Check out all the chapters by clicking HER(fix)E
CHAPTER NINE: CAFE BIEN - PART TWO
Phil stood outside the conference room, his temper making him pace. He had no patience after the frantic, tense, late morning he’d had, after Sam had the gall to not only tell Jenna and him that she’d gone to a—what had she called it—munch behind their backs, but she’d told them that she planned to keep going to them. Was going to join a group.
And Pip had been the one who’d orchestrated it.
Then, to top everything off, when he’d finally dropped Sam off a school and his sister at her job, he’d had to fight his way through a vitriol-filled circus outside the Infommunity office.
This was just not his morning.
And he knew just who to blame.
He looked up as Pip walked out of the conference room. He stood up straight, his spine snapping tall. “I need to talk to you,” he barked. “Now.”
“Not right now.” Pip shook her head and tried to push past him.
He grabbed her arm, stopping her. “Now,” he repeated before he tried to tug her toward the break room.
“Phil!” She wrenched back her arm before they took a single step. “First, you will not grab me like that. I do not work for you; I do not belong to you. I am not yours to order around.”
Phil stepped back and blinked, sensing her very real irritation that could easily bubble into anger. “Sorry,” he said, clasping his hand behind his back. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
She took a quick breath, relaxing a bit. “I know that,” she said. “Doesn’t mean you don’t need to be reminded from time to time.” She shook her head. “Second, I don’t have time for this right now.”
“Make time,” he insisted, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sam’s just missed her second round of morning classes in two weeks because she decided that breakfast would be the perfect time to come out as kinky and a pathological liar.” He turned to her. “Which seems to be a contagious problem with the people in my life, seeing that you were the person she’d said was aiding and abetting her little rebellion. You were supposed to be helping me talk her out of this crap, not encourage her.”
“Phil,” Pip said, her teeth clenched as she visibly fought to keep her voice from either growling or shrieking, making her usually melodic voice sound tight and rigid, “I just said that I don’t have time.” She pushed past him again. “If you think you’re having a bad day,” she said on a scoff as she shook her head, “you have no idea. So, if you want to talk about this, it’ll have to wait until after work.”
Phil looked at her. She looked frazzled. Her usually pretty, perfectly maintained hair was unbound and looked like she’d run her hands through it too often. She wasn’t wearing makeup—something he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her without—her features looking softer, fainter.
He missed her boldness. The surety and self-possessed poise she usually wore effortlessly.
“Okay,” he agreed with a nod. “After work.”
“Thank you.” Pip began to walk away. “But,” she said, turning back around, “just for the record, I wasn’t encouraging Sam. I was just showing her—if she’s going to do this, and it sure looks like she is—how to do it right.”
Phil rolled his eyes, even as a part of him knew she was right. Didn’t mean he had to like it. And didn’t mean he wanted it to continue.
“And,” she added pointedly, “if you keep treating her like she’s a criminal, despite her efforts to be open and honest with you about this, you can’t be surprised when she continually tries to break out of your prison.”
He cringed at that. He would have said she was being overdramatic. If he hadn’t been the one to start the criminal analogy.
“And, if you try treating me like one,” she said, “when all I’m doing is trying to help you and your niece, you’d better believe me when I say that, if I wanted to teach your niece how to act out and rebel, I know all the tricks; don’t give me a reason.”
Yeah, looking down and rubbing his jaw as he tried to hide his smile, he bet that she did.
“And, lastly,” she said, “before I try to salvage what’s left of this really awful day, when you pass your high and mighty judgment on something, you might want to actually know something about it.”
Phil scoffed. “I know enough.”
“You don’t know anything,” Pip sassed, swiveling her hips. “At least about this. You can’t learn this from some egghead article. You can’t know it from some trumped up, biased documentary. And you—of all people—would never think you could, if we were talking about chemistry or medicine or—I don’t know—baseball. If it were any other subject, you would never rely on a handful of other people’s opinions to form your own. You would have demanded to know more. You would have done your own research. You would have looked at all the facts, looked at it from all the angles, and, only after you’d learned everything you could, would you have come up with your conclusion.” She shook her head and gave a humorless laugh. “But, with this, you’re perfectly content to look for all the evidence that backs up your initial conclusion, happily ignoring everything else. Maybe you might want to think about asking a few more questions, Egghead, you know, for the sake of science.”
And with that, she walked away, leaving Phil with some pretty uncomfortable thoughts.
———
“Well, good for you!” Joelle cheered as they picked up their coffees from the service counter. “Knock that boy down a few pegs.”
“I’m glad you stood up for yourself.” Logan nodded and sipped his tea. “He should be grateful to have you in his life—and his niece’s life—and it’s past time he started to realize it.” He paused. “Though I’m not sure about you taking this girl to those kinds of events.”
“She does seem young.” Joelle shrugged. “My mother would definitely have locked me in my room forever, if I’d been even thinking about anything like that.” She snorted. “Still would.”
“Which just encourages more secrets,” Pip pointed out, “not less.”
Logan grimaced. “Look, Lord knows, I know all about living proudly, but even you have to admit that there are certain things about your love life that you don’t want your parents to know.”
Pip shook her head. “No one needs details, but I would think, as a parent, you’d want to know what’s going on with your kid, who they’re hanging out with and what they’re getting into.”
Though she supposed her own mother, for a long time, had preferred denial. It’d created this barrier between them; the one thing, that despite how close they were otherwise, the two couldn’t talk about.
Being poly, Pip hadn’t been able to introduce her partners to her mother, not as her partners anyway. Always friends of hers. She hadn’t been able to share so many of her personal and relationship joys. Hadn’t been able to have her mother over to her home, not without a ridiculously thorough cleaning. Hell, her mother hadn’t even been able to bring herself to read or listen to any of her work. She’d known what Pip did for a living; she just hadn’t wanted to.
For her mother, it wasn’t just that she hadn’t wanted to know details; she hadn’t wanted to know the truth about her daughter.
And, because Pip loved her mother, she’d let her decide their boundaries. But it’d hurt that there’d been parts of Pip’s life, whole chunks of her, that clearly weren’t welcome in her mother’s. It’d made it near impossible to keep her mother in her life. To be both present and stay so hidden.
It’d taken so much courage to confront her mother about it. To refuse to keep her mother’s lies. Her mother didn’t need to know everything, but Pip couldn’t let her deny the truth. Pip was who she was and no amount of her mother wishing or pretending otherwise would change it.
So they’d agreed that her mother would greet and welcome her partners as her partners, whomever they were. She would acknowledge her work and be proud of her daughter’s accomplishments. And, if she was staying in town, she’d stay at a hotel.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was the way it should be. And, while there were parts of Pip’s life her mother was less than thrilled about, Pip knew that she loved and accepted her. That she wanted her daughter, however she got there, to be happy.
That was what Pip wanted for Sam too.
EMAIL ME IF YOU WANT MORE OF THIS STORY!
WANT MORE?
No comments:
Post a Comment