Chapter 4 – The Daughter

SPOV

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

How Hadley could believe my cockamamie woe-is-me act was astounding and in my mind there was only one reason why she would.

Her brain cells had clearly been maimed by too much cock.

Lucky bitch.

She and Remy had been together since Alcide and I first started out and the four of us had done everything together. We probably would’ve ended up having a double wedding if mine hadn’t been done shotgun style, which was why they’d been just as heartbroken over his death as I was. Their one and only son Hunter was born right in between Jason and Trey, so the three of them were like the Three Amigos.

Or the Three Holy Terrors known as Trentson.

Depended on the day, really.

But after Eric had left the house the night before and took his cock tower with him, Hadley had been quick to offer to take Treyson with them to Arlington for the weekend, so I could have some me time to allow my panty angel time to grieve her Knight in shining latex.

And I fully intended to collect on her offer, which was why I had yet to tell her about who I ended up busting at Kroger’s that very same night.

“I’m fine Had, really.” I couldn’t look her in the eyes, which was fine because she thought it was out of my disappointment things didn’t work out with Eric and not because I was fucking her over in the omissionary position.

But I knew she’d get over it when I told her later on I was getting the opportunity to fuck Eric in multiple positions.

Hopefully.

I didn’t want to get ahead of myself about giving or getting head.

The boys came running out of the house then, with Jason wearing no shirt, pajama pants, and socks and Trey in his pajama top, no pants, and sneakers (no socks). Jason took more after me, while Trey favored his father, so they were the same size for now and shared clothes.

Literally, it seemed.

Looking at them, I laughed and called out, “Your ADHD is showing.”

Their Helen Keller was showing too because they acted like they couldn’t hear me and climbed into Had’s SUV, so she just shook her head and laughed out, “It’ll be fine. Remy can strip down to his wife beater and I’ll Snooki-fy my hair and makeup on the way to Six Flags. We’ll tell everyone we’re filming our reality show, Big Shmucks in the Big City.”

Looking concerned again, she asked, “Now, what are you going to do?”

Put my phone on vibrate and stick it in my panties, waiting for Eric to call?

Shit!

Thinking it made me realize we never traded numbers. I had his home number stored on my computer, but he was supposed to call me and my number was unlisted.

Would my desperate housewife be showing if I called him to give him my number so he could use it to call me for a date?

Probably.

My dilemma was written all over my face, which made it easy for Hadley to misconstrue, so she said, “Why don’t you go see Laf? Get your hair done or just hang out and let him regale you with his naughty tales of chasing tail?”

Guessing I would have no choice but to wait for Eric to call me at work on Monday, I shrugged and said, “Yeah, I’ll probably do that.”

Which was how I found myself sitting in his chair and trying to not fall out of it, laughing my ass off and hoping I wouldn’t make a wrong move to then find myself accidentally letting my Cyndi Lauper show when half of my hair was sheared off.

This girl just didn’t want to have that much fun.

When he was finished he declared, “You’s too pretty now to just go home and show off for Dean. Whatcha say you and me go out dancing tonight?”

“Sure,” I smiled. “Why not?”

Sam was out reveling in his own freedom since the boys were gone for the weekend. Babysitters were hard to come by for those two in particular anyways, but Sam always offered to watch them whenever I had something to do. I could probably order him to do it since he still lived at home rent free, but I never would unless it was an emergency. He was forced to grow up much quicker than I would have wanted when Alcide died, but he truly didn’t mind watching out for his younger brothers.

At least I got one of them right.

I met Laf at a local bar/club a couple of hours later dressed sexier than I had the occasion to in a very long time. But thanks to my run in with Eric, for the first time in a very long time I was actually feeling sexy and it showed.

“So when are you finally gonna give up the goods and gets you a man?” he asked when we took a break from dancing to cool down with a fresh drink at one of the tables.

For a moment I thought about giving him my stock answer that he was my man, but I couldn’t keep my secret from both him and Hadley, so I spilled, “I think I might actually have one dangling on the line now.”

“What?” he asked, with his eyes going wide. And looking around like the ghosts of one-night-stands past were after him, he added, “Where?”

My eyes had automatically followed his, even though I knew I wouldn’t find the man I was talking about there in the room with us.

But then I did.

There was Eric, looking even sexier than before, dancing with a beautiful woman.

A beautiful young woman.

She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, tops.

I was more than half her age away from twenty-five.

There went my sexy. Both the one I’d brought with me to the club and the one I thought I actually had a shot with on the dance floor.

But feeling Laf’s eyes fall back on me, I quickly looked away and said, “No one. You don’t know him and I’m probably getting ahead of myself anyway. Never mind. Pretend I didn’t say anything because you know…I could jinx it.”

The crowd was large enough that Eric seeing me wasn’t an immediate threat. If he hadn’t been so tall I never would’ve seen him, but now that I had I didn’t feel like being there any longer.

I wanted to go home and take out my frustrations on a pint of Chunky Monkey.

It was stupid of me to think he would want any kind of relationship with me when he could get beautiful women like the one in front of him. And a part of me knew it was stupid to be having the reaction I was when Eric and I had only planned on having a date. We weren’t anywhere even close to being in an exclusive relationship, but I couldn’t help it. I might talk like a sailor and joke around with my family and friends in a way that would make Satan blush, but the reality was I wasn’t the kind of girl who slept around.

Obviously.

Alcide had been my one and only partner. But with the way Eric managed to make me feel all tingly and cum drunk so easily, when we hadn’t come anywhere even close to doing those types of things together either, it made me realize how easily I could’ve given in to him.

Would he have mentioned he was seeing other people beforehand?

After?

At all?

I never could’ve guessed how much I would envy the me from twenty-four hours ago when I just believed Eric didn’t find me cute or witty enough to stay at the party.

Now I had to live with the knowledge he found me attractive enough to want to ask me out, but I wasn’t the only belle on his dance card at the ball and the one ahead of me was a hell of a lot prettier.

And younger.

So when a second girl, just as young and pretty as the first joined them on the dance floor, I decided it was pumpkin time for this princess and made pitiful excuses to my fairy godmother and left.

And for the rest of the week, whenever Eric called to speak to me at work, I had my secretary tell him pitiful excuses as to why I couldn’t take his call.

And for the following week.

And the beginning of the one after that when he eventually stopped calling at all.

I knew it was the coward’s way out, but in my mind it was for the best. I wanted no part of dating him if he would be taking pretty young things, like he was obviously capable of attracting, out on the nights he wasn’t seeing me.

Irrational?

Maybe.

Did I give a fuck?

Hell no.

Better to save my heart the surefire ache by keeping it squirreled away from Eric and his nuts.

I wouldn’t say I had forgotten about Eric so much as I forced myself to not think about him, which was why I was so shocked running into him at the Farmers Market a month after the last time I’d seen him.

Not that he’d seen me at the time.

But since I had my two littlest nuts with me, I was kind of hard to miss now, especially when Trey ran up to him and said, “Hey! I remember you! The last time I saw you I was naked!”

“You were,” he smiled back at him, but looked a little uncomfortable.

I couldn’t be sure if it was the possibility of being looked at as a pedophile or the fact he was certain he’d have to see me again, but then a third possibility made itself known.

Because as I moved forward to pull back my beyond forward wayward son, someone else came to stand beside him. Someone whose pretty young face I would know anywhere and she was dressed to look like she’d just walked out of the pages of a magazine. I didn’t need to look down to know I was dressed to look like I’d just walked off of a farm in my favorite cutoff denim shorts.

The farm Clark Kent had been raised on if you took into account the Superman emblem on the front of my t-shirt.

Putting a smile onto my not-as-pretty face, the angels had abandoned my panties to openly weep on my sleeve, as I said, “Hey Eric. How are you?”

“Good.”

He didn’t look so good though. Well, he did look good, but he didn’t look happy.

Was it because he could be misconstrued as Trey’s maybe funny uncle?

Was it because in the daylight his date looked even younger so maybe he could be misconstrued as her funny uncle?

Eric’s date just watched us with wary eyes, which he must have felt because he said, “Oh, uh…Sookie, this is my daughter Pam. Pam, this is Sookie Herveaux. Her husband was Alcide. Do you remember him?”

His WHAT?

“You’re Pam?” I asked, not hiding my shock.

Nor was my decibel level anywhere near mute and I probably shocked everyone in a fifty foot radius with it.

“Yes,” she smiled, trying to hide her fear of the now crazy lady in front of her.

“She’s Pam?” I asked Eric, not letting myself believe her.

Or believe how stupid I now felt.

EPOV

“Yes,” I replied, wondering what was so surprising to her. She knew I had a daughter, so what was the big deal?

What I wanted to know was why she’d epically blown me off when I tried to contact her.

Nobody was that fucking busy.

And because I was that much of a fool, I didn’t let myself believe that was what was going on and kept calling her until I finally got the hint.

She wasn’t interested.

So why was she so interested in who my daughter was now?

“Eric, I’m so sorry,” she sighed.

I was still a little hurt and more than a little pissed, but I wanted her to spell it out for me – so there would be no room for confusion this time – when I asked, “What specifically are you sorry for?”

“For being an asshole.”

I hadn’t seen this side of Sookie yet. Gone was her lighthearted voice and happy smile, having been replaced with everything I’d been feeling for the last few weeks.

“Why?” I asked.

I had a fuckton of why’s I wanted answers to, so I would take just about any one of them right now.

But her answer was one to a question I would’ve never even known to ask.

Pulling me aside to give us a little bit of privacy, she admitted in a low voice, “I saw you. On the night after we’d met up at the grocery story, I’d gone out dancing with my friend Lafayette and I saw you there.”

Dancing with my daughter and her girlfriend Miriam to boot.

Who both look a hell of a lot older than they are when they get dressed up.

As Pam had gotten older we made a standing daddy/daughter date night once a month just so we could keep up with each other’s lives. Usually we would go out to dinner and maybe a movie, but on that night she’d insisted we go out dancing. And that night happened to be our date night or else I would’ve asked Sookie to go out with me while we were still in the grocery store parking lot.

But looking at her now, I could see how sorry she was written across her face. And while a part of me wanted to be pissed at her for overreacting and blowing me off, the other part of me remembered how I’d done the exact same thing when I thought she was seeing Bill-Bored.

We were more alike than I’d realized.

While I’d been busy working it all out in my mind, Sookie took my silence as her cue that I must not want things to work out between us because she said, “I understand if you want no part of me and my irrationally assuming ass, but I really am sorry Eric.”

She turned to walk away, but I caught her by her arm and said, “No I…I do. I just wish I’d known what the problem was earlier.”

She hadn’t cornered the market on irrationality because the last few weeks had been hell on me. I kept replaying our interactions over and over in my mind, wondering what in the hell I’d done wrong that made her blow me off. And then I kept telling myself I was a douchebag for getting so worked up over a woman I barely knew and had spent the sum total of one hour with.

“Is there any way I can make it up to you?” she asked shyly.

“Give me your phone number.”

My tone was more like an order than a casual response to her question, but if I had to talk to her snotty secretary one more fucking time, I was sure I would drive down there and beat the shit out of him.

Bitchass Bobby Burnham.

She did me one better by handing me her phone so I could send a text to mine, but when I handed it back to her I was hit with that same feeling I’d had that night at the grocery store. I wasn’t anxious to be away from her just yet and considering everything I’d been feeling over the last few weeks, we could conceivably spend the next year side by side and I still wouldn’t feel like it was enough.

Mentally checking my body for the stings, I wondered when she managed to whip me with her pussy when I wasn’t looking.

“So does this mean you’re giving me another shot?” she asked, taking her phone back.

“I owe you one after the whole Bill debacle,” I smiled back at her. “Besides, I really had been looking forward to going out with you.”

“Me too,” she smiled.

And since neither one of us appeared to want to walk away just yet, I asked, “So, do you want to walk around together for a bit or do you have other plans?”

It was a Sunday afternoon, so I didn’t know if she had other obligations. But I was pleasantly surprised when she admitted, “No, I don’t have any plans and we just got here.”

But at the word ‘we’, she looked around and must have realized Trey and Jason were gone with the wind because she shook her head and didn’t look the least bit embarrassed when she stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled like a train was about to leave the station.

I chuckled seeing Pam’s horrified expression a few feet away, while she tried to shrink back in between two vegetable stands, but sure enough a minute later both boys came running up to her sweaty and out of breath.

“What have I told you about running off?” she admonished.

“If we’re caught or killed you will disavow all knowledge of our actions,” they replied in unison.

And recognizing the quote from Mission Impossible, I thought she really might be the one.

“Good boys,” she laughed and turned to me saying, “Say hello to Mr. Northman and act like you weren’t raised by wolves.”

“Hello Mr. Northman,” they replied, again in unison.

I really would have pegged them as twins if I didn’t know better. Fraternal twins, but twins nonetheless.

“Hello boys and you can call me Eric.” Motioning for Pam to come over – much to her horror, given the sourpuss look on her face – I said, “And this lovely creature is my daughter Pam, who appears to have sucked on a lemon recently.”

She turned a brighter shade of red over me calling her out on her less than gracious appearance and her lips pursed even more when without any prodding they both looked up at her and said, “Hi Pammy!”

She hated being called Pammy.

Which was why I used it when I really wanted to get her attention.

“Hello,” she huffed and her attitude was really starting to piss me off.

But before I could call her out on it again, Sookie spoke up and said, “Uh…you know what? I’m sure you two have your own thing you were doing before we showed up, so why don’t we leave you to it and I guess I’ll talk to you soon Eric?”

I’d really been looking forward to spending more time with Sookie right now, but seeing Pam was having a rare showing-her-ass moment, I didn’t want to subject her to it and I glared at Pam while I agreed, “Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea.” Turning to face Sookie, I let my glare disappear and replaced it with a genuine smile as I added, “I’ll call you soon.”

“And I’ll actually answer this time,” she smiled back at me before walking away.

And watching Jason and Trey take off miles ahead of her I thought it would be a mission impossible if she actually managed to get them both back home again.

“What’s your problem?” I asked, turning to face Pam. She never acted like this, especially around people she didn’t know.

“What’s yours?” she countered. “How could you not be embarrassed by the way they acted? She whistled like she was in some pig calling contest and then her two grimy piglets came running up like mangy little mutts. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they just whipped out their little boy bits and took a leak right there.”

The more she spoke the more pissed I got, so I got right in her face and said, “Right now I’m more embarrassed by the way you are acting. You may have gotten your height from me, but I never taught you to look down on anyone else. There is nothing wrong with Sookie or her boys and you’re sadly mistaken if you think you’re better than them.”

I loved my daughter, but right now she was showing me the worst side of her mother.

And right now we were having an argument her mother and I had had more than once.

“You like her,” she accused and before I confirm her statement, I was surprised actual fire didn’t shoot out of her eyes when she spat out, “She’s nothing like mom!”

I loved my wife. I really did, but there were sides of her I didn’t love at all and Pam was showing me one of them right now. So I didn’t feel any remorse when I agreed, “You’re right. I do like Sookie. And she’s nothing like your mother, but that doesn’t mean she’s not worth my time.”

I held back from telling her everything, like how much I couldn’t stand her mother’s values.

Keeping up appearances for appearance’s sake and looking down on anyone else who didn’t conform, wasn’t a trait I would’ve wanted passed onto Pam. But it appeared it was too late.

But was it too late to break her of the habit?

“So you’re going to see her no matter how I feel about it?” she asked.

Again, accusatorily.

Pam of all people should’ve known how well I responded to ultimatums of any kind, but I also knew she wasn’t used to not getting her way. That was partly my fault as well, but as the only child of an affluent couple, there hadn’t been any reason to deny her when her wants weren’t usually so outrageous.

But hearing her now – giving an unspoken demand for something she had no right to make – I only felt outrage.

“Yes, I am.” And looking at her now, I found I didn’t want to look at her at all at the moment, so I added, “And since you seem to have a case of the ass, feel free to take it back home.”

She stared back at me in shock, not really believing I was dismissing her. So I showed her I was serious by sticking two fingers in my mouth and whistled even louder than Sookie had. Every head surrounding us turned in our direction and Pam turned even redder than she’d already been before turning to stomp away from me, but my eyes were soon drawn to the two trackers who’d answered my not-so-silent call.

Smiling down at Jason and Trey, I said, “Bring me to your mother.”