Page 4 of For Pleasure Or Worse

"Oh my god." I gasped. "Not the rifle."

Mateo's eyes flickered to me, a pain that wasn’t physical stricken across his face. "We will talk about whatever the fuck it is you just called this later. But seriously, Tally, lock yourself in the room. Do not answer the door for anyone but me. I'll knock twice, jingle the doorknob, then knock again."

"Can't you just say, like, 'hey babe, it's me’?"

He racked the gun back and stepped in front of the bedroom door. "Can't you just, like, listen to me for two minutes?"

"What if I hear something bad?"

"Call the cops."

He left me alone on the bed as the door clicked shut quietly behind him.

Fuck.Fuck.I shot over and squashed my ear to the wood, attempting to listen over the thump of my pulse in my eardrums. It was silent on the other end which was just as terrifying because it allowed my mind to race and the anxiety to take over. This was a nice neighborhood. No one ever had their house broken into. There was sweet, old little Gino living next doorwith his tomato plants and the Corleys across the street with their kids. We had potlucks, and joint garage sales, and a block party on the Fourth of July like it wasThe Sandlot.

What if he got ambushed? What if there was someone out there with a sleeper dart waiting to shoot it into his neck and drag him away by his underarms? What if I was standing here waiting to hear a knock and my fiancé, my future husband, the father of my unborn kids needed my help and he couldn’t call out for it?

"Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, FUCK—" I chanted, rounding the bed and scrambling in the nightstand drawer until I came up with a cold, metal pocketknife. I tried to whip it open as I’d seen Mateo do a thousand times, but my fingers weren't quite strong enough and so I wrestled it with two hands until the sharp tip of the knife finally dislodged.

Instead of letting myself deliberate any further I slipped out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Listening be damned. Mateo’s shadow was plastered to the hardwood farther down at the edge of the wall, and I crept in behind him, wielding the little knife and ready to take on whatever lay waiting on the other side of the divide.

More cabinets opened and closed and voices murmured in the quiet. Mateo rolled his shoulders back. "Cops have been called," he announced. "I'm armed."

Instead of waiting for a reply he turned the corner and barreled into the kitchen, faster than I could follow without tripping over myself. The light inside flipped on and two intertwining screams rang out, followed by Mateo's own bellow of shock, which triggered my fight or flight. I came around the corner screaming like a wild banshee and waving my knife beside him.

"Don't shoot!" A short, plump woman stood in the center of the room with her hands in the air. "For Christ’s sake, Mateo David Duran! Giving me a fucking heart attack!"

Time froze. I could see the dawn of realization crest Mateo’s face, softening his eyebrows, widening his eyes, flaring his nostrils. His mouth dipped from a straight line into an open frown.

"Mom?!" Mateo shouted back, dropping his weapon immediately to his side. My head followed him on a swivel to the other person in the room, the uncanny resemblance of an older, grayer Mateo staring back at us. "Dad?!"

"Mom?!" I yelled at Mateo. "Dad?!"

And then all three of them turned to look at me. My chest rising and falling in a chaotic rhythm, hands shaking with the pocketknife still suspended between us. And a bright purple strap-on dildo dripping lube between my legs and onto the floor.

chapter two

Mateo

It wasthe worst night of my life. Undoubtedly. Worse than the night I got so drunk taking swigs out of a bottle of Goldschläger before senior prom that I threw up peppermint and a McChicken all over the limo. It was worse than in the Army when I got stuck in the forest for three consecutive rainy days and my boots soaked through to the socks on day one. It was worse than my girlfriend's dad catching her blowing me behind the backyard shed when we were sixteen.

Because at least then my conservative Christian father didn't think I casually took it up the ass on a quiet night in. He didn't have to see the woman I was going to marry standing in the middle of our kitchen in the laciest bra she owned with an artificial, veiny dick hanging limp off her hips. And when she turned, squealing, and beelined back down the hallway, I didn't have to share the full moon view of her ass with the woman who gave birth to me.

I was surprised Tally even showed her face again, joining us in silence around the kitchen island five minutes later under the brightest fucking light we could have possibly installed. There was no hiding the red under her eyes that continued across the bridge of her nose and splashed across her permanently blushedcheeks. The black eyeliner she had been wearing was scrubbed clean, her hair up in a bun. The biggest, thickest, sweatsuit of an outfit she owned covered her head to toe.

I had to give it to Natalia, if it were John and Sistine Russo in our kitchen I'd have packed my bags and left out the back door never to be seen again. But if anyone could recover from what just happened it was my Tally. She was braver than I was. Stronger than me, smarter and more unyielding. Even when she thought she wasn't.

It occurred to me as she slid onto the barstool beside me facing Mom and Dad that this was their first official meeting. After a year of phone calls and promises to come up to New York for a visit as soon as we could, all the putting it off came back to fuck me in the ass harder than Tally was ever going to.

This is what you get, Mateo.Defy your mother long enough and she just shows up unannounced, eighteen hours from home and rummaging through the kitchen cabinets for an acid reducer.Fuck’s sake.Mom's thin lips were pressed into a line, the crease between my father's eyebrows deep and worried, worse than the rest of the wrinkles that had grown into his face with age.

"So," she squeaked. "What a story for the grandkids, am I right?"

Anxiety crawled like a spider up my spine and to the base of my skull, exploding like fireworks and touching every single limb on the way back down. I laughed weakly and tried to scratch the itchy feeling off my neck.

There was a twitch of, dare I say,amusementfrom across the table. My parents exchanged looks and I stiffened in my chair, waiting for the expected berating. The one I'd have surely gotten if this were anything like getting in trouble growing up. Angelo and I would sit next to each other on the couch with our chins to our chests, trying our very best not to fidget or speak, knowingour bikes were getting taken away. Saturday cartoons were out of the question. We were going to be stuck clothes pinning Mom's wet underwear to the line outside to dry, and Dad was definitely—definitely—volunteering us for altar duty at church.

But that wasn't what happened at all. In fact, the sound of a low, smoky chuckle made me think I was imagining things. I'd already descended to the pit; the underlord was mocking me. My father didn'tlaughlike that. The most you'd ever get out of him was a huff, or a gurgle, or something like there was inflammation in his chest that he was trying to suppress by clearing his throat. The only thing my father thought was funny was that one specific pop culture XM radio show that had inexplicably not been canceled yet.

---