Chapter Text
“Shoot him! What are you waiting for?!” Ashlyn’s excited voice boomed through the family room of the big old house as she pointed desperately at the 55” television screen she and her wife were focused intently on. The keeper was perched on the coffee table, her competitiveness making it hard to sit calmly on the couch behind like her beautiful brunette.
‘Call of Duty’ was one of the many video games the Krieger family had played together, off and on, for over 20 years. The only game that was more popular in their world was FIFA. Once they had the obligatory and important conversation with their young kids about guns and war and how video games were not even remotely like the real thing, both Ali and Ashlyn had enjoyed hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours playing or spectating the first-person shooter style game. There were a dozen or so different formats you could play within the game, and you could even play online in teams or pairs with your friends. That was how the Krieger clan spent their time with the game – online multiplayer in the popular ‘Warzone’ format. ‘Call of Duty’ copied the tremendously popular ‘Fortnite’ concept using one huge multiplayer map where 100 different players all competed to stay alive and be the last soldier standing.
‘Fortnite’ had been fun and flamboyant and colorful – geared much more towards kids. Your character, suited up in whatever goofy skin struck your fancy – from a chicken suit to a cheerleader to a licensed super hero, and everything in between – started the game jumping out of a party bus that floated across the map under a gigantic hot air balloon. There was nothing serious about it. You didn’t even start out with any weapons. It was a comic book version of a ‘Hunger Games’ competition where you had to fend for yourself to survive. You started with an axe and a backpack and had to roam around and find weapons and resources to help you heal and live. There was no bloodshed shown when you killed another player – either by axe or discovered gun. It was like a laser tag ethos. Lots of parents let their younger kids play ‘Fortnite’ but wouldn’t let them play ‘COD’.
‘COD’ launched their more grownup, hardcore version of the concept and called it ‘Warzone’ and it became even more popular than ‘Fortnite’ because all the grownups in the world started playing it too. Your character was in military garb and you chose your loadout – armor and weapons and perks. The more you played, the more you leveled up in experience, the better equipment you were able to choose from. And depending on your personal play style – those loadouts were as individualized as the 100 players dropping into the Warzone map each time. It wasn’t a party bus though – it was an armored military transport plane that flew across the map in ‘COD’. ‘Warzone’ imagery was serious and realistic, not even remotely playful.
“I don’t wanna miss” came Ali’s steady reply as she waited an extra beat for the variable zoom scope of the sniper rifle she was looking through to stop bouncing around the tv screen. She held her breath, just as her video game soldier did to stabilize the scope.
“He’s gonna move! You’re gonna lose your chance...” the keeper cautioned with a frustrated shake of her head and an anxious sigh.
The deadly but muffled shot of the HDR when Ali pulled the trigger a second later put any doubt to rest. The opposing player dropped and the brunette’s score increased.
“Got him!” she enthused with a chuckle and moved her soldier up to a slightly different location, just in case anybody nearby had heard or seen the shot. It was unlikely because she used a suppressor, but if somebody was close enough to her location they might be tracking her now.
“You freaking kill me” Ashlyn shook her head some more and laughed out a sigh, turning back to look at the love of her life. “It’s so stressful watching you play this game.”
“Oh, get over yourself” Ali shot back with a boastful smirk. “Slow and steady wins the race. How many times do we have to go through this?” she laughed. “You’re just jealous because I’m better than you.”
Before either of them could say another word, the brunette’s soldier was attacked from above – another player dropping into the game landed right behind her and took her out with a dramatic throat-cutting cinematic scene before she knew what was happening.
“Ahhh ha ha ha, see?!” Ashlyn cackled gleefully, slapping her knee and pointing at the tv screen. “That’s what you get for camping and hiding!”
It was true. One of the most contentious aspects of the game, both ‘Fortnite’ and ‘COD’, was whether camping was a viable play style or just a copout by inferior players who were too afraid to play the game the ‘right’ way. Ali Krieger was a steady and constant player of any game, video or otherwise. Of course her play style would be to take her time and consider where the other players around her might be. Was it her fault that other players ran around the map like chickens with their heads cut off? Of course she was going to sit quietly and patiently, waiting for her chance to snipe enemy players from a distance. Why would she not?
“That’s crap” the brunette objected with a scowl as she thrust the controller at her wife. “I hate this new revive mode. Once you’re dead you’re dead. You shouldn’t be able to come back and drop in again.”
“Oh you’re just mad because your girl got slashed from behind” Ashlyn laughed some more as she got out of the map and went back to the lobby to change the settings. Truth be told, she hated the revive mode too but they hadn’t realized it was activated until Ali had just been killed. And she wasn’t wrong about the throat-cutting death. It was widely considered the most shameful way to get eliminated in the entire game. Everybody agreed on that.
“Whatever” Ali shook her head and tried to soothe her own wounded pride as she relaxed back into the couch. “Let’s see how you do, hot shot. Show me what you’ve got.”
As she watched her beautiful keeper get ready to drop into a new round, Ali was reminded of how far video games had come since she had spent so much time playing them. Back in the dark days after her breakup with Emily and before her 30th birthday deadline to get back into real life again, Ali had played a lot of video games. She had taken herself out of the romance game in real life and was focused on nothing but work and family and taking care of her little house in Stoneham. Reading books and watching movies and playing video games were what kept her from spiraling backwards. They were a most welcome distraction that kept her whole brain engaged – which was key to her recovery from that painful period in her life.
Back then, almost 30 years ago, you couldn’t choose to play as a female character in the games. The video game companies were just starting to realize that women and girls played their games too. And shortly after that lucrative revelation, they realized there were gay dollars to capture too – and along came gender neutral storylines and main characters you could choose to be male or female. Female Viking warriors could marry savvy NPC women in games just as male Viking warriors could, and vice versa.
Now, Friday evening May 20, 2039, Ali watched her wife quickly change the loadout to her preferred weapons and perks and admired the female soldier they were using as their character. When they were playing ‘COD’ with the kids there wasn’t time to change the character when they were trading turns. As soon as one of the kids’ players died the controller got handed off to the next family member for their turn. They would play for hours, rotating through the family like that. If it wasn’t your turn you could mess around in your phone or tablet, or work on the family schedule or online shop on your laptop if you were Ali. If you weren’t sitting there when it was your turn to take the video game controller, you missed your turn. New family members could join the queue at any time, and often did. It was a fun, fluid way to spend some time together, and lordy did the trash talk fly! There was just enough time between turns to change the loadout in the game so you were using the gun and perks you preferred. If you got out of the Warzone game and into the main lobby, the group had to agree to that delay or there would be much complaining all the way around. Sometimes physical repercussions were the only way to keep Lily from repeatedly bailing to the main lobby to change something on the character. Whoever was closest to the young blonde gave her a poke or a whack or a flick as admonishment. If she did it again then she’d lose her next turn altogether.
The kids all had their own play style too, of course. Meg was the expert at any bow and arrow type of weapon, or throwing weapons – whether explosives or knives. It didn’t win her a lot of games but it provided some of the very best killshot animations and videos of the entire family. Drew would have been the best player in the family, if not for Dodge’s freakish reflexes. The elder brother played the run and gun style, never stopping and only rarely slowing down. Now, this was not his play style in the more exploration-based video games where he was more like his methodical brunette mother. But when it came to ‘COD’ he played the ‘right’ way. Josie was never as into video games as the rest of the family because none of her friends ever played very much. When the redhead did play, it was always at home in these scenarios where she could pop in and out of the activity as the spirit moved her. Consequently, she wasn’t very good at ‘COD’, but she was still very good at the other family competition games like Mario Kart and Roblox, etc. Dodge was the best of the family with his nimble fingers and quick reaction time. He literally ran around the map like a spaz and managed to kill everybody he encountered before they could kill him. Lily played more than Josie but less than Dodge and Drew so she was also at a skill disadvantage from lack of practice. But she had nimble fingers and quick reaction time too - when she was paying attention. Lily was the one who would blunder through the map and fall to her death because she wasn’t aware of her surroundings. Ali, as already discussed, was a slow and steady player – a camper who waited for other players to run into her path. She was lethal in her approach however, and even though the rest of the family looked at her play style with disdain, her scores were always very high. Ashlyn was another run and gunner who played the ‘right’ way, like Drew and Dodge, and even Meg to some extent. But Ashlyn wasn’t nearly as good as her children, and she certainly didn’t have nimble fingers, so she adopted a variation on their play style. Instead of sprinting around everywhere with a lightweight but deadly submachine gun loadout, Ashlyn chose a more middle of the road assault rifle setup that allowed her to get kills from slightly farther away and avoid much of the close-quarters carnage that would ensure her premature demise.
On the rare occasion when just the two moms played, like tonight, they took the time to select a soldier they wanted to be on the map. As with everything, it was an exercise in compromise. Ashlyn wanted a more vibrant representative out there and always tried to get the punk style girl with the hot pink hair. Ali wanted a badass who blended into the environment of the map – camouflage style. They almost always settled on a Black woman in camo with spiky but dark hair. Representation mattered to them and, in their opinion, there were still far too few non-white characters in the game. Ashlyn was allowed to select a camo outfit that had some color and pizazz in it, much to Ali’s chagrin.
Ashlyn’s own hair had finally reached a 4” short shag length that she could style and enjoy with more confidence after losing it all to chemotherapy the year before. It was her natural light brown color, with touches of grey, but the temporary post-chemo curls that had been present early on in the re-growth process were gone again. She would dye in some blond up top sometime in the future, but she was giving her body a break from chemicals for a little while. Ali’s brunette locks were about 6” long now and well on their way back to her preferred top of the shoulders length. Almost there. Ali was absolutely dying away her grey hair and nobody saw that stopping anytime soon.
The house was quiet, aside from the sharp sound from the tv, and the snores of both Logan and Frankie who were curled up on either end of the couch. The two wives were relaxing in joggers, t-shirts, and bare feet, and pacing themselves on the bottle of Spanish red wine they had opened – neither mom wanted to get tipsy tonight.
The brunette leaned forward and massaged the back of her wife’s neck, letting her fingers flex through the soft hair. She could feel Ashlyn’s pulse and took comfort from it. Ali’s lingering fear from last year’s breast cancer battle slipped farther away every single day. Yes, the keeper was going to have to let her body keep adjusting to life after chemo and radiation and mastectomy. She would take hormone therapy medication for at least 5 years, and she would keep massaging and treating her mastectomy scar tissue, and she would have to slather her chest in spf 50 sunscreen for the foreseeable future, and she would experiment with her left breast prosthesis, but that was all ok. Ashlyn was feeling like her old self again and Ali could see it, could feel it. Thank fucking God.
The keeper took a drink of wine and hummed into the welcome touch. “Mmmm, feels good baby” she turned and smiled sweetly at her beautiful brunette before returning her attention to the tv. “But don’t try and distract me, woman. I know all your tricks.”
They both laughed and Ali let her hand trail down her wife’s back and over to her right hip, which she patted affectionately.
“I would never” the brunette chuckled. She leaned farther forward and pressed a quick kiss into Ashlyn’s back before returning to her comfy spot on the couch.
“You sure as hell would” the keeper laughed before getting serious about picking a landing target for her badass soldier.
It was just after 9pm and the wives knew they had a couple hours to go before they could relax and try to get some sleep. There was a reason they were playing ‘COD’ tonight. It was an effort to keep their minds distracted and their bodies busy. As 54 and 55 year old moms of 4 teenagers, Ashlyn and Ali had found it a good way to keep their minds off of some of the stressful parts of parenting. Shooting pretend bad guys together while your youngest child was attending her boyfriend’s junior prom was the best they could do to keep from losing their minds with anxiety.
“What time is it now?” Ashlyn asked over her shoulder as she mistimed her landing and slid off a low water tower, taking self-inflicted heavy fall damage in the first minute of the game. “Fuck.”
“9:04pm” Ali replied with a snorting laugh. “Just because we’re stressing about Lily tonight doesn’t mean you have to start playing like her.”
“Ha ha, very funny” the keeper groused as she hustled around the game environment trying to find bandages or a medkit to heal herself.
Ali and Ashlyn got excited whenever any of their kids went through one of the adolescent or teenage rites of passage. They always had and they always would. It was a mixture of pride and anxiety but it was all from the most loving place possible. The moms adored their kids and wanted nothing but the best for them. They saw it as their job to try and provide the guidance and wisdom that would enable the best things to come to each of their children. But they also knew that they couldn’t shelter their kids from life all the time. They knew in their brains that their job as parents was to prepare the children to survive and thrive in the real world – which could often be cruel and unforgiving. Their hearts, on the other hand, well...that was another story entirely.
In their hearts, Ali and Ashlyn saw their youngest child, sweet little Lily, with her adorable little stutter and her beautiful long blonde hair and her precious as a princess outlook on life. They knew that the teenager who had just turned 16 years old exactly one week ago was not that sweet little Lily anymore. But that little Lily was still inside the high school sophomore, somewhere. The two moms knew they had taught their kids well. They had proof of that assertion in both Drew and, to some extent, Josie. Ali and Ashlyn couldn’t count Meg’s success as their own because Hannah had done most of the heavy lifting there. The Krieger kids were, for the most part, good human beings who stayed out of most trouble and did their best to do the right thing when presented with a decision. But – they were teenagers and that meant they made mistakes too.
What Ali and Ashlyn were nervous about tonight, Prom Night for Gloucester High School 2039, was that sweet little Lily Krieger and her precious heart would be exposed and taken advantage of by older, meaner high school juniors and seniors. Lily was their gullible kid, their easy-going, tolerant, agreeable child. She was the sibling that got along well with every one of her brothers and sisters, all the time. She had always had a very special bond with Drew. She had always had a special sisterhood with Josie growing up. She had always been Dodge’s twin – the two sharing something only they could really understand. Lily was the only one who didn’t routinely get run out of whatever sibling activity was going on. She was always welcomed or at least tolerated by all three siblings. The only thing she ever fought about with Josie was clothes.
And while that was all good and admirable, Lily’s affability caused concern for her moms. The most agreeable kid in any group was always the one who got taken advantage of – at whatever benign level of shenanigans was going on. Ali and Ashlyn knew that their girl would always be tested because she was the most patient and understanding. Someone was always going to try and push her past some limit, for some reason. Maybe it was an actual attainable goal. ‘I’ll bet you can’t steal a potato from the cafeteria kitchen.' Maybe it was just because some group of friends was bored. ‘If you want to come with us tonight you need to do x,y,z...’. And the moms were especially anxious about prom night where she was the youngest member of her group.
Lily was a very popular girl all through high school. She had always been a mini-Ashlyn in appearance and build, but now that she was 5’5” the ‘mini’ no longer applied. The difference was that the young blonde didn’t have much musculature – she was Ashlyn but a more slender version, with 4 more inches still to grow by the time she graduated high school. She had started dressing more feminine last year, but still wasn’t one to get all decked out in dresses and wear a lot of make-up. She had realized that she would get more attention from boys in high school if she wore more girlish attire. And that was that. Lily dated about 3 different boys each school year, plus a fourth during the summer. It wasn’t on purpose. She wasn’t tallying points in some imaginary boyfriend game. She was looking for someone who truly loved her and treated her accordingly.
Leo Dalrymple was a junior on the varsity soccer team so Lily had seen him at the big old house when it was Dodge’s turn to host team dinner, in addition to seeing him occasionally at school. Leo was nice enough, but Dodge wasn’t too thrilled about the relationship – and that meant that Ali and Ashlyn were nervous about it too. Dodge would always be a protective brother, moreso even than Drew because it just wasn’t in the elder brother’s personality to butt in or interfere in his siblings’ business if he didn’t have to. The younger brother could be overprotective sometimes. But his moms appreciated that, if they were being honest. If the kid who is hanging out with Leo on the team and in the locker room, as Dodge was, doesn’t think he’s good enough for Lily – then maybe he isn’t good enough for Lily. Leo wasn’t a bad kid. He wasn’t an asshole. But something gave Dodge cause for concern and whatever that was added to Ali and Ashlyn’s anxiety tonight.
It also didn’t help that Dodge wasn’t going to be there to keep an eye on his twin sister. It was Junior & Senior prom – no underclassmen allowed, unless accompanying an upperclassman as a date. And that brought the whole topic of older boys dating younger girls to the forefront of Ali and Ashlyn’s angst. They both knew that, ultimately, a few years age difference didn’t matter at all. But they also remembered those older boys from their own experiences. Those seniors who always had a younger, more impressionable girl on their arm, or in their car. Why couldn’t they date a girl in their own grade? Whatever the answer to that question was, and there were a few, it never made the senior boy look good. Age-appropriate dating is a hallmark of a healthy, well-adjusted kid. Once your kid matures enough and is a full-fledged grown-up then the issue became a lot more murky. There could be a myriad of reasons why there might be a big age difference in a couple. But high school was not that time. Ali and Ashlyn took solace in the fact that Leo was only a year older than Lily. But then there were all the seniors. And even though Lily was used to being around the seniors on her sports teams - freshmen who made varsity teams got a powerful dose of that dynamic at their very first team gathering - she didn’t know any seniors who weren’t her teammates.
“Rooftop! On your left! Sniper!” Ali pointed and called out the telltale glint of a sniper scope that had just flashed in the corner of the screen. “Behind the church tower!” she added for additional clarity.
“Oh shit!” Ashlyn yelped as her badass character scrambled for cover, moving just in the nick of time to avoid the sniper bullet that whizzed right above her head. “How did you see that?!”
It was always easier to see things on the screen when you weren’t actually controlling the character or playing the game. The game designers constantly put effects into the game to make it hard to see or confusing to identify what you were seeing. Leaves were always blowing around, or birds or butterflies or bats or residual fallout from a nuclear bomb – anything that fit the narrative and would also help disguise player movement. There were always 10 things moving around on the screen so you couldn’t detect player movement so clearly.
“I’ve got you babe” Ali popped a couple of peanut butter covered pretzels into her mouth, eyes never leaving the screen.
Ashlyn continued traversing the landscape flat on her belly until she could make it behind the cover of the abandoned barn 20 yards ahead of her. Her eyes were also focused intently on the screen but she started singing loudly.
“’They say we’re young and we don’t know
We won’t find out until we grow.
Well I don’t know if all that’s true
Cause you got me and baby I got you...’”
Ali laughed out loud and slapped her thigh. “That’s...not what I meant.”
“Sing with me baby” the keeper encouraged as she got to the first chorus of the Sonny and Cher song that everybody on the planet still knew because it appeared in a television ad at least every 3 or 4 years.
Together, the couple belted out the familiar chorus.
“’Babe.
I got you babe.
I got you babe.’”
Ashlyn kept going with the second verse.
“’They say our love won’t pay the rent
Before it’s earned our money’s all been spent.
I guess that’s so, we don’t have a pot
But at least I’m sure of all the things we got...’”
“Oh, she knows all the words” Ali laughed again, but was impressed nonetheless and joined her wife for the chorus again.
“’Babe.
I got you babe.
I got you babe.’”
“Oh hell no” Ashlyn abruptly stopped singing as another player began shooting at her from inside the barn. “I crawled too damned far for this shit...” she jumped up and sprinted into the barn to confront her newest attacker.
“In the loft, on your right!” Ali called out the enemy as soon as her eyes adjusted to the dark interior of the dilapidated building. “Throw a grenade!”
“I don’t have a fucking grenade!” Ashlyn shouted back as she maneuvered around the lower level of the barn, trying to get an angle to shoot from.
The attacker started firing again and then threw a grenade of their own down. Ashlyn reacted with lightning speed. She picked up the grenade and flung it back from where it had come so it exploded just as it cleared the floor of the loft. Both she and Ali held their breath for a second, waiting for confirmation that the attacker had been killed. As soon as the points tallied on the screen, they had their answer.
“Oh my God that was so good honey” Ali leaned forward and rubbed her wife’s back in celebration. “Great job!”
“Let’s hope that asshole left some good gear behind” she exhaled as she climbed up the ladder to check out the guns and ammo and other equipment dropped from the dead attacker.
“How do you know all the words to ‘I Got You Babe’ anyway?” Ali inquired, watching her wife quickly look through and evaluate which things to add to her own gear. “Oooh, take that heartbeat sensor” the brunette encouraged.
“Got it” the keeper acknowledged the prized pickup while upgrading her loadout with a secondary weapon, some bandages, and a couple of stun grenades. That was the good thing about the early stages of the game, you didn’t have much equipment yet so you could use almost everything you came across. Later in the game these decisions got a lot harder. “And I know every word of that song because it was my senior prom theme” she chuckled and rolled her eyes.
“What? You’re kidding...” Ali’s jaw dropped at the new information.
“What can I say?” Ashlyn sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “We were a simple class... with old school taste in music...”
“Yeah, right” the brunette giggled.
She knew full well that her wife’s early taste in music had been steeped in rap and hip hop. The idea that anything other than ‘In Da Club’ or ‘Work It’ or ‘Lose Yourself’ had been Ashlyn’s senior prom theme in 2003 was mind-boggling.
“Seriously though, how did that happen?”
“Honestly? I have no idea” Ashlyn laughed and shook her head, trying to think back on something she hadn’t been interested in remembering at all.
She was making good time now as she moved across the map, avoiding the poisonous gas cloud that closed in from the edges of the map every few minutes to keep the game interesting and exciting. If you reduce the size of the map then the players had no choice but to find each other and fight. If the gas cloud caught up with you, you died.
“I think it was a joke. Half the senior class thought it would be funny to piss off the pretty people who wanted, like, ‘A Moment Like This’ or something” she shrugged again. “I don’t think anybody really thought enough people would vote for it – but they did. It’s kinda funny now, I guess. I didn’t go to my prom so I blame everybody else.”
“Oh, right” Ali made an eek face, remembering too late that her sweet wife hadn’t enjoyed much besides soccer during high school. “Well, that explains that” the brunette nodded definitively, even though Ashlyn couldn’t see her. “That’s what they get for being mean to you. Assholes.”
“Look at that sneaky motherfucker...” the keeper squinted at the screen as she crept up on a player disguised in a full ghillie suit, camping on a ledge that overlooked a footbridge that got lots of use because it was 10 times faster than hiking down and back up the ravine it crossed.
“Do you have a silencer yet? You should shoot him from here because I guarantee you he’s got some S-mines set up. He’s dug in there good” Ali offered advice from her own experience with camouflaged sniping.
But Ashlyn was thrilled by the opportunity to take this player out silently, with a stealth throat-slitting from behind. It was such attractive bait. Those players who played the ‘right’ way loved nothing more than this exact scenario. It was sometimes even better than winning the whole game to them. That’s how much they hated campers.
“I’m just gonna...” the keeper spoke softly and moved slowly towards her prey, crouching down to reduce the noise she made with each step.
Before she had taken 3 steps though, she tripped one of the proximity triggered S-mines Ali had predicted.
“Oh fuck you!” Ashlyn yelled in frustration as the explosion killed her character on the spot. “God I hate campers...” she growled.
“I told you...” Ali giggled as she reached around to take the controller from her still-agitated wife. “That was a good spot. I haven’t seen that one before. I don’t know how he got to that ledge though” she tilted her head, deep in thought as the lobby screen appeared and they waited for the next map to load. “Ima check that out.”
“Of course you are” Ashlyn sighed in frustration and then stretched her back out with a grunt.
“Well he got you didn’t he?” Ali giggled again, knowing how competitive her keeper was and would always be.
“Whatever” Ashlyn made a concerted effort to let the loss go, even shaking her head to get the angry anti-camper thoughts out of there. “So what was your prom song then? Can’t be worse than ‘I Got You Babe’.”
“Well, I went to both my junior and senior proms...”
“Of course you did” the keeper turned around and beamed at her wife, lest there be any misinterpretation of her comment. “Such a princess” she spun around on the coffee table so she was facing Ali and closed the distance with a soft, sweet kiss. “I’ll bet Debbers was a chaperone and you and all your friends all hung out at your house getting ready together and everything, didn’t you?” she asked, dimpled grin still firmly in place.
Ashlyn had made peace with the fact that her high school experience had been vastly different than Ali’s. The past was the past and their relationship had survived many fights about money – how and when to spend it, what to teach their children about it, how to give the kids the things that Ashlyn never had without turning them into spoiled brats. Meg was still very uncomfortable with her inherited wealth and both Ali and Ashlyn took that as a sign they were doing it right with all 5 kids.
“We did” Ali nodded in agreement and leaned forward for another kiss. “You’ve got it all right, as usual” she continued as they separated but kept talking face to face, abandoning the game for the moment. “I had a blast at both” the brunette grinned and pecked her wife’s lips gently before settling back into the couch with a satisfied smirk. “’Hanging By a Moment’ was junior year and then we got a little rowdy senior year and went with Pink and ‘Get the Party Started’ ha ha ha.”
“I can picture it now” Ashlyn closed her eyes and started humming the tune, shoulder dancing in place while Ali laughed along. “Epic” she teased but the attempted sarcasm was unconvincing because her whole face was alight.
It was times like this that the keeper was most grateful for. The two of them just goofing around, being silly and close. Nothing was better. Well, maybe one thing, but they were far too tense tonight to have sex.
“I love you, my very own prom queen...” Ashlyn cooed sappily as she climbed onto her wife’s lap, straddling her and planting a big kiss on laughing lips.
“I wasn’t prom queen” the brunette mumbled.
“Outrageous” Ashlyn feigned offense and got back to kissing her wife, who would always be the queen of everything, in her eyes.
“Mmmmm...” Ali hummed into it, hugging her sweet keeper with one arm while holding Frankie at bay with the other. “Frank...go away...” she giggled as the 6-1/2 year old dog continued trying to push her face into the wives’ embrace.
The ruckus made Logan, almost 10 years old, lift her head up to survey the scene. She wagged her cropped tail and whined a little, but remained in her spot on the other side of the brunette.
Ashlyn’s phone rang and the keeper sat upright immediately. “Hold on” she said briskly as she reached behind her to the coffee table.
Frankie finally advanced into the abandoned space and Ali gave her a hug and a kiss. “Silly girl. You know we love you too.”
“Hey Caro” Ashlyn answered the phone, moving back to the coffee table to get away from Frankie for a minute. “We’re good” she chuckled. “Hanging in there, let’s put it that way.” She put the call on speaker phone so they could all talk.
Tammye and Carol had been having a rough year. Understandably so. The intensive rehab treatment at the hospital in Gainesville, Florida had ended as scheduled in February, 3 months after it had begun. Tammye worked hard and made significant improvements, but she was still a shell of her former self. Everyone in the family hoped that she would do better once she was back at home and doing the rigorous outpatient therapy program that had been designed for her. But she had made only minor improvement so far. Tammye’s right side was still mostly paralyzed. She could use her right arm and leg only minimally, and only if she was feeling strong. Her main focus had been her right hand and her face – those were the two areas the stroke patient had deemed the most important. That and learning how to talk again. That was the primary goal above all others. And, thankfully, that was where she had made the most improvement. It was still extremely difficult to understand what she was trying to say though. Only Carol was able to get what she was saying 90% of the time.
“Oh, she’s just ornery tonight because it was Amber’s last day” Carol explained her wife’s shorter than usual responses after a few minutes of chatting.
The truth was that Tammye’s whole personality had changed after the stroke. In addition to the short-term memory loss that had only gotten marginally better, she suffered from expressive aphasia. She knew what she wanted to say but her brain couldn’t find the right words. Or sometimes she did know the right words but she couldn’t actually get them to come out of her mouth. Pair that with the post-stroke depression she had been suffering and it made for a bleak 6 months since the stroke back in November.
“Aw, sorry mom” Ashlyn frowned as she spoke. She felt guilty for not remembering that today was also the last day of her mother’s official, 3-month outpatient rehab stint. The occupational and rehab therapist who had been working with Tammye at home in Melbourne Beach would be moving on to a different patient on Monday. “That’s gotta suck. I know you liked Amber a lot. We all did.”
Carol had tried to get Amber to work exclusively with her wife, as a private nurse and therapist but she had declined. Amber felt it wasn’t fair to the other patients who needed her expertise. There were other private nurses who patients could work with to continue routines Amber had set up in those pivotal first 3 months at home. Nobody could fault her for it. But Carol would continue to try and hire her for the rest of Tammye’s life.
“Mm jus ty-err” came the slow, grunting, slurred reply.
“She’s tired” Carol interpreted with a sigh of her own.
“It’s late” Ali’s careful voice chimed in. “You guys should go to bed and get some rest. We’ll text you when she comes home. I promise.”
As they ended the call, Ashlyn’s mood reflected the guilt and despair that swept over her after every conversation with her mom this year.
“Come here honey” Ali opened her arms and welcomed her melancholy wife back onto her lap and into a long hug. She whispered softly and squeezed Ashlyn tight. “I know it’s hard to hear her like that. I’m so sorry.”
“I just...I just want her up here so I can help out more, so we can be there more for her – for both of them” the keeper spoke softly from inside the hug. “I hate having her so far away.”
“I really think Carol will be able to talk her into coming up for the summer” Ali offered optimistically.
The whole family had been trying to get Tammye to agree to spending the summer, if not the Fall too, at their Rockport, Massachusetts beach house. It was only half the size of the Melbourne Beach house and not nearly as fancy, but it was only 5 miles away from the big old house – which had been precisely why they had bought it in the first place. Ashlyn was certain that once her mom got up here she would settle in and want to stay until Winter. She just knew it. The trick was getting her to agree. They were using Josie’s high school graduation next month as the bait.
“You do? Really?” came the hopeful reply as Ashlyn sat up to face her beautiful brunette.
“I do” Ali nodded and gave her girl a soft smile. “Beth thinks so too. Just try and be patient honey. We can’t pressure her or...”
“Or she’ll dig her heels in” Ashlyn took a deep breath, let her head fall back, and exhaled up into the air. “I wouldn’t say this to anybody else” she met Ali’s eyes but then dropped her gaze out of shame. “But I miss my mom...my real mom...”
“I know babe. I do too” Ali reached out and cupped her keeper’s cheek with a sad frown on both their faces. “She’s still in there though...”
“I know. I get it. I really do” Ashlyn felt her temper flare for a few seconds. She wasn’t mad at Ali, just the situation. “I know all these changes are side effects from the stroke...but goddamn it...”
“I don’t know how Carol does it” Ali said quietly after a minute without either of them talking. “It’s just so hard, all the way around.”
Before they could slip all the way down into the sadness that always followed a talk with Tammye, Ali’s phone rang with a Facetime call from Kyle.
“Hello sissies! Have you mommies lost your minds yet?!” he cackled into the phone as a demented greeting.
“Hi BB.”
“Hey bro.”
The wives responded and Ashlyn moved next to the brunette on the couch so they could all see each other.
“So do we think she’s lost her virginity yet or what?” he continued the torture.
“Kyle!”
“Are you fucking kidding me?!!”
After swift reprimands and condemnations from both wives, Kyle settled into the real reason for his call.
“So what did we decide about the extra footage from the island trip?” his voice was steady and strong. He was hoping he could play the big brother card and get his younger sister to do what he wanted - as had happened all throughout their childhood. “We’re going to use it, right?”
“No!” Ali yelled, frustrated to be having the same conversation again for the fourth time already this year. “You’re not using that video! No fucking way!!”
“Kyle, I told you...” Ashlyn spoke, voice somber and serious “...you need to stop asking. She’s not changing her mind...”
Ali glared at her wife.
“We’re not changing our minds” Ashlyn corrected quickly.
“Alex, please...” Kyle began but was cut off abruptly.
“No fucking way” the brunette shouted even louder than she had the first time. “You are not using any intimate videos in your stupid documentary! I’m not having this conversation again with either of you!”
“Wow, stupid documentary huh?” Ashlyn couldn’t help but feel the sting of her wife’s sharp words. “I thought you were on board with this, but apparently not really so much” she crossed her arms and set her jaw as her temper rose again. “The truth finally comes out.”
“Geez sis, thanks for the support” Kyle added in, looking genuinely wounded.
“Oh for fuck’s sake” Ali closed her eyes and rubbed her temple with her free hand. “Can we not do this tonight, please? I’m stressed enough without you two ganging up on me to release some sex tape in your documentary – which, for the record, I think is a great idea...just not the sex tape part.”
“So it’s not a stupid documentary?” Kyle pushed, his expectant eyebrows both up and his head cocked judgingly.
“You know I don’t think your breast cancer documentary is stupid. You both know that” Ali sighed and shook her head. “Can we just not do this tonight? Please?”
Kyle and Ashlyn had been working on a documentary of her breast cancer experience last year. All of the hours and hours of footage she had recorded, as well as videos the kids and Ali and Kyle had made during the whole breast cancer battle, were going to be edited into a first-person documentary about what it was like to go through breast cancer. Kyle was extremely excited about the project because he knew how impactful it could be. Not only would it help other breast cancer survivors feel seen and respected and celebrated, but it would educate everybody else about the struggle too. The trick was trying to create a narrative that worked on the screen. One that was honest and genuine but also one that respected Ashlyn’s privacy and the family’s dignity. Ms. Alexandra Blaire Krieger had strong opinions about what that meant.
“Fine” Kyle rolled his eyes before a tentative smile returned to his serious face. “But you need to schedule us in for an official meeting where we can get this worked out once and for all. No changing your mind or getting cold feet.”
“I’m not changing my mind or getting cold feet because I’m not agreeing to it...”
“Ok, ok, that’s enough for tonight” Ashlyn intervened as she often did between the two siblings on this topic. Ali and Kyle could both be stubborn when they felt strongly about something. And Kyle was used to getting his way because his kid sister usually went out of her way to make him happy – even as adults. “You two are almost worse than the breast cancer was...” she muttered, but they both heard her.
“Ash, babe...”
“Oh sissy...” came two remorseful replies.
“Whatever. Forget it” the keeper called the whole thing to a halt. “We’ll set up a time to talk about it later. No more drop-in nagging sessions from you” she gave Kyle a pointed look. “And you need to really think hard about why you’re saying no” she nodded solemnly at her wife.