One Little Question

Author's Note:

While their partners have to work on a Saturday just before Christmas, a group of women have a cookie exchange, where a few too many mimosas lead to one little question that changes everything.

This is a full length 58K word story posted in its entirety and follows a cast of six couples -- think Love Actually, but dirty and also not a movie. While there are multiple points of view, the story is presented in a linear fashion with minimal jumping around from character to character.

***

I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes
Christmas is all around me
and so the feeling grows
It's written in the wind
It's everywhere I go
So if you really love Christmas
C'mon and let it snow?
—Christmas Is All Around, as performed by Billy Mack

Of all the messages I was expecting my wife to send me that day, that was not one of them.

Not that she never sent me... you know. Risqué sorts of messages. I'd opened my share of unexpected tit pics in the middle of drinks with the guys, subtly tilting my phone away from everyone else and indulging in the sight of her perfect brown skin and enticing cleavage and dark, puffy nipples. And then I'd try to finish my beer as fast as I could before rushing home so I could get my mouth around one of those beautiful nipples.

What could I say? Candice knew how to get me going. It wasn't the reason I'd married her, but I wasn't going to sit there and pretend like my wife wasn't hot as fuck.

But she hadn't sent me a picture of her tits. Or her ass. Or, like when I was a very, very lucky man, her pussy. This was just a question and a couple of emojis. It wasn't even that suggestive.

The thing was, I knew where she was.

And I knew who she was with.

And so did the rest of the guys on my crew.

"What's got your face so red, Jay-Jay?" asked Seth loudly.

"Nothing," I said. "And stop calling me that. Don't think I won't get you fired, new boy."

Seth mocked my words, a grin spreading across his face as he stripped his work gloves off and rolled the cuffs of his coveralls up. He was the baby of the crew and looked it, though in fairness, that's just because the rest of us looked old as balls.

Well, except Rob. And Adrian. And Kendra was only two years older than Seth and would've slapped me for saying she looked old at twenty-seven. And Benny didn't actually look old as balls. He just seemed it because he was the only one with kids.

It was me, okay? I looked old as balls. Forty was going to hit me three days after Christmas, but I'd been going grey for ten years by that point and working with a crew who was all younger than me made me distinctly aware of the fact that I was the fucking adult on the team.

Which had to be dangerous, but there we were.

Candice didn't seem to mind how I looked, though, and that was all that mattered. She liked it, she said, the grey beard on my chin and the fact that the salt had taken over my salt-and-pepper hair. Her favourite thing, she said, was when I got home from work and still had my sunglasses on, the sleeves of my coveralls rolled up to my elbows.

"You grime down real good, baby," she would say. "Not that you don't clean up real nice, but I like you a little dirty."

And even though it was just a couple of days before Christmas and the snow was flying, I always made sure I had my sunglasses on and my sleeves rolled up when I got home from the site every day.

I wondered if Laura, Seth's little teacher girlfriend, liked him grimed down too. Damn kid was too good-looking for his own fucking good. If I had looks like that when I was fifteen years younger... well, actually, I would've done fuck all differently, since I would've already met my wife and that woman had me hooked from day one.

But Seth was the kind of guy with a smile that made girls' hearts melt, even if he did need to grow up a little. When I first hired him, I had said it would just be a seasonal thing. He was a little too party animal, a little too misguided, a little too young. But I think, mostly, all of that was because he was just a little lost. All it took was a few weeks of guidance and tough love before he'd started changing, and the kid had ended up fitting in pretty well. So I'd decided to keep him on the crew.

"How are you not freezing?" Seth asked, staring at Benny, who was undoing his winter coat and fanning himself off.

"Working harder than you, probably," Benny said, and everyone chuckled even though Seth was right. How Benny was sweating when it was below freezing and we were in the middle of rough framing a house for some rich fuck who was paying out the ass for his new mansion to be constructed as fast as possible was beyond me. I was working my ass off just like the rest of them, but my toes were frozen between my steel-toes and I was almost regretting calling a coffee break, since at least when I was moving, it wasn't so damn cold.

That, and I wouldn't have seen that little question from Candice.

Why do you need to know that? I messaged back, then tucked my phone back in my coverall pocket before taking a swig from the coffee Adrian had just brought to the site.

"Seth's got a point," Kendra said to me as she leaned against the skeleton of a wall we'd gotten up that morning and ran a hand through her short, shaggy brown hair. "C'mon, boss-man. You're making us work the whole fuckin' weekend. Entertain us a bit. What kinda message did you just get?"

I gave her a stern look. "I didn't make you do shit. You know Dave's the one who told the client we'd have it done before Christmas. I'm stuck working this weekend just like the rest of you sorry fucks."

"Yeah," Rob said as he helped himself to a coffee, shivering as he took his glove off so he could pop it open. "Dave's the fuckin' Scrooge, not Jay."

I nodded at him gratefully. Rob was thirty and had been working on the crew with me for coming up on ten years already. I might've been Dave's second in command, but Rob was my right-hand guy. The dude was intimidating: nearly six and a half feet tall with what looked like half his yearly income inked onto his white skin, from the top of his neck to the backs of his hands and probably on his legs too, plus a shaved bald head and a dark, trimmed goatee.

But Rob was a teddy bear, just like most gigantic dudes with broad shoulders and dark, intimidating eyes tended to be. And he was loyal as all fuck. I hadn't asked him yet, but I had a feeling when Dave finally fucking retired, Rob would go in with me on buying the business. I hoped so, anyway.

"It's not so bad," Benny said. "We finish today and tomorrow, then a week off for the holidays? Paid? It was pretty nice of Dave to do that."

"It was," Seth agreed. "Laura's excited, too. Since she's off for Christmas break from the school and she's not going home this year."

"Exactly," Benny continued. "And besides, I'm taking all the overtime I can get. Christmas bills aren't gonna pay themselves, and my boys wanted one of those new fucking Nintendos this year."

"Shut the fuck up with your common sense over there, Benny," Kendra said.

"And your kids wanted a PlayStation, not a Nintendo," Seth added.

Benny was a great dude. He was a couple of years younger than me and the only dad of the group, at least for now. Candice and I had decided early on that we didn't want kids, but I had a feeling Rob would be getting started on that whole thing pretty soon, once he finally wifed Halle. And who knew about Seth, but he had lots of time to figure that out.

Though, Kendra and her wife had finally found a sperm donor they both agreed on, so her wife was pregnant and due in the next couple of months. I guess she wasn't technically a dad, but she was part of the crew.

But for now, Benny was the crew dad and had the bod to show it. Not that it bothered him; the second anyone joked about his dad bod, he reminded us he had proof he'd gotten laid at least twice—though he was gonna be able to change the count on that pretty soon—and what the fuck did we have except our word for it?

Then someone would respond with something like, "Well, Benny, most people don't need proof, but I guess when you're pale as a sheet of paper and have red hair and ginger scruff on your face that you refuse to shave, you kinda have something to prove."

The rest of the crew was still laughing at Benny when my phone buzzed again. I tried to subtly take it out of my pocket to see what Candice had replied with.

Which was dumb of me.

Because the girls and I are trying to figure it out and you've got a whole crew right there to ask, said her message.

I gritted my teeth as I typed a quick response. Yeah, a whole crew... of THEIR partners. This isn't anonymous at all.

"Is it nudes?" Kendra asked, suddenly beside me.

"Huh?" I said, jerking my phone away.

The crew roared with laughter.

"Is Candice sending you nudes?" she repeated. "And more importantly, can I see them? Your wife's hot."

"They're not nudes," I repeated. "And fuck you. I'm not letting you see my wife naked. And what makes you think I'm getting nudes right now, anyway?"

"'Cause you've got that 'I just saw something real naughty' look on your face."

I rolled my eyes. "That's not a thing. I don't have a look for that."

"Oh, Jay McJacobson, you totally do," Adrian said. He was a short guy in his late twenties with light brown skin, thick eyebrows, and a total shit-disturber attitude. "It's kinda like you're trying to hold something in. Easy to mistake for your 'I got the shits and someone's in the porta-john' face, though. The coffee run through you that fast already?"

"You're sick, man," I said.

"Wait, Candice is sending you nudes?" Seth asked, frowning. "The fuck kind of cookie exchange is your wife hosting?"

"Cookie exchange?" Adrian repeated. "The fuck's a cookie exchange?"

"They all bake a bunch of cookies and trade them," Rob said. "Halle made her mint Oreo meltaways again. I swear to God, if I had to pick a last meal, it would be those."

"Candice invited Denise, Benny, but she said couldn't get a sitter," I said. "You know she could've brought the boys, right?"

"Yeah, totally," Benny said. "She was planning on going to see her mom today with the boys, though. Help her parents get ready for Christmas sort of thing."

Kendra snorted. "How'd you know about the cookie exchange, Seth?"

His cheeks turned pink. "Candice was nice enough to invite Laura after they met at the Christmas party last weekend."

The crew oooed.

"Ah shit, man," Adrian groaned. "It's that serious already? Now I'm the only single fucker here."

"I wasn't single before," Seth said. "Laura and I have been dating for, like, six months."

"Yeah, but you aren't married," Kendra said.

"Neither is Rob," I said.

"Might as well be," Adrian grumbled, then sighed. "Well, congrats, Seth. You're officially part of the crew. Your girl's in the wives' club."

"It's not a wives' club," Rob said. "It's a small town and they like to welcome new people. And since Dave is making us work all weekend to finish the framing, they decided to amuse themselves with a cookie exchange."

"Which brings me back to my original point," Seth said. "Why is Candice sending you nudes from a cookie exchange?"

"She's not sending me nudes!" I said.

"Boo," Kendra muttered.

My phone picked that moment to buzz again. I tried to ignore it, but everyone's eyes were on me. Sighing, I looked down at the new message from Candice.

That makes them the perfect group to ask, her message said. Come on, baby. It's just one little question. Ask for me and I'll let you do it when you get home tonight.

It was that more than anything which made me cave. I mean, she would've let me do it anyway. But still.

"If you gotta go to the john so you can take a pic to send back, we'll give you a few minutes," Adrian said.

The crew chuckled again and I sighed.

"Alright, assholes," I said. "You wanna know what the message said?"

"Nah, we changed our minds," Benny said. "'Course we want to know."

I took a deep breath, then let it out.

"Candice said the girls want to know if guys go down on women for the woman's pleasure, or is it because the guy gets off on it."

"Jay gets off on eating pussy."

My fingers tightened so hard around the stem of my champagne glass that I was almost afraid it would snap. Luckily, every other woman in the room cackled with laughter, so no one seemed to notice my startled reaction.

The last thing I'd expected to be talking about at a cookie exchange with a group of women I knew solely from the workplace Christmas party my boyfriend had taken me to a week ago was sex. Not that I was some kind of prude or something. I just... well. I mean, I barely knew any of them. And Candice was Jay's wife. And from what Seth had said, Jay was kind of like his boss. Not his boss-boss, but the supervisor of the crew. The boss-boss didn't show up at the builds or something like that.

So basically, my boyfriend's boss's wife was sitting there telling every single person in the room that her husband really liked eating pussy.

And the whole thing had started because of Halle's cookies.

Candice had explained the cookie exchange rules to me over a few glasses of wine at the Christmas party. Eight dozen cookies, she'd said: one dozen for each of the other people attending, plus one for yourself, and one for all of us to enjoy while we were drinking mimosas at her place the following Saturday. And while I wasn't a huge fan of baking, I could make a pretty decent rum ball and I didn't have a ton of friends in Southbush, so I agreed to it.

The joy of moving to a small town to take a teaching job, I guess.

Thankfully, I'd met Seth almost immediately after moving here. Well, re-met, I guess. We'd run into each other at the grocery store and realized we'd met at a club in Calgary a few years earlier.

And by "met," I mean made out.

Then left the club together and went to my place.

Then hooked up.

Then hooked up again when we woke up the next morning.

Then texted a few times and talked about meeting up again, but he wasn't actually from Calgary—he'd said he was from a small town an hour or so north—so things had just never quite worked out. Which was sad, because it had been fun. Not that I'd expected it to turn into anything more. I might not have done the whole one-night-stand thing very often, but I didn't think it had to be anything more than a good time.

Even if the guy was gorgeous, like Seth was. Dirty blond hair, broad shoulders, one of those bright and genuine smiles that made everyone else want to smile with him. And he worked a pretty physical job, so he also had a super nice body. So running into him randomly in what turned out to be his hometown had been... well.

Really great.

We'd been dating ever since, but I hadn't met a ton of other friends in Southbush. So when Candice invited me to the cookie exchange, I jumped at the chance to connect with other women.

They were all a bit older than me, but that was okay. It wasn't like I was a child; I was twenty-four, with a career and an apartment and had moved from Calgary to Southbush all by myself. So I figured that made me pretty mature. And I knew I looked a little older than I actually was; that was purposeful, since it made the students and parents I taught respect me a bit more.

After all, if the high school kids I taught found out I was only a few years older than them, they'd probably use that against me. I already had a problem with the older boys thinking it was okay to hit on me, and worse, with certain parents thinking it was my fault.

"Well, maybe you shouldn't spend so much time making yourself up for school," one mom had said when I let her know her son had tried to grab my ass during biology.

I'd looked down at my outfit, which was a collared navy-blue polka dot dress with a skirt that hit just below my knees. And I had leggings on underneath it. I mean, sure, I'd curled my dark brown hair and I was wearing a bit of makeup—just a pale pink lip gloss and some mascara to highlight my brown eyes—but I'd hardly call that making myself up.

And regardless, my clothing didn't give anyone the right to grope me. Nor did the fact that we all knew what she was actually talking about, which was that my boobs were too big.

Because they were. Not big enough that they bothered me or anything, but with a slim waist and somewhat flat hips, I had a top-heavy sort of look that I couldn't do a whole heck of a lot about. So even though I wasn't showing off my boobs, they were just... there.

Seth had been livid when I told him about the boy who tried to grab me, especially when I said the administration's solution had been to switch him out of my biology class... but had kept him in my chemistry class. But after Seth had popped by with Rob, his larger-than-life coworker who would've only looked out of place in a motorcycle club because he could dwarf a Harley, to pick me up from the school one day, that student had surprisingly kept his hands to himself for the rest of the semester.

I still made an effort to look older and frumpier than I was, though. Just in case.

I wasn't sure how old Candice was. I thought she might be in her mid-thirties since her husband, Jay, had lamented about how he was turning forty at the Christmas party the previous week and she'd told him it didn't matter because he could still pull a hot young thing like her. Her sense of humour and quick wit had made me like Candice immediately. She was a Black woman with a coy smile and sparkling eyes beneath her coiled hair. As soon as Seth had introduced me at the party, she'd taken me under her wing, introducing me to the other people and making sure I felt like part of the group.

Halle had been one of those people. She was Rob's... something. Girlfriend felt like the wrong word since I knew they'd been together for five years, but they weren't married. She was absolutely beautiful in the Punk Rock Princess Barbie kind of way. She was in her early thirties and had the longest, blondest hair I'd ever seen on anyone. There were a bunch of piercings in her ears and a hoop in her nose and just like Rob, she was covered in tattoos. I'd seen a few of them at the Christmas party when Halle had been wearing a shiny green dress with thin straps, but at the cookie exchange, she was wearing a horribly ugly Christmas sweater with the characters from The Muppet Christmas Carol on it, so most of them were covered.

The other women I'd only just met that day. Nadia, a neighbour of Candice's who had made incredible Indian cookies that she refused to share the recipe for because she said her grandmother had brought it over when she immigrated. Then Trish, Candice's sister-in-law that worked at the library with Phoebe, who was probably the closest to my age. She was a larger woman and looked adorable in a cozy fair-isle patterned sweater dress that clung to her curves. Her legs were crossed over each other as she sat on the arm of the sofa, insisting to Candice that she was more comfortable there. With rosy white skin and shiny black hair, she almost looked like a pin-up version of Snow White. She was quiet and had a dry sense of humour that kept us all laughing.

Especially after she commented on Halle's mint Oreo meltaway cookies.

"Oh, my God," Candice said after taking a first bite of the cookie. "Halle, these are fantastic."

"Um, yeah," said Trish. "These are... wow. Wow."