Amelia and try to prise my credit card back out of her grasp.
"What?" she said when I opened the door to her room.
"I came to say goodnight" I said. "And, uh, grab that card back." She reached over to where it was and handed it to me as I sat on the bed with her.
"You said goodnight. When you said I have to go and 'play' with the kids tomorrow. I'm not a kid. I don't want to hang out with all of them. They suck."
"Just be nice, Amelia. Anyway, we could talk."
"Talk?" Amelia said, like she'd never thought of the concept before.
"Yeah. You know. Hang out. Eric's busy and most of the others are asleep, although I have my suspicions about Felicia…" I'd heard some familiar foot-steps
"I'm just going to the loo!" Felicia said from out in the hallway.
"You're just spying on me!" Amelia accused.
Felicia's head appeared around the door. "No" she said. "What's there to spy on? It's just you, sitting there, reading your books and dreaming of Riley."
"No!" Amelia said. "No, it's not. I'm…" she gave up as Felicia had left and was now on her way, I hoped, to the bathroom.
"She is infuriating!" Amelia complained.
"She's just curious" I said.
"What about?" Amelia asked.
"Oh, you know. You. What you're up to. What it's like to be a teenager."
Amelia frowned. "She's just dumb, is what she is. Did you know she met some boys today? At the supermarket? They asked her to go swimming with them. I mean, why? It's Felicia. She's just…she's just…" Amelia didn't finish that, and she looked up at me pleadingly, as though she wanted me to explain exactly what it was that the boys had seen in her annoying little sister. Felicia had mentioned something about the pools and asked if I was sure I'd packed everyone's togs at dinner, but I hadn't known about the boys. Huh.
"Well, um. I guess they just want to be friends with her" I said.
"But they're boys. You can't have boys as friends!"
"Well you can. Isn't Riley your friend?"
Amelia looked thoughtful. "Kind of. But it's different. He's not a friend like Chloe because, well, you know…" She blushed a bit.
"Because you fancy him?" I suggested.
"Mum!" Amelia said, looking horrified at the suggestion.
"Well, it's OK if you do" I said. In fact as much as I hated the idea, and Eric didn't want to think it was even possible, it was quite within the bounds of reason that she did. And probably Riley would be grateful if Amelia liked him about half as much as he liked her.
I did, however, still kind of miss the days when her true love had been a fictional sparkly vampire who wasn't going to take her away from me.
"Riley's just…well…" Amelia looked over at the pile of books on the bedside table. "You know…Riley."
"Well, that's OK" I said. "Better he be that than try to be anything else."
"Yeah, but isn't he supposed to be someone else? I mean…I just…" She stopped and looked at the books again.
"They're not like real life, Amelia" I said. "You know that, right? They're like, um…fairy tales for grown-ups."
Amelia wrinkled her nose. "Grown-ups don't need fairy tales" she said.
"Well they do, but there's less glass slippers and more, um…" I thought the word 'orgasms' and my brain tried desperately to think of something else. "Well, you know. Less millionaires and princes and handsome strangers."
"You think Dad was a handsome stranger" Amelia said, in a voice which suggested that I was basically off with the fairies.
"Well OK, he kind of was." Amelia curled her lip and I ignored her. "But not in the way those books would have written him. There'd be less swearing, for one thing, if he was in those books."
Amelia looked unconvinced. "But he's a real person" she said. "So, you know, it's like…not the same thing."
"Why?"
"Well, it's just not."
"So you see what I'm saying then? That real guys aren't going to suddenly turn up and…" I picked up one of the books "Sweep you off your feet ...in a once in a lifetime passionate affair on a remote island paradise..., and then, um, ...once at home, the lover she pined for makes a dramatic re-appearance as the new head of the research facility she's dedicated her life's work to..., so that, um, ...in the end she's forced to choose between her love for her job, and her love for the man she thought she'd never get to keep. See? That's all a bit far-fetched really."
"No" Amelia said, grumpily. "It's really good that one."
"I'm sure they're all really good, but just don't think that's what you'll get in real life. That's all I'm saying. Real men, well, it's kind of different. I mean, you know."
"What do I know?" Amelia said.
"Oh, that they think farts are funny, and swear you never told them the important stuff they had to do, and leave wet towels on the bed, and trip over your shoes and then blame you because they didn't see where they were putting their own big feet. They embarrass you in a carpark by getting out of the car and yelling at the person they thought stole their spot, and never remember that cleaning the guest bathroom is a chore."
"Yeah, but I don't think you can, like, base everything on Eric" Amelia said.
"Yeah, but they all come with faults."
Amelia looked thoughtful. "All of them?" she said.
"Definitely. Bill liked me to do things his way, or he'd go really, really quiet and just not talk to me. Our record for not talking to each other was four days."
"It was?" Amelia said. "I can't imagine not talking to someone for four days."
"No! It was bloody hard work, I can tell you. I kept wanting to say something, but I was damned if I was going to break first. So I gritted my teeth and I held out."
"What were you fighting about?" Amelia asked.
"I can't really remember" I confessed. And I couldn't, it was a long time ago. I could definitely remember, though, the feeling of not wanting to let him beat me by talking first. In the end Bill cracked and sent me an email asking if we were free to go to Lorena's on Sunday. I think I did a small victory dance in my chair at work, although it was a short-lived victory given that I had to go and hang with his family at the weekend. "I think it might have been over me changing my name. We had a few disagreements over that."
"I can't imagine, like, a silent fight" Amelia said. "You and Dad are so loud. Well, he is. When he yelled at Pam before I could hear it all the way down here."
I shrugged. "I know. It sucked doing it that way. I much prefer just yelling and getting it over with. Of course I had to teach Eric how to do that, but he seems to have the hang of it now. He and Pam made up at bedtime. Well, mostly." I was actually a bit worried about the two of them and Pam's desire to stay here with Miriam. I hoped she got over it.
"But, you said they didn't change? Guys? That you couldn't change them?"
"Um…you don't change them. You can, um, maybe get them to compromise with you? On some stuff, anyway. But they'll still be them at the end of it. And I guess that's how you know that you found a good one. Because they don't arrive out of the sky perfect, but you'll put up with some of the annoying stuff because the good stuff is better than you get elsewhere."
Amelia shrugged. "It's just confusing. So, I'm not supposed to think any guy's going to be perfect, but I should wait for my perfect guy and I'll know him because he annoys me, but I don't care because I think he's hot anyway?"
"Um…kind of." It did sound confusing when she put it like that. "Just know that there's not a manual for it all, everyone's different. So whatever you do, don't take those books as the only way a relationship happens. And remember, there are two sides to it. For all that you might not find the most perfect guy in the world, don't expect there'll be someone thinking you're the most perfect woman either. If you ask Eric about it he will probably tell you that farts are funny, and he has the Google search results to prove it; I talk too much around the important subjects and need to send him an email occasionally, in bullet-point format. That I make too much about a couple of towels, and that shoes belong in the wardrobe and not where I leave them. He will also ridicule the notion of a guest bathroom, which I think is really his way of saying that occasionally he wants to use a bathroom where people won't try to bust in on him. And whatever you do, don't ask him about that incident in the St Luke's carpark, because he will defend his right to get out of the car and yell at random strangers over a strip of concrete until the day he dies. And he was right. And they were wrong. And any embarrassment his family felt is totally trumped by the fact he was right."
Amelia sighed. "But I really, really like those books" she said. "And it's just not the same in real life."
"But it's nicer, in a way, isn't it? I mean, hanging out with Riley is better than reading about someone else's relationship?"
She shrugged. "Kind of. But it's not, you know…he doesn't exactly, like, say stuff…and stuff…"
"Say stuff?" I asked.
"Yeah. Like tell me he likes me, and stuff like that."
Oh. Yeah, those books were full of that. But even the phrase "Sweetheart, I love you very much" gets old really quickly when it's used as the lead-in for everything from "Stop putting your feet on the coffeetable" to, "Didn't we have this for dinner last week?" Not forgetting the old favourite, "But she's my mother Sookie, and it's very important that I do this for her. You're just being deliberately difficult because you don't like her." Yeah, all of those took the shine off anything that came before them.
At least Eric just stuck with the annoyed look and didn't do much when I blanked him, other than sigh and carry on looking annoyed.
"Riley's just young" I said. "He's still figuring out how to be in a relationship. But, again, remember the books are just stories. You're maybe never going to get an outpouring of romantic phrases like the women in them do."
"I'm not?" Amelia asked. "Oh."
"Well, you might. But don't expect every guy to do it. If it comes, great, if not then…well, you'll figure it out."
Amelia frowned. "I don't know if I will. It's, like, all really confusing. So…I just…one day I'll meet someone? And know?"
"Yeah, and remember it's just a meeting. It's not like seeing someone and knowing instantly they're the most perfect creature you've ever seen. It's more like, um, being in a tutorial group with a guy and discussing methods of depreciation and then he asks you to the movies."
"That was Bill?" Amelia asked.
"Yep. That was Bill. It wasn't the most auspicious start. He spent a long time trying to explain straight-line depreciation to me, when I already knew. I let him. It was a dumb thing to do, really."
"I don't know what that is" Amelia asked.
"It's boring. But the point is I should have told him I knew and just moved on. I set myself up for some of the stuff that went on later."
"OK" Amelia said slowly.
"I did like him though, but I didn't know right then that I wanted to be with him. I mean, I thought he was a bit stand-offish, because he was older than the rest of us in the class and he thought we were a bit dumb, I think. So it was nice that he was interested in me, but I had to get to know him to find out if I wanted to go out with him again."
"And you did?"
"And I did."
"Even though he, like, told you stuff you already knew?"
"Yeah, because he did good stuff too. And I didn't mind being told the odd thing again." Well, not then. Later on it got really annoying. "And not every relationship lasts forever, like in those books. They make it seem like there's one person and once you're together that's it. But they stop at the point where you get together. It's everything that comes after that, that's the real relationship."
Amelia looked slightly glazed. I'd lost her with that bit. Yeah, no hope of selling the idea of five kids and a mortgage as a happily ever after to a fourteen year old. Oh well.
"Sooo…if you have sex, then it's different?" Amelia asked, out of the blue.
"What?"
"If you sleep with them, then it's like…I don't know. You stay together and stuff?"
"Oh, you don't have to" I assured her. "But you still probably want to be a bit careful with that."
"And it's nice?" Amelia asked. "Sex? It's always nice in the books. Did they lie about that too?"
"Um…" I said, trying to think of a way to word it and willing myself not to say 'no, it's terrible, don't ever do it, I just put it up with it'. "It is, but you know, it's like anything. Sometimes it, um…well, it's not always great at first."
"It's not?" Amelia asked. "Oh."
"Yeah, sometimes um...well they make it sound like it's always the best ever when they write those books. And just like you have to learn other things about each other, you have to learn, well, that kind of stuff about each other too. How to, um, please each other."
"So guys don't know?"
"Some do. They figure it out. And you get to tell them."
"Tell them what?" Amelia asked.
"Um. What you like. Or don't like. And they'll do the same, probably."
"Oh. Oh, I thought, you know, because it's natural...which is what you always said about the 'magic cuddle' that made babies, you said that everyone did it..."
"Well, if they wanted to have a baby. Most people do it that way, anyway."
"Yeah, so if everyone's doing it, how come they don't know how to do it?"
"Because everyone's different, Amelia. And it, um...it takes a lot of trust to really let someone else be that close to you. To share your body with them. Once you're in that kind of relationship, then you can figure out all the...the, well, the mechanics of it, I guess. It's the trust that comes first."
"So don't sleep with the first guy I meet and don't expect orgasms?" Amelia asked.
"Mmm" I said, hoping she didn't have other, more detailed questions. "But I don't think you have to worry about that quite yet." And then I thought of something. "Do you? I mean…you haven't, um…"
"Oh, no" Amelia said. "No, no. I don't, yeah, I mean…you know. It's not like I want anyone to see me naked or anything."
"Uh-huh. Well, you know. If that changes, let me know. We can, uh, talk some more."
"OK, and euw."
"Alright, well you better get to sleep or you'll be grumpy in the morning."
"Not a baby Mum! That's Pam who gets grumpy, not me."
"Uh-huh. Well, good night" I said, and I left her to her books.
Back in the bedroom Eric was still staring at the screen. "Fucking fuck fuck" he muttered.
"All a bit poos, is it?" I asked.
"Something like that" Eric mumbled. I left him to it and started to fold the washing that I'd put on the bed earlier. We worked in silence for a while and then Eric put the laptop to one side and looked at the piles on the bed. "I should be used to it by now, but the land of tiny underpants and socks still kind of freaks me out" he said.
"Well, they're getting bigger all the time" I said. "Before you know it there'll be nothing tiny anymore."
Eric pointed to a bra. "That's nice" he said. "The purple."
"That's Amelia's."
Eric withdrew his hand like it had been burned. I decided I wouldn't tell Eric about the conversation I'd had with her earlier. Not the details anyway.
"Oh" Eric said. "Um…OK."
"Yeah, I'm kind of jealous that she can fit all the pretty ones and doesn't need to worry about the width of the straps and whether it sits smoothly across the back."
Eric was now sporting the same expression Tray did when you were talking about stuff he didn't want to think about. Like salad for dinner. And then he stuck his hand into the washing basket. "So, um, who's is this?" he said, pulling out a t-shirt.
"Felicia's. Now. Used to be yours."
"Oh. Thought it looked familiar" Eric said, as he put it in Felicia's pile after I pointed to it.
"And the socks?" he asked.
"Um…" I said. That one did stump me. "Um, not sure. One of the boys."
"I'll assign them to, um, Tray" Eric said.
"No, hang on" I said, before he put them down. "If we give them to Tray and they don't fit, he'll just put up with them. If we give them to Sam, then he'll know if they don't fit him, and he'll pass them on."
"Oh. Good thinking" Eric said. "Which is Sam's pile?"
"That one."
We got all the washing folded and assigned and I did the big sneak-around to return it to the right bedrooms without waking anyone. I had to tell Amelia to definitely go to sleep now and she didn't look particularly happy about the intrusion. "I'm on holiday" she hissed.
"Well, I'm not. So go to sleep. Goodnight."
I went back to the bedroom and realised I felt kind of weary now. "Need another gin?" Eric asked, as I sat on the bed next to him. He was watching something on TV, some kind of late night show you never saw in New Zealand. I couldn't really see the point of them.
"No, it would put me to sleep" I said. "I'm kind of tired."
Eric leaned over and kissed the top of my head. "You have been working hard" he said.
"And I'm nearly 45" I said, and Eric frowned a bit at that. Bugger. I hadn't meant to bring my birthday up in order to tell him he had to do anything special for it. I just wanted to get through this and get home, and then we could worry about birthdays.
"The kids are a lot of work" Eric said.
"Yep" I agreed. "They are. Honestly, bedtime used to be quite orderly when they were little, but now it takes so long to get them into the bed. And they want to argue about it! Like I'm suddenly going to say, 'you know what, don't go to bed'. It's exhausting."
"It is. But I take it from your comments last night we're just doing this for the joy of one day getting grandchildren?" Eric asked.
"Yes!" I said, emphatically. "I have heard from a reliable source, well, from Hadley anyway, that grandchildren and much nicer than actual children. For one thing, their parents have to deal with all nappy-related emergencies and unexpected vomiting, and when they get all grumpy and tired and kind of hyper, but deny they need to sleep, their parents take them home. You don't have to be the bad guy; you get to be the fun person, who gives them lollipops when they want it. Sounds like heaven."
"It does sound pretty good" Eric mused.
"And when they want to run around the back garden, you can just say 'Sorry, sweetheart. Granny needs to rest.' And then you sit there with your gin and just relax."
"Uh-huh. And that works for granddads too?" Eric asked.
I shook my head. "No. They still have to run around and do stuff. They're still young and sprightly after all."
"Sure they are" Eric said.
"Yep. They are" I said, nodding and refusing to look at Eric and the sceptical expression he was wearing. "And I am going to shuffle off to the bathroom now, and get my old self ready for bed."
I left Eric to his show and did my nightly routine. I knew it was a routine. And that it had to be done. I didn't know why the kids had to be so bloody difficult about it.
When I came out of the bathroom, Eric was laughing. At first I assumed at the TV. And then I realised that had been switched off. And he had picked up the book I'd taken from Amelia's pile of discards a few days ago. Oh, poo bum. "It's not that funny."
"It really fucking is, Sookie. I'm pretty sure that just because he works on a ranch, he doesn't have to call everyone darlin'."
"Well, that's just a…regional quirk. Or something." I picked up my bottle of body lotion and rubbed some into my legs.
"And then there's this bit" Eric said. "Where he says 'If I'd known that you were still untouched, I wouldn't have done it like that.' You know, just after they've fucked. In that barn."
"So?"
"So, what the fuck would he have done differently?"
"Maybe he wouldn't have had sex with her, standing up, in a barn" I said, moving on to putting body lotion on my arms.
"I don't think it would be very nice if you were lying down in a barn, Sookie. All the hay. It'd be itchy. No, it's fucking weird. Like how was he supposed to know? And why did he care?" Eric thought for a moment. "Maybe he means he would have put it somewhere else…"
"OK, stop that right now" I said. "I don't see why it's so interesting anyway."
"Oh, it's fascinating Sookie" Eric said, grinning at me over the book.
"You sound like Amelia" I said, as I put down my body lotion and got into bed.
"Has she read this one?" Eric asked, looking worried.
"Maybe." That didn't change Eric's expression much.
"With all the sex?" he said.
I shrugged. "Maybe not then. That was from the pile she didn't want. She's not a big cowboy fan, after all." It might be kinder to let Eric retain a little bit of ignorance.
"I don't know if she should be reading quite so much of that stuff" Eric said, seriously.
"Oh, I think it's fine. It's a phase. Lots of us go through it and come out the other side."
"I'm not sure you've come out the other side, Sookie. You're still reading them."
"Only because I forgot to bring a book with me. Remembered sheets and everyone's togs and forgot a book. Oh, and Tray's good shoes. Never mind. But Amelia will be fine; we've had a chat about it all."
"OK" Eric said. "I'll leave it to you then." He looked at the book again, and then put it on the bedside table, before turning to me with a grin.
"Want to pretend it's your first time?" he asked.
"Um, no. No I don't."
Eric sighed. "We could pretend it's my first time?"
"I'm not telling you where to put it, Eric" I said sternly, and he giggled.
"I would suggest sex on the patio, but I think we'd have an audience" Eric mused. I didn't want to know who he thought that might be. And then he broke into a smile. "I could pretend to be a cowboy, daaarlin'?" he suggested, drawing out the last word with a drawl.
"Please don't. I'd never understand you. How about we just be us? I'd like that better. I learned that going over all of this with Amelia earlier on."
Eric looked at me. "You were talking about your first time, with her?"
"Oh God, no. Not specifics. No, more about, um…just relationships and stuff. When I was trying to point out that the books are not like real life. I was telling her it's better, with someone you really like. That first part, all that trying to figure out if you really want to be with that person, that's exhausting. I don't want to go back to that. I'd much rather be with someone I know, and trust, and love, and who knows me."
"So…that's a vote for me then?"
"That's a vote for you. For you and me in the here and now. Because that's the other bit they leave out in the books, they forget that the story doesn't stop when you meet the person who completes you. It's about way more than that."
"I don't complete you?" Eric asked.
"Well…you make my life more interesting. There would be less shouting in the St Luke's carpark if you weren't around."
"I was indicating, Sookie. Clearly, I was indicating and that fucker…"
"Yep. So there's that." I smiled at Eric and rolled on my side so I was facing him. "You bring me a lot of joy. And a lot of pleasure." Eric ran his hand up my side, cupped my breast and ran a thumb over my nipple. "Pleasure is good" he said.
"Pleasure is very good" I agreed, trying to hold onto my train of thought. "I love that we share the kids, that you're the other half of that equation."
"So you can blame the cursing on me?"
"Um…I think it's a given that one. But more that I think we make a good team. We make a good team in most things really. And as much as I love my life now, I don't think it's complete. I hope it's not complete. I don't want it to be complete until I'm an old lady on my death-bed."
"Surrounded by children? And all those grandchildren?" Eric asked.
"Maybe even great-grandchildren. I intend to live to a ripe old age; we might be able to fit another generation in there."
"And then you'll feel complete?" Eric asked.
"Maybe. I hope so. I mean, it's not like I'm unhappy now. I'm very happy. But I hope there's more to my story."
"Me too" Eric said, leaning over to nuzzle my neck. It was kind of scratchy, as he'd shaved for the funeral but promptly given up the practice again as soon as that was over. See? Some things just never change.
"So is the next bit of your story a sex scene?" Eric asked. "Because that might be good about now."
"Well…it could be" I said, slipping further down on the pillows and lying on my back. Eric moved over me and kissed me. "I think it would make sense in the narrative flow" Eric said, as he kissed along my collarbone.
"Uh-huh." I agreed. "Just shut up and fuck me, Eric."
"Yeah, I don't think you'll get all that cursing past an editor, Sookie."
"You missed out step one Eric. Step one was 'shut up'. We can't move on to step two until you get with step one."
"You're bossy" Eric said, as he helped me pull my tank-top off. "You sure you don't want to pretend you have to show me what to do?"
"Nope. I'm handing editorial control on that over to you" I said, as I lay back down and Eric started tonguing my nipple. "I think you can handle it."
"Pretty sure you're right" Eric mumbled.
"Oh, I am" I said, as Eric kissed down my body, and started to pull my pyjama shorts off. "I'm definitely right on this one."
A/N We use togs for swimwear and only swimwear, and we rarely say anything else. It's unusual to hear someone talk about a swimsuit, it's far more common to say "Have you got your togs?" Tara's shop in the books will, to me, always be the place where Sookie gets her bikinis.
Thanks for reading!