Marital Bitch (Men with Badges) - By Jc Emery Page 0,13
between me and dad. I should have known better… growing up in a house full of women and all. I tell dad and dad tells mom and mom tells Charlotte, because at this point they’re more like girlfriends than mother and daughter, and then Charlotte tells Darla, and sure enough Darla tells Lindsay who lets it spill to the twins. I’m surrounded by nosey women. I don’t know why I thought a conversation between two men could ever be private. Colleen must know at this point—though, she is oblivious to almost everything.
“Get out,” I shout, now annoyed with their little game. It takes the twins a moment to realize that I’m serious. I stalk towards them, muttering obscenities before they scurry away, no doubt, to rat me out to mom. Sisters are so fucking annoying. Why couldn’t I have been blessed with brothers? At least I have James Frasier, who is as much family as my own flesh and blood. God, I hope he doesn’t know. As I chase the twins from my room, I see dad laughing and shaking his head from down the hall.
“I’m sorry, son,” he says. His shoulders are shaking with laughter. Dad was an only child so he doesn’t really understand my plight. I have three sisters and no brothers and my best friend is a girl. I don’t think many men could understand my plight. I’m cursed with having more knowledge about the inner workings of the female anatomy than most vagina doctors. Now if only I had half as much understanding of sex, I’d be fucking set.
“Whatever,” I gripe, walking out and slamming my door behind me. “Next time, you wanna just plaster it on the side of the station? That’d be easier, ya know.” I stomp downstairs, ignoring mom’s complaints that I’m going to leave a hole in her stairs. Maybe if I did stomp a damn hole in her stairs I could fall the fuck in and skip what is surely going to be a humiliating evening. Why I hadn’t considered the possibility that my talk with dad would be public knowledge by know, I don’t even know.
I reach the bottom of the stairs and mom hands me a ceramic dish filled with something that looks like mom’s famous stew. Charlotte is waiting by the door playing with her cellular phone. I don’t know why anyone would want a phone that goes with them everywhere. It seems annoying to me, but she’s all over it. Mom asks her to put it away and she sticks it into her pocket and takes the soda bread that mom hands her. Charlotte doesn’t talk much these days—not after she introduced me to her boyfriend, Peter, and I let the guy know what’s up. Yeah, that didn’t go well.
Mary and Maggie follow Charlotte out, asking her all about the cellular phone and how much is costs. The twins are convinced that if they just present the idea the right way that mom and dad will cave and get them their own cellular phones. I don’t know what the fuck it is about girls and talking on the phone. Colleen isn’t like that, which is one of the amazing things about her. When I first tried to ask her to prom last week, I’d done it over the phone, but five minutes into my rambling, she had outright asked me if there was a point to our conversation, because if not, Friends was on and she was missing something funny. I sighed in defeat and let her go. She was distracted and at that point it wouldn’t have done me any good to ask her because she wasn’t even listening. Plus, I’d lost my nerve.
We walk down the street to the Frasiers’, all of us carrying something. When we do dinner, we do it up big. Mom says it’s our Irish appetites. All too soon, Colleen’s mom, Louise, swings the door open and excitedly greets us. She’s more excited than usual, which tells me that she knows. Fuck my life. I follow my sisters into the house, but before I can make it past Louise, she pulls me into a tight hug. I half hug her back, careful not to drop the stew. She calls me her boy and tells me how handsome I’ve gotten since the last time she saw me. I don’t remind her that the last time she saw me was like two days ago. Yeah, there’s no doubt that she knows.