A Fortunate Accident – Chapter 20

My door chimes, and I run to open it. It’s still raining. But that’s Rio for you.

“We come bearing gifts,” Kalvin says, lifting two canvas bags. Saif is holding an umbrella over both of their heads.

“Come in quick.” I wave them into the entryway. Saif sets the umbrella right next to the outer door and closes the inner door behind him on the way in. They take off their shoes before tracking water into the living area.

Kalvin opens the canvas bag and empties covered bowls onto the main table. He uncovers each, and steam curls in the light spilling from the overhead lamp.

“It’s fried noodles night. I had them load yours up with lots of vegetables.”

He remembered. I asked for extra vegetables in my pasta when I was recuperating at Vivian’s consort’s vineyard on Sonoma. Kalvin and I only had one meal there, but it must have been memorable enough for him.

Saif approaches me, squeezes my upper arm, and leans in to kiss me on the cheek. “I got dessert. Peanut butter pie.” He lifts the bag he’s carrying and raises his eyebrows.

I press my hand to my chest. “Sugar will always be the way to my heart.”

“I figured.” He smiles.

Kalvin’s smile is slight as he sets the chopsticks next to each bowl. I cross the room to him and kiss him on the cheek.

“Thanks for grabbing dinner, guys. I appreciate the help.”

I need to be open about how their help is needed and appreciated. They want to help, but I am terrible about asking. Despite wanting to spare them the inconvenience of my crazy life, they signed up for this.

My chest aches as I imagine them leaving, grabbing their bags and high-tailing it out of here, and how much that will hurt when it happens. I take a deep breath through my nose and push the thought away. It’s okay. Whenever they want, I will let them go. I promise myself, right here and now, never to be selfish and try to keep them if they want to leave me. I will accept it.

But I hope they’re here to stay.

“Of course,” Kalvin says, gesturing to my spot at the table. “It’s just dinner, Skylar. No big deal.”

I sit down in my seat, say a quiet, brief thanks, and pick up my chopsticks. Both Kalvin and Saif wait for me to start before they pick up their chopsticks, too. I capture a mouthful of noodles and pull them up.

“You may think it’s no big deal to pick me up dinner, but it is. Really. It’s a sweet gesture. It’s the kind of pampering I’ve rarely had from loved ones.” I push the noodles into my mouth and sigh at their perfection. Chewy with just the right amount of saltiness, they are bliss. India must have hired one of the best chefs she could find. “Mmmm, delicious.”

Saif picks at his noodles, and Kalvin’s face is twisted in thought.

“Are you telling me that just giving you food is pampering?”

The table jumps, and Kalvin hops with it. I glance under the table, and Saif is pulling his foot back to his side. Classic.

“Ow. Jesus.” He sits up taller, bringing his feet under his chair.

I mix around the noodles in my bowl. “It’s okay, Saif. No need for violence.”

“I just thought you’d like a break,” he replies.

“From what?” Kalvin asks. He shoves noodles into his mouth.

Even though I’m hungry after working all afternoon, I set my chopsticks down.

Here we go. Kalvin knows so little about my past, and I’m sure Saif is sick of hearing about it.

“Besides going to a restaurant or eating at Vivian’s house, I have always fed my family first and then myself. Since I was six. And even then, there were many times I fed everyone else, and I was denied food of my own.” I stare out the window at the rain. “I have a complicated relationship with food. I always eat now whenever I can.” I touch my chest. “There’s a buzz in here, when I see food, that I have to push away and ignore every time. I see a meal, a snack, whatever, and I want it, but I fear it’ll be snatched away from me at any second. So I always eat, and I never wait for people to bring it to me. It’s…” I stop and close my eyes with a smile. “It’s a treat for others to feed me and not take it away.”

I face Kalvin. “So, thank you. I appreciate it more than you know.”

Being gracious does not come naturally to me, so this is a feat. Every time I was appreciative and gracious in the past, my family used those moments to destroy me.

I pause and wait for someone to say I don’t deserve this meal, or to steal the food from my bowl, or make a snide comment about how I never reciprocate.

Nothing comes.

Silence has fallen over the table, but I won’t let it stop me from moving forward with this evening. I pick up my chopsticks and keep eating.

“Maybe you should stop calling them ‘family.’” Kalvin’s voice is low with anger.

I pause for a moment and find my zen in detachment. “Yes, I probably should. Anyway, we’re going to hammer out some things here tonight, between the three of us, so we can either move on together or part ways.”

Kalvin and Saif resume eating along with me. Saif grabs a beer from the bag, opens it, and hands it to me. Beer and noodles, what could be finer?

“Thanks.” I take a sip. “Okay. I’ve been going over my financial records, and things will be tight for a bit, but I think I can make this work for the next few months.” I chew on the noodles and decide to be open about the financial arrangements. “India Dellis paid me two million credits for being here.”

Kalvin’s eyes widen, and he and Saif glance at each other. “That’s a lot of money. You could buy a decent ship.”

“I could,” I stress, “but I won’t. I will use the money to give you both a stipend and pay for a lawyer to defend the Amagi. I will still make money as I work here month-to-month, assuming I survive the plants and the animals of Rio.”

“Skylar, that’s unnecessary,” Saif says, pausing his chopsticks above his bowl. “I don’t need a stipend. I have money I planned to bring to my network.”

He looks at Kalvin, hoping Kalvin will back him up. Kalvin quickly chews his mouth full of food.

“Skylar knows the predicament I’m in.” He clears his throat. “My previous job stole my wages, and every credit I’ve saved has gone towards my mother. I have a small amount of savings, but it’s not much.”

Saif’s eyebrows furrow. “Why does your mother need money?”

Before me, I have two men I care for, and they both come from opposite sides of society. Saif’s family is wealthy. They are the elite. His mother would never dream of taking money from her children. Kalvin has never been that lucky.

Kalvin clears his throat. “She’s been sick for over a decade. She would be homeless without my support.”

Saif’s cheeks fall, and he stares into his bowl.

I hold up my hand. “We’ll get to more of that later. I really feel it’s important you’re both paid for the work you’ll do in the network.”

Saif pulls his attention back to me and folds his arms over his chest.

“I don’t ever want you to think I’m being selfish or holding back from you,” I explain. Anger rises in my belly at his stony face, and it’s difficult keeping my voice even and calm. “You will get the stipend because that’s what’s fair.”

“No, no, no,” Saif says, pushing his bowl to the side. “You have slaved and suffered your whole life just to get to this point. I should be allowed to contribute funds and spoil you in the way you deserve. And I will settle for nothing less.”

I open my mouth to argue with him, but nothing comes out. For once, there are no comebacks to a statement like that.

Because deep down in my gut, that’s what I want. I want to be spoiled, and cared for, and watched over. I want someone to smother me with love so I can barely breathe, so I can barely move. Not that I would know what to do with that kind of attention or anything. Just the very thought of it makes me want to hide.

“I will settle for nothing less,” Saif repeats, stressing every word. “And you will let me because that’s what I was meant to do.”

Kalvin is quiet, poking at the noodles in his bowl. I watch him from the corner of my eye.

He thinks for a moment before lifting a helping of noodles. “Let him,” he says, stuffing his mouth full of food.

Saif gestures to Kalvin, his palm out and his eyebrows raised.

I actually laugh. “What?”

“Let him spoil you. Let us spoil you. I can’t spoil you with money and jewels, but I can spoil you with attention, food… I’m a great cook, by the way. My siblings made me cook because my food was the best. I can take care of ships and make sure your business is always running on the up and up. There’s no reason we have to keep doing things the way the old guard did.”

“He’s right.” Saif sits up straighter. “Newer networks now are more evenly balanced. They don’t rely on just the woman to do everything, and the men become leeches. My mother raised me to be independent and want the same thing in a network.”

Kalvin looks me dead in the eyes. “Some of us were lucky to have good role models for mothers. You don’t have to be like yours.”

His statement knocks the air out of me. I press my hand to my chest as I try to catch my breath.

“Have I…?” I start, but I can’t finish the sentence.

Have I been trying to be like my mother, but better? Thinking that if I just paid my men enough, they would be more responsible, more loving, more reliable than Mom’s network? When I remember my childhood, a lot of the grief amongst the dads was because of money. They never had enough, hence the gambling and the side hustles. They put me in charge of the kids to pursue their own desires because they didn’t get anything from Mom. All she ever did was fly and pop out babies. She was never really a part of the family, and her network didn’t make it a family because she wasn’t around.

“Oh my God,” I whisper, pressing my fingers to my lips.

Kalvin nods. “You don’t just make the mold better or stronger or bigger. You break it. That’s how the cycle ends.”

When did Kalvin become such a wise man?

Maybe he always was. I still have a lot to learn about these two.

“You’re right. You’re so right.” I sigh as I stare down into my bowl of noodles. “I thought that if I just paid you more or gave you less responsibility or asked less of you, everything would be better. Dom, Miguel, my own father…” I press my hand to my lips. “They were never happy, and I figured it was because they never had enough.”

Saif’s eyes are wide. “Did you think you would just do everything, and we would — I don’t know — hang out?”

My neck begins to sweat, and I swallow hard because I think I know the correct answer to this, but I’m still unsure.

I slam the chopsticks down on the table, cover my face with my hands, and groan.

“I don’t know!” I yell, throwing my hands into the air. “I don’t know.” I stress every syllable. “I don’t know how to do this. I feel like a complete and absolute moron. I am smart,” I say, poking myself in the chest with every word. “I gather data, and I make decisions based on previous experiences. All my life, I watched the dads be restless and angry. They took advantage of me as free labor so they could do their own things. All because Mom was tight with the money. What do you think I learned from that, huh?”

Kalvin holds up his hands and nods slowly. “It’s okay. We’re not here to demonize you for being the way you are.”

“No,” Saif says, shaking his head. “I’m sorry if my tone was sharp.” He closes his eyes and sighs. “I grew up believing everyone was cherished as part of a network. Men and women. Everyone in my mother’s network had an equal say, with my mom being the final decision maker. Still, I don’t think they ever fought over it because they always came to compromises. My mother has five men in her network, and they have always all been considered. It’s a team effort.”

I never saw a team effort growing up. I saw one man dominate the psyches of everyone else and impose his rule. Unfortunately, I was the one who endured his wrath.

Kalvin glances between Saif and me. All I can do is stare into space. I have been lied to for most of my life, lied to and used. How do I even have healthy relationships after all the shit I’ve been through?

“That sounds pretty great, Saif. Doesn’t it, Skylar?”

I swallow and turn to him. I must look like a dying baby bird because his face falls.

“It is pretty great.” Saif’s lips turn up in a warm smile. “And I think Skylar is going to make a wonderful partner.”

“Partner…” The word feels foreign in my mouth. I sit with it a moment until it warms to my soul. “Partner.” I nod as the word becomes a friend, not an enemy.

“Yeah.” Saif’s mood brightens along with his smile. “Let’s do things differently. I think it would be great for us to have a partnership. All of us.” He gestures to Kalvin. “He’s growing on me.”

“Same, buddy,” Kalvin says, sarcasm dripping off his words.

I burst out an abrupt laugh. Saif’s smile grows.

“And I’m sure there’ll be others,” he continues, nodding. “We can make this a tight family where we all have a say in how it works. My mother came from a family similar to yours, Sky, though she didn’t suffer the kind of abuse you did.”

I lower my eyes to the table.

“But her mother’s network was always so bitter. They lived hand-to-mouth for so long because they invested in the business instead of themselves and their own happiness. When my grandmother died, none of my mother’s siblings were surprised. She had worked herself to the bone for years and did nothing but complain for the last ten of them. My mother decided she would never do what her mother did. You can do the same.”

I take a deep breath and let it all out. Vivian’s network is more like a partnership than anything else. I grew up believing the woman had to be the center, had to pull all the weight, had to provide all the income, had to birth all the babies. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve seen other network configurations. I’ve seen ones as small as single pairings. I’ve seen larger ones with multiple women. I’ve seen unhealthy networks and happy networks. The happiest ones were always a mystery to me.

But they don’t have to be.

“Do you think we can make that work?” I ask, sitting back in my chair.

They both nod. “I don’t see why not,” Kalvin says. “It is a partnership by law, anyway. It’s obviously not always done this way. Some networks prefer a more traditional style with the woman at the front and center always. But I’ve seen others where it works out better the way Saif is suggesting.”

“Okay.” My shoulders start to feel lighter.

Saif raises a finger. “I’d also like to propose that you don’t appoint a number-one like some networks do. It seems to work for Vivian because of her farm situation. Still, I think things would be better divided evenly between us all, with you as the ultimate decision maker, especially when it comes to your business and your ship.”

“Okay.” A smile returns to my face. “I’d like that, I think.”

Saif nods once.

My noodle bowl is almost empty, so I pick up my chopsticks again.

“I’m going to make my first decision as part of this network, then.” I scoop up a mouthful of noodles. “I’d like for you both to work out a sleeping arrangement schedule. I will not be sleeping with you both every night. In fact, I will only ever sleep with one of you at a time.”

“Good,” Saif mumbles.

“Thank fucking God,” Kalvin says.

“Glad to see we’re on the same page. And some nights I would like to sleep alone. Can you take care of that?” Vivian has a similar arrangement, and I think it would be good for us.

“Sure.” Saif nods to Kalvin. “He was here last night, and you’ve done enough emotional labor today. So take the night off. I’ll take the next. Fair?”

We all agree.

Kalvin lifts his hands. “Look at that. We made it work.” His smile is sweet, and Saif’s returning smile is gracious and kind.

How the hell did I find two men like this? Now, if only we can fix the disastrous trip to see Saif’s family.

“Finish up because I’m dying for dessert,” Saif says, reaching behind him to grab the food bag. He pulls out three helpings of peanut butter pie with chocolate ganache on top. I finish up my noodles in a flash.

Hey now. You can’t go wrong with dessert.

My night is looking up.