Chapter 2-3
1259 Words
I opened a shipment of peek-a-boo lingerie. It was pink, it was stretchy and it was all see-through. It left nothing to the imagination and gave a ton of access to all the important places.
The store smelled like piña colada as a customer had dropped a canister of tropical scented dusting powder on the floor. It had taken me fifteen minutes to vacuum up what looked like flour, but its use was less culinary and more s****l, although there was some licking involved. The scent lingered. I probably smelled like it, too.
The phone rang.
“Goldilocks.” Goldie listened, and then answered, “You got it stuck where?” She listened some more. “Uh huh.” And then some more. “We don’t give advice on medical conditions, but if it’s stuck where you say and you can’t reach it, then you need to go to the ER to get it out. Come in next week when you’re feeling better and I’ll give you a replacement, on the house.” Goldie hung up.
Nothing like customer service!
“So, I heard about the incident at the fire station this morning,” Goldie commented, gum popping between her capped teeth. My mother-in-law was seventy, five feet nothing, lots of dyed blonde hair piled high on her head. She wore a black V-neck stretchy top, which showed off ample cleavage. Trim jeans and a pair of clogs. She aimed for under forty above the ankles, and went for comfort when it came to her feet.
Her husband, Paul, was her antithesis. Calm, quiet, reserved. He chose his words wisely. When he spoke, I listened, as it was always something good. I had no idea how they’d stayed married for almost forty years but, whatever it was, it was working.
Paul was an obstetrician who’d delivered more than half the babies in town. Now he delivered those babies’ babies. He’d been on call when I went into labor with Zach, but I drew the line—even at nine centimeters dilated—at my father-in-law seeing my hoo-hah, so they’d called in an alternate. It was no small stretch that as a couple, my in-laws knew more about a woman’s hoo-hah than anyone else in town. She was the expert on fun, he the consequences.
“John Poleski was at the breakfast with his wife and grandson. Fortunately, he had that pacemaker put in last year.”
John Poleski was eighty if he was a day, shaped like a tall Humpty Dumpty and bald. He’d worked for the railroad on the highline near Malta, a small town near the Canadian border, for decades. I’d never seen him in anything but overalls.
I rolled my eyes at her as I rung up a sale for strawberry-flavored body lotion and a DVD rental of Hit Me With Your Black c**k.
“Wish I’d been there.” She chuckled. “I’ve got to kiss my grandson for stirring things up.” Goldie was all for stirring things up. She was Bozeman’s Stir-Things-Up Queen. She liked to stick her nose in everyone’s business, which was easy to do around here. “John also said you met Ty Strickland. He’s a real man. I bet he’s good with his hands.” She waggled her eyebrows at me.
I dreaded where this was going. I decided to take the high road because I was not talking with her about my dirty thoughts involving my new neighbor. “I’ll definitely remember him when my snow blower stops working.”
She clicked her manicured nails on the glass-topped display case full of the higher end toys. “Snow blower, my ass. He can take care of other things you need worked on, Jane.” She looked at me, her head tilted down to give me a beady-eyed gaze. “You need s*x and that man can give it to you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I grumbled, walking over to the hanging racks with the lingerie. I had no doubt Ty Strickland could give it to me. I also had no doubt he’d be really good at it. Really, really good.
“It’s been three years since Nate’s been gone,” she replied, breaking me from my thoughts of having s*x with Ty. “How long before that?”
This was a typical conversation I had with my mother-in-law. She’d talk s*x with the pope. Although I thought the pope would be more comfortable than I was at the moment. This was her son—her dead son—she was talking about. But she was the first to admit his elevator hadn’t gone all the way up and it had skipped the morals department altogether.
“Obviously, you did it to have Bobby and that’s been, what, five years or so?” She looked up in the air at her imaginary calculator.
“Holy crap,” I whispered. I’d have s*x with the first guy who came through the door if Goldie would just shut up.
“Honey, I’ve known you since you were a little baby freshman at MSU.”
MSU, or Montana State University, was practically downtown, in fact, only a few blocks from my house. “Coming from a state like Maryland, I swear you didn’t know one end of a cow from another.”
It was true. I hadn’t.
“Didn’t know one end of a man from the other, either.” She chuckled. “You met Nate right away. I bet he was your first too, hmm?” She winked at me.
No way was I answering that one. She knew the answer. Making me say it out loud was cruel and unusual punishment.
“Then you up and married him. Your first. Your only.” She casually rearranged the basket of foiled condoms we offered like mints to customers. “Your mama has always entrusted me to be there for you. I swear Savannah’s gotta be on the other side of the world and you needed all the help you could get. Still do, for that matter.”
Goldie had been a fixture in my life from the very beginning of my fateful relationship with her son. Sweet and kind, yet over the top crazy, I’d fallen in love with her almost as fast as I had Nate. Since I’d grown up in Maryland, Bozeman was as far from home geographically as possible, barring moving to Alaska. Lifestyle-wise, it would have been more familiar to me if I’d been launched into space.
At the time, I’d wanted something different, something far away. My dad had walked out and my mom divorced his sorry ass lickety-split. I’d figured I’d find myself in Montana. I was still working on that one. During my college years, my mom had moved south to Savannah to find herself, and Goldie became a substitute mom as I settled into Bozeman. My real mom, more apt to wear Lily Pulitzer than Levi’s, had forged an unusual bond with Goldie and was comfortable with her acting as mom-by-proxy.
“The way I see it, you’re due.”
I groaned and shook my head. Not because she annoyed me, which she did, but because she was right. I was due. Overdue, like a carton of milk.
The night Bobby was conceived was the last time Nate and I had had s*x. The last time I’d had s*x period. I’d discovered I was pregnant the same day I’d discovered Nate with another woman in Goldilocks’ storage room. Pants around ankles, Nate’s white butt thrusting Bimbo into the shelves of porn. I’d had his clothes tossed out across the front yard an hour later.
“Ty seems nice,” I replied as neutrally as possible. “I don’t even know if he’s got a girlfriend. Besides, I’ve only talked to him for about five minutes. Total. I think I need a little more foreplay than that.”
She winked at me again. “Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ll help.”
Oh god. Goldie help? This was so not good.
- Writer
