Vanilla. Megan Hart

reassure her that they were only photos. That I didn’t actually do “those things.”

      I couldn’t. I’d never told my mother I was kinky, but I’d never denied it, either. I don’t think there are many people who enjoy discussing their sex lives with their parents, and people who get off on things not considered “normal” probably have an even harder time. I’d gone to my mother when I was about fourteen with some questions about sex, positions in particular, that I’d read about in one of the books she tried to keep hidden in the back of the bookcase. The woman on top position had intrigued me, but I’d been unable to figure out how, exactly, that worked. At fourteen I’d seen a penis—my brother’s, which hardly counted, but at least I was a little bit more informed than most of my friends about what one looked like. Alicia had shown me some pictures in her dad’s nudie mags of people fucking, but they’d all been doing it with the guy on top. I wanted to know how it worked the other way around.

      My mother had told me then what she’d just told me now. It’s unnatural for a woman to want to be on top. She’d said it when I was fourteen and again at twenty-two, the first time she’d seen my “filthy” pictures, and several other times since. Yet, that was how I liked it, how I’d always liked it since I’d first discovered it was possible. It was how I would always like it.

      “I’m just saying,” my mother continued, because of course she had to get in the last word.

      “It’s also a little creepy that you keep harping on it,” I said sharply and got up to get another glass of water. “I thought we were here to help Susan with some Bar Mitzvah stuff, not talk about my private life. Where’s Jill anyway?”

      This was way more my sister’s type of gig than mine. I didn’t care about the color scheme or types of napkins or any of that stuff, but I figured I’d better be there as a buffer. If Susan and I had a neutrally pleasant relationship, she and my mom had what I’d consider a “temporary cease-fire” sort. My sister, Jill, seemed to have no idea that Susan actively loathed her, but then Jill assumed the world revolved around her, and the idea that someone could actually not like her never entered her mind.

      “Jill had a school board meeting, and Susan is late,” my mother said.

      I looked at the clock. It was already close to eight. I didn’t really want to hang out here all night, not with a forty-five-minute drive back home. My mom would try to insist I stay over. I’d have to not-so-politely decline. She would pout. I would snap. Susan would roll her eyes.

      “What time was she supposed—”

      “I’m here. Sorry, sorry.” Susan, eyes bright, cheeks a little flushed, bustled into my mother’s kitchen with a brimming accordion folder.

      They squared off like cowboys in an old Western, but neither of them drew. After a moment, my mother grudgingly offered coffee, which Susan politely declined. The pair of them looked at me like I had anything to say about it, but I only shrugged, and they both went into the dining room to lay out menus and brochures from different locations.

      The first disagreement happened over kosher catering. Never mind I’d gone out to dinner with my mother plenty of times and watched her devour a Cobb salad like it wasn’t riddled with pig, but Susan would send her order back if it arrived with unexpected bacon. Or that neither of them actually kept a kosher kitchen with separate pots and pans and the like. My mother wanted to be able to invite and impress her friends. My sister-in-law wanted a nice place to have a party and have some good food. We didn’t live in an area where kosher catering was a common thing.

      Under other circumstances I’d have popped some corn and settled back to watch the show, but tonight I was already tired because I’d been up at three in the morning being a dumbass and messaging a man who always read my messages but never answered me. I didn’t have the patience to listen to them quibble over hors d’oeuvres. It wasn’t my event, nor my money. My phone hummed from my pocket, and I drew it out, surprised to find a message from Esteban. I was also pleased, though. More than I wanted to admit.

      “I won’t be serving shrimp cocktail,” Susan said stiffly. “There will be a pasta station and a mashed potato bar, which William requested. We’ll have grilled chicken skewers, too. I don’t see why this has to be an issue.”

      “I simply think that you should serve food your guests will be able to eat,” my mother said with a sniff.

      Susan’s eyes narrowed. “Anyone I invite will be fine with the food.”

      “You’re having it at William Penn Inn, right?” I asked absently, reading Esteban’s short but descriptive list of things he wanted to do for and to me. He’d started off with “I humbly request the honor” and ended it with “If it pleases you,” and though the wording was campy and silly, I had no doubts he was sincere in his offerings.

      Both of them shut up and turned to me.

      “There were so many other choices,” my mother muttered.

      Susan made a contemplative noise. “That’s where Evan and I had our wedding reception. We discussed this already.”

      “I know,” I said, looking up with a grin at what my lover had sent me, not for either of them. “I was there, remember? Bright yellow dress, puffy sleeves? Groomsman stepped on the hem and ripped it straight off the waist seam just before we walked down the aisle?”

      I’d been trying to make light. Susan didn’t laugh. My mother’s mouth twisted again.

      “It’s a great location,” I told them. “I just went to a thing there a few months ago. They had a huge vegetarian buffet with hummus and grilled portobellos and stuff. You can do vegetarian meals for people who really care about it being kosher, which honestly, won’t be that many. Nobody has to eat the grilled chicken if they don’t want to. Just make it at a different station.”

      “Well, maybe you don’t care what people think of this family,” my mother said, “but I do!”

      Susan scribbled something on her notepad, then excused herself to use the bathroom. My mother glared at me. I dragged myself away from my increasingly dirty messages to shrug at her.

      “What? It’s not your event, Ma.”

      “I want to be able to invite my friends and not be embarrassed!”

      “You can want what you want,” I told her, repeating one of her most-often-used phrases from my childhood, “but you get what you get.”

      My phone tickled me through the pocket of my jeans again, and I bent back to it while my mother got up to putter around the kitchen.

      “Is she going to invite your father?”

      I pulled my attention away from Esteban’s message, which had included a photograph that made the ones my mother complained about look like they belonged in a hymnal. “I don’t know. I’d assume so.”

      My parents had been divorced, at this point, almost as long as they’d been married. My dad had moved to Florida, which had meant the every other weekend custody thing hadn’t happened for us, something my mother loved to point out over and over. How she’d been a single mother, did it all on her own. By now it was old news, especially since whatever generous alimony arrangement they’d made had allowed her to work only at part-time retail jobs she cycled through whenever she decided she wanted the employee discount at some new place. My mom hadn’t had it all peaches and cream, I’d never say that, but she hadn’t exactly had to work in a labor camp to raise us, either.

      “He’s not even close to William!”

      “William spends a week with Dad in Florida every year, Mom. Just like we did when we were kids.”

      “A week out of the year?” She sniffed. “That’s hardly anything.”

      I shook my head in warning. “Not your party. Not your choice. If Evan and Susan want Dad there, he’ll be invited.”

      My mother scowled. “The way you talk to me!”