Mel comes over for coffee as usual, with updates

I opened the door and Mel stepped into my house.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” Mel said, looking a little tired.

“Long night?” I asked.

She nodded, and I gestured for us to head to the kitchen. Dan worked a sales job in tech, and I worked from home, so it wasn’t uncommon for Mel to drop by for a coffee some mornings to shoot the shit before I got to work on my graphic design gigs. She was always interested in hearing what brand I was designing the packaging for and cared less about my recurring gigs with the local sports teams.

I put a new pod in the Keurig machine, starting up a second cup, and slid the first one that I’d just made over to her. She took it black and after a long sniff of the dark roast, she took a sip and groaned softly. She gave me time to get my own coffee in front of me, and to sit down across from her at my breakfast table, before we spoke.

“Last night was stupid,” she finally said.

“OK,” I said. “Gonna need a little more detail than that.”

She sighed and set her mug down, burying her head in her hands for a moment and working her fingers through her curly brown hair. Rhia had gotten her colouration but Dan’s smoother, straighter hair type, but I knew from plenty of experience that Mel’s hair was fun to play with and grab onto in the middle of sex in a way that Veronica and Rachel didn’t like as much, and they had hair more akin to Dan and Rhia.

“Well, let me just tell you, having a talk with your adult kid about how you and your husband have been pretty-much-swingers since before she was born isn’t the fun you might think it is,” she said. “I wasn’t thrilled at hearing what she’d seen. I feel like a shit mother for not having noticed anything changed after she caught us the first time.”

“Maybe nothing did,” I said. “I mean, Rhia’s always been a quick-thinking kid, Mel. Just like her mother. She saw it, processed it, and didn’t let it affect her relationships with either of you.”

“Yeah, well, the fact that she saw Dan in a threesome with Aaron and Veronica, and heard me taking it in the ass from you, still makes me feel like she should be traumatised even if she was already eighteen,” Melissa said. “Not to mention the fact that she apparently spied on us a few more times. Thanks for not including that in your warning call, by the way.”

“Hey, I was dumping a lot on you guys,” I said. “If I missed a few details, I feel like I did pretty well giving you the gist of things.”

She sighed again and took another swig of her coffee. “That’s fair, I guess,” she mumbled and then shook her head.

“She argued her case pretty hard, didn’t she?” I guessed.

“Until the wee fucking hours of the morning,” Mel said. “I should have made her join the debate team in high school, she’d have won some awards.”

“And then she would have been even more dangerous arguing with you,” I smirked a little.

“Hey, I’m not wrapped around her finger like you or Dan,” Mel said. “That puppy dog look doesn’t work on me.”

‘Which is why I left it to you to tell her no,” I said. “How disappointed was she?”

Mel shook her head, looking into her coffee. “She used every fucking trick in the book. Dan gave up arguing after a couple of hours - honestly, I’m proud of him for lasting that long. Usually, he would have given in or given up with her in twenty minutes. In the end, it really just came down to whether we were hypocrites or not on her side, and whether I could get over the idea of you and her together on mine.” She looked up from her coffee at me. “This wasn’t somehow your idea, right? Like, I love you, Shane, and I don’t think this is what it sounds like it is, but as a mother I have to ask - you didn’t put this idea in her head, right? You weren’t grooming my daughter?”

“God, Mel,” I said, immediately feeling disgusted and betrayed that she would think that, but I wrestled that feeling down enough to acknowledge that I would be asking that question of any other man in Rhia’s life that might have fit into the spot I was in. I took a breath and looked back at her meaningfully. “No. I never talked to her about anything like this, ever. I’ve only ever tried to be a positive person in her life. Hell, I hadn’t even seen or talked to her since her fall performance until we met to hammer out details about the group.”

Melissa looked into my eyes for another long moment before nodding. “OK,” she said, releasing a breath. “I knew it, I’m sorry I had to ask.”

“I’d be asking the same thing of Jack or Aaron if they were where I’m at right now,” I said. “It stung, but I understand.”

“Thank you,” she said, then drained her cup. “I told her OK, she can do it.”

I blinked a few times. “I’m… sorry, what? You said yes?”

“I said yes, Shane,” Mel said. “To her getting to play the Game the same way we do. And I told her all the bloody fucking risks involved with that. About how it almost broke up Jack and Veronica early on, and how Aaron and Rachel had such a hard relationship for a while even if they ended up happy. And I told her the truth about how Dan and I weren’t dating when I got pregnant.”

“You didn’t tell her about the DNA test though, did you?” I asked.

“No,” Mel shook her head. “That would have been… maybe too much. She did an ancestry DNA test last year anyway - at the time she said she was just curious, but now I realise she was probably checking if Dan wasn’t her father. Obviously, he was, but we knew that already.”

I nodded. The question at the time Mel had gotten pregnant was whether it was Dan, me or Jack. That had been a tough few months before we could confirm it. Mel had made it clear she wasn’t getting an abortion. That was the incident that almost broke up Jack and Veronica. When the paternity test came back as Dan, they’d gotten together and stayed together and I’d been thrilled for them.

“Still,” I said. “This is…”

“Her choice,” Mel said. “I know she’s been sexually active. Hell, at her age, so was I even before The Game. We all were. And she thinks that she, Elyse and Tori will only get closer if it happens, and she admits that she was only hoping and guessing about the guys being the right fit, but had figured it might just be a summer fling sort of situation.”

“But what about me and her, Mel?” I asked. “That’s a line that can’t be uncrossed.”

Melissa pushed her coffee mug aside and reached across the table, taking my hands in hers. “You’re a fantastic lover, probably my dearest friend, and someone she trusts implicitly to the point of feeling safe wanting you part of this fantasy she’s built up. You’re also single, so there isn’t any complication like that, and I feel like I’d be robbing you of what can only be one fucking wild experience if all three of them actually do want to fuck. And I’d be robbing her of doing this with you as a safety net because I know if she panics or decides to back out you won’t pressure her or judge her.”

“Shit,” I said. “Mel, I- You’re sure? For real? Because any hesitation for you and Dan means I want to pull the fucking ripcord here.”

“No hesitation,” Mel shook her head. “Well, I mean, lots of hesitation getting to this point, but not after. Dan keeps reminding me what we were like at her age, and how we raised her to think for herself and trust her gut judgement.”

I took a breath. “Fuck,” I said.

“Fuck,” she replied, nodding.

“I’m going to need to talk to her,” I said. “I don’t know what she’s expecting, but you know it’s not just an on-off switch.”

“I told her, but it’ll help for her to hear it from you,” Mel said. “This is her choice, and if she doesn’t listen to you and rushes it and makes things weird with her friends? Well, she’s been warned of the risks.”

“OK,” I said, leaning back in my chair and taking a big, long breath. “Fuck,” I said again.

“Yep,” Mel smirked. “You will be.”

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