Page 36 of Nutcracker with Benefits
“Yeah? What word did you learn?” I ask as I lead Fritz’s family inside. Ricky is struggling with his jacket, so he and Fritz stay by the door and wrestle with it while I lead Whitney in. Benny is strapped to her chest, and she has a diaper bag hanging off one shoulder. With a thunk, it lands on my kitchen counter, and Whitney starts rooting around in the side pockets.
“Patry-cal.” She says it with a kick of her little feet, except one of them lands directly on my crotch and lightning shoots up from my balls. My knees clench together, and I sink down to kneeling, trying not to topple Molly onto the marble floor. “And bullshit!” she shouts in my ear.
Now I’m throbbing at both ends.
“Sure, that’s the word she can pronounce correctly,” Whitney mutters as she unstraps Benny.
Molly giggles as I clench my eyes shut.
“What are you doing?” Fritz’s voice hovers over me, and when I crack my eyes open, he’s looking down at me, befuddled.
“Got kicked in the nuts,” I tell him with a gasp.
“Ah, yeah. She’s gotten really kicky lately. Nails me twice a week.” He frowns. “Molly, why don’t you give Uncle Nash a break, and let’s play I Spy out his window?”
Molly dismounts me, shouting, “I spy something red!” before running to the window. From where I’m sitting, I can only see blue sky and clouds, so who knows what the hell she sees.
Fritz looks at Ricky. “Go play with your sister.”
Ricky meanders to the window, despite Molly’s shouts for him to hurry up, finger digging in his nose the whole time.
Fritz returns his gaze to me and offers me a hand. I accept it.
“You get used to it after a while,” he says while hauling me upright.
“Says the man who instigated the first incidence of violence on me this week,” I grind out. I stagger a few steps away to the couch.
“Yeah,” he says, running a hand over his hair and taking the seat across from me. “I wanted to apologize about that.”
“How much of this apology is you, and how much of it is Whitney making you?”
He considered the question. “About seventy-thirty.”
Figures. Whitney’s always the one that whips Fritz into shape.
Fritz leans a little closer. “The seventy is me, by the way. I am sorry about punching you.”
“I’m not sorry I slept with your sister.”
Fritz blanches. “Gross.”
“It’s not gross!” Whitney shouts from the kitchen. “She’s a grown, consenting adult!”
I give Fritz a small smile. “Forgiven.”
“Whitney’s here mostly because she wants to meddle,” he says.
“I heard that.” Whitney appears from behind me, lifting the carrier up and over my head as she passes between the couch and armchair. She fusses with Benny for a moment, setting the carrier on the floor at her feet and tucking him in, and then she sits, keeping an eye on her baby.
Fritz waves a hand dramatically at me. “Commence meddling.”
Whitney’s eyes light up, and she lightly claps her hands together. “Tell us everything that went down between you and Clara.”
I groan. “Come on, I don’t want to relive that.”
“You have to. How else are you going to get a plan together? You had your big chance, and it got blown—” she looks pointedly at her husband, “—so it’s time to call in the reinforcements. Tell us how you fucked up, and we’ll try to fix it.”
By keeping our relationship secret, Clara and I have never had to deal with this kind of meddling. It means we’ve never been pressured to talk to anyone else. Although, now that I think about it, I remember when Bea, and then Kara, found out and the relief of talking to them.
