Chapter 90: A New Design

Lydia

Kontiolahti, Finland, in early winter – we were not comfortable. But that was nothing compared to poor Marshall, Jonjo’s brother and our interim physio until Mark was fully fit again. He was used to the weather in Jamaica and Pasadena. He was decked out in thick clothing as if he was going to the north pole, and he was still shivering.

Mark had insisted that he felt refreshed enough to make the trip, and he did indeed appear much improved, Femke still had that slightly waddling gait to prove it, but Regina had put her foot down. She was not going to let him go anywhere until the doctor had cleared him, threatening to take him hostage if need be.

It had been pointless to even try to argue with her. When it came to Mark, she was as stubborn as a mule at saddle time. Every other woman in a living arrangement like ours would perhaps have felt threatened by her possessiveness, but we all knew that due to our sport and the frequent travel that came with it, it had been Regina who had always taken the backseat. We didn’t begrudge her the alone time with him at all. And with Regina we could be sure that Mark would be in excellent health by the end of the year.

Mark

The broadcast had been running for about twenty minutes when the front door flew open and Jenny stormed in, back from her karting practice.

“Have they started yet?” she asked while hurriedly peeling herself out of her clothes, still in the corridor. With her mother having the same clothing-repellent tendencies, the laundry basket was in the corridor too, so at least the discarded garments wouldn’t end up strewn across the floor like in the olden days.

“Still preliminary heats,” I reported. “Femke has won hers by a country mile.”

“And aunties Nadja and Lydia?” Jenny asked, walking past me and Regina straight to the fridge to get herself some refreshment, presumably.

“Honey?” I addressed her. “You may want to go to the shower first. Did they spray you with petrol or something?”

“Oops,” Jenny said, blushing slightly. “I ... I blew up my engine. I’ll be right back.”

Regina was sitting next to me, naked as always of course, and looked at me as if I had just performed a card trick.

“How do you do that?” she asked. “She would never have admitted that if I had asked.”

“Love, our daughter can be a bit transactional at times. You give some, you get some.”

Instead of replying, Regina’s eyes got moist and her bottom lip started quivering. “You called her ‘our daughter’ for the first time,” she whispered, her nostrils flaring in a desperate attempt not to cry. Then she jumped on me and hugged me.

It took her a few moments to calm down and process my words.

“What exactly did you give?” she asked me.

“Next February Matt and Jenny will exchange pictures for the last time. I agreed to make a drawing of her instead of a photo.”

“She won’t be striking some naughty pose, will she?” Regina asked and climbed off my lap again.

“Well, in a way she will,” I admitted. “She wants me to draw her while sitting on her kart, naked. That won’t present a particularly modest picture, with her legs spread apart to reach the pedals.”

Regina gasped. Then she had an idea.

“But there’s that panel thing on the steering column, where the number is. That should hide it.”

“Yes, except I won’t be drawing her directly from the front.”

“Are you mad?” Regina asked me.

“No, I’m not. Look, Jenny thinks she tricked me into drawing her in a more revealing pose, and I’m willing to give her that little win. She has always accepted my red lines, now it’s time for me to make a concession. That picture will last less than twenty-four hours before Matt has to delete it, and let’s be honest, he won’t be seeing nothing he won’t get a very close look at within two days of arriving here.”

“But you’ll be drawing our daughter’s exposed privates,” Regina argued.

“Yes, I’ll be very uncomfortable, but Jenny has taken herself back for my benefit so often, I can bloody well accept half an hour of discomfort for a change. And what are we even discussing here? So Matt will get a look at her pussy. Big deal. When he comes here, he’ll have his face in it before the jet lag is gone anyway.”

Regina sighed. “We could have avoided a lot of drama if you had thought like that two years ago.”

“Yeah, so I’m slow on the uptake,” I agreed. “But the important part is we can at least make the last few months as easy as possible, because when Matt arrives, the real dance will start, and I don’t only mean the sex.”

“What do you mean?”

“They are madly in love with each other,” I said. “And for the remainder of the season they will sort of avoid each other. Matt goes straight into Formula-BMW, while Jenny will still be in karts. But in 2002 they will have to race each other. I predict major fireworks.”

“Oh shit, I’ve never thought about that,” Regina admitted.

“Neither did I. Nadja pointed it out to me.”

Regina

It was still a bit strange to get used to Mark’s changed attitude towards Jenny. On one hand, had he been so accepting of her quirky personality from the start we could have spared ourselves so much drama in the past, but on the other hand I became worried that Jenny would abuse his more laid back approach.

My worries didn’t exactly get smaller when she came back from the shower and I realized she had shaved off the sparse fluff of pubic hair that had started growing lately. Mark seemed to ignore that fact completely, so I forewent any comment on the matter, but I made a mental note to make sure that Jenny wouldn’t start to push the boundaries, now that Mark seemed to have made peace with the fact that he was the ersatz-dad of a rather eccentric teenager.

“What’s the situation?” Jenny asked and finally made her way to the fridge, now properly cleaned up.

“Lydia and Nadja are out,” Mark reported. “Lydia made it into the second preliminary, so that’s the best she’s done so far. Femke won both heats.”

Never mind my surprise that Mark had somehow managed to follow the broadcast while also talking to me, what really caught my attention was that Jenny was coming towards us with a beer in her hand, but then I saw she was also carrying a bottle of orange juice. She handed the beer to Mark who thanked her with his customary kiss on the tip of her nose.

The interaction between them was an enigma. Just a year ago Mark would have completely freaked out if Jenny had sat down next to him, stark naked, and now they had this weird beck and call thing going on. Jenny asked a question and he answered as if I wasn’t even there. It wasn’t malice, of course, but ever since his attitude change, Jenny seemed to direct all her attention to Mark to the point of almost ignoring Meri and me.

At least Mark seemed to have picked up on my worries. Jenny and I were sitting on either side of him, and he hand put his arms around both of us, and he even kissed me once in a while. Unfortunately my inherent insecurity was messing with me. I was growing somewhat irritated that he always only took his arm off my shoulder to take a sip from his beer bottle, but never Jenny’s. Thankfully the rational part of my brain kicked in and reminded me that Mark was right-handed and I was sitting to his right – d’oh.