Vol.5, Chapter XIV— The Recital, Part 3: Scouting Secrets

After the recital, Abby’s apartment got flooded with people for the celebration of its success. It had been completely unplanned, the amount of people gathered there, as initially, it was supposed to be just me, Abby, Sophie and our Dads back at my place, but to the group joined in Mathilda, Claire and Paul. Mrs. Fletcher had left after the recital was over and she had given Sophie her congratulations, Mathilda now being under Claire’s care under the excuse that she had gotten up early and didn’t want her young friend tied up to her tired old bones, otherwise she’d be joining in, I’m sure.

It was quite the contrast the way we were dressed and what we had for dinner, us formally presented and sat around a table with take-away roasted chicken and fried chips, the men having beer while us ladies had juice and sodas.

It was lively, it was noisy, and as anyone can guess, very tiring for me. Even so, I kept moving around, playing hostess, both because it gave me a way to keep myself from noticing how drained I was feeling, but also because that was simply my personality and upbringing.

Two groups had formed, one constituted by Abby, Paul and Mathilda, and the other one being made up by Dad, William and Sophie. Claire, like me, kept hopping between the two groups, unable to stay locked in giving her attention to her sister, “her woman”, and her boyfriend, all the while trying to get a hug out of me and Abby who clung to me when I was nearby for safety.

“Babe, great new!” Abby cheered when I was going back to her group. “Paul says that if his university has a good Sports Science department, he might be able to get us his apartment once he graduates!”

That certainly would be a great help if it came to fruition. According to the snippets I heard, his apartment was a single bedroom with a small kitchenette, but it also had its own bathroom with a tub, and if Abby and I learned anything from our fieldtrip is that we love a bathtub.

However, as nice as it was hearing the news, I was more impressed with her than anything else.

“I wasn’t expecting having you scouting a place for us already,” I commented as I moved an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in for a bit of my self-comfort.

“I can’t let you alone worrying about everything in our future, can I?” she chirped as she affectionately nuzzled my jaw. “Although it’s not guaranteed his university will work. He’s still waiting for a friend of a friend of a friend who has someone they know studying there if the teachers and curriculum are any good. A literal game of telephone, you see?”

I gave Abby the warmest smile and the gentlest squeeze of appreciation. It really warmed up my heart to see her taking a proactive stance when she’s oftentimes telling me to calm down and relax. Seeing her like this, it made me feel like I really could relax.

“It will be a bit of a pain if I come visiting you tough,” Mathilda joked.

“Won’t you be busy with your own studies to go around visiting them?” Paul asked.

“Hmm… thing is, I don’t know if I’ll be going to university,” Mathilda said. “I’ll try starting V-tubing this summer—talking about movies I watch, videogames I play, do some reaction content, so if that goes well, I might go full time with it.”

“V-tubing?” I asked. “What’s that?”

Mathilda launched into an explanation with lots of fast talking and examples on her phone, telling me how they draw an avatar and then rig it so it can mimic her movements and expressions. The one she was going to use apparently was very basic as it just covered a few facial expressions, but apparently some can move the whole body? Talking with a chat of potentially hundreds of people sounded impossible for me, but for someone like Mathilda who’s a social butterfly, that was right up her alley. What’s more, while her parents didn’t care what she did either way but she had Claire, Claire’s Mum, and Mrs. Fletcher, she could take a bit of risk.

As a matter of fact, so did I, so why wasn’t I taking risks to find something I wished to do in the future? Dad would support me, and so would Abby and everyone else for that matter, but if I wanted to be as pessimistic as possible, Dad would always be there out of all people.

“Not that it’d ever, ever get to that point in real life,” I thought as I looked back at him.

He had taken his blazer off, now being only in his short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt. I remembered it being a bit looser around his arms last year, but then again, he now went to the gym and had better care with is diet.

I also noticed that I wasn’t the only looking at him, seemingly appreciating his improved physique.

“…”

Sophie sat perpendicular to him on a couch, her eyes holding a shimmer in them as she watched him talk with a captivated look. I knew that look better than anyone, it was the same one Abby would give me every day, every time she’s doing nothing but watching me do something or simply existing in the same space as her.

I stared for a bit longer, trying to reason with what I was seeing, and Sophie took notice, her head snapping towards me, our eyes locking on one another. She then averted her gaze, looking a bit flustered.

The second person I looked at was Abby. It was just in time to see her looking away from me, her eyes flickering back and forth between me and Paul as he talked with Mathilda. Finally, she looked straight at me, giving me an apologetic look.

She knew…

She knew, and she hadn’t told me about it. I felt angry, and honestly, a bit betrayed by her hiding it from me. She knew that, she can always tell how I feel, so she hugged my arm a bit tighter as she pressed her face against my shoulder, a silent plea for me to not be mad.

Discreetly, I took a deep, long breath and thought things through.

I knew Abby better than anyone. Abby tends to bottle things up, just like I do, but while I do it because I get lost in my mind, Abby does so because she worries a lot about what’s on the mind of others.

Telling myself this, I started to calm down. I was still mad and a bit hurt, don’t get me wrong, but I trusted Abby, and if she hadn’t told me about it yet, then she had a good reasoning behind it.

“We should head out now,” Claire said as she approached us, placing her hands over Mathilda’s shoulder, her sisterly smile shining warmly. “It’s getting late, and I need to put my little sister to sleep.”

“Let’s be real here, you only want to put me to bed so that you and Paul can get to making babies,” Mathilda said, sounding annoyed. “I’m not a little kid anymore, I don’t need you to put me to sleep.”

Claire laughed and hugged Mathilda from behind, swaying the two side-to-side, delighted by Mathilda’s cheekiness. Mathilda, still annoyed, asked if her being cheeky made what she said any less true. Claire again laughed, giving her sister a shrug. She then turned and asked Paul when they would start making Mathilda an aunt.

“First, I graduate, then I get a job, we get married and start living together, and finally we can take care of that,” he told her just as deadpan as always. “My guess would be in less than five years for the first one.”

“Oh my! You’re planning on us having more than one?” Claire sang as she went to cling to him now.

“I wasn’t sure about it, but seeing how you and Mathilda interact, and having grown as a single kid, I think at least two would be nice.”

Claire began kissing him right there and then, and I mean it in a hungry way. She only stopped because Sophie started scolding her about doing it in front of me, her sister and Mathilda. That was only a brief pause though, because after she looked at us, she decided she didn’t care—to the surprise of no one, and went back to kissing Paul. Or she would, but he told her not to, that finally calming her down, if just barely.

“Ah, that’s right!” Mathilda said, just as she was about to leave with Claire and Paul. “Could I ask you Abby to maybe find a good place for us to go camping with the boys? You know, since Violet now has two jobs?”

“Hmm, that certainly would keep me busy for a few hours while Violet is working,” Abby hummed. “All right, leave it to me.”

They then left, and now it was time for Dad to leave too, but before that, he asked if we were staying here at Abby’s place, or if we were going together with him to ours.

With a quick glance, Abby and I decided: mine and Dad’s place. Our bedroom there is now almost soundproof and away from Sophie’s ears, so it was the best place for the talk we needed having.

◊◊◊

Arriving home was followed with the usual domesticity, but it didn’t carry its usual warmth. We fed, petted and humoured our needy kitten, we used the bathroom and brushed our teeth together like always, and we put on our pyjamas together in complete silence, each one thinking about how we’d start the conversation. It was only after we placed our chokers on the nightstand that we started talking, Violet sitting across from me on her desk chair while I sat on the bed.

“Ok, so… what did I actually see back at your place?” she asked, shifting on her seat. She kept adjusting her posture, crossing and uncrossing her arms and legs, leaning back or forward or sitting perfectly straight, sometimes shaking her body.

I breathed in before I started talking.

“Ok, so… like you, I’m quite sure Sophie has a crush over your Dad,” I admitted. “I noticed it a few months ago, but said nothing to you because I wanted to talk with sis first to make sure it was actually that. It ended up dragging longer than I expected, and—”

“Abby, hold on a second,” she told me suddenly.

She got up and came to sit by my side, turning her body so she could face me, our knees touching. Her posture relaxed more and she produced an approving hum, her hands crossed over her lap before asking me to continue. I understood why she did this. Before she came to sit by me, this felt too much like an argument. Too confrontational. In part, this was due to her own comfort, but even in this scenario, Violet was also giving priority to my own feelings.

I turned my body slightly to face her better before resuming.

“As I was saying, it ended up dragging for longer than I had intended, either because it wasn’t a good time when I was alone with her, or it was a good time, but we wouldn’t have the opportunity to make it last if needed… I was also hoping she’d let it go as time went by, if I’m being honest.”

“That last part really was naïve,” Violet sighed. “They spend a lot of time together, arguably more than even I do with him.”

“I know… I’m really sorry about all this Violet. I really didn’t mean to keep it a secret from you. It’s your Dad we are talking about too after all, not just my sister.”

“You’re right, it is my Dad we are talking about too,” she said, a bit of her anger coming out, although she kept it mostly contained.

I then watched in silence, letting her process everything. She crossed her arms and closed her eyes, her face turning into a shifting scowl as she thought things over. I was looking at the watch for the third time when she clicked her tongue and began ruffling her hair.

“Ach! Seriously though, why Dad!?” she hissed. “He’s my Dad! Isn’t it kinda messed up? Is that even allowed?”

“Babe, you’ll hurt yourself if you keep scratching your head like that,” I calmly called as I placed a hand over her shoulder. That worked, as she lowered her arms, choosing to drum her heel on the carpet as she did some more thinking.

“…It’s not that I don’t like your sister, ok?” she told me, looking straight into my face. “It’s just that he’s my dad, she’s your sister, and you’re my girlfriend. That’s what’s messing me up. But then… then there’s the part in me that doesn’t want to do the same she did to us when she found out we liked each other as more than friends… and their age gap… it’s just…”

“…Really complicated?”

“Yeah… Really complicated.”

Her concerns, all but one, had crossed my mind many times.

There was the really big one, and that is how we were all related, plus how Papa Stan my Dad’s best friend, so Sophie having a crush over Stan might drive a wedge into that.

As for their age gaps, I hadn’t really considered it. Currently, my Mother is forty-four while Dad is fifty-seven. On the other hand, Sophie will soon be twenty-three while Stan is thirty-six. That all means that the age gap between Stan and Sophie is the same one as between Dad and Mother, something I shared with Violet.

“Not that I think it should make any difference on how you feel,” I added as a conclusion. “Thinking about it, a thirteen-year age gap is quite something.”

Violet looked at me, for a moment distracted on how my Dad was old enough to be my grandfather, something that surprises me a little any time I think about it too.

“Haah, you know what? Let’s just go to sleep,” she said, starting to toss away her pyjama. “I’m completely exhausted mentally, so I just want to sleep for the next ten hours or so.”

I watched, a bit stunned at how she stripped as usual and got into her side of the bed, in position for me to join her.

I didn’t ask, not yet anyway, I simply undressed too and went to join her under the sheet. Just as always, she pulled me in, making sure I was all snuggled and comfortable before settling down.

“…Are you still mad at me?” I asked in half a voice as my head comfortably rested on her shoulder.

“…Not enough that I wouldn’t want to cuddle with you,” she told me before smooching my hair. “Sleep well, Abby. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

I smooched her jaw and wished her a good night too, my heart still feeling guilty, but definitely warm with her love for me.