She sets down her spoon. “Crosby, you don’t understand.”
“I think I do though. You’ve been brought up in this ivory tower and surrounded by people who don’t even know you. None of them see what I see, least of all your own mother.”
10
Ridley
On one hand, how dare he criticize my family and friends. On the other hand, he’s one hundred percent correct.
He squeezes my hand before letting go as footsteps approach the kitchen.
“Why do you two look so happy?” Mother asks.
“One more sleep until Christmas,” I reply.
My mother chirps, “Dear, grownups don’t speak like that. It’s ‘one more night.’ Honestly, the way you and your friends talk these days.”
I shake my head as she turns away from me to fill her coffee mug.
“Actually,” Crosby says, “Sleep can be used as a noun. As in, ‘did you have a good sleep?’ So, yeah, to say ‘one more sleep until Christmas’ is a totally valid usage.”
I look up at Crosby, my eyes shooting him a look that communicates to him that he’s put himself in mortal danger. I look to my mother as I straighten my shoulders. “See?”
Mother looks meaningfully between me and Crosby. A beat passes and I start to wonder if she’s about to gut my future stepbrother like a fish for mansplaining to her in her own house.
Instead she nods and looks at Crosby approvingly. “I knew I liked you as soon as I met you, Crosby. Pay attention to this one, Ridley. He’s smart. You could learn some things from him.”
I knew I couldn’t enjoy the moment of triumph for long. Crosby stares at me so intensely that I can’t avert my eyes. His nostrils are flaring. Seems he does not like my mother running me down. Very subtly I shake my head and widen my gaze to tell him to drop it. But the look on his face and his shallow breathing tell me he’s going through some primal moment and there’s nothing I can do to dispel it.
“Mrs. Rushmore …,” he starts, and I have to cover my face and peak through my fingers because I just can’t watch the full view of this shit show that’s about to happen. “If I may say so, you have done a magnificent job as a mother. Ridley is going to do great things. I can just tell.”
I can’t stay in this room a second longer. The kindness from Crosby in contrast to the sharpness of my mother compels me to get out of here. I turn my back on the both of them and go to the French doors. “I’m gonna check on Sassy again.” My voice sounds strange, choked by a huge lump in my throat. It’s higher pitched and breathy.
I hear Mother’s syrupy, smiley voice. “That’s a very nice thing of you to say, Crosby. Well, then. Be dressed and ready in the front hall promptly at noon for the photo shoot, mmkay? I’m off to hair and makeup.”
I’m barely halfway out the door when I feel Crosby grab me around the waist and pull me close, dragging me back into the kitchen and closing the door. Through the material of my thin bathrobe, his dick roots out the valley between my ass cheeks. The side of his face tickles and warms the side of mine from behind. It’s such a cozy feeling I regret sneaking out of bed so quickly this morning to check on Sassy the first time.
“You ever leave my bed again without waking me up, I’m going to have to spank you.”
I feel his face tighten in a smile as he says this and I shiver.
“Promise?”
11
Ridley
My mother, in her enduring wisdom, likes to do our Christmas photo shoot on Christmas Eve as soon as we’ve all dressed for the party. She then sends them out to arrive by Epiphany.
Well, she doesn’t send them out. She has her assistant send them out.
She likes to think she trademarked this idea as part of her “Radical Me Time” blog. As if she could be radically caring about anything else but herself.
Harsh? Me? As Mother would say, that’s my “brand.”
“OK, everyone,” chirps the photographer. “Eyes up here.”
I paste a sugary smile on my face and hiss at my mother, who stands next to me. “Tell me again why we’re doing this on Christmas Eve and not, like, in summer or fall, like normal people?”