My ship would not be the one sinking!
SowhatI’d made her an orgasm machine for the express purpose of fucking her tits? She had banging tits! It was only sensible to worship at their altar.
“What about Eoghan?” Savannah huffed when she stabbed herself and not the wool or whatever disaster she attempted to make for one of my poor sisters-in-law. “And Dec?”
“Eoghan was very quiet. That was probably for the best. Things were hectic with five boys in the house at that point?—”
“No shit, Ma.”
“Aidan and Brennan helped a lot?—”
“Hita lot.”
“They didn’t!”
“They did. Knuckle sandwiches in exchange for peace and quiet.”
Ma scowled over the shawl she crocheted. “You never said.”
“I’m not a snitch! And when I cried—” My tone turned pointed. “—you called me acrybaby.”
Though her cheeks pinkened at my wry tone, she harrumphed. “Declan was forever in the coloring books?—”
“Until Da said they were for girls and threw them out?—”
“Conor, you’re aggravating me.”
I rolled my eyes. “The truth stings.”
“Conor!”
“Ma!”
It wasn’t often that I raised my voice, but I wasn’t about to let her paint a fairytale story about our upbringing in my own goddamn home. Some of it had been fun, some of it had fucking sucked, and some of it was downright brutal.
I wasn’t complaining about this fact of life. But letting her spin her BS wouldn’t serve anyone.
“It wasn’t so bad, was it?” She sounded wistful and I knew she was thinking about the old days. The oldgooddays. At least, in her mind.
“Not all the time.”
She nibbled on her bottom lip and nodded, like she knew I conceded for her sake.
“Well, that conversation became gloomy hella fast,” Jen mocked with a crisp turn of a page in her magazine.
Instead of answering, I stepped into the room and plunked myself beside Ma. I hadn’t meant to give her a hard time, so the least I could do was sit next to her.Beavis did me a solid by snuggling up to her, and she cooed at him in delight.
Then, without looking at me, she passed me a skein of yarn, and my fingers did the talking as I began untangling it for her.
Man, it’d been years since I’d done this, but muscle memory pulled most of the slack.
“So, what are we making?”
“Can’t tell,” Savannah muttered, then stuck her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated.
“Something unrecognizable by the looks of it,” Jen taunted.
“Fuck off and fuck you,” Savannah countered, saccharin sweet.
