November 2088. Colette Marin is 31, Lorraine Marin is 59, Felix and Milo are 9, Gabby Roseland is 16, Sebastian Gilmore is 38.
previously with Colette's mother: backstory // Mother's Day
content warning: cancer, sims behaving badly, infidelity, little bit spicy, no nudity.
Colette had sworn off dating forever after her last terrible failure. But the line for coffee today was absurdly long, and having no other idle interests than to browse the faces of desperate men, she opened up her dating app. There was something casually entertaining about swiping left, swiping right. Hot or not, like a game. She didn’t plan to connect with any of them. Lately, this app was only full of college boys. The only mature men were bald with beach balls for bellies. Not that a bald head couldn’t be very attractive on the right man, but these men weren’t attractive at all.
The line was still five people deep, all of them moaning about the places they needed to go.
Colette’s phone rang. At a glance, it was her mother, and Colette had no desire to answer it. She probably wanted money, or to turn her alliances against her brothers for some unearned sympathy, or maybe even a kidney. Colette wouldn’t be surprised if that ask came along someday.
There would be some ask involved in this conversation and Colette didn’t have the spirit for it today. She let the call go to voicemail, but her mother didn’t leave one. She called again. Then she called a third time.
Nobody calls three times without leaving a voicemail unless there’s something urgent to say. Oh, damn, it was going to be the kidney, wasn’t it? And there was no way Colette wanted to have that conversation with her mother in a line full of impatient people with nothing better to do but eavesdrop.
“Mom?”
“Colette, there you are. I know it’s been some time, hasn’t it? That’s a shame. Family should be more important than that, don’t you think? Well, I have some news. It seemed important to tell you. So… I have a little cancer.”
The prickly contempt Colette had reserved for her mother turned into something entirely different—a deep, blank feeling. Cancer. How was she supposed to feel about this? “Uh, you’re dying?”
Loraine barked out a condescending laugh. “Oh, Lord, I hope not! It’s stage one. They say it’s early. I bet you wish I would die.”
Colette shook her head, feeling somewhat relieved and also confused she felt that way. “Why would I care if you die? You don’t have anything to leave me but debt.”
“You’ve always been such a cold cold girl. I won’t go easy, but I will be dead someday, and you’ll be sorry you said that.”
Colette shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“You kept my grandchildren away from me. You’re really going to hold a grudge for ten years?”
“I can hold a grudge a lot longer than that! Watch me. Why are you calling? You want money? Your treatments are covered by Medicare. You probably only want more Botox. I need my money more than you need Botox. Jordan left. Again.”
Colette instantly regretted telling her mother that unfortunate truth. Her mother hadn’t earned access to such private disappointments. She braced herself for the judgment that was coming.
“Well, well. I always told you to pick a better man, my dear.”
That was why Colette didn’t tell her mother things.
“This is not just about money,” Lorraine said. “I’d like to see the boys.”
“That’s for you, not for them,” Colette said. “What good would you bring to their lives?”
“Can’t it be for me? I could die, you know. You wouldn’t let me see them, even if it was my dying wish?”
“You said you weren’t dying.”
“Well, we’re all dying, aren’t we? I hope it’s not soon, but you never know.”
“That’s not their problem.”
“They don’t have grandparents in their life. I know that. What kind of childhood is it growing up without a grandmother?”
“And they’re doing just fine without.” Colette couldn’t imagine what kind of grandmother her mother would be. Would she dote on them for split seconds before turning on a dime when they didn’t suit her ego anymore? Colette didn’t want her boys to know that heartbreak. They already had a fickle father to deal with.
“Colette, don’t make me beg.”
“Ha, you wouldn’t beg. I might like to hear it though. Go on.”
The line was silent for a few moments. Colette got her hopes up.
“You always had to have it your way, didn’t you? There’s an emotional aspect to fighting a disease like this. You’re putting stress on my heart. You think on that, and let me know when you’ve changed your mind.”
*click*
Colette thought her boys were worth begging for, after everything. But her mother didn’t beg. She didn’t even say “please.” Colette felt stupid that she actually hoped she might.
Colette returned to the cafe annex, feeling stunned and unsure. What was she even doing here? Coffee? The line had finally cleared, but now she wasn’t sure she still wanted one. Maybe a phone call like that warranted ending the day early and climbing into a hot bubble bath. And a nap before the boys came home from school.
Before she could head for the door, a man stopped her.
“I like this place, too,” he said. “I’ve seen you here before, by the way. I don’t mean to sound forward. I just notice a beautiful woman when I see one.”
“Well,” Colette said, deflating even further into her mood, unsure whether she should feel flattered or creeped out. Or annoyed—mostly annoyed. He wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t in the mood for being hit on, and she wasn’t feeling particularly beautiful today after everything. She was certain she had her resting bitch face on. Was he that oblivious? If he told her, “Just smile a little, you’d look even prettier,” he might lose an eyeball.
She looked him over. He was a little older than her and looked somehow scholarly. He had all of his hair and wasn’t too squishy in the middle. She had to admit she was intrigued. “Is that your best line?”
“No lines, just the truth. You were headed for the coffee, I think. Can I buy you one?”
She was leaving, probably, but she also didn’t want to think about her mother anymore, and this man looked like a suitable distraction. If he was willing to fit that bill.
“I suppose that would be okay with me,” she said. “One coffee.”
So, then, bachelor number two. His name was Sebastian. He was thirty-eight years old and gainfully employed. She was right about the scholarly aesthetic; he was a professor. “Engineering designs, what even is that?”
“It’s the creative process of engineering, the invention, the practical use and adherence to standards, and…”
He went on a bit about his pedagogy, which quickly bored her and she changed the subject. “What do you do for fun? (Golf, he said, and model ship-building.) What do you read? (Political thrillers.) Are you married?”
“Actually,” he started, with a grim look on his face.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Colette muttered, cutting him off right there.
“Give me a chance,” he pleaded. “We’re on the rocks. Separated. Practically.”
Practically.
She wasn’t unfamiliar with those in between kinds of relationships, but she also wasn’t so stupid she didn’t know that was what all married men said when they wanted to pick up a side chick.
She stewed in her moral superiority for a moment, but then she had to walk herself back just a little. Hotel bar flings at real estate conferences, in those sketchy in-betweens when she and Jordan were fighting and not fighting, back and forth, a time or two or three. She wouldn’t necessarily call it cheating. They were never officially a couple and decidedly not a couple most of the time. Only questionably together at all, except for when they were together. But neither of them made any promises. They were practically single. Practically.
It appeared that Colette had no room to judge.
Sebastian wasn’t giving up. “I swear, it’s just a matter of paperwork. Let me take you out. Have you been to the Fine Arts Gallery in Britechester? There’s a new modern art wing and I think you’ll love it.”
Colette’s soul was not pure enough to judge his, and his marriage was not her business to feel guilty for. He had no intentions of asking her to a bowling alley or a nightclub, and that seemed to be a hot commodity in the modern dating market. What harm could a little art gallery date do?
“Well, I do like modern art. Let’s see where this goes.”
———
Sebastian wasn’t a big fan of Thanksgiving, and neither was Colette, but it stood that most other people in the country were. It would be challenging to find a suitable babysitter two days before a major holiday.
“There’s really nobody else to call,” Felix reasoned. “She’s not that bad. It’s not like she fed us poison or anything.”
“Please, please,” the boys begged in unison.
Even though Colette would be quite happy to never see Gabby Roseland in her home again, the boys had a point, the clever little weasels. They were cut from her own DNA and they weren’t wrong.
So she called Gabby.
“Well,” Gabby said. “It is two days before Thanksgiving. I’m technically already on my holiday weekend. I’d be missing valuable rest time, and don’t you know eleventh grade is murder? I’ll need time-and-a-half rates, and we’ll eat Chinese delivery instead of pizza.”
Goddamn, that girl. But, at the same time, Colette respected her hustle.
“Fine, can you be here at six?”
Dating was going horribly, in Colette’s opinion—make no mistake about that—but Colette did enjoy having a good reason to dress up. She had a whole closet full of pretty things that had hardly seen the light of day or night over the past ten years. If she and Jordan ever attempted to go out somewhere together, which may have happened once or twice in their time, it wouldn’t have been the kind of place to require a gown and heels.
Maybe she needed to be with the kind of man who wanted to take her to an art gallery or an opera or a charity ball.
Or maybe Sebastian’s wife would see them out together tonight and claw her eyes out, and nobody would ever want to look at her ruined face again.
Damn. Tonight, Colette’s own claws were unmanicured and stubby.
Sometimes Colette felt a great humbling coming for her soul. Yes, of course she had a soul. It was a dark and shriveled little thing, buried somewhere in her chest, but it was there. All this angst and turmoil in her life fed upon itself, growing itself like a tumor, preparing itself for some grave moment in her near future when it would all explode in her face, violently. And when that moment came for her, she would have stubby nails. She just knew it.
The boys came up to her room in the moments before Gabby was due to arrive.
“I didn’t know you had so many dresses,” Felix said. “Is your friend your boyfriend like dad’s friend is his girlfriend?”
“No,” Colette scoffed. “Definitely not. Definitely not like that.”
“Good,” he added.
Good? Colette let that tiny sentiment make her feel validated.
Well, it was fine enough to indulge herself for a night, but she couldn’t imagine bringing a whole person into their lives like their father had felt compelled to do. She wasn’t convinced he had the boys’ best interests in mind.
“I just want you both to remember that the people who are supposed to have your back won’t always be reliable. It’s not nice when that happens, but it does happen, and sometimes you’ll need to look out for yourselves.”
“Because Gabby?”
“Sure, because Gabby.”
Colette didn’t know if she was talking about Gabby, who seemed to find it a game to spoil their last remaining drops of innocence; or their father, who was five states away with his new girlfriend because he wanted to be; or their grandmother, who wanted to shower them with ten years of backdated attention only to surely take it all away. Or, probably, all of the above.
But not me, she wanted to add. Wanted to, but she stopped short. She would never disappoint these boys. Never! But maybe sometimes you just don’t know what humbling your life will deliver and how it will unfold. You can’t promise what you don’t know.
Then their doorbell rang, and it was time. They all went downstairs to greet their trusty babysitter and lay out the rules for the night. Colette had provided them with a charming assortment of age-appropriate board games and puzzles.
Gabby rolled her eyes. “I mean, buckets of lame. But we’ll play them, if you want.”
And the boys snickered to each other delightfully.
And Colette knew for sure she meant Gabby in that lecture to the boys upstairs. Definitely watch out for Gabby.
———
Sebastian was a highly educated man. He knew more than Colette did about a lot of things—classical art, history, radio-carbon dating, and he loved to show that off, too. He didn’t seem to doubt himself about anything, and she found that attractive. She suspected she would eventually grow tired of the lectures, the stream of endless facts—she finished her college learning and had no desire to repeat that experience again—but tonight, this was a novelty. She was impressed.
He asked her about her own work only briefly. In his world, selling high-end real estate on commission probably seemed so superficial. He was surely uninterested in it. Fair enough, though. She didn’t really want him to know her that deeply, anyway.
Already this date felt more her style than the last one, which meant he could confidently count himself as her best date in ten years. The bar was that low, but he didn’t need to know.
She found the classical art lovely, but basic. She wasn’t interested in fossilized rocks or dinosaur bones. But she loved the modern art wing, just as he told her she would. The cold and brutal sculptures, the black and white photos, the political rage, the paint splatters that could mean literally anything or nothing at all. This interested her, and he wasn’t bored by it, either.
They had plenty of interests in common to talk about, and she thought their failed (or failing) relationships were a depressing choice of topic, but he brought up his marriage first. She wouldn’t have pried, because honestly she was trying not to think about his unfortunate marital status.
“She wants kids,” he said. “A lot of kids. And I don’t. I don’t want any. I don’t think we can work that out.”
“I suppose not,” Colette agreed.
“Do you have kids?”
“Two boys,” she said. “They’re nine. My ex wanted a ton of kids.”
“You didn’t want more?”
He looked entirely too eager about the prospect. It was probably a great turn-on to him to find a woman who didn’t want more.
That blank feeling filled her gut again. It felt something like regret, and she didn’t like it. She shrugged. “That ship has sailed now.”
They continued browsing the exhibits, and they found themselves stood in front of a giant shimmering marble egg. He knew about the sculptor, of course, and he told her all about him. Colette wasn’t listening.
An egg.
She never got a tubal, she realized. If she didn’t want more children, she would have gotten her tubes tied ages ago. Colette was no stranger to optional surgeries. She had the money for it. She got a boob job and a tummy tuck—after the twins, she wouldn’t have even considered it purely optional. She didn’t necessarily want more kids. She didn’t pin all her hopes and dreams on it. But she would have had them, if it made a difference, if they could have made it work. It was something she was holding in her back pocket like a bargaining chip. It was something she was willing to compromise on. For him, the father of the children she already had. If it could have saved anything.
It probably never could have saved anything.
But no, not now, not with anyone else. She didn’t want more. It wasn’t necessarily a depressing realization, but a heavy one. This baby factory was closed for business forever. And if that was a thing she had just decided, tonight in this gallery in front of this giant marble egg, then she should probably schedule that tubal ligation.
“God, do you want to stop talking now and go fuck?”
He grinned at her, looking surprised, but also keen. It wasn’t too much to presume, she hoped, because why else does a married man ask out a woman who isn’t his wife?
“Follow me,” she said, and he did. It was sort of a test. She wanted to see if he could handle a bossy woman.
She led him downstairs, past the classical art wing where they entered, past the lobby, past the guest services on the ground floor, the family bathrooms and the lockers. Down another flight to the basement, the storage rooms, the loading docks. She opened the door to a boiler room.
“Should I be worried that you’re leading me off to my murder?”
“I only murder when I’m angry,” Colette joked. “But I can’t answer for your wife, should she find out about this.”
He didn’t laugh. Colette didn’t take offense. She’d never been known to have a ripping sense of humor.
The boiler room was noisy and totally empty. It was the kind of room that didn’t get much foot traffic at 9:00 in the evening. Also the kind of room that probably didn’t have any cameras, but Colette wasn’t too shy to put on a show if there were.
“You know, I could have taken you somewhere,” he said.
A whole hotel room, all that expectation. She’d tried and failed at that already. “No, it’s too much. Does this shock you?”
She was leaving no mystery to what he’d be dealing with. If he was going to be disappointed, she wanted to know right now.
“I must say, I think I’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
“Well, you can work your way up to more. You can try. Start now. Kneel.”
And his eyes lit up. If he was surprised by her ask, she was equally as surprised by his answer. He knelt.
“Okay, now slide your hand up my leg. Slowly.”
He took direction enthusiastically. A little too well, maybe. His hand found the long slit of her skirt and the bare skin of her knee, slowly tracing upward.
“There,” she said. “Stop there.”
She didn’t mean to make a whole show about it. Some people did, but it had never occurred to her to try that before. She just wanted to ask for what she wanted without the whole song and dance. Men had such fragile egos—she was learning that more and more every day. She felt silly at first, but then she felt empowered by it, by how he played along.
She lifted her leg slowly, resting her shoe on his thigh. “Now wait,” she said. She slid the toe of her shoe to his groin, teasing him to arousal. “Now beg.”
“Yes, Miss Marin. Anything you want, Miss Marin. Please.”
“Good boy.”
Oh, how he grinned. What can of worms did she open with this one? Okay, maybe it was about ten percent fun. Maybe it could grow on her.
“The chairs,” she said, her body on fire with power, with possibility. Her body throbbed with the hunger, and she knew just how she wanted it. “You’ll use your hands, and so will I. You’ll unzip your pants and finish inside them.”
So he draped her over one of those cheap metal chairs, and he handled her expertly.
And this was different. She would see him again, she decided, and he could have her in a hotel room next time. She thought to ask him, How many times have you cheated on your wife? But she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
———
This time, she texted to let Gabby know she was headed home, and she didn’t pull any tricks about it. She gave them twenty whole minutes to finish whatever unruly trouble they’d gotten themselves into, because she honestly couldn’t bear to look her boys in the face after the night she had.
The boys were thankfully nowhere to be seen and Gabby sat quietly on the couch with her calculus books closed and her phone in hand. Werewolves tonight, the sound turned down low.
Colette couldn’t believe her eyes. “What did you guys do tonight?”
“Oh, not much. We did the puzzle. It was okay. Then some video games, and we read some books.”
“That’s all?”
“Yup.”
Gabby took her wages for the night, collected her things, and left.
When Colette went to the kitchen to clean up and turn out the lights, she found a book that Gabby left next to the puzzle boxes. She flipped open the cover. A Modern Witch’s Guide to the Craft. After the werewolves, the zombies, the yetis, the mermaids, the ghosts, and now witches?
Whatever, it wasn’t real, anyway. Just another of the many fantastical things these kids filled their head with.
And that was fine. We all liked a bit of fantasy from time to time.
Colette was too tired to make a stink about it. There was lots to care about in life, and this wasn’t it. So she turned out the lights and went upstairs to bed.
notes: Colette began this long three-part chapter with one goal—to get laid. So, score? But the introspection she had along the way, though often unpleasant, will surely be more valuable than the filthy boiler room sex. 😂
gameplay:
What a strange chapter. You made little cancer sound funny and Colettes lucky time in the boiler room kind of sad. What an accomplishment.
ReplyDeleteHa ha, gotta keep you on your toes! 😇 But Colette’s life is such a mess. Any ordinary experience—from her relationship with her mother to her date nights—would probably feel unbelievable for her life. She attracts chaos, lol!
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