Page 116 of Kylo
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, the books are, you know…”
“Full of big dicks and toe-curling orgasms?” I asked, loving how her cheeks went pink.
“Shh!” Her worried gaze slid over toward the kids. But they were busy getting shown all the snacks in the kitchen. “But yes.”
“Darlin’, if I knew book club was the reason you’ve been waking me up in the middle of the night to fuck, I would have been supportive.”
“It’s just, you know, I’m with the kids all day. And it starts to feel like everything is kid-related. I caught myself sitting and watching one of their shows. All alone. While they were outside.Grammy left her book at the house one day. I picked it up. And I was hooked.”
“Well, how about we head to the bookstore right now? I think I heard your grandmother talking about this series about aliens with double dicks.”
To that, Rue snorted and went pinker.
“I was kind of curious about that series.”
“The kids want to come with me to go see Missy’s new puppy,” Claudia said. “Why don’t you two go have some grown-up time?” she suggested.
I looked at Rue, seeing her answer before she spoke.
“I could go for that.”
It was settled then.
We left the kids with their grandmother, left Ernest with the club, went to the bookstore, bought out a third of the damn romance section, then went home and curled up in bed.
Until the story started getting good, leaving Rue shifting around and flushing.
Then, well, we reenacted the scenes in the book.
I was fully behind this new hobby of hers.
Rue - 20 Years
“You’re okay, sweetie,” I said, sitting on the dock next to our teenaged son who was panting for breath, his eyes wide and panicked, his jaw set in a frustrated line.
“It’s not. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. Your body is just overreacting to your fear.”
“My chest hurts.”
“I know,” I said, running my hand up and down his back. He was practically vibrating with panic. “I get that all the time. If you want to walk away, we can walk away. Or, if you want, we can work through this and keep trying.”
I’d never been given choices as a kid.
If I said I was going to do something, my parents forced me to finish. Signed up for softball and learned I could neither hit nor pitch? Too bad; I had to finish the season sitting on the bench. Had no ability to play piano? Oh, well, I had to finish all the lessons already paid for with the nasty-ass instructor who snapped at me each time I messed up.
That lack of control, of choice, was definitely something that triggered my anxiety when I was younger. So I wanted to make sure my kids always knew that they had a choice, that I wasn’t going to force them to do something they genuinely didn’t want to.
Did we encourage them to give everything a solid try? Of course. But if they did and they weren’t happy with it, we let them move on.
So our kid deciding to possibly bow out of the parasailing session he’d been looking forward to?
No big deal, if that was what he really wanted.
“You know, I was terrified when I did this the first time,” I told him.
