Love, the Second Time Around

I stared out the window, watching the street below. The same scenario was playing through my mind again. Only now instead of introducing another man to my family, I was coming out as a lesbian and introducing my new girlfriend to my family.

One thing I had going for me was that money wasn't an issue with Amberle. She was financially secure, and in fact, was worth more than I was. We were also older now; as forty-something women, I think we were both over the bullshit that dominated our younger lives. We'd discussed our finances, our children and our living arrangements. Nothing was written in stone, but the foundation of our relationship was settling into a nice comfort zone.

Chewing on my lip, I heard Amberle stand up and cross the room. I felt the warm press of her body against me. Her arms wrapped around my waist, and she rested her head on my shoulder. I settled back into her embrace; her touch seemed to calm my rapidly-beating heart.

"Why didn't you talk me out of this?" I asked absently.

"I tried," she laughed. "But you kept calling me back."

Neither of us spoke for a long moment.

"Relax, sweetheart," Amberle whispered soothingly in my ear. "Everything's going to be fine."

Those were the words I needed to hear. When we were first discussing her coming to see me and meet the craziness that is my family, she suggested that I first tell them that I was seeing a woman—to come out first—and then introduce her later. I knew they'd want to meet her immediately, which is why we were doing it this way. I also didn't want to have this conversation more than once.

Now I was having second thoughts.

I wasn't worried about my family reacting negatively to my sudden lesbianism. New York, for all its faults, is a diverse place, and homophobia is bad for business. Plus, our family knew that the world didn't end when some of our closest friends—and little brother—came out of the closet.

The touch of her lips against the back of my neck was calming. And exciting, at the same time. If that makes any sense.

Our fingers intertwined and she nibbled just behind my ear, in that one spot that makes me crazy.

I had to bite my lip to stifle a moan, and closed my eyes, as if to will away the tension.

When her hand cupped my breast, I jumped slightly as the space between my legs suddenly became very slick.

My pulse raced. My breath quickened.

Her lips left a wet, sloppy trail down across my shoulder. Without warning, she blew a stream of cold air across my skin, sending a chill from my head to toes.

Just as I was about to turn and kiss her, I heard Stephen's key hit the lock on the front door.

Amberle gave my tit a firm squeeze, smacked me playfully across the backside and giggled.

"Bitch," I laughed as she wiggled free of my grasp.

"Your bitch," she replied with a wink, before retreating back into my bedroom, as we had discussed.

Stephen stepped inside from the hallway and was shedding his winter coat, mittens, scarf and boots by the closet. As far as Januarys go, this one was pretty mild with only sprinklings of snow instead of the blizzards that occasionally blow through.

His father held his backpack and some other things from school. I gave both a quick hug. Usually Ethan and I have a week on/week off schedule for our son, but over Christmas, he asked to have Stephen for a couple of extra days while they went skiing up in the Adirondacks, so I was getting him back early, which worked out nicely for me.

The first couple of years after our divorce, my ex-husband and I weren't very pleasant to each other. Both of us were hurt and angry, sometimes not even at the other, but we took out our frustrations in ugly ways. Looking back, that's one chapter in my life of which I'm definitely not proud.

What got us through the nasty stretches was our mutual devotion and love for our son. Ethan is many things, but a bad father is not one of them. He has always been there for Stephen, and he never tried to use him to get to me.

Over the last few years, we've become friends again, and put aside most of the things we wish we could take back.

Ethan re-married, and his wife is pretty good, as far as stepmoms go. They also live on the Upper West Side, just past the Museum of Natural History. We exchanged small talk and caught up on what was going on in Stephen's life, specifically the part where his grades were lower than what his father and I expected.

I will also say that Ethan has always gone out of his way to back up the decisions I made when it came to our son, even if he didn't agree with them, and I've always tried to do the same for him. Even before our divorce, we had an unspoken rule that we would never fight in front of Stephen and that we'd put forth a united front when dealing with any matters that involved the three of us, whether it was the time he accidentally lit a Persian rug on fire, when we were first dealing with his dyslexia, or the first time he tried to play one of us off against the other to get something he wanted.

It helps that both of us always had good jobs—Ethan in architecture, me in my real estate ventures—so money wasn't really an issue that we fought over a lot. Mostly it was my emotional unavailability and his not being able to keep his dick in his pants.

With our business concluded, Stephen gave his dad a hug and kiss goodbye, and then we settled into our home.

"Remember when I told you that we were having company this weekend?" I started.

"Yeah."

We left his things in the foyer and walked back through the kitchen and into the sitting area that overlooked Central Park West through the big bay windows. I led him to one of the couches and motioned for him to sit.

"My friend's name is Amberle," I said as my lover came out of the bedroom to join us. I watched my son's face with great interest as he gave my girlfriend the once-over. He scooted over, so I could sit next to him, and Amberle took a seat in the plush chair across from us. "Amberle, this is my son, Stephen."

"It's nice to meet you," she smiled. "I've heard so much about you."

"Stephen," I started, but had to pause, my mind suddenly drawing a blank. "I—"

"You're dating, aren't you, Mom?"

My jaw hit the floor.

Amberle's smile got wider and she had to stifle a laugh. Apparently, me being speechless is funny.

"Yes . . . yes, we are," I stammered.

"Is that why everyone is coming over for dinner tonight?"

I'll say this about my son: There are some days when he'd lose his brain if it wasn't locked inside his skull, and on others, he's the smartest kid in the world.

"Um . . . yes."

"Does this mean you're a lesbo, Mom?"

This time, Amberle couldn't help herself, and burst out laughing. After a second, she composed herself.

"Sorry," she tried to cover up her false sincerity.

"It means I'm seeing another woman," I said once I found the words. "And it's 'lesbian', Stephen, not 'lesbo'."

"Okay," he said, then he turned to Amberle. "Do you have any kids?"

"I do," Amberle replied. "My daughter Maureen is nineteen years old."

"Were you married before?"

"Yes, my wife died a long time ago." Clearly she had thought far enough ahead to come up with answers to some of the questions my son and family might ask.

"How could you have children if you're gay?"

"My wife and I wanted to have a child, and so we found someone to help us have a baby." I knew that wasn't entirely true, but it would pass muster with my nine year-old son.

"Can I meet her?"

"Maybe one day," Amberle replied patiently. "When it warms up, maybe you guys can come visit me at my house at the beach."

"That sounds fun," he said simply. Then, being the fickle pre-adolescent that he is, Stephen changed the subject. "Can we get something to eat? I'm hungry."

"Of course we can." I breathed a sigh of relief. This had gone much better than I had anticipated, although I suspected that he and I would have a long talk between the two of us, and that my coming out to him would take a while for him to fully process.

The three of us spent the next couple of hours making lunch and getting to know one another in this new dynamic. After an initial bout of shyness, he seemed to open up to Amberle, even taking her back to his room to play on the Wii and show off his collection of Star Wars Legos.

I hoped that my next coming out would go as smoothly.

*************************

Amberle

The prospect of meeting Nichole's family was less daunting than having her meet mine. Maybe it's because I've been "out" for twenty years. Maybe it's because I'm at the point in my life when I don't give a damn what other people think about my lifestyle. Maybe it's because over the last five months, I've come to terms with my wife's death and am finally ready to live the rest of my life without being haunted by my past.

Her son seemed to receive me well. At least for our first meeting, he was polite and eager to get me to play with him. He asked me a few questions about my life, but we mostly played with his vast collection of toys, only to be shooed out of the kitchen as Nichole began cooking dinner when our Nerf gun battle spilled out of the play area.

"Stephen! Clean up your mess," Nichole called after a little while longer. "I need Amberle to help me make dinner."

My girlfriend had already opened up the wine when there as a familial knock on the door just before it opened.

Three smiling faces greeted me. Two I only recognised from pictures around Nichole's apartment. The third was my daughter.

"Surprise, Mom!" Maureen laughed, having once again pulled one over on me. I gave her a puzzled hug.

"You must be Amberle," one of the other women said. "I'm Melissa, the prettiest of the sisters."

"And I'm Emily, the highest-ranking," the second new face grinned. Both gave me warm, friendly hugs after setting bags of groceries down on the counter. My daughter wheeled her small suitcase to an out of the way corner of the kitchen.

"How did—" my voice trailed off before I gave up.

"We're all on Facebook, Mom." Apparently, my daughter was getting quite good at surprising me.

"It's nice to meet you," Emily said. Nichole was the middle of five children, behind Nathan and Emily, and older than James and Melissa. Michael was the oldest of three children, and Rhett and Courtney were coming later.

"Did you know that Emily is a rocket scientist?" Maureen asked me.

"That's 'ballistic missile engineer'," she corrected playfully. Nichole bragged a lot on her siblings, mostly because they were all very good at what they did. In her "other" life, she was Lieutenant-Colonel Emily Chittum-Galloway of the United States Air Force. She was a project manager for some program that she can't really tell you what she's working on, and it's best not to ask for any details, but it probably involves blowing lots of shit up. I just knew she was getting some leave to visit us for the weekend.

"Yeah, Em is the family's resident genius," Melissa said, her voice filled with sibling rivalry. If Emily was the smart one, then the youngest sister was hardest-working. Nichole's family was co-owner of a food shipping service that catered to many of Manhattan's long-established restaurants. All of the children had worked for the company at some point in their lives.

Before he died, Michael had taken over the company from his and Nichole's fathers, who came out of retirement for a short time before retiring for good a few years later. As the other children scattered across the country and around the world, Melissa and her husband had assumed the day to day operations of the business.

"Speaking of . . ." Nichole frowned. "What are you doing here? You were supposed to come over with Mom later."

The oldest of the sisters snorted softly. "I wanted to meet your girlfriend first."

Nichole's eyes got wide. Then narrowed as she glared at the youngest.

"Oh, knock it off," Emily said dismissively. "She didn't blow your secret."

"What gave us away?" I asked, as much to break up the tension as satisfy my own curiosity.

Emily reached for the electric corkscrew and a bottle of pinot noir, then winked at me, ignoring the daggers shooting out of her sister's eyes. "Nichole has taken exactly eight vacations in the last seven years; two of those were to see me when I was stationed in Germany and one was that family reunion we had up in Lake George before Mary Paula got married. Don't make that face at me; your business trips and chaperoning for Stephen's school trips don't count! So when I saw on Facebook that she had suddenly taken three trips to fun places in the last five months, I figured something was up. And guess whose smiling face has been in four of my sister's last ten profile pictures?"

I blushed.

She passed some wine around to each of us.

"To my little sister's lousy attempt to keep her girlfriend a secret." Everyone except Nichole giggled and our glasses klinked together.

"Is it that obvious?" Nichole asked softly. I saw fear in her eyes. "Has Mom said anything to you?"

"Nope," Emily polished off her first glass and poured herself a second. "And even if she figured it out, she's going to make you tell her first."

"What about everyone else?"

"Why are you worried, Nic?" Melissa scoffed. "You haven't been this happy in years. I'll get Emily to use her giant space laser on anyone who gives you any shit."

"We do not have a giant space laser." Emily's voice hardened sternly for just second, before she smiled mischievously. "At least not one we can use on civilian targets."

We all laughed. I looked over at Nichole, who was trying to will away her nerves. Or drown them in wine. I reached out and took her hand, carefully watching her sisters to gauge their reaction. Both just beamed at me.

"Let's go show Maureen to her room," Nichole followed as I tugged her along to give my daughter the two minute tour of the apartment. Emily and Melissa began unpacking the groceries and picked up the kitchen choreography of a family that was used to throwing big parties and entertaining a lot of people.

"What are you doing here?" I asked once we were out of earshot of the other girls.

"Nichole asked me to come up to meet her family all at once," Maureen grinned sheepishly. "And we wanted to surprise you."

I gave them both a big hug. "You certainly did that."

"I also think she didn't want you to have to face her family by yourself," my daughter said, my appreciation for her and my girlfriend only growing.

Maureen left her things in one of the back bedrooms and then we walked around Nichole's apartment. It has vaulted ceilings to match the tall windows that overlook Central Park West. The outside walls are a deep, red brick. Some of the inside walls are also brick, but most are framed and drywall.

The apartment she once shared with Michael took up a little less than a third of the floor, but once she bought the entire building and other tenants began moving out, she took over a couple of the other apartments, so now it covered almost half the fourth floor.

There is lots of open space with a big living area, a separate television room, a formal dining room and four bedrooms, a home office and three full bathrooms, a luxury in uptown Manhattan. She told me at one point she almost took over the top floor of the building, but this had been the home she made with Michael, and that meant more to her than a better view three stories up. Besides, then she could charge someone else the "penthouse" rate.

"Stephen! Come in here for a second!" Nichole called. "There's someone else I want you to meet. . . . This is Maureen, Amberle's daughter."

"It's nice to meet you," Maureen knelt down so she was eye level with Nichole's son. He blushed a little, but reached out to give her a friendly hug, which she eagerly returned.

"When is everyone else coming over?" I asked, knowing the Nichole wanted nothing more than to get the initial part of the evening to pass.

"In about an hour," she replied nervously.

"Then let's get ready for dinner." I took her hand and have it a reassuring squeeze. We left Stephen back in his room to clean up.

A short while later, Emily left to go pick up their mother, while Melissa, Maureen and I made dinner. Nichole wanted to pitch in, but she was too nervous be of any actual help.

From the preparations, I could tell dinner was going to be quite a production. We had mac & cheese going in a crock pot, some kind of chicken over pasta, meatballs, more pasta, a ham cooking in the oven and at least three different salads.

It was also my understanding that every family that was coming was also responsible for bringing something else. And this was the "small" party; the "big" one was the next night with the rest of Nichole's friends.

Nichole glanced up from a text message on her phone a little while later. She looked like she was about to have a panic attack. "Mom, John and Elizabeth are on their way up."

I reached out and pulled her to me. Her entire body was shaking nervously.

"Everything is going to be fine," I whispered in her ear. Pausing long enough to wash the scraps from dinner off our hands, I took Nichole and Maureen to the back corner of the living area. It was probably about as private a setting as we were going to get.

We heard the door open a couple of minutes later and the footsteps of half a dozen people announcing their arrival. Almost immediately, Nichole's mother covered the room quickly. She was followed by two people whom I instinctively knew to be Michael's parents.

"Hi, Mom," Nichole began, her voice sounding small. And afraid. "This is . . . um . . ."

We all stood there staring at each other for a long moment as words failed Nichole.

"I'm Carole," her mother broke the silence. I didn't know what to expect, but she reached out and gave me a cautious—but warm—hug. If she was surprised or upset, she didn't show it. "It's nice to meet you."

"My name is Amberle, and this is my daughter, Maureen," I said.

Nichole finally managed to find her voice. "This is John and Elizabeth, the other half of my family."

They, too, reached out and gave me reassuring hugs. Immediately, I found myself liking Nichole's mother and in-laws. They were informal, friendly and at the point in life when they quickly wanted to cut through useless pleasantries. I could tell from the twinkles in their eyes that they were accustomed to smiling and laughing.

"Amberle," John repeated my name, making sure he had the pronunciation right. I nodded.

"We've been trying to figure out how to say it for the past couple of months," Elizabeth explained with a smirk. Obviously, they had put two and two together.

"Oh, that reminds me," her husband reached into his walled and drew out a pair of fifty dollar bills and handed them to Carole. "If he were here, I'd owe Ernie some money."

The family laughed at their shared in-joke. I smiled and filed that away as something to ask Nichole about later.

John took my arm and saddled up next to me. He tried to put on a serious face. "In the absence of Nichole's father, this is the part where I tell you if you break my little girl's heart, I have friends who can make you go away."

"You do not," Elizabeth snorted and playfully rolled her eyes. "The last of your mob friends got sent to Saddlebrook in October."

"Is that a prison?" Maureen asked curiously.

"Sort of," Carole laughed. "It's a nursing home."

"Welcome to the family!" John said with a mischievous smile. "You did good, Nichole. She's much prettier than the last one you brought home. I just hope you did a credit check first."

"Oh, stop that," Elizabeth admonished her husband.

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