Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 78043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Thank God for small favors.
“Would I be any less of a Dom if I said I wasn’t sure how to have that conversation?” I’d never run into anything like that online, so I didn’t even have a fictional frame of reference.
“No.” Dean looked like he wanted to bang his head against the table, but I saved him by finally bringing over his coffee. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Sitting across from him, I thought about the situation. “There’s a good argument for me having to be the one to handle that conversation since I’m head Dom. He’s probably already told her that, so she might be expecting it.”
Dean looked like he was trying to crawl into his cup and just sighed. It was definitely him agreeing with me, but I’d have rather been wrong.
“Yeah, he’s no doubt told her that.” It was Joel. Of course he had. “Well, on the bright side he’s proud of us and he thinks we’re doing a good job.”
Setting his coffee down, Dean frowned as he started trying to find the bright side. “So she’s probably happy with us too. She’s not pissed or weirded out about what we’re doing.”
Happy moms were better than pissed ones any day.
“We just have to pretend it’s a perfectly normal conversation and not sound like we’re panicking. Moms can smell fear and that’ll make it look like we’re guilty of something.” I sounded like a conspiracy theory nut, but I felt better when Dean went still and then groaned.
Yep.
“She’ll think we’re not comfortable with our relationships or something like that.” Dean let out a long breath and leaned over to look in his cup. “Then she’ll try to be helpful because that’s what Joel would do.”
God.
“No one wants that.” That was a hard no from me. “So we sound confident. We’re good Doms. He’s a good sub. We’re exploring our relationships in safe ways and we’re…we’re communicating well at every step. She’ll like that.”
Nodding, Dean sat straighter. “Yeah, that’ll make her happy. She’ll also like that we’re learning about what makes us feel special. With how often Joel uses that word, she has to like it too.”
Another very good point.
We should probably be taking notes.
“Or at the very least, she’ll like that we’re using his language and that we’re really listening to him. Mirroring or something. Right? That’s what it’s called?” I hadn’t taken nearly enough psychology classes to handle Joel’s family.
I was a fucking finance and econ double major…I didn’t have a frame of reference for any of it aside from movies and TV.
Neither of which had a lot of healthy relationships to show as good examples for how to behave.
“We can do this.” Dean’s pep talk seemed more for him than for me, but I nodded along anyway. “We just need to sound calm and confident.”
“Um, and we actually need to have answers for her.” We couldn’t forget that part because there was no way in hell that she would. “What are we going to tell her?”
“Fuck.” Going back to staring at his half-empty cup, Dean took another deep breath. “I forgot that part.”
Smiling wouldn’t have helped at the moment but he was so fucking cute. “That’s okay. It’s a lot to process.”
And neither of us had the same relationships with our families that Joel seemed to have with his. Eventually I’d tell mine what we were up to, but I’d never talked about anyone else I was dating, so I wasn’t going to rush.
Dean seemed to be in the same camp, so we were both out of our league when it came to helpful family that wanted to talk out weird problems. “I’m not sure if I’m a good enough actor to pretend all this is normal for a relationship…the talking to parents part, not the actual dating part.”
That was the point where I couldn’t hold back how funny it was, but Dean just waved his hand at me when I chuckled.
“Sorry.” Kind of. “The whole situation is just nuts.”
I could handle it, though.
I was their Dom and that meant they needed me to be strong.
“Okay, Joel is confused when he tries to figure out how the rest of the world sees things but he’s never angry or upset. She’s probably the same way. If something hits a boundary for us, we just explain their family approaches things differently than we’re used to.” We could do that…and I was pretty sure it would make sense to them.
“Boundaries are reasonable no matter how weird a family is.” Dean seemed like that was going to be something he kept at the front of his head because he repeated it two more times before nodding to himself.
When he wound down a bit, I nodded. “Yes, and Joel understands that even if the why doesn’t always get through to him. Hell, she talked him down from the dirty clothes apocalypse and she didn’t hate me for that.”