Neighbors With Benefits: Chapter 59

Aiden insisted on hosting Thanksgiving. Not only did he love cooking for people, but he wanted to finally introduce me to his mom and sister.

“Are you nervous?” Cat asked me as we walked next door, carrying two dishes. “To meet them?”

“Yes of course I’m nervous!” I hissed at her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Are you guys going to tell them… everything?” she asked carefully. “Or do they think you and Aiden are a couple? Just the two of you?”

“They don’t know yet,” I replied. “I want Aiden to tell them, but he’s nervous.”

“I’d be nervous,” Cat muttered. “This is kind of a big deal.”

We let ourselves in, and a cheer went up among the guys. Bash greeted us with hugs, and Dante gave us each a simple fist-bump. That was normal for him though, even without Aiden’s mom and sister being there.

“You must be the wonderful Jasper Barnes!” said a woman holding two glasses of wine. “Come here and give me a hug. I’ve heard so much about you, I feel like you’re my own daughter!”

“Strong start,” Cat whispered to me.

I hugged her and said, “It’s great to meet you, Mrs. Rush.”

“My name,” she clarified, “is Tabitha, and I will insist you call me that. Here.” She handed a glass of wine to me, and another to Cat.

“I like her,” Cat said with a big grin.

I met Aiden’s sister, Amy, next. She was tall and waifish, with short-cut dark hair and black-framed glasses. She wasn’t as friendly as Tabitha, but she still greeted me like I was family.

“My brother is quite taken with you,” she said.

“I’m taken with him,” I replied. “I’m going to see if he needs any help in the kitchen.”

Aiden was pulling the turkey out of the oven. I helped him move the baking tray to the counter, and then we wrapped the entire thing in aluminum foil.

“Now it rests for twenty minutes,” he said. “You brought the mashed potatoes?”

“Freshly mashed!” I replied, kissing him on the cheek. “Your mom loves me.”

“You’re a lovable woman.”

“Are you still nervous?”

He gave me a look that told me everything.

“She loves you,” I said, rubbing his back. “She’ll support you no matter what.”

“Or she’ll disown you,” Dante muttered, sticking a finger into my dish of mashed potatoes and licking it off.

I smacked him on the arm. “We’re trying to be positive right now!”

“And I’m just being realistic,” he said. “You might want to feel her out a little before you drop a bomb on her at a major holiday.”

“We’ll see,” Aiden said, but I could see the conflict swirling in his eyes.

I took my wine back out into the living room, where Bash was flipping through the TV channels. “Trying to find the football game?” I asked.

“Dante refuses to watch the Cowboys,” Bash explained. “So I’m trying to find something else to put on in the background.”

“Stop! Right there!” Cat suddenly said. “That’s The Mummy. Let’s watch that.”

Amy swirled wine around in her glass and sighed happily. “This movie was very important to my teenage development.”

Cat barked a laugh. “I’ll say. Seeing this movie in theaters was when I had my bisexual awakening.”

Amy gave her a sideways glance. “Same. When I realized I couldn’t decide who I was attracted to more, Brendan Fraser or Rachel Weisz, I knew.”

Cat turned to face her directly. “Yes! I spent months fantasizing about both of them. The first girl I dated looked like her, too.” Cat leaned in a little closer. “Kind of like, you actually.”

I gawked at them from the other side of the room. Were they hitting it off?

“The answer, by the way, is Rachel Weisz,” Amy said. “That’s who I would choose. But only barely.”

Cat was grinning. “I would swim through a river of her piss just to see where it came from.”

“Cat!” I hissed.

But Amy was covering her mouth to keep from laughing so hard. Cat reached out and touched her arm, saying, “Sorry, I don’t really have a filter.”

“I can tell,” Amy said.

Aiden came marching out of the kitchen. “Wait a second. Amy? You’re bisexual?”

“I consider myself pansexual,” she replied. “But yes.”

“I never knew this! You never told me!”

Amy raised an eyebrow. “Why on earth would I tell my baby brother that?”

Aiden turned to his mom. “Did you know about this?”

“Of course I did,” she replied bluntly. “She made it obvious since the second grade. I’m surprised you didn’t know. Her friend Nelly was always at our house in high school.”

“He was too busy ogling Nelly,” Amy said with a smile, “to realize what we were doing.”

“You dated Nelly?” Aiden demanded. “I had a huge crush on her!”

“I know. That’s what made it so funny.”

Amy and Cat fell apart into laughter, leaning on each other while enjoying Aiden’s shocked incredulity. I shared a look with Dante, who was laughing too. We were never going to let him live this down.

“Hear me out,” Cat told Amy. “Why choose between them? The obvious solution is to have a throuple with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz.”

She glanced at me for a heartbeat. Why was she looking at me?

“That might be the best throuple in the world,” Amy agreed.

Tabitha stepped up beside me and shook her head. “Now that’s something I can’t wrap my head around. Throuples? Those would never work. Women get too jealous. And men don’t like sharing their toys. Just pick somebody! I don’t understand why everyone has to be so different nowadays.”

“I… had better go check on the turkey,” Aiden said curtly.

I watched him go back into the kitchen. Bash gave me a pained look, and even Dante seemed to wince.

That’s when I realized what Cat was doing. She mentioned the throuple as a way of broaching the polyamorous subject with Tabitha. An innocent way to see how Aiden’s mom felt about the whole thing. And it had worked.

The only problem was her answer.