"What about the dominatrix?" I asked. "That lasted a while."
"Thedominatrix?" Tiel repeated. "No, forget the cat, I want to hear aboutthat."
Riley shrugged as he dug into his cereal. "Met a woman at a deli. Turned out she was a dominatrix. Who knew?" He pointed his spoon at Tiel. "I learned a lot, but it wasn't my scene."
Tiel laughed as she smeared cream cheese over a chunk of bagel. "All for the research?"
Riley stared at his bowl, thinking before he replied, "It was cool at first, but like I said…not my scene."
"You can't leave it at that," Tiel said. "Come on. This is a safe space. We're in the trust tree here."
I glanced to Tiel. "Is that what we're calling this place now?"
She jerked a shoulder, a smile lifting her eyes. "That's what I'm calling it, yeah."
Riley refilled his cereal, and waved his spoon at Tiel again. "Mila came at me with a big purple strap-on, told me to suck her dick, and the only thing I could think of was Shannon. So that was traumatic. I safe-worded my ass right out of there, and never went back." He frowned and glanced away. "Oh, shit, I'm not supposed to say her name."
He knocked his fist against his forehead several times while Tiel layered both hands over her mouth to keep from laughing.
"Trust tree," I said. "It stays in the trust tree."
Riley glanced up with a quick nod and returned to his breakfast. "Yeah, well, she…Ma'am…texts me every now and then. Invites me to play. But…she has too many rules and obviously, I never remembered them, and that experience reminded me that I don't enjoy having my ass whipped. I have enough problems without pretending to like ritualistic beatings."
"This has been really informative," Tiel murmured. "You think you know someone, and then… Are you okay? I feel like I should hug you now."
"Nah, it's all good. When's the wedding?" Riley asked around another mouthful of cereal. He shot a glance at Tiel. "You should know we all get into a lot of trouble at weddings. Epic trouble."
I pushed away from the table to rinse out the smoothie jar. "I think you're exaggerating," I groaned from the sink.
"And I think I'm holding the chips on more wedding night shenanigans than you can imagine," Riley said. "You're kidding yourself if you think shenanigans won't go down at your wedding. Fixing old houses and fucking up shit at weddings. It's what the Walsh kids do."
Growing up in a loud, meddlesome family of six, and then choosing to work with that same family, I'd always leaned toward keeping what personal information I had left to myself. It was never about secrecy, rather the persistent need to designate something as my own. When so much existed under the umbrella of communal property, that which only I owned was treasured.
And for the past year, the treasure was Tiel.
Keeping her to myself was entirely for my benefit. She joined my brother Matt's wife, Lauren, and my brother Patrick's girlfriend, Andy, for brunch sometimes, and had drinks with my sister Shannon when their schedules aligned, and Riley begged for her homemade Greek meatballs weekly, but she was stillmine. She didn't belong to all of us the way Lauren or Andy or Matt's marathon buddy, Nick, did, and I was selfish enough to prefer that.
But the status quo was going to change. Marriage meant change, and deep down I knew I wanted the family I made with Tiel to be part of this bigger, messier, noisier family, too. However, I still needed to protect her from the thundering herd of well-dressed beasts known as my siblings.
I girded myself for this change as we reached the tail end of our Monday morning status meeting. We did this every week: everyone around the table in our Beacon Hill office's attic conference room, all our sustainable preservation projects on the table for review, and without fail, at least ten minutes devolved into family talk.
It was go time.
"Tiel and I are getting married," I announced.
I smiled to myself while I fished my phone from my suit coat pocket. I tapped the screen, and an image of Tiel and me appeared. It still seemed unbelievable that I was going to marry this girl.
Everyone crowded around me, offering handshakes and hugs, congratulations and quips about Tiel making an honest man out of me. But Shannon was still seated, watching while Andy and my brothers offered their well wishes.
I looked up and met Shannon's eyes across the table, and I couldn't believe she was still angry at me for taking time away from the office, and that she still held Tiel responsible for that sabbatical. She couldn't accept that I'd needed the time to get my shit in order, that I'd needed to make sense of my life, that I'd needed to be really fucking alone for a little while. She couldn't comprehend that leaving was aboutme, not about Tiel, not about her.
"Shannon?"
Her expression shifted into a perfect mask of hollow happiness. It was almost humorous how hard she worked at pretending she wasn't completely fucked up. It was no secret that Something Happened—something more than being pissed at me for falling off the face of the earth for a couple of months—but every time someone asked, Shannon blinked, smiled, and rattled off assorted details about difficult negotiations or jogging some extra miles. She was laboring under the assumption that we hadn't noticed her clothes hanging off her small frame, or couldn't see deep bags under her eyes or the lonely cocktail of sadness, anger, and regret radiating from her.
"Congratulations!" she said eventually, rounding the table to wrap me in a bony hug. She felt like she was trying to disappear. "Have you set a date yet?"
I dropped my hand to her shoulder, swallowing my annoyance, and shook my head. I wanted her to freak out the way she did when Matt got engaged, and tackle Tiel and me in a screaming hug, and then yell at us for making her cry. I didn't want the boss lady right now.
