Chapter 6

Author’s note: When I started down this track in Chapter 116, I was fairly certain I did not want to go there but decided to let things flow and see where it went. I include this alternate reality in order to show a facet of Beth’s personality that we do not get to see very often, and never this strongly.

When the door opened, I expected Liya and/or Gracey, so was surprised when I heard Meka’s voice say, “I’m not surprised that she needed relief. Damn! That was turning me on. I think he’ll make a great lover. He knows what he doesn’t know and takes direction well. I don’t know how it could work out for you, but you would be doing yourselves and any other ... females in your orbit a great favor if you can teach him how to love ... girls ... women. Don’t tell him, but I’ve moved him into the Make Love With This Guy category.”

As Liya entered, she said, “I agree with you, Meka. My god, he could be a lover like Charlie with the right instruction. FU-UCCKK! Beth, we need to figure out how to do this. We might just have to risk simply telling him. There’s a chance that he likes us enough not to tell anyone, but...”

“Yeah, very large ‘but,’ there.” Meka continued with, “I didn’t know how he’d deal with ... all this. I expected him to take direction well. What I didn’t expect is him opening further. I take it you all did notice that he inserted some unexpected comments and more-than-simply-pleasant compliments.”

“I noticed,” I replied, then gently banged my head back on the shower door a couple times.

Apparently, we were having a get-together in the 2^nd-floor bathroom, as Celeste stepped in saying, “If you girls don’t grab him and hang on, you’ll be making a huge mistake that you might regret for the rest of your lives.”

“Celeste,” I said, “we know.” I exhaled, banged my head twice more, then asked her, “What do you know or suspect about our family? Please don’t be afraid to annoy us, as you won’t. We all suspect you know ... or, at least, suspect, but I need to know, now.”

Without batting an eyelash, she replied, “You girls are all Charlie’s lovers, as are most or all of the mothers.”

“I didn’t want this out in the open this soon, but your opening statement requires it. We ... refuse to try to start a ... We don’t want to start a relationship with him with a lie, either of commission or omission, and how would you propose we tell him that we’ve all been fucking my father for four months?”

She replied, “I know how you girls think about ... sex, and I doubt you’ve been fucking your father. I’ve suspected for a long time that you’ve all been making love with him or having sex with him, but I’m relatively certain you haven’t been fucking your father for four months, despite the cute alliteration.” She shrugged and said, “I don’t know the answer to your question. However, he seems really taken with at least a couple of you, possibly all of you. Given how shy he seems, and how ... smitten he seems, you’ve probably got some time to figure a way through that. The tack you’ve been taking, as I determine from the various things you told him today, is probably the right one. Keep him interested, make him know that you want a future with him, and he’ll probably wait ... possibly years.”

“‘Yeah,” Heather replied, “that’s what we’ve figured. What we haven’t figured is how to tell him about Dad and not have him, a) be horrified and discontinue all contact with us, and/or b) go to the authorities.”

“You could try trusting in his love for you and just tell him.”

I began bawling and was completely unaware of anything else after Brett said that. Well, not completely unaware, as I knew someone’s arms were around me and that I was crying into that person’s shoulder. Well, and that at least one person was saying quiet things to me in hopes that I would quit crying. Eventually, and I know not how long ‘eventually’ was, but I began to understand that it was Brett who was holding me, and Brett who was trying to comfort me. I also began to realize that he and I were alone on the floor of the 2^nd-floor bathroom. I was bamboozled, not knowing what was going on, but hoping against hope that it really was Brett holding me and Brett comforting me. It would be that, or I’d break, break completely. I opened my eyes and pulled my head back from the shoulder.

“Is it really you, Brett?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why are you even talking to me? Why aren’t you disgusted with me?”

“Because I love you and have since 1^st grade.” Very gently, he continued with, “I wasn’t lying earlier when I said that this fall was the best time I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve greatly enjoyed meeting and getting to know your friends. I’ve greatly enjoyed hanging out with the soccer team, your friends, and you. I’ve greatly enjoyed actually being able to talk with you, and to talk with your friends, who have, somehow, become my friends. And they’re all girls, a species of humanity that scared the dickens out of me because I was so head-over-heels with this incredibly pretty girl that I met on the first day of 1^st grade. This incredibly pretty girl that talked to me as a friend, as a buddy, despite that I had great difficulty in saying much at all of interest to her because she had me so tongue-tied. The pretty girl who made me feel incredible when she laughed at one of my jokes. But the pretty girl that I knew, just knew I was nowhere near good enough for by the time 4^th grade rolled around. But that pretty girl, that amazingly pretty girl, just kept talking to me occasionally, even when I was mostly uncommunicative. You see, that pretty girl was obviously an angel, as she was so pretty, so smart, and so ... just good. How could I deserve to spend time with an angel, much less be an angel’s boyfriend? She made me smile every time I saw her, although...”

“Stop, stop, stop. Stop! STOP! I can’t take it. I’m not all that. I’m a somewhat clueless girl who’s trying to find her way through a morass of feelings, longings, and pubescence and love and sex and friendship and girls and boys and ... and ... incredible dads and ... this one, incredible boy who I’ve liked since I met him on the first day of 1^st grade and could never figure out why he was so shy, so hard to talk to, despite that when I could get him to talk, he was obviously so smart, and so funny and I’d just about given up on that boy when, one day, he accepted my invitation to join me and my friends at lunch, but the problem was by that time, some of my friends and I were already involved ... in a ... sexual relationship ... with ... another guy ... and I was so torn, so confused, because I wanted him and I wanted my ... lover, and then we had this great morning together with most all of my good friends, and we asked him to do something for us that we all knew was well outside his comfort zone, yet he agreed and began helping us with what we wanted, and he was so kind, and so gentle, and his hands felt so nice on my friends, and we wanted him to help with this ... this thing we wanted to do to ... impress ... make that other guy even more interested in us. Why would my friend from 1^st grade put up with ... shit like that? Why?”

“Why? Because that 1^st-grade friend loves you and has found that he loves some of your friends, and that guy would hate ... absolutely hate doing anything that would make you sad, make your friends sad, make my friends sad. Beth, I should have told you earlier, much earlier. I love you.”

I looked at him, at his face, at his eyes. Then I looked into him through his eyes. I know not how long I looked into him, but it was probably not a short time. Then I lunged at him, wrapped my arms around him as he toppled onto his back on the floor of the 2^nd-floor bathroom.

I was sort of straddling him and began the process of lying on him in preparation to kissing him soundly, when he said, “Beth. Beth! You’re wearing almost nothing, and I’ve just had the most ... sexual morning of my life, and I’m not sure I could resist you. Granted, I’d like not resisting you, but I doubt that not resisting you would be good for ... any of us right now. We ... you and I ... need to talk, but it’s probably more important that we all talk first. I have only the slightest inkling of why we were here this morning doing what we were doing, but I suspect that ... whatever it is probably needs to be put on hold temporarily.”

That sent my mind reeling back through ... however long it had been since Brett and Lana arrived around 9, which sucked a loud “FU-UCCCKKKK” out of me. If I thought my life was getting complicated before, I did not know what complicated was. I began crying, though not the full-body, wrenching, heartbroken wailing of earlier, but it was not the short, “oh, that hurt, but now I’m mostly better” crying. It lasted no longer than a couple minutes, as my mind realized that things were far, far better than they might have been and that I should quit the damned pity party and begin working on solving the damned problems that I’d created ... or, at least, had done a lot to help create.

Still straddling Brett and looking into his eyes, I breathed heavily, then said, “You’re probably right. I don’t have a clue how to ... to ... fix ... all this, but I best get on with it.”

“Beth, you’re not alone. You don’t have to fix ... whatever this is by yourself. There are some incredibly smart and very helpful girls waiting downstairs for us. And those incredibly smart and helpful girls include my cousin who so wants to be your friend, and friend of your friends. Yes, she’s sorta like my mom and talks too much, but someone has to balance my silence, and I’ve found that she knows me very well and likes me enough to help me with some problems I thought were intractable, with the proof being that here I am, lying on my back in the middle of a bathroom floor with an angel, a female angel, who is wearing nearly nothing, and seemed like she wanted to kiss me into next year. Of course, next year’s only a few days away, but...”

I interrupted him by saying among giggling, “I can’t believe that I want you to stop talking.” His eyes caught me, however, and I dove into them until my knees began complaining about the tile floor, when I said, “I think I’ve loved you since 1^st grade, too, but it was so hard to be sure because you wouldn’t talk to me. God, I’d love to have ... even five months back to change my past.”

“No,” he said quietly, after which he repeated it more intensely. “We cannot go back, because who knows what other changes you’d make in that time, changes that would change this moment or make it vanish entirely. No. Forward. We can go only forward and do our best to get to some place and time that is more than simply acceptable and where we can each have as much as possible of what each of us wants that can still keep us together, because Beth Williams, I’m not letting you go again like I did in elementary school. I’m willing to share, but I want to be in your life, and I want you in mine.”

I looked down into his eyes, my knees still protesting their abuse, and said, “I always knew you were smart. Okay. We’ll do it your way. We’ll go downstairs and see if you can deal with my recent past.”

When we stepped into the kitchen, Rhee and Heather immediately put me in the middle of a three-girl scrum. I reveled in the love of my lovers for a minute or so, then encouraged them to let go of me.

I grabbed one of each of my lovers’ hands and said, “There’s someone I want you two to meet. This is Brett Jacobs. He’s been a friend of mine since 1^st grade and I’ve probably loved him since then, but he’s been just too quiet for me to be sure. Brett, these are my dear lovers, Rhee Devlin – she’s the dark-haired beauty with the huge melons – and Heather Wilkerson – she’s the little thing with the incredibly sparkly eyes and beautiful grin when she’s really happy. Both of them make my heart flutter every time I see them after we’ve been apart.