Happily Ever Ninja(103)
He smirked and nodded. “This is true. The same thing happens when I go to the hardware store.”
“At least Nicoletta can admit it,” Ashley said. She’d joined us from Tennessee via Skype and her image, on Elizabeth’s laptop, was sitting on the side table next to me. “If Drew goes to the hardware store without me, it takes him four hours of screwing around to find what he’s looking for. But if I’m with him, he’s in and out in ten minutes.”
“That’s probably because he’d rather be doing a different kind of screwing when you’re around.” Marie wagged her eyebrows and sipped her lemon drop cocktail.
“Is this what you ladies do during knit night?” Greg frowned at the room. “You corrupt my wife with your drinking, gossiping, and double entendre?”
Janie blinked at him then looked to Ashley. Ashley set her knitting down and glanced at Elizabeth. Elizabeth swapped a stare with Kat while Nico smirked at the baby blanket he was making. Marie and I exchanged a quick grin.
“Basically? Yes,” Nico answered . . . for all of us.
Greg shoved a handful of popcorn in his mouth and proceeded to talk around it, his words hilariously garbled, a few kernels spewing forth for added grossness and drama. “Why didn’t you tell me this was so much fun? I’ve always wanted to learn how to make lace—for collars and such—and here I could have been tatting whilst championing lewd comments and imbibing girl-drinks.”
Kat, Marie, Sandra, and Elizabeth were giggling by the time he’d finished.
“Tatting?” Janie frowned at my husband, like the strangest thing he’d referenced during his tirade was tatting.
“Lemon drops aren’t girl-drinks, Mr. Fiona.” Sandra wrinkled her nose at him. “Not the way I make them.”
“No offense implied, Sandra. I equate girl-drinks to anything that tastes good, like a woman’s lady closet. Whereas man-drinks taste of sweat and toe jam, like a man’s cock.”
Marie made a gagging sound while Nico and Elizabeth outright guffawed.
Nico took out a little notebook and began jotting something down. “I’m stealing that for my show, Greg.”
“Feel free. You can send the royalty payments to my lawyer.” Greg lifted his chin toward Marie, and Marie lifted her glass in response.
Janie was still frowning in confusion. “What is tatting?”
“According to Wikipedia, tatting is a technique for handcrafting a particularly durable lace from a series of knots and loops. One uses an implement called a shuttle for the construction.” Greg shoved another handful of popcorn into his mouth, smiling and munching.
Janie’s frown deepened. “I did not know that.”
We all took a moment to be appropriately shocked someone knew a random factoid unknown to Janie. It was a momentous occasion.
Sandra broke the stunted silence. “If Greg joins us he’ll need a new name, like Nicoletta.” She addressed this statement to me. “Gregwina?”
“Gregarious?” Marie offered.
“No. Auntie Gregina,” I said with a smile aimed at my husband. “Think of him as a girl in a man’s body. He’s got the brain of a woman.”
He nodded, returning my smile and remembering our private joke from our pre-dating college days. “That’s right: shrewd, calculating, resilient, ruthless.”
“Sounds about right.” Sandra took another gulp of her drink. “Too bad you’ve got a man’s body, because apparently us women are delicious.”
“David never went down on me,” Marie admitted flatly, her cocktail suspended in front of her, staring forward as though in a trance. The room fell into a surprised hush as everyone—sans Marie—exchanged wide-eyed glances. I doubted she realized she’d spoken out loud.
Greg frowned at our friend, true astonishment written all over his features. I don’t know what he thought we talked about during knit night, but Marie’s comment was fairly tame. If he wanted to be regularly included then he would have to put up with the oversharing.
I was just about to tell him this when he surprised me by prompting Marie, “Tell Auntie Gregina all about it.”
Her gaze cut to his, her features blank but her tone clearly aggrieved as she said, “The good ones are like unicorns.”
“The good ones?”
“Men.”
Greg studied her for a beat, then he set his popcorn aside. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees. He gave her one of his soft, compassionate smiles; the ones he used liberally with Grace when she was hurt—even if he didn’t realize it—and with me when I encountered disappointment or non-Greg-related distress. It always made my heart do wonderful things.