Starting Over by Mia Malone

Chapter Nineteen

Normal

Tony

“No one will yell at her, Mom,” Tony said and rolled his eyes. “Just tell her to get her ass down here.”

His mom promised to try to convince Emma, and he reiterated his assurance that everyone would behave before they hung up.

A couple of weeks had passed, but Emma still stayed with Katie and kept to herself. Tony spent time with her, and Rosie had visited a couple of times without him. Addie had been there, and Finn, but no one else. It was getting ridiculous because the plastic surgeon Rosie’s father had called in had done a fucking fantastic job. The scar was noticeable, but she didn’t look bad and absolutely not as hideous as she seemed to think herself.

And now they were at the Roadhouse, and Tony hoped his mother could coax Emma into joining them for a little while. The place wasn’t packed with people, but most of the inner circle was there, and the mood was relaxed and easy like it usually was. Rosie was laughing with Addie about something, and the way her hair moved when she threw her head back made him decide that a kiss or two were entirely in order, so he made his way over to them.

He reached them at the bar just in time to hear Addie.

“You must be desperate for normal, Rosie.”

Rosie frowned and said slowly, “I can’t say that I am.”

“Really?” Addie said. “It hasn’t been too much?”

Tony leaned on the bar, waiting to see how this discussion would unfold because between the two of them, it really could go anywhere.

“No,” Rosie said. “Not at all, actually. I like being a bit adventurous.” She grinned and added, “Like it a lot, actually.”

“Okay,” Addie said, looking doubtful. “I was so relieved when things settled down into a daily lull. There’s nothing wrong with boring the way I see it.”

Rosie put her glass down, and Tony had to press his lips together when he saw the look on her face. They were clearly not talking about the same thing, but he would absolutely not tell them that.

“I guess it becomes a little less vigorous after some time together,” Rosie said and gave Tony a glance which shared clearly that he’d better stay vigorous for the foreseeable future.

“Vigor – Rosie, what are you talking about?”

“Normal?” Rosie said. “Or, what are you talking about?”

“Yeah, Rosie, here’s a piece of information for you,” Coop said, and drawled his words in a way that actually was kind of funny if one weren’t Rosie, “For those of us who actually don’t think about sex all the time, normal probably means a life where there’s no drama. You know? Where no one is an asshole, and no one gets hurt or worse.”

Rosie’s eyes widened, but she raised her chin and put a hand on her hip.

“Cooper, honey,” she said haughtily. “I find it incredibly sad that you live a life where it’s not normal to think about sex all the time.”

Tony couldn’t stop his laughter then, and when Finn joined them, it turned slightly hysterical. Hilt kept his cool, though, put a beer in front of Finn, and said blandly, “Here you go. Unless you want something stronger to beat back the daily lull?”

By then, even Addie was laughing, so her explanation wasn’t entirely clear, but Finn finally got it.

“Boring lull, my ass,” he muttered. “I’m so fucking vigorous I might give myself a hernia.”

This made another burst of laughter erupt, and the mood continued to be great through the evening.

Until Rosie mentioned that she would start looking for a job.

Tony told her she didn’t have to since she was doing stuff on behalf of Cascadia. Coop chimed in and said they’d put her on the payroll if she gave Dagger whatever information he needed.

“You’re not paying me for doing nothing,” Rosie said.

“You’re doing plenty,” Tony said. “Your phone is busier than mine some days, babe.”

“It’s not the same.”

“If you don’t want to work for Cascadia, then just say so,” he said with a sigh.

“I’m trying to explain to you that I’m not working for Cascadia as it is, so I don’t know what to tell you,” she snapped back at him. “If someone wants to call me and talk about something, then that’s a social call, and I won’t charge for –” She clamped her mouth shut, inhaled, and said with forced civility, “I’m not going to have a fight with you about this in front of the whole club.”

“It’s a fraction of the club,” he said

“Tony, for fuck’s sake.”

He couldn’t hold a grin back when she used his favorite expression for when she did something he considered a little bit ridiculous.

“Okay. Go find yourself a job then,” he said magnanimously and added an eye roll just for good measure.

It wasn’t as if she needed his permission to work or not work, so why the hell they were fighting about it, he did not know.

“Are you done?” Eye asked, didn’t wait for a reply, and said slowly, “I have an idea.”

Somehow, the discussion swiftly turned into a weird exchange of half sentences between Rosie and Eye where they seemed to finish in midair or possibly finish each other’s thoughts. The only word he recognized was probiotics, which he’d heard about but never seen a need to delve deeper into. Rosie apparently had.

If he got it right, this was what both she and Eye had done research on, but then they started using words like acidophilus and possibly something called bacillus, which sounded gross.

And kefir. Christ, they spent fifteen whole minutes discussing something called kefir.

“Okay,” Rosie said. “I’ll go with you to take a look.”

“Huh?” Tony said.

Take a look at what? The lacto-something kefir, whatever that was?

Rosie grinned and explained that Joe, a Cascadia member, had talked to Eye about the small dairy farm he ran. It had been organic for a few years, and Joe had experimented quite successfully with products for specialty stores and restaurants. Now they would look into producing probiotic-enhanced kefir, which apparently was some kind of yogurt from eastern Europe or Russia.

“Seemed like something the club might want to invest in,” Eye said.

“If it’s as promising as it sounds, I might invest too,” Rosie said. “Let’s see once we’ve been there to talk to Joe.”

“I thought you worked at the University, Eye,” Finn said.

“Wanted to do something like this for years, but I don’t have enough experience. Rosie does, so if she’s interested, we can make it work. Won’t be a huge enterprise, but a good one.”

“We’ll make it work,” Rosie said calmly.

Tony leaned down and brushed his mouth over hers gently, mostly because she looked so happy.

“I guess you found a job,” he said.

“I guess I did,” she replied. “We’ll need someone to sort out some of the logistics and a few other things. Charlie can sort out the marketing for us once we’re ready for it. We’ll figure it out.”

“Charlie is in marketing?” Hilt asked and chuckled. “Boy, was I wrong.”

“You thought she was a kindergarten teacher,” Rosie said. “Everyone does for some reason.”

“Nothing wrong with being a kindergarten teacher,” Hilt said but winced since it had indeed been his guess.

“Absolutely not,” Rosie said. “Patience as angels is what they have, so it’s quite the opposite as far as I’m concerned. Charlie is a marketing executive, though.”

“Isn’t she a bit young for that?”

“She’s clever as fuck in case you haven’t noticed,” Tony said.

“And pretty.” Hilt grinned and added, “Wonder which of the boys who will –”

Tony raised a hand and glared at him.

“Don’t.”

“Black has one more son,” Finn said with a grin.

“Don’t,” Tony repeated, not at all prepared to discuss Lex fucking Hagen in any context that involved Rosie’s pretty daughter.

***

Rosie

After my discussion with Eye, I was full of happy energy and was laughing with Momo and Addie when they both suddenly trailed off. I turned and came face to face with Emma. She didn’t look at me, though.

“I’m so sorry, Momo,” she said quietly.

It looked like she meant it, and it must have taken quite a bit of courage for her to walk into the Roadhouse, knowing that everyone felt sorry for her but still was a little pissed off too.

“Me too,” Momo replied, leaned in closer, and slid a hand over the thin bandage covering her wound. “They say you’ll have a scar.”

“Yeah,” Emma said, and there was a world of pain in that sighed-out word.

“Emma, remember back in high school?” Momo said. “You were homecoming queen.”

Emma’s eyes filled with tears, and she nodded but didn’t answer.

“There wasn’t even a vote because no one else was nominated,” Momo went on. “We all knew it’d be you.”

“Mo,” she said brokenly, and I wondered why Momo brought up that memory.

“You were pretty, Emma,” Momo said, cleared her throat, and straightened her back. “God, you were so pretty, but that wasn’t why we all knew it would be you. You were like a sparkling diamond, happy and giggly but sweet in a way that made everyone around you feel fucking great. Christ, you were smarter than most of us too and always so goddamned curious about everything.” She chuckled and shook her head slowly. “Always so nosy but in a good way, as if you cared, and it made everyone feel like they mattered.” Then she speared Emma with a glare so determined I almost took a step back. “It was never because of how you looked, Emma. It was because of that sparkle.”

Oh, God.

I loved Momo so much, but I’d never loved her more than in that exact second when she used their memories and history to show Emma that the scar on her face didn’t define her.

“I don’t know what to say,” Emma said.

“Just stating the facts as I see them,” Momo said calmly. “And, Emma, I didn’t get pissed off because you called me fat. I know who I am, and I like who I am, so I don’t give a fuck. I don’t know what happened, but over the years, that bright, wonderful light faded away, and you’ve become a petty woman who puts people down. You lost the sparkle, and that pissed me off.” She paused and added with a crooked grin, “It was pretty fucking fantastic, so I miss it and wish you’d find it again.”

“When did you become so wise, Momo?” Emma asked, and she meant it as a joke, but it sounded a little sad.

“I grew up,” Momo shot back. “Perhaps it’s time you did too?”

“Yeah,” Emma said with a soft sigh. “It probably is. Are we okay again, Mo?”

“Sure we are,” Momo said but added sternly, “As long as you don’t bring up Rosie’s thighs again.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out because I also knew who I was and liked who I was, but Emma’s words still stung.

“I won’t,” Emma said quietly.

“Good,” Momo said. “Because your brother sure seems to like being between them.”

Both Emma and I squealed loudly, but when Momo started laughing, we did too.

My eyes met Tony’s across the room, and his face softened, but then Momo said something about becoming an elderly prude. I turned back to find that Addie and Angelica had joined the group and had taken an immediate offense to the label elderly.

We debated this for a while and agreed that elderly was a concept that did not apply to a group of women who might have passed fifty but still felt they were in their prime.

Then Katie leaned in and shared that it was perfectly possible to be a lot older than we were and still not feel one bit elderly.

“Damn right,” Milo said and put a glass in Emma’s hand. “Drink.”

“Milo, I –”

“Small sip to remind yourself of who you are. It isn’t the homebrewed shit you apparently gobbled down as a teenager, but it’s wine, and it’s white, so it’ll have to do.”

They shared a long look, but Emma clearly didn’t have a chance against the tall, determined man who had a glint in his eyes that was more than a little wild, and she raised the glass slowly. The mood became happy and boisterous again, and Emma didn’t stay for much longer, but now she’d at least been to the Roadhouse for the first time since the incident. She would come back.

I ended up by the bar next to Addie and Finn, who said something about boring lulls and how he would show her what normal was about in his world when they got back home.

“We should do something that actually is normal,” I said when we stopped laughing. “Something everyone does.”

“We’ll go hiking,” Addie said.

“Yes!” I exclaimed. “That sounds like fun.”

Tony shook his head silently.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Your kind of hiking means putting a tent up fifty steps away from the car. Her kind of hiking means walking around for a week with no gear at all.”

“Really?” I asked.

I knew about Addie’s time in Alaska and how she’d crossed a mountain on her own when her ex’s family chased her, but she’d surely prefer to –

“He has a point,” Addie said. “Milo and I could go on our own for a few days and then join you at a campground somewhere?”

“I could actually walk about a hundred steps from the parking lot,” I said with a grin. “Let’s find dates that work for everyone.”

It was late when Tony and I returned home, and I was a little bit tipsy but a lot happy.

“Soo,” I drawled. “Are we going to have a normal life now?”

I’d made air quotes around the word normal, and he started walking toward me with a grin.

“Fuck no,” he said in a low rumbly voice that shot right through me.

“That’s good,” I said, reached into a drawer where I kept my underwear and a few other items. “Because I have these, and we haven’t used them.”

His eyes went from sweet chocolate to dark intensity immediately.

“Nipple clamps,” he said.

“With little skulls,” I said, aiming for haughty, but it was mostly breathy and ended on a giggle. “I’m in love with a biker president after all.”

He burst out laughing, and then we inaugurated the small, intricately carved clamps, and I liked them so much we decided to start a collection.