“Yes!” she cried. “Fuck, yes!”
Eleanor’s whole fucking body tensed up, her legs thrashing as she came. She flooded me, cut off my air until she was done, finally setting me free in order to take Buck’s big dick inside her.
I watched him push his way in, and her pussy ate him right up.
“Hard!” she demanded. “Fuck me! Fuck me!”
The tools rattled as he rammed her, fucked her hard until his breath was short and his beard was glistening with spit from sloppy wet kisses. “Swap,” he grunted.
My fucking pleasure.
Poised close, so fucking close, about to spear that sweet fucking snatch and pound her good, until the shutters shook again. Rattled fucking hard by the idiot outside, the impatient dick who wouldn’t back the fuck off.
And then the dick’s voice.
Only it wasn’t a dick.
Not even close.
“Darren! What the hell?! I know you’re in there! I need to talk to you!” Jodie’s voice paused, and my mouth dried up. Guilt. Even though I had no reason to feel guilty and hadn’t done for a long bastard time.
Buck stared at me, raised his eyebrows. Giving it all the ignore her shit he usually gives me. She’s just an ex, Trent. Leave her fucking be.
But Buck hasn’t loved Jodie Symmonds since he was a kid.
Buck didn’t watch Jodie Symmonds bring two of his fucking kids into this world, hasn’t loved her with every single fucking bone in his body and believed it’d last for fucking ever.
The shutters rattled again. “Darren! It’s about the girls!”
Buck sighed.
Game over.
Mere hours earlier.
World War Three didn’t start over nuclear weapons, or oil, or violation of civil liberties. It didn’t start over who pissed on someone else’s prayer spot, either.
No. World War Three started at Number Two, Oak Crescent, Pontrilas.
World War Three started over standard-issue black school socks, and the eight-year-old diva who refused to wear them.
I gritted my teeth and prayed to the God of Monday mornings for a change in fortune.
“Ruby, please! Just. Put. The. Socks. On!”
“But Mummmmm! Black socks are the worst ever. I never ever ever wear black socks! I won’t be Ruby Trent in boring socks! Urghhhhhh!”
I held up the offending items. Just socks. Just fucking socks.
“And who do you suppose you will be? Huh?” I tossed them over to her. “Ruby Trent doesn’t have any other clean socks! Not since the washing machine went psycho-crazy last night!” My delightful daughter held up a truly heinous combination of odds. Green stripy and purple plain. Just no. No. The perfect-mother-brigade would never forgive such a crime against humanity. “Matching socks, Ruby. Matching.”
She let out a groan, threw herself on the bed, arms flailing. “Who cares about matching?!”
The entire snooty populous of the local village. Your teachers. My peers. Your peers. Cynthia Blackthorne and her pigtail-wearing twins. Georgie Graham and her child prodigy mathematics genius pre-schooler. I could give her the whole bloody directory.
Her cute little freckled face pouted up at me, and I almost let sock-gate slide in her favour. Almost.
Until she said the words. The words.
“Dad would let me wear them! Dad wouldn’t make me wear disgusting boring socks!”
Oh yeah. She just shit right out of luck with that line.
I put on my serious-Mum voice. “Get dressed, Ruby. Black socks. Final answer.” My definitely-need-to-leave-the-house phone alarm started up in my pocket. I pulled out my mobile to shut it up. “And now we’re late. Again. Thanks very much.”
The muffled voice of her elder sibling fog-horned from downstairs. “We’re late! Mum! I’ll miss the bus!”
Tell me something I don’t already know. I stuck my head out onto the landing. “I know, Mia, dearest child of mine! Your sister is just putting her black socks on!”
I stared at Ruby until she sighed. “Fine! I’ll wear boring-smoring socks to school!”
Praise the fucking Lord.
Monday morning is my morning. You wouldn’t think it, not pre-nine a.m. while chaos reigns all around me. Not with two girls to get ready for school, suddenly remembering the homework they swore blind they didn’t have over the weekend, and the sports shorts that they really, really need that afternoon but forgot to put in the laundry basket. You wouldn’t think it was my morning as the cat tries to trip me up while I’m juggling breakfast plates, and Nanna is reminding me for the hundredth time to pick up her pills from the chemist, like I’ve done every single Monday in the past seven years we’ve been living with her.
You wouldn’t think Monday morning belonged to me at all.
But it does.
It’s my one single weekday morning without both work and kids, and I make the most of it. Or I try.
Ladies who lunch.
Only it’s ladies who grab coffee down the local coffee shop. We are always well done by lunch.
I really needed it today. A couple of hours of just being me. Not Mum-Jodie, or Jodie-from-the-cafe, or Granddaughter-cum-Carer-Jodie, or Trent’s-ex-Jodie. Just Jodie.