Chapter 8: Teasing Trish's Disapproving Parents

Trish walked into the living room where Pam and I sat next to each other reading. I was deep into the Journal of Cyber Security, and Pam was into a book about the Federal Reserve.

Trish looked perplexed, and speechless. I noticed her cellphone in one hand.

“What’s up, Gorgeous?”

“My Mom just called. They’re on their way to Florida and want to stay with me for a week – with us ... I guess. Mom and Dad don’t know I’m house sitting.”

I shrugged, “So, there’s plenty of room in the guest rooms upstairs.”

“That’s not the issue. The issue is that I haven’t told them I’m living with the two of you. All they really know is that I have a new address. Mom told me that Dad had looked at the house on an aerial survey map on the Internet, so they know it’s a mansion of sorts, and they want to see it. I don’t know what they think is going on because I couldn’t afford a house like this.”

Pam said in a matter of fact tone, “So, do you want us to vacate so you can keep up your virginal façade with your parents?” She eventually laughed at the thought.

“I can’t ask you to do that? I ... I could put them up at my condo.”

I said, “But then they’d wonder why you didn’t bring them here to show them where you’re really living. They want a window into their daughter’s life.”

“I’ve been giving them a window into my life with weekly telephone calls – a very selective window with only limited information, so far.”

Pam giggled, “But you didn’t tell them you’ve turned into a nymphomaniac fuck bunny cum slut with deep lesbian desires that occasionally likes to fuck strangers of both sexes, like the husband of your boyfriend’s ex-wife or his best friend or your many swinger friends that you find very satisfying?”

I chimed in and teased, “I also like that you walk around here nude most of the time, and that you prefer to swim and sleep that way so I have ready access to your promiscuous toned and sexy body whenever the mood strikes – and that’s fairly often.”

Trish smiled, “No, I haven’t, obviously, but that’s a pretty good description of how they might end up seeing me.” She gazed upwards and added, “And, I guess it’s quite accurate.” Trish shimmied her breasts at the two of us as she stood there nude.

“How long are they staying?”

“It sounded like a week.”

“So, how can we help?”

Trish looked at us and then at her silent phone as though the ‘right’ answer was in one place or the other. Finally, she said, “I just want us to keep on living the way we are. It’s about time they learned a fact or two about their daughter. Maybe we could all wear some modicum of clothing for a week, though.”

Saturday afternoon, Trish got a call about one o’clock announcing her parents’ arrival in a couple of hours. The two of them, Max and Bea, were on Interstate 75 a little north of Tampa and headed south.

Trish and Pam got up and headed off to put some clothes on. I was already wearing a bathing suit and a t-shirt, so I figured I was presentable in a Florida-kind-of way.

At three-thirty, we saw their nondescript sedan pull through the gate into the circular driveway in front of the large home. Pam and I hung back and let Trish head out the front door to welcome them with hugs and kisses.

Pam turned to me, “This is going to be interesting.” I just nodded. I hoped that Trish would emerge unscathed from the visit. I vowed to protect her however I could.

Trish brought them into the large house by way of the august stairs up to the large ornate front door with the herons carved in it. We were standing and smiling in the living room, trying to look friendly and not like two ogres who had turned their daughter into a sex slave. I thought, ‘Hummmm, sex slave? I wonder what that’d be like?’

Trish said gaily, “Mom, Dad, I’d like you to meet Bob and Pam. Bob, Pam, these are my parents. I’m so glad you finally get to meet them.”

I stepped forward and put my hand out, “Mr. Farnsworth, nice to meet you. Welcome. Mrs. Farnsworth.”

Max immediately said, “Please, it’s Max and Bea. Mr. and Mrs. Farnsworth were my parents, and they’re long gone.”

I smiled back at them. Both Max and Bea were a little on the portly side, although I could see Trish’s good looks in both of them. They were also on their best behavior, so far.

Pam stepped forward and did her little air kiss thing with each of them. She said, “I’m so glad you could come and see our temporary home.” As she did, I could see the look of uncertainty come over their faces as to just who we were, and why we were welcoming them into ‘our’ home. Trish said they knew about the house-sitting gig.

Trish said, “Let me show you the house quickly. Do you need to use the restroom, or can I get you a drink?”

Max said, “I would absolutely love a beer, if you have one. Otherwise, I’m fine.”

I ventured, “We have some Bud Lite, if that’s acceptable otherwise I can run into town and get something else for you. It’s not far.”

“No, that’d be fine.” Again, that look of confusion on Max’s face. He didn’t want to ask, yet he did; his training led him to just observe and try to figure it out. I almost thought that he’d like to solve the puzzle first. Why was I acting like a host in his daughter’s home?

As I got him a beer and Bea a glass of ice water, Trish led them around the house on the grand tour. I noticed she only gave them a peek into the master bedroom. The oversize bed was hard to miss. After that, I helped Max bring in several suitcases from their car and got them situated upstairs in the guest room next to the one I used as an office.

Finally, as I came down the stairs, I heard Bea ask her daughter, “Where do you sleep, dear?”

I chuckled at the temerity of the question, and how it sought some deeper truth than they presently knew.

Trish said merrily, “Oh, in the bedroom, of course.” She gestured towards the master bedroom. Her voice made it sound like there was also a ‘Duh’ attached, as though to imply, ‘Where else would I sleep?’

I almost burst out laughing, because she still had robbed them of any certainty of our relationships. We could just be visiting friends or close neighbors – best friends, and in a way we were. Our roles in Trish’s life were totally unexplained at that point. Also, there were other bedrooms that she might be using.

I asked Max, “So, you’re off work for a holiday? Trish said you were staying a week?”

“Yes, I wanted to turn the three-day weekend into a ten-day holiday down here in the warm weather. The weather is rainy and chilly up in Ohio, but at least all the friggin’ ice and snow has pretty much stopped falling from the sky. I’ll store up some sunshine, and hope it’ll last until April. We still have snow on the ground up there in places where it got piled up last month.”

Bea said, “If I may ask, what do you do?”

I volunteered in a pleasant tone, “Well, I’m a consultant in cyber-security. I have a number of clients around the country and I work on their technology and network infrastructures to protect them from outside threats.” I nodded to Pam.

Pam, who was standing next to me said, “And for the past two years, I’ve run a small hedge fund dealing with non-stock market investments. So far, we’ve invested in a race horse, two NASCARs, a start-up radio station, several computer games, a restaurant chain, a number of up and coming bands, a cable TV channel, and now we’re in the movie industry in L.A. and England.”

I knew that Pam’s job description would be much clearer to the two of them than mine, which sounded like a bunch of buzzwords arbitrarily linked into a sentence.

Max said to me, “So, you work alone?”

“Pretty much. I have some friends I employ as 1099-contractors to help write some of the specialized code for certain systems and network servers. I do some work myself, of course. A lot of what I do is set up the architecture and oversee its implementation if that’s what the client wants. Sometimes they take what I plan for them, and they implement it themselves. I’m lucky in that I can do a lot of my work from home; perhaps you noticed my office upstairs next to your bedroom.”

I figured that would confuse them further. If I was ‘working from home’ and had an office upstairs, then this was my home, which probably meant I had some kind of special relationship with their daughter.

Pam added to what I said, “I have an office about five miles from here with twenty-two employees, mostly doing either financial statements, tax and security filings, or research on promising investments. We have about half-a-billion dollars invested right now, including a few million that Bob invested with us.”

I added, “I just gave Pam a small drop in that bucket a couple of weeks ago. She’s promising me that I’ll not regret that decision.” I laughed at how we were subtly signaling our financial solidarity to Trish’s parents. “I promised her more if I liked what happened over the next six months.”

Trish made a good living, but Pam and I easily eclipsed her in earnings. Trish was making about $65,000 in her paralegal work. I was billing out at $800 an hour, and charging out about 2,000 hours a year. Pam our peak earner personally harvested one percent of the gross portfolio value she managed on an annual basis, but also had to defray some office expenses. We weren’t playing a ‘keep it even’ game. I tended to carry most of our living expenses. We’d all agreed to that with the proviso that occasionally there’d be some effort made to even the score, if not financially then with some other meaningful currency for us all. Sex was a good currency, I thought; the idea of Trish as our sex slave flashed back through my mind.

Bea asked a pointed question, but she asked it the wrong way and that let me duck the real answer she sought, “Where is your permanent home?”

“Well, I have a condominium in the city, but it’s been sitting unused for the past month since we moved in here.” I knew my phrasing teased her to ask the key question.

Pam volunteered, “And I have a relatively small house up in Lakewood Ranch, but that’s also sitting unused.”

Max and Bea looked between all of us with a dazed and confused look again.

Trish jumped in, “And, of course, I still have my condo just east of downtown, but because of this house sitting job I’m not using that either.”

I thought, ‘Ah ha! She just gave them a monumental clue about what was going on.’ I watched to see if the lights would come on in their eyes. They didn’t. The glazed over look of question marks still remained.

Finally, Bea asked me, “Well, if you’re home and condos are all unused, where do you live now?”

“Well, here,” I said as though that point had been obvious all along – another ‘Duh’ statement.

Pam smiled and added with polite emphasis the way a wife might augment what her husband had said, “Yes, here.” She even gave a nearly imperceptible nod towards the master bedroom.

The little invisible ‘me’ sitting on my shoulder and observing all our play was doubled-up with laughter. I thought this whole conversation hilarious. We were making Bea and Max work hard for every tidbit of information about us.

Max and Bea both looked around the house, as though seeking additional rooms that they hadn’t seen.

Trish added in that same ‘didn’t-you-understand-what-we-told-you’ tone, “We live together – the three of us.”

I jumped in with some more data that I knew would be useless if not confusing in their processing. “Well, we’re here for almost six more months or until the owners – they’re in England – show up for next season. If I understand the immigration laws, they can only be in the States six months out of any one year, so I guess they’re half time here and half-time in England.”

Max waved his arm, obviously dismissing my last comments, “So, the three of you actually live together?” He put some strong emphasis on the word ‘live.’ I figured he was beginning to see that we had enslaved his daughter in something unsavory.

The three of us all said, “Yes” in unison. I liked the harmony that we made. We also each smiled. Some about lemons and lemonade flitted through my mind.

Trish came and held Pam’s arm. “Pam and I met about eight years ago. She’s my best friend. I know you’ve heard me talk about her a hundred times in our phone calls because we do so much together.”

She then came and took my arm and put it around her shoulder in way that broadcast our intimacy, “And, Bob is my boyfriend. That’s why we live together.”

Bea started, “But...” She was almost there. Only a couple of key pieces to the puzzle were missing now. Her eyes rolled around the room, ending at the door to the master bedroom.

Bea looked between Pam and me. She said, “Oh, I thought you two were a couple.”

Quick as a flash Pam stepped to my other side and said, “Oh, we are.” She’d anticipated the statement.

“Huh?” Bea dropped. We’d just befuddled her again; still not all the way there.

I explained, “Yes, Pam and I are a couple, and so are Trish and I,...” I paused to be sure I laid on the last piece of relationship data with taunting ease. I added, “ ... and Trish and Pam are a couple.”

Max slowly got it. The pieces all fit together, and now he was seeing the whole picture. He looked between each of us, no longer with the confused look. Instead, he registered uncertainty about how to deal with the situation now that it was understood. My eyes were drawn to him because his head was jerking from one of us to the other, as though he were watching a very fast three-sided tennis match.

Bea said, “But ... well, I don’t understand ... you mean...”

Max turned to his wife and bluntly said, “They live together. The three of them live together. They’re not a couple, there are three of them – living together.” He turned to his daughter and both stated and asked in the same breath, “Sleeping together?”

Trish looked shocked, “Of course!” Her reply left no doubt about the state of our relationship. The long form of her reply was unstated and would have sounded like, ‘Of course, we sleep together, and make love, and fuck, and everything else we can think of that three people can physically do to each other.’

Bea finally got it. She blurted out, “Do you love each other?” Bea’s head now started to do the three-sided tennis-match dance.

Trish did a little swoon dance and put one hand on her heart, “Oh, yes. Very much.” She snuggled in under my arm, but gave an amorous look of love to Pam.

Max asked, “And how long has this been going on?” There was an edge to his voice that let us know he did not approve of what was happening.

I responded with a forced smile, “A little over three months.” I paused to be sure he was following, “Pam and I met on a flight back here from L.A. where we’d both been on business. A week or so later, she introduced me to her best friend Trish, and ... well, the rest is history. We all fell in love.” I didn’t elaborate about what ‘the rest’ entailed, but I smiled as my mind did cartwheels through all the sex, the swapping with Reese and Dave, and Jon and Amy, and the first swinger party we’d been at the week before where his daughter had distinguished herself by fucking six men she hadn’t known before that night.

Max let out a large, “Harrumph.” He walked to the window looking out over the pool and onto Sarasota Bay. His silence hung in the room. He took a long swig of his beer.

Bea looked around the big house, “You mean you all eat ... cook ... sleep ... live together here, but it’s all temporary?”

Trish said, “Well, it’s not temporary as far as I’m concerned. I love these two with all my heart, and they love me the same way. I think we’re in this for the long haul. As for eating and cooking here, well, we eat out most of the time except for breakfast and lunch if we’re around, because we all work. Bob’s in the house more than we are.”

I gestured upstairs, “As I said, I use that other bedroom with the large computer and desk in it as my office when I’m not on the road. Some days I could be just about anywhere on the planet and be doing the work; I even skip lunch because I get in the zone, but I like being here when Trish and Pam come home to welcome them.”

Bea said uncertainly, “Welcome them?”

“You know, with hugs and kisses, the way someone welcomes home the people you love and care about.” I was laying it on kind of thick I realized.

Trish added with a blush and quiet voice so her father wouldn’t hear but her mother would, “Or a spontaneous lovemaking session.” She grinned at Bea, really pushing things in my opinion.

Bea inhaled sharply. “Oh, ... dear.”

I tried to shift the whole discussion, “Errr, we have about another hour before the afternoon temperatures will start to roll off. Might the two of you like to join us in a swim? The pool is about eighty-three degrees, so I think you’ll find it delightful. The three of us go in almost every day.”

Max turned and looked interested. I think he liked the change in topic. He said, “Yes, I’m all for that. Let me go put on my suit.” He turned to his wife and said somewhat firmly, “Come on, Bea. Come put your suit on too.” His last statement wasn’t a suggestion; it was a command for Bea to join him in private conversation.

As the two of them went up the stairs, Pam, Trish, and I went to the master bedroom to change to our suits. I kept on my conservative suit rather than my Speedo. Pam and Trish, however, opted for their slightly conservative bikinis, and at least they didn’t put on the ones that their boobs kept falling out of – the Wicked Weasels.

We three were in the pool when Max and Bea came out ten minutes later. I speculated that they’d had a few words with each other about how to treat the discovery about their daughter’s ‘threesome’ lifestyle.

I hopped out of the pool and got them both some pool noodles to float around on, and then dove into the deep end. Max dove in behind me, and Bea inched her way in from the pool stairs. We had some ‘neutral’ conversation about the pool, weather, Sarasota Bay, the boats going by, the large homes around us, and the Florida real estate market. Surprisingly, nothing else came up about our living together, so we just let it drop.