Page 99 of Gone for You

“I’m thinking so. Yes.”

She raises a dark eyebrow. They’re manicured and done so perfectly. It’s all a ruse. All this perfection when what she really is, is a swinging lesbian liar with pants that are on fire.

“Livvy Loo, we’re not gay.”

“I won’t judge you. I promise. I don’t care who you love as long as you’re both happy.”

“I know you wouldn’t, honey, but that’s not the reason we got a divorce.”

“I need chocolate.”

“Okay. Yes. I agree.”

She stands up quickly and rushes to the kitchen, grabbing the Tupperware container of cookies.

“These are tainted now,” I glare at her, but still remove the lid and throw it aside. They may be tainted but they’re still delicious magic and I’m not an idiot.

Well, that’s obviously to be determined since I didn’t know my parents were… some word I can’t even think, let alone say out loud.

I sit down, tuck my legs under my butt and munch away, staring at the container the entire time. It takes five cookies for the magic to set in but I feel calmer, more stable.

“I’m ready.”

“When your brother was a freshman in college, we met some new friends.”

I scoff becausefriendsis a weird word to use for someone you sleep with but then I think about… never mind.

“Please, just listen.”

“Okay, Mom. I promise. And I’ll try my best to have an open mind, too.”

“Thank you. As I was saying, we met some new friends. We’d been having a few problems… in the bedroom.”

I pull a face and she raises her eyebrows at me.

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just weird since you and I have never really talked much about sex.”

“I know. Anyway, our sex life had gone, stagnant, I guess. We were bored.”

“So bring in some new sex toys or watch porn together!”

“We did.” She looks down at her hands that are twisting together on her lap. “Oh. With…”

“Yeah.”

“Okay I think maybe we just need to rip the Band-Aid off and finish the story without me asking questions or clarification.”

“Good plan. We met these friends, and after a few months of spending time together, they approached us. It was awkward, for sure, and we laughed it off at first like it was the most ridiculous thing either of us had ever heard of. But then we came home and just the idea of doing that sparked something in us. We stayed friends and never brought it up again. But then we realized that every night we got home from spending time with them, the problems we once had in the bedroom were fixed, of sorts.”

She grabs a cookie, shoves the entire thing in her mouth at once. I smile. “Like mother, like daughter.” My eyes widen when I realize what that could now imply.

Mom starts laughing and soon we’re both doubled over, wiping tears from under our eyes. We lean on each other, sighing through the last of our giggles. It feels good to laugh, a sound that hasn’t escaped my lips in far too long. It almost feels foreign, just like the feeling of happiness does.

After we’re both calmed down, she continues. “As I was saying, the problems seemed fixed but we both wanted more. It was me who first brought it up. It didn’t go well, in all honesty. Even though he wanted it, hearing that I did, too, was a blow to his ego. All the progress we’d made in the bedroom, went up in smoke. I was walking on egg shells around him, mad at myself that I’d brought it up in the first place. Sad that I misread him so strongly and that we weren’t on the same page at all.”

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this but, just thinking about swinging was helping so how could you have known?” I ask, then chug straight from the wine bottle because… obvious reasons.

“Right? I was so pissed. He was acting completely irrationally about it. But then I thought about it from his point of view – what I mentioned earlier. His ego. You know your dad. He’s a man’s man. He had a hard time. Thought that me being curious about it meant I didn’t think he was enough for me.

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