Naked - Megan Hart Mills & Boon Spice

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brought with her my two stepsisters, Cindy and Stacy, both a year or so older than me. My mom stayed steadfastly single, rarely even dating. My parents were cordial to one another as they shared me, neither ever making me choose, and if there was always a little bit of tension with my dad over my place in his new household, it was made up for by my mother’s complete indulgence in me. We were best friends, my mom and I.

      I had my first “real” boyfriend at fourteen, gave my first hand job a year later. Most of my friends had lost their virginity by the time we were sixteen, but I waited another year before I gave it up in my boyfriend’s basement at a graduation party for his older brother. I wasn’t scarred by screwing him, even though we broke up shortly after that. I knew enough to use a condom and was smart enough to go all the way with a guy who’d already proved himself adept at getting me off. It was as fine a first time as I could ask for.

      My life changed my senior year of high school. My mom, who favored f lowing gypsy skirts and long, unbound hair, had always been a reader, but her choices of material had changed over the past year from Clive Barker and Margaret Atwood to thick, leather-bound copies of the Tanakh and journals on Jewish commentary. I knew about Judaism, though we’d never practiced anything more religious than spinning the dreidel. But now…well, they say there’s nothing like the enthusiasm of a convert. My mother, born and raised Jewish, wasn’t technically a convert, but she was definitely enthusiastic.

      Suddenly, most of what we’d done together as a family disappeared, tossed out in the garbage along with an entire pantry of food she deemed unfit to eat. She put away half her dishes to keep them unused for a year, the time it would take to make them kosher again. The others she koshered by pouring boiling water over them, and maintaining a completely meat-free house.

      Suddenly we were Jewish and vegetarian. My mom had always been a devout carnivore. The Friday-night dinners I could’ve dealt with. The candle lighting, the baking of challah. But giving up cheeseburgers? No way.

      I moved out to live with my dad and Marjorie, who took me in, but not quite without making it seem as though I were a burden. It was her duty, I heard her whisper to a girlfriend once, when they were gathered for coffee. Her Christian duty. It bothered her more that I hadn’t been baptized than the fact I was black—which was good, because there was always the chance I might accept Jesus Christ as my savior, but I could never change the color of my skin.

      I loved my dad and didn’t mind having to share a bathroom with my stepsisters, or having a small, dank bedroom in the basement. I didn’t mind the prayers before meals, because at least they were giving me plenty of bacon, ohhh, bacon. Every morning, bacon and eggs. I didn’t even mind church so much, because the altar boys were cute.

      My mother didn’t like any of this, but caught up in her own journey, she let a lot of things slide. So long as I was with her for the holidays she wanted to celebrate, she didn’t mind what I was doing the rest of the time. If I was there to light the menorah, she was all right with me going home to my dad’s to stuff the stockings. I was smart enough not to tell her about the youth group Marjorie encouraged me to join, or how my dad had been hinting that it might be a good idea for me to get baptized.

      I escaped salvation by heading off to college. Where I met Patrick my sophomore year. He lived in my dorm, and the first time he smiled at me, I imprinted on him like a duckling. Tall, fair-haired, ruddy-cheeked…and Catholic. As in can-name-all-the-martyred-saints Catholic. I was smitten.

      I like to think of life as an infinite jigsaw puzzle with so many pieces that no matter how many you fit together, the picture’s never finished. Meeting Patrick was the culmination of a hundred thousand choices. He was the end of only one path, but it was the one I took. No matter how it ended, he was the choice I made, and while I’d always felt I would never waste time in regretting it, I was beginning to think I might.

      I thought I knew what love was with a handsome boyfriend who was a very good kisser. I thought I knew what it was for three years, all through college, even when all my friends were fucking like bunnies and the sheen of chastity was wearing off. Love is patient, love is kind, right? Love forgives all things?

      That’s what I believed then. I wasn’t so sure now.

      Our senior year, Patrick got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, with a princess-cut diamond ring in one hand and a bouquet of twelve red roses in the other. We set a date. We planned a wedding.

      And two weeks before we were due to walk down the aisle at my father’s church, I found out Patrick had been lying to me all along.

      I hadn’t been raised stupid, but I’d sure ended up feeling dumb.

      The week passed. I heard the sound of voices as I passed Alex’s apartment, and I saw his car come and go, but I didn’t see him. I ended up watching Pride and Prejudice alone and somehow blaming Patrick for that.

      The week before Christmas is busy for most people, even those who don’t celebrate the holiday, and I had a to-do list as long as anyone’s. I hadn’t put up a tree, but I had bought presents. I’d be spending the day with my dad and his family, though my brothers and their wives and children weren’t going to be there. I’d also picked up a slew of last-minute design jobs for after-Christmas sales promotions, and a few portrait sessions for friends looking for down-to-the-wire stocking gifts for friends and relatives.

      The little girl in my camera’s viewfinder didn’t have wings, but she was a little angel. Four years old, mop of curly black hair, stubborn little rosebud mouth and a pair of crossed arms. A tiny, badass version of Shirley Temple, including the dress with the bow at the waist.

      “No! No, no, no!” She stamped her foot. She pouted. She glared.

      “Pippa. Sweetie. Smile for the picture, please?”

      Pippa looked at her daddy Steven and stamped her foot again. “I don’t like this dress! I don’t like this headband!”

      She tore the bow from her hair and threw it on the ground, and to make sure we all knew just how much she hated it, stepped on it with her patent leather shoes.

      “I blame you,” Pippa’s other daddy, Devon, told me.

      I raised a brow. “Gee, thanks.”

      Devon laughed as Steven grabbed up the bow and tried to salvage the look. “She’s stubborn, that’s all. A lot like you.”

      “Pippa, princess, please—”

      “Oh, and her daddy spoiling her has nothing to do with any of that?” I murmured, my attention focused on the scene playing out in front of me. Point and shoot. Click. I captured the battle between father and child with a press of one finger.

      “Don’t take pictures of this!” Steven demanded.

      Pippa, laughing, dodged his grasp and ran around the studio. Her shoes pounded the old wooden boards, the beat of freedom. She ran fast, that little girl. Just as I always had.

      Devon laughed and sat back, shaking his head. I snapped picture after picture. Pippa running. Steven grabbing her up, dangling her upside down, her pretty dress flipping up to show the rumba panties beneath, and her springy curls sweeping the floor. Daddy and daughter snuggling close. Then, two daddies with their little girl, the love among them a visible, tangible thing I didn’t control or edit, but merely captured.

      “Pippa, do it for Daddy,” Steven said. “I want a pretty picture of you to give Nanny and Poppa.”

      That rosebud mouth pursed again and the small, fine brows furrowed, but at last Pippa gave a sigh better suited to a little old lady. “Oh, okay. Fine.”

      He settled her on the upturned wooden crate and arranged her hair and dress, then stepped back. I framed the shot and took it. Perfect. But even as I tilted the camera to show the digital image to Devon, I knew this wasn’t the one I’d tweak and polish to give them for their wall.

      Small arms hugged my knees and I looked into an upturned face. “Lemme see, Livia! Lemme see the pitcher.”

      I knelt beside the little

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