march 2020 writing challenge day 2: natural response

I loved looking at my husband. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was about him that sent my pulse racing and set off a hallelujah chorus in my love below, but in the eight years that we’d been together – four married – it had never waned. I was grateful for it, particularly as I thought about the stories I’d heard from my married girlfriends about scheduling sex and leading lives that were so busy that they always felt disconnected from their mates. Maybe Hersh and I were still in the honeymoon phase, but I’d thankfully yet to experience any of these growing pains that friends had warned me about before we jumped the broom. Prayerfully we’d never get to that point.

“Earth to Skylar, do you read me?” my friend Dru’s voice broke into my lust-filled thoughts as I watched Hersh pick her son up with one arm, effortlessly tossing him back and forth with Dru’s husband, Hank. Hank Jr. an overactive three year old who could be a holy terror unleashed was getting his entire life, screaming with laughter as he bounced from one man’s arms to the others.

I turned back to face Drucilla – my prettiest friend with the ugliest name – and her sister Ariadne. Ari’s perma-scowl was stretched across her face as usual and I wondered if the bitch ever expressed any other emotion but discontent. She wasn’t simply one of those women who suffered from resting bitch face, she was just always in natural bitch mode. Completely opposite of Dru which honestly made me wonder how they could have been raised in the same house. A compelling argument for nature versus nurture would be studying these two polar opposite women and how they came to be their adult selves. I wasn’t Ari’s biggest fan, but I suffered through her for Dru’s sake.

“Should they be tossing Lil Hank back and forth like that? That doesn’t seem safe or logical,” Ari droned, her nasally twang instantly setting me on edge. I suppressed an eye roll and clamped my lips together so I wouldn’t say anything that would start a back and forth. I’d like Dru handle her sister.

“Now Ari, do you really think my husband and child’s father would engage in any activity that he thought would bring eventual harm to the child that we worked very hard for years to conceive? Damn, do you even know how to have fun?”

“Tossing a child in the air recklessly doesn’t seem like fun to me. My natural response to witnessing something like this between my mate and child would be fear, but I mean do you.”

Dru craned her head to look around the backyard.

“What are you looking for?” Ari asked.

“Your man and child. Oh…they’re both nonexistent? Cool, you let me worry about me and mine while you keep searching for you and yours.”

Ariadne sputtered, offended, before quickly rising from the table and stomping off back into Dru and Hank’s home. Knowing her she was going right into the house to tattle on Dru to their mother who’d undoubtedly appear and bless Dru out for daring to say something to her precious baby. Dru usually teetered on the edge of control when it came to Ari, so I was surprised by this little outburst.

“Everything okay, sis?” I asked as Dru picked up her wine glass and slammed the remainder of the wine slushy that we’d been sipping on.

“I’m so fucking sick of her running commentary on everybody’s lives, but when you call her on her shit, she wants to tuck tail and run off,” Dru huffed.

She wasn’t lying. Ari had it bad for judging the hell out of people. I’d been under that scope of hers more than once in the few years that Dru and I had known one another, which was usually why I avoided coming to any gatherings where I knew she’d be present. But Hersh eagerly accepted Hank’s invite to their cookout before consulting me. This impromptu gathering was the brainchild of the men after one too many bourbons at their lil poker night they had with some of the other fellas.

“One day she’ll learn that nobody cares about her little ‘live from above it all’ ass commentary and she’ll stuff it up her ass,” Drucilla continued, way more fired up for this to have just been about what just transpired. I let her get it all off her chest though, knowing that sooner or later she’d get to the root of what her sister had done that made her go off like this.