Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

I smile. She must be eating dinner. That mouth is mine in ten hours, I
say.
I’ll be done with my pasta by then, she assures me. Because it and me
are having a total relationship without you right now.
I send her a kiss emoji with a heart and head into my grandmother’s
house.
“Mimi?” I call out, setting my bag down and straightening my sweater
vest and Polo underneath. “I’m heeeeere.”
No one answers, and I drift through the living room, den, and dining
room, looking.
“Mom?” I say loudly.
I see movement outside, and I walk through the solarium, toward the
patio outside.
“That has never been an option,” Mimi bites out.
I halt, moving to the side, behind a fern. My mom and grandmother sit at
the patio table on the other side of the glass, the open door next to me
allowing their voices to drift inside.
“My family is miserable,” Mom tells her.
“Then, fix it. For God’s sake, I’m not against divorce when it improves a
woman’s situation,” Mimi fires back, “but leaving Jefferson Collins and
letting some other woman win… How could you live with yourself? What
are you teaching Clay?”
“That perhaps she should know when to walk away?”
“A divorce is failing,” Mimi says, “and you are both better than that. And
don’t act like you don’t still love him.”
A divorce? I stand there, unmoving. My mother’s actually considering
divorce. I thought maybe a trial separation after I graduated, but… Have they
already started the process?
“And when my father cheated on you?” Mom asks her. “Do you still
think you won anything?”
“Oh, honey.” Mimi picks up her glass of lemonade, the pristine blue of
the pool in the yard beyond. “I knew exactly what I was getting into. And I
knew exactly what I would get in return.” She takes a drink and sets the glass
back down. “Some days were almost unbearable, but I’m still here and those