The incident could fade away and never be mentioned again, as far as he was concerned.
All he cared about was his friend was happy. Kimbra looked happy. That bullshit about glowing brides was no fucking lie. Even dressed in her usual slacks and blazer, her face glowed, her radiant smile beamed as they waited in line for their turn in the clerk’s office.
He genuinely felt happy for her. He wanted her to be happy. She worked her ass off to help other people—she deserved happiness.
Eve made her happy.
Once it was their turn, the three of them followed a clerk into a side room, where Ron used the women’s phones to take video with Kimbra’s and still photos with Eve’s while they quickly said their vows before kissing.
As he watched, his heart throbbed, aching over Kimbra’s obvious joy.
Someone to finally share her life with.
Something missing from his own life.
They weren’t exchanging rings today because they hadn’t yet purchased any and weren’t sure what they wanted yet. Back outside less than thirty minutes later, Ron gave Eve another brief hug before hugging Kimbra.
“Congratulations, sweetie,” he said. “I’m glad you two finally got your shit together.”
“Come have dinner with us tonight,” Kimbra offered.
“Nah, I can’t. I’m going over to Wynn’s. I guess he’s invited a teacher from Sorrellson who’s single and gay and they want to play matchmaker.”
“Ah. Well, can’t fault you for that. Good luck.” She pecked him on the cheek before taking Eve’s hand and heading to their car.
He fished his keys from his pocket and realized his heart really wasn’t in it tonight. He already suspected it wouldn’t end in a match for him. Meri had shown him the guy’s Facebook profile, and yeah, he was handsome enough, but something about the guy didn’t…do it for Ron.
He’d promised Meri to keep an open mind, though, and that’s what he’d do.
I hope Eve appreciates how much Kimbra loves her.
* * * *
Kimbra couldn’t spend too much time celebrating their wedding when she had a stack of case files to work through. Over the next three weeks, the two women spent all their spare time going through their personal financials, real estate paperwork, wills, POAs—and negotiating the best way to set up their future together.
After studying the local housing markets and listing pros and cons for both homes, Kimbra proposed she move in with Eve and they keep Kimbra’s house as an investment property. Either long-term rental, or as an Airbnb. Kimbra’s house wasn’t located in an HOA development the way Eve’s was, so Kimbra wasn’t restricted by what she could do.
Eve’s house was a little larger, anyway, and she had more equity built up in it.
They set up joint checking and savings accounts, updated life insurance policies, slowly working their way through all the minutiae of combining their lives and households.
Eve voluntarily hyphenated Kimbra’s last name to hers.
Kimbra was also happy to note that Eve had been including her at family dinners more frequently, and Eve had rearranged her schedule to make sure she could go with Kimbra to hers. Everything this time felt…different.
Like Eve was really there now.
It allowed Kimbra the freedom to relax and know that Eve was working toward the big reveal for their families.
By their third week married, they spent every night at Eve’s. Kimbra had moved enough stuff over to her place she could comfortably live there now. But with both of them horrendously busy with work, they were taking their time moving all her stuff. Small things at first, that they could carry in their cars. Clothes, jewelry, all of that. They’d eventually have to call in the troops, Walt and Kimbra’s siblings, and Eve’s brother and Wylie, to help do the heavy lifting portion of the move once Kimbra was ready.
The Tuesday four weeks after Eve showed up on Kimbra’s doorstep and begged Kimbra to marry her, they lay in bed that night after making love, Eve tightly snuggled against Kimbra.
“Not this coming weekend, but next weekend, I want to tell my family.” She looked up at Kimbra. “Let’s tell your family this coming weekend.”
“Okay, but why the wait for your family?”
“Mom and Dad are out of town this weekend, and Ev has an event he’s vending at.”
“Ah.”
Eve snuggled in close. “And I’d like to go ring shopping this week.”
Kimbra fought the urge to jump out of bed and do a happy dance. She nuzzled Eve’s forehead. “That sounds like a plan, baby girl.”
“Thank you for being so patient with me.”
“I was married once already and it didn’t last. I want to do whatever I have to do to make sure we’re forever. I’m patient. I know you’re wanting the same thing.”
But when they both woke up the next morning, Kimbra found herself bolting for the toilet in the master bathroom. Eve started to follow her, to check on her, when she ran from the bathroom.
“You all right?” Kimbra yelled. She’d heard retching noises from the hall bathroom.
“No.” She heard the sound of the toilet flushing, then the sink running. Kimbra flushed round one herself, but she wasn’t brave enough to get up yet, her stomach still feeling iffy.
Except Eve finally rejoined her. “Okay, we are never eating at that sushi place again. Here I thought they were good.” She brushed her teeth. “I don’t even feel like coffee.”
At the mere mention of coffee, Kimbra once again threw up, until she was left dry-heaving and miserable.
“Maybe we should think about suing them,” Kimbra only half-joked when she finally felt stable enough to give up hugging the toilet.
But when they both were still doing it Thursday morning, Kimbra was wondering if the culprit wasn’t in their house. She threw out their flavored creamer they kept in the fridge, as well as two containers of gelato they’d both eaten from, and a package of brie.
Friday morning, still puking, they both called in sick to work. Together they visited Kimbra’s GP, who could fit them both in at the same time. They sat in the exam room after having given blood and urine samples, both of them eying the room’s garbage can, just in case.
When the doctor joined them, the older woman wore an expression Kimbra couldn’t immediately label, but which set her jangled nerves on an even sharper edge than the one on which they already perched.
Dr. Kepler carried a tablet with her, which she used for notes. “Congratulations on the wedding, by the way,” she said. “But I am curious about something.”
“What’s that?” Kimbra asked.
“Is there anything you’ve failed to mention to us in your health records?”
“What do you mean?” Eve asked.
“Because I get the distinct feeling that neither of you understand why you’re having these particular symptoms.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Kimbra said.
The doctor studied them for a long moment before she spoke again. “You’re both pregnant. And before you even ask, yes, I had them double-check that they didn’t accidentally test one of your samples twice. That you’re here and not at a fertility specialist leads me to suspect I need to step outside for a few minutes and let the two of you have some private time to talk. I’ll be back in fifteen.”
The doctor let herself out as Kimbra willed her heart to keep beating. When she finally looked at Eve, she suspected her wide-eyed expression of horror matched Kimbra’s own.
Chapter Eleven
Fuck fuck fuck!
Eve fought against the urge to beg the doctor to take her with her when she left the exam room.
The weight of Kimbra’s gaze on her nearly crushed her. Eve realized there was no way in fucking hell she could get out of telling Kimbra the truth.
When the tears hit, Eve closed her eyes and sat there, certain this was the end of her world. She had assumed Kimbra had slept with a woman, not a guy. Again, not a violation of their agreeme
nt.
Sleeping with Ron wasn’t exactly in violation of their agreement either, except it was a personal level of fuckery that Eve wasn’t the slightest bit proud of.
“It was that weekend up at the Toucan,” Kimbra finally whispered, her voice shaky. “I’m sorry. I forgot to take my pill, but I thought it was okay because I took it the next morning. I was drunk when it happened. He was drunk, too. I barely remember any of it, but that’s…that’s no excuse. I do know he was neg, because I saw his test results.”
Eve couldn’t quit crying, could barely process…this.
“That’s what I wanted to talk about,” Kimbra continued. “I wanted to talk to you, apologize for being an idiot, and see where we’d go from there. Then you showed up Sunday morning.”
Eve nodded again.
She heard Kimbra climb off the table and step away. A moment later, she pressed a tissue into Eve’s hand and Eve heard her blowing her own nose.
Eve finally forced her eyes open. Kimbra looked…shook.
“I guess it’s safe to say you slept with a guy, too, huh?” Kimbra’s forced smile didn’t fool Eve in the slightest.
Still crying, she nodded.
“I…I have a copy of the guy’s driver’s license,” Kimbra finally said. “He—”
“Can we please finish this conversation at home, Ma’am?” Eve whispered. “I don’t want to do this here.” The clinic’s walls were paper-thin.
Kimbra nodded. “Sure, baby girl.” She stepped in close and hugged Eve. “I love you,” she said. “This doesn’t change anything between us, except we need to redo some of our plans.” A harsh laugh escaped her. “All of our plans. We need to factor in two babies.”
Eve let Kimbra hold her but was pretty dang certain Kimbra wouldn’t feel the same way when Eve confessed who she’d slept with.
* * * *
Twenty minutes later, they’d talked to the doctor again, checked out, and were sitting in Kimbra’s car in the parking lot. Stunned, Kimbra wondered if the sudden concrete wall she felt between her and Eve meant Eve wasn’t as okay with all this as she’d said she was. With them both having…explored other options.
Eve still didn’t speak but let Kimbra hold her hand as Kimbra drove them home. The tension thickened and grew until they walked in the front door and Kimbra set her purse down on the bookshelf next to the front door.
“We need to talk about this,” Kimbra gently said.
When Eve turned, she was crying again. “Ron,” she tearily whispered. “It was Ron.”
“Ron what?” Kimbra walked over to her, wrapping her arms around her. “What about Ron?”
She could barely hear Eve’s soft, struggling whisper. “It was at Ev’s, the Saturday they had their Viking thing there. Ron brought several jugs of mead and I started drinking with him. By the end of the night we were both wasted and sitting there in the Tin Can talking and drinking, and…” She started sobbing. “I woke up the next morning naked in the bunk with him.”
White-hot fury washed through Kimbra. “Are you saying Ron took advantage of you?” She’d fucking kill him, if Ev and Wylie and Walt and their other friends didn’t beat her to it.
“No! I did it! I didn’t even think he remembered anything happened between us, until the day we got married. When you went into the bathroom, I started to mention it, and he told me it didn’t happen. Meaning he didn’t want to talk about it, either. That it might as well have not happened, as far as he was concerned.”
Kimbra realized she’d released Eve and had taken a step back. “Are you telling me you and Ron slept together, and he remembers that you did, and he’s been staying silent about it to me? My best friend fucked my girlfriend?”
Tears rolling down her cheeks, Eve nodded, hugging herself. “I’m so sorry, Ma’am. I’m not on the pill and haven’t been. But my period started like the next day, so I thought I was okay. I never wanted you to know who it was when we decided not to—”
“So that’s why you didn’t want to discuss the details that day? You felt guilty because you fucked my best friend?”
She nodded.
The next thing Kimbra knew, she’d grabbed her purse and keys and slammed the front door behind her, leaving Eve crying inside. She wasn’t even sure where she wanted to go, until she found herself heading toward Ron’s house. She stopped and pulled into a shopping center and parked off along the far end of it to pull herself together.
Now I get why people rage-murder their loved ones.
She wasn’t sure what hurt worse—Eve’s betrayal, or Ron’s.
She couldn’t even go curl up in her best friend’s arms for comfort about her own colossal fuck-up, because he had one of his own that directly impacted her life.
Before she went any further, though, she needed to do something else. She pulled up the number for her gynecologist and made an emergency appointment for herself and for Eve for Monday, giving the briefest of details why.
Then she called Ron.
* * * *
Finally, a Friday I can cut out early.
Ron had just finished his last job of the morning and swapped out his work truck for his personal car and was heading home. He’d worked late last night on an emergency job, so that meant this afternoon he was free. There might be a Toucan night in his future this weekend, because he didn’t have any other plans.
As he’d expected, he and Wynn’s friend hadn’t really hit it off romantically. As friends, sure, the guy was nice. Romance wasn’t in their future, though.
Ron was sitting at a stoplight when his phone rang, Kimbra’s custom tone. He hit the button to put it in speaker mode. “Hola, chica. ¿Que tal?”
“Where you at?”
He frowned at Kimbra’s clipped tone. “Honey, you all right?”
“Where. You. At?”
“Heading home, why?”
“You gonna be alone?”
Chills washed through him. “Yeah, why?”
“How long ’til you get there?”
“About ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Kimbra, honey, what’s going on?”
“On my way.” She hung up on him.
Shit.
He had a suspicion what and why she wanted to talk, but he wasn’t going to admit it unless she brought it up first. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was some other trouble between her and Eve, and she needed a shoulder.
Except…
She’d sounded pissed.
Like clenched jaw, hold-my-earrings pissed.
Meri wasn’t due home from work for a couple of hours yet. He’d just pulled into the driveway and was unlocking his front door when Kimbra screeched into the driveway and parked behind him. He didn’t bother closing the front door as he stepped inside and disarmed the alarm.
Before he could even turn, she’d stormed through his front door and slammed it behind her.
“You son of a bitch!” She shoved him, hard, and he held up his hands to keep her from clawing at his face. “You fucked Eve and didn’t bother to tell me?”
Oh, fuck.
Okay, so this was the absolute worst-case scenario.
“Sweetie, I’m sorry. We were both extremely drunk. I wasn’t even sure it had really happened. I woke up the next morning in the Tin Can, alone, and she’d already left. I didn’t even know it’d actually happened and wasn’t just a drunken dream, because she never said anything to me about it later.”
Kimbra slapped at him again, punctuating every word with a shove or a slap. “But you did know, because she said something to you the day we fucking got married, and you both agreed to keep it a secret! How could you not fucking tell me? How could you stand there and watch me marry her and not say oh, by the way, we fucked? How could you go all these weeks pretending to be my friend and not tell me?”
He finally grabbed her by the wrists more to keep her from accidentally hurting either of them than to protect himself. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. It wasn’t intentional, I swear. We were both really fucking drunk. That’s no excuse,
but it’s the truth. I never meant to hurt you. I would never do anything like that on purpose. You’re my best friend, and I love you. You’ve known me for years—you know I don’t fuck around with someone who’s taken. Especially not a woman!”
She tried to pull away, but he didn’t let her, finally able to wrap his arms around her and hold her as she started sobbing against him. The worst of her wrath now spent, he guided her over to the sofa and held her as she cried.
Gutted is what he felt, knowing he’d caused his best friend this level of agony.
“I love you, Kimbra,” he said, hoping she would forgive him. “I thought there was no way this could ever come up again. As far as I was concerned, it didn’t happen. It damn sure wasn’t worth blowing up what the two of you had to drop that between you. It was a one-time thing I wish I could take back, believe me. I felt guilty as fuck about it when I realized it actually did happen. If I could take it back, I would. Eve loves you. I could see that the day she married you, and every time we’ve got together since then. She’s in love with you. Isn’t that what matters?”
Kimbra shook her head, still crying.
“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I love you, and I was going to go to my grave to keep this secret so it didn’t hurt you. You know me—I’m gay. When have you ever known me to make a pass at a woman? It was really bad judgment caused by really good mead, and I’m so sorry. And yes, I’m neg. I just got new tests a couple of weeks ago, so there’s no worries about that.”
She mumbled something he couldn’t quite hear…except it nearly stopped his heart.
“What?”
Kimbra sniffled. “We’re pregnant.”
He stared, certain he’d misheard her. “Eve’s…pregnant?”
“And me.”
“Wait…what?”
Now she lay in his arms, holding them around her, trapping him there. “The weekend at the Toucan. I…I had a drunken night of my own and slept with that twink.”
“Wait. You did what?”