Earning a Name

"Go for it, Mr. Coolidge," Dr. Tolbert said, as they arrived at a gleaming brass bell with a long, braided rope extending from the clapper.

Wade would not leave people in suspense for long. He grabbed the rope and joyfully rang it. The gathered crowd and roaming doctors, nurses, and patients clapped for him as Wade felt a tear dislodge from his eye and course down his cheek.

The year had been exceptionally tough, starting in spring when he went to a routine wellness check. Soon, he was having tests run and being told what his chances of living through his disease were, a little over forty percent, according to Dr. Tolbert. The leukemia had time to metastasize before they caught it. Wade's girlfriend walked out on him after the diagnosis, insisting she was lousy luck Wade didn't need. Chemo, radiation, surgery, and a litany of appointments left him drained and depressed. Therapy and long talks with his family kept him hanging on to his sanity.

August came, and a ray of dawn light appeared on the day that Wade physically felt good, but was at his lowest. An idiot in a parking lot brought out the anger and frustration that had been simmering since the diagnosis. Wade lashed out, unafraid of the hulking, angry man who tore off Wade's mask. There was one thing that would make that completely worth it, and she was clapping in the hallway.

Wade looked over at Dia, who had a tear streaking down her face and a proud smile. She was wearing a pink dress with curly, tight hair in a ponytail and a bow tied with pink and white ribbons. Her stark, white tennis shoes might look out of place with the subtle formality of the dress, but on Dia, they were perfect.

Fredo and Clem were bouncing and clapping with joyful smiles. It was fantastic to see the boy feeling good and spending time with the girl who had become his closest friend.

"Congratulations, Wade." Rissa was the first to say something.

Dia didn't respond verbally. She stepped close and looked up at him with warm brown eyes. On her tiptoes, she put a hand around Wade's neck and pulled him into a passionate, slow kiss.

"Eww!" Fredo and Clem squealed as the kiss broke.

"Congratulations, babe." Dia smiled.

"So, we're dating." Wade felt his cheeks warm. He wasn't the type to declare things publicly, but Dia wasn't something he could keep hidden.

"Yay!" Fredo cheered. Wade smiled broadly. A seven-year-old's opinion was important to him.

"Nat and I were coming to take our loves to lunch. Would you three care to join us?" Jake asked.

"Sure."

The group never confessed that someone had tipped them off about the bell ringing. Rissa just said that she saw Dia and Fredo walking through the hospital, and Natalie just happened to be showing up with Jake and Clementine to go to lunch. Wade suspected Tabi had dropped some hints, but he wouldn't call the woman out.

"Do you have plans for New Year's Eve?" Wade asked Dia, as the first lunch without his prominent source of worry drew to a close.

"Well, somebody will probably try to stay up until midnight and fail." Dia glanced at Fredo, who was coloring quietly with Clem. "We wouldn't mind some company."

"Darn, that sounds like fun, too, but I have a suite downtown for the ball drop." Wade smiled as long as he got his first kiss of the new year from the woman he loved. Everything else was inconsequential.

"Why doesn't Fredo party with us for New Year's?" Rissa jumped into the conversation.

"Yeah! It'll be at my and Jake's place." Tabi grinned.

"So will Derek and Sammy, but they probably won't be there long with the newborn. Sara, Alison, and their two kids will be there. It would be great for Clem to have someone her age." Jake added naming more of the expanding friend group that came along with getting close to Dia.

"You and Dia need a night out." Nat joined in the plot to get them time alone together.

"You can call me at midnight, momma." Fredo grinned.

"That sounds like fun, Wade." Dia smiled brightly as her eyes twinkled with promises of entertaining mischief.

Dia - New Year's Eve, an hour before Wade was supposed to meet her

"Which one, girls?" Tabi, Natalie, and Rissa were helping Dia decide on a dress for her first date with Wade. After all the time the pair had spent together and already knowing that they had incredible sexual chemistry, Dia was nervous about their first date. Wade would be happy with whatever she wore, but she didn't want happy. She needed to drop his jaw.

Her selections were far more formal than what Dia would typically wear, but an invitation to the downtown New Year's party was an enormous social event. In one hand, she held a slinky merlot dress with a long slit down one leg that would show off the pair of dark stockings she had selected. In the opposite, Dia displayed a black, backless dress that looped over her neck. She liked it but didn't have many bras to go with it.

"They're both gorgeous." Natalie nodded. Her opinion meant a lot to Dia as Nat was always so elegantly attired. The woman was in a dress for everything other than yoga.

"Are the girls going to stay corralled in this?" Rissa inspected the black dress. Although she was typically more casually attired than her wife, Rissa had something more in common with Dia than Nat. Rissa knew more about having large breasts than her wife's lithe and perky pair.

"He's taking you dancing, right?" Tabi nodded to Rissa's remark. "Can't let the ladies get loose at a high-class event like this. It would be positively scandalous." The woman affected a false posh voice.

"Probably a good call." Dia sighed in agreement. Her strapless bra would unlikely provide her needed support if Wade wasn't kidding about wanting to dance. "Are the boys and Clem occupied?"

"Yeah, the younger pair are building something out of Lego, and Jake's helping." Tabi looked out the door with a smile. Jake treated Clementine like a daughter; they'd been dating for less than a year. The little girl didn't share any of her mother's brown skin tone, but they had the same adorable nose. Clem was Tabi's sister's daughter by birth, and Tabitha had adopted the girl after her mother died in a car crash. Clem's father had never met the adorable little girl and denied his parentage, but no one had seen the man since he absconded before her birth.

"Great, mind if I try on the dress? I need expert opinions with it on." Dia stepped over and closed the door to Tabi and Jake's bedroom.

"I've never seen you this nervous, Dia. You've got it bad for Wade, don't you?" Natalie teased.

"I do." Dia didn't argue as she pulled off her top. Other women might have been concerned about getting undressed around a pair of lesbians, but Dia thought that was foolish, especially since the women only had eyes for each other.

"Wow, I like the lingerie!" Rissa cheered.

A lacy white bustier had been waiting almost three years to be on display. Dia had bought it on a whim and hoped to surprise Chet one night, but her marriage unraveled before she could premiere it. This is the only dress this goes with anyway. Dia was already liking the consensus choice of her three friends.

Dia kicked off her brilliant-white tennis shoes before unzipping her jeans and revealing that her tiny white panties matched the top. The fabric was sheer enough on her womanhood that her three friends likely knew she was waxed.

"Whoo! Wade is gonna love you!" Nat called out.

"Thanks." Dia blushed. She hadn't really dressed for sexy since her marriage imploded.

"That contrast on your brown skin, girl..." Tabi grinned from her perch on her and Jake's bed.

"I was hoping it would look good." Dia smiled. "It'll be a nice surprise when Wade gets me out of the dress. Speaking of which..." She temporarily eschewed the dress to grab a piece of jewelry from her purse. It was a shiny, faceted trinket that looked like a disco ball. "Does this look like what they drop at midnight?"

"Yeah, it does!" cooed Rissa.

"Where's that go? It looks like an earring," Tabi questioned.

"I got my belly button pierced after the divorce," Dia explained.

"Nice!" Tabi lifted her T-shirt enough to reveal her own abdomen jewelry. "Jake is a huge fan of mine."

"Gotta make sure the tight dress doesn't give it away before we get to the hotel room." Dia put the accessory on before shimming into her dress.

"My goodness, Dia. You're going to blow his mind!" Tabi cheered.

"Really?"

"I'll bet you can't wait until he drops the panties. It's been a few years since Chet, hasn't it?" Rissa asked with a grin.

"Uh... Wade and I have already..."

"What!? When!?" The three friends seemed to ask in unison.

"Since two nights before I went back to Puerto Rico." Dia smiled.

"How was it?" Tabi wasn't bashful, but this wasn't a surprise to her.

"Incredible! He's, uh, well equipped for the job." Dia blushed.

"It's always the quiet ones." Nat shook her head.

"More than that, it was the first time anyone..." Dia trailed off, thinking she'd gone too far already.

"Anyone what?" Rissa's enthusiasm was evident in her questioning.

"Went down on me." Dia had to look away from her friends.

Rissa laughed. "Sorry. Sorry. That wasn't at your expense, I promise, Dia."

"I believe my wife is recalling how we went from best friends to lovers." Nat shook her head as she gave her wife a wry smile.

"Oh!?"

"Yeah, Tabi's the only other friend I shared the story with." Rissa blushed.

"I guess you're officially one of us." Nat put a comforting hand on her wife's shoulder. "One of us! One of us!"

"So, I had gotten out of a relationship where my guy stopped going down on me..."

"Don't forget about Doctor Dumbass or Doctor Man Slut, whatever his name was." Nat giggled.

"I was getting to that, but moving in with you came first."

"Oops." Nat giggled.

"I moved in with Nat, who likes to walk around the house naked. Still does."

"Is this germane to the story?" Natalie's scandalized expression appeared to be performative.

"Yes. It very much is my love," Rissa grabbed her hand. "It's why I started having those dreams, I think." She took a breath, but no one interrupted her. "Nat had a crush on me for the longest time."

"Since high school."

"That's how long I've had a crush on Wade." Dia interrupted the story.

"Worth the wait?" Tabi asked.

"It's been incredible so far."

"Natalie thought it was a good idea to hook me up with someone from work instead of pining for me fruitlessly," Rissa continued.

"Her next attempt at a hook-up was much better." Tabi giggled. "I'm delighted that Jake and I were the target a year later."

Dia listened to the story as she rolled on her stockings. Wade will think these look incredible when it's all I'm wearing. She grinned to herself as she examined her form in the floor-length mirror.

"That was a team effort. Rissa is a great wingwoman."

"Her hook-up resulted in sex with Doctor Dumbass." Rissa's laugh sounded a little forced. "Fantastic anonymized name, babe. It was good sex, but he didn't lick the kitty."

"Meow!" Nat giggled.

"The doctor couldn't keep it in his pants and got caught hooking up with a med tech at work. A week later, after a hellacious week at work, Nat's walking around the apartment naked, as usual."

"The wife joins me now!"

"Giving away all the secrets!" Tabi laughed.

"She looks incredible in her birthday suit!"

"Anyways! I exited the shower the night she was supposed to take me dancing. I stayed wrapped in a towel while waiting for clothes to de-wrinkle in the dryer. Natalie left to grab her clothes, and I dropped the towel to put on my panties and tripped over the dog. Nat's eyes got the size of saucers as she stared at me, and I asked her to lick my pussy."

"It was so good, she married me a year later!" Nat kissed her wife on the cheek.

"The trip was planned, but the dog made it more believable. If a guy had just gone down on me, maybe I wouldn't have been so desperate!" Rissa laughed and kissed her wife.

"Chet always said it was dirty." Dia blushed as she stood and smoothed down her dress. It fit spectacularly and showed off her legs, butt, and bust in a tantalizing manner.

"Poor girl." Tabi shook her head. "Jake's really good at it."

"Take that move away, and sex wouldn't be so fantastic for us." Nat shook her head.

"Nah, you'd find a way. Tell me the jackass at least employed these," Rissa flexed her fingers as she held up her hands.

"Sparingly. He also went and took a shower as soon as we finished having sex, like my vagina made him dirty."

"That's sad, Dia."

"Yeah, the more time I have away from him, the more I realize there were many cracks in the foundation. It wasn't just his drinking that sank our marriage." Dia sighed, as she looked over her shoulder at her behind in the mirror. "Can you three see panty lines?"

"A little." Tabi nodded.

"Yeah. That thong is already small," Rissa opined.

"Go without." Natalie shrugged. "I do it all the time."

"I was hoping to astonish him with the lingerie." Dia sighed.

"No panties are a fun surprise, too." Rissa grinned. "Ask me how I know."

"Just no high kicks on the dance floor." Natalie pointed at the slit in Dia's dress that went to her mid-thigh.

"Wasn't planning on it." Dia sat on the edge of the bed and slowly worked her panties out from under her dress.

"Maybe just one where only Wade can see." Tabi's eyebrows bounced suggestively.

"Oh, fun!" Rissa nodded.

"Better now?" Dia asked and got three nods.

"He's not going to know what hit him. Come on, let me help with your makeup." Tabi pulled her to the bathroom. "Sorry girls, time for some brown girl bonding!"

"That's fine. We should go check on our party anyway."

Tabi's expert hand working on her makeup looked spectacular, and Nat returned to help get Dia's hair perfect before Dia discovered one flaw in her plan. The backpack that she thought contained two pairs of heels to choose from for the evening was instead more Lego. Teach me to buy two identical black backpacks from Amazon. Dia fumed briefly. Tabi volunteered her shoes, but they didn't fit. She had to wear her white tennis shoes with her elegant dress. It wasn't a bad look. However, Dia had wanted something more refined. "My shoes!"

"He's not going to care, Dia." Tabi smiled, when they emerged from the bedroom.

Guests started showing up for the friends' New Year's Party. Only four months ago, Dia had felt isolated and alone, without time for anything but the restaurant and Fredo's treatments. Her son now had a best friend instead of spending too much time at the hospital. Dia had friends that felt more like family. Sara and Alison showed up with their newborn and two-year-old, while Derek and Samantha brought their little one. There was so much love and happiness in the house.

"You look pretty, mommy." Fredo grinned up from his Lego creation.

"I wanna dress like that!" Clementine clapped. She was as obsessed with Lego as Fredo, but was also a girly girl. She was fascinated with dresses and accessorizing with a matching purse.

"When you're older." Jake smiled. "Wade's gonna love it, Dia."

"I hope so." Dia was nervous again. She wanted to impress the man who had taken her heart.

A knock emitted from the front door a few minutes later, before Wade's appointed time. Tabi made Dia answer the door.

"Whoa." Wade's jaw dropped as he stared, utterly flabbergasted by her outfit. He looked stunning in his tailored suit. He had to have had it made or adjusted since he'd lost weight due to his health struggles. It was a dark color with a vest underneath. The shirt was a gleaming white with a bit of shimmer and a purple, solid-colored tie. A blue square of fabric stuck out of a pocket, and he had a perfectly matching fedora. The hat wasn't a requirement anymore, as there was no harsh sunlight to guard against, and he had the beginnings of his hair returning.

"You clean up very well." Dia leaned in and collected a kiss.

"Not half as well as you, believe me, Dia. I keep thinking I've seen you at your most beautiful, but you keep surprising me." Wade's blue eyes gleamed as he smiled.

"But I don't have my heels." Dia pouted for a moment before smiling.

"Those shoes look perfect on you. Do we have a minute? I brought something for Clem, Fredo, and the hosts."

"Sure. Are you certain this is better than the apron the other day?" Dia smirked.

"We can call that a draw. These are for you." He handed her a small, elegant bouquet of flowers. They were an explosion of color on a cold winter evening. "Been a while since my last first date. This is good, right?"

"You're doing fine."

"Your present is still back at my apartment, Dia." Wade smiled. Even though she'd picked him up at the airport and spent Friday afternoon with him, their schedule hadn't allowed her time back at his apartment since before Christmas.

"You didn't have to, Wade."

"I wanted to, babe. You know I'm smitten, right?" Wade leaned in to collect a kiss.

"Kinda get that impression." Dia grabbed his hand and led him through Jake and Tabi's house to see the hosts and children.

Wade - That same time

There was plenty of room for Wade to walk side by side with Dia, but he couldn't resist holding back just a bit, so he could sneak a look at her extraordinary ass in a tight merlot dress. I'm the luckiest man alive. Popped into his head even after the harsh year. His trials and tribulations seemed to be what was required of him to have a few minutes more with Dia.

A peek over Dia's shoulder caught Wade leering. "Like the dress?" she asked with a smile.

"It's incredible. Almost as intoxicating as the woman wearing it."

"Thanks. I wanted to wear something nice for you."

"You went above and beyond nice, Dia." Wade halted them in a secluded spot before they emerged into the kitchen. He needed to collect a kiss before anything else.

"Save it for the hotel room," Tabi said, as she walked by. The accompanying smile shouted she was having fun with them, not angry.

"Do you have a vase?" Dia switched subjects as she broke the kiss. "These are beautiful, but I don't want them to wither while we're at the party."

"Of course." Tabi took the offered bouquet and led the couple to the kitchen.

"Oh, and for you and Jake. Thanks for watching Fredo." Wade reached into a bag in his opposite hand and pulled out a nice bottle of wine.

"You didn't have to, but thank you, Wade. Don't worry. You and Dia will make up for it with a little free babysitting in a few weeks when Jake and I celebrate our anniversary." Tabi grinned.

"Gladly," Dia replied for them, as they turned a corner into the open kitchen.

"Fair is fair." Jake shrugged with a grin.

"Bald brother!" Fredo dropped the pieces to the tower he was constructing with Clem and rushed over to hug Wade's legs.

"Hey, buddy. I don't think either of us is bald any longer."

"I know. I just like the name." Fredo looked sad.

"What's wrong?"

"I was gonna stay up all the way to midnight this year with momma. Can I come to the party? Momma says there's gonna be fireworks."

"Aww, sorry, Fredo," Wade said. It was unsurprising that the kid who had blessed the date a few days ago had changed his mind. "The party is for adults only. What if your mom and I call you at midnight?"

"Can ya show the fireworks?" Fredo looked down.

"We'll call you on video, Mijo, but only if you're still awake." Dia ruffled Fredo's hair.

"'Kay."

"Before we go, I got yours and Clem's Christmas presents."

"Why'd you get one for her?" Fredo looked puzzled.

"You don't want me to give your friend a gift?" Wade questioned.

Fredo motioned for Wade to lean down. "I didn't get her anything, and she's my best friend." Fredo's lower lip stuck out a little as he pouted. "You're making me look bad."