Page 64 of Castaway Whirlwind
It’s like a record scratch, the way the women go silent, except for Goldie. “What does that mean?”
Holding my empty glass up in the air to grab Mckinley’s attention so I can order a second, I tell Goldie, “Just that…you know…”
“No. I don’t.”
My cheeks flame despite the cooling temps of Goldie’s gray eyes. “Sex.”
“What does sex have to do with anything?” Goldie asks.
Cora is just as interested in the answer as Goldie while Dolly shifts uncomfortably in her seat.
“Davis. He’s kinda like your job since you don’t work outside the home or…” I trail off, looking around the table at the various frowns. Violet squeezes my hand under the table. When no one speaks, I put my foot further in my mouth when I say, “He pays all the bills, and you keep him…happy. Like Wyatt and Dolly.”
“Oh, Layla, no,” Dolly says quietly.
Goldie pinches her lips tight before saying, “Is that what you really think of me? Of Davis? That I have sex with him so I don’t have to go out and earn a paycheck to keep a roof over my head?”
Fluttery panic tightens my chest at the mix of anger and hurt in her voice. “Please, no, I know you love him and that you don’thave to,” I stress. “You’re taking this all wrong.”
Cora’s head follows the invisible volley back and forth between us.
Goldie leans closer with her elbows on the table. “I think you’re the one who’s got it wrong. I have sex with the love of my life because I want to. Even if I never had sex with him again—which I would hate as much as he would—it wouldn’t change our dynamic because my staying home is what we both want for our family, and that’s it. My husband is not my boss or my job—he’s my partner.”
With my stomach aching as if the air has been punched out of me, I whisper, “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” Goldie says softly, sighing and reaching across the table to rub my arm. “And I know it’s not your fault you have some stinkin’ thinkin’ and trauma you still need to work through—we all do—and that you didn’t mean any harm. But maybe we can keep this conversation between us girls, ok? Davis would be upset if he knew you thought…well.” She clears her throat and pulls away when Mckinley arrives with my second drink.
“Wyatt, too,” Dolly adds quietly.
I nod, filling my lungs with a deep inhale now that I know they won’t hold mystinkin’ thinkin’against me, though I’m not so sure I’ll so easily forgive myself.
“I think I have to break up with Max,” Cora announces, her smile starting off wobbly when we make eye contact, then growing larger, same as mine. “Tomorrow, though, since tonight is about you and Russell.”
Violet raises her glass in the air. “I’ll cheers to that!”
* **
Russell
At my height and the men’s, it’s not hard to find Wyatt and Davis over the crowd at the bar counter that spans the length of the left wall. I push my way through the throng, finding Harold, Jared, and Paul standing with them. Wyatt hands me a beer after two metal buckets of bottles on ice are served up. We move as a group out to the concrete patio on the right side of the building. Within view of the girls, we pick a picnic table beneath the crisscrossing strings of bulb lights that create a makeshift ceiling.
“So, what’s the plan?” Wyatt asks after wecheers, clinking our bottles, and the conversation meanders away from the superficial catch-up.
Davis clarifies, “About your soon-to-be-brother-in-law?” He takes his baseball cap off and slaps it against his thigh with agitation. “Can’t say I liked what I saw in there.”
“Say the word. I’ve got plenty of property to bury a body,” Elliott says, materializing out of the dark and sliding onto the bench on my side of the table. He waves a hand, refusing the beer Jared offers him.
“Fucking hell, Uncle Elliott. Just about scared the piss out of me,” Paul says, slapping a hand to his chest.
I grunt. “We’re not murdering Max just because he’s a butthole.”
Wyatt’s laugh is booming loud. “‘Butthole.’ You sound like William.”
Max steps onto the patio through the garage-style doors of the building that are rolled up to allow free movement inside and out. “Who’s a butthole?” he asks with a curl to his upper lip, lifting one side of his mustache.
Paul opens his mouth, ready to make some smartass comment, when I give him a small shake of my head. I’m working hard not to let anything ruin Layla’s good time by getting into a tussle with Max.
“There they are!” The girls shimmy out, each of them holding a giant margarita glass.
