Page 32 of Sweet Spot
“Good God, Marcia, let the poor boy go before you turn his spine into a sack of loose nickels,” my grandmother chided, all but shoving her daughter out of the way. Francis Langdon—more fondly known as Grandma Buttons by everyone she ever met—smiled up at me so brightly the weathered skin on her face creased, the laugh lines running deep thanks to a life well lived.
After my father had bailed on Mom and me and it became clear he wasn’t coming back, my mother had sat me down and asked if I wanted to keep his last name. She explained that she was going back to her maiden name, the name she and her mother shared, but if I wanted to continue to use his, I was more than welcome to. I didn’t want anything to do with that man, so when Mom returned to being a Langdon, I joined her and hadn’t regretted it for a single moment. I’d been named after the two most important women in my life, the ones who’d raised me, made me the man I was today. I carried that name with pride.
“There’s my handsome man,” she said affectionately, grabbing me by the sides of my face and jerking me down a good several inches so she could plant a kiss on my cheek. “Still as handsome as ever.” She gave my cheek a smacking pat. “Though you could use a shave. Don’t want to cover that sweet girl of yours with beard burn, now do you?” She winked and my eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets, disgust making my whole body tremor.
“Jesus, Gram! Can you not make jokes about my sex life?”
I wasn’t sure how scarred a person had to be from half a lifetime of his grandmother’s innuendo, but it was a goddamn miracle I could even get an erection without medicinal help, thanks to this little old lady. She might have looked innocent, but she was far from it.
She gave me another smacking pat, harder this time. “Ah, don’t be such a prude. Get our bags, would you? And where’s my future granddaughter?”
As if she’d been summoned, Wynn crept around the corner. I could tell she’d been hoping to peek without being spotted but couldn’t know my mom and grandmother were like bloodhounds. They probably scented her the moment they stepped in.
“There she is!” my mother crowed, then the damn woman practically body-checked me out of the way and rushed in to get to her.
I caught the way Wynn’s eyes widened with surprise—and maybe a tiny bit of fear—before Mom collided with her and wrapped her in that famous hug, made worse by her level of excitement. I thought Wynn’s eyeballs were going to pop out of her skull from the force of the squeeze.
Mom pulled back and cupped Wynn’s cheeks affectionately, smooshing them together until she had duck lips. “I’m so happy I could spit!”
I let out a small breath of relief when Wynn laughed, taking my mother’s wrists and removing her hands but keeping an affectionate hold on them. “Hi, Marcia. It’s great to see you again.” To drive that point forward, she leaned in and placed a kiss on Mom’s cheek.
“You as well, honey. Especially under such wonderful circumstances.” She clapped her hands together. “Engaged! I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect daughter-in-law if I’d picked one out myself.”
My grandmother shouldered up to hug her as well. “Hello, sweetheart.”
“Hi, Grandma Buttons,” Wynn greeted with a smile.
My grandmother pulled in a deep breath. “I always hoped the two of you would get the lead out and realize how good you’d be together. Makes my old heart happy that day came while I was still around to see it. Should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. “Welcome to the family, my sweet girl.”
My eyes met Wynn’s over Gram’s shoulder when she pulled her in for another hug, and I saw, clear as day, the conflict swimming in those deep violet depths. She loved my mom and grandma as much as they loved her, and I could see her guilt for lying to them.
I hated seeing that look in her eyes, but I stayed strong, telling myself it was only a matter of time before we were on the same page with what we were doing. I simply had to get her on board when it came to making this relationship very real in every way. Then there’d be no need for guilt.
It didn’t surprise me that they were both so happy to see my fiancée. They’d gotten to know Wynn really well over the past few years when they’d visited. Each year they came for my birthday, then again at Thanksgiving and stayed until the day after Christmas. Considering how close Wynn and I had been, she’d become a main fixture during those visits and had won my ladies over in no time, without having to try.
Vanessa never had that kind of connection with either of them. They’d kept it to themselves, not wanting to put me in a bad position, but after the breakup, Mom and Gram had confessed they’d never cared for Vanessa. They’d never felt they could let their guard down with her. Wynn, on the other hand, had become their favorite person within the first five minutes of meeting them. All because she’d been herself.
I looked at the pile of suitcases on the porch. “Uh...” I looked back to the trio of women. “Not that I’m not happy to see you guys, but... what the hell are you doing here?” I pointed at the pile of suitcases. “And why do you have so much luggage?”
My ladies looked at me like I’d asked the dumbest question in the history of dumb questions.
“We saw the pictures you posted Insta,” Mom stated.
I blinked, then shook my head to clear it. I lifted my finger. “First, don’t ever call itInsta. Second, when the hell did you join Instagram?”
She waved me off. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is when we saw the photos”—she looked back to Wynn and smiled lovingly—“and you looked beautiful by the way, we hopped on the first flight. Now, whatI’dlike to know is why I had to find out that my son, my only child, the flesh and blood I birthed for thirty long, grueling hours—”
“Just get to it, Marcia,” Gram said with a dramatic roll of her eyes.
“Why did we have to find out about this momentous occasion on social media instead of from you?”
“Jesus, Mom.”
Her finger came up in the air, immediately silencing me. Her face went stern in that way it did when I was a kid and had done something to earn her ire, like breaking the living room window with a rouge baseball or getting caught in the back seat of her car with Cindy Brinkley my junior year of high school.
“Sorry. It’s only been three days. I wasn’t trying to keep this secret. I was planning to call.”
What Wynn did next was unexpected, to say the least. She separated from my mom and grandmother and moved to me, nudging her way beneath my arm and giving me no choice but to loop it around her shoulders. She pressed into my side much like she had that morning at Hot Java, and the moment I felt those soft, round tits press against my ribs, I had to fight getting hard right there in front of my fucking family.