Bree Lancaster

Breakdown 5-16-24 #1

{{ Monday, March 11
Kenner, LA
Bree’s home }}

“Hey babe, I’m so glad to see you.”
I greet Josh at the door, and he steps inside before giving me a kiss. It’s after five in the afternoon, and he came here right after leaving the Academy for the day.
“Rough day?”
“Ugh, you know it was.” Dom and I had our first court hearing today. It was everything you’d expect.
“Well, good thing I brought this.” Josh then holds up a brown paper bag. I squint at it, and he pulls out a bottle of whiskey.
“I knew there was a reason I loved you.”
“And here I thought it was the giant—”
“Hey!” I laugh.
“Heart. I was going to say heart.” He smirks.
“You absolutely were not.” He shakes his head no, trying not to laugh. “Either way, it’s not wrong.” I reach for the bottle as Josh finally laughs.
“Gonna chill that?”
“Of course.” I go into the kitchen to put it in the freezer. Josh follows and sits at the island. I join him after I put the bottle away.
“So, how’d it go?”
“Boring, really. We had to be there at ten, but ended up not being called until after lunch”
“So, once you got called…?”
“Oh, that wasn’t too bad. The judge looked over the paperwork, ruled the prenup valid, then gave us a deadline for getting the financials handled. We went over those clauses, everyone agreed, and we go back the 25th to show proof we sorted it.”
“That was it?”
“That’s it.” I shrug. “It might not sound as rough as I made it seem, but the waiting almost all day drove me nuts, and it didn’t help that he was in a bad mood.”
“Do you know why?”
“Nope. Didn’t ask, don’t care. All I asked was if he was going to be here tonight, and he said no. So I called you.” I grin.
“I admit I wasn’t sure if coming over here was a good idea, but now that I’m here… I definitely don’t want to leave for a while.”
“Good. Because I have plans.”
“Oh do you, now?” Josh leans on the counter towards me.
“Yep. First, I thought we’d order from the sushi place.” Josh nods, agreeing it’s a good idea. “And then, I thought I might introduce you to the wonders of my heated pool.”
“That sounds really hot. And I don’t mean just the water.”
I smirk. “I thought you might think so.” For a moment it comes to mind why I have a heated pool in the first place – Dom had it done for me as a gift a few years ago, to remind us of the hot springs in Iceland, where we went for a photo shoot. Let’s just say the water there wasn’t the only thing heated up. I push the thought out of my head. Fuck it, I will make new memories.

After our sushi dinner, and with the now chilled whiskey, Josh and I are sitting together on the couch in the den. We both have whiskey drinks. I’m laying across, leaning back on the arm and my feet resting across his lap. He has a hand on my leg, gently and slowly rubbing my bare leg, as I have shorts on.
“Just let me know when you’re ready for the pool. I turned the heater on last night. It takes a while to warm up.”
“Last night? So you planned this out.”
“I did.”
“Impressive.”
“Are you impressed enough to stay over?”
Josh’s hand stops moving for a moment. “Overnight?” I nod, smiling. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I think it’s the best idea I’ve had in a while.”
“What about—”
“He’s not coming here tonight. And Amy already agreed to keep the babies overnight.”
Josh smirks, and starts rubbing my leg again, reaching a little higher.
“Wow, you really did plan this out, sweetness.”
“I told you I did.” I set my glass of whiskey down, as I assume I’ll soon need both my hands, judging by the direction his are going.
“Not only am I impressed, I’m aroused.” Sitting up straight, Josh then leans over to reach up my leg further.
“Is that a yes?”
“No.” In one swift motion, he leans in more, grabs me by my hips, and pulls me closer, settling on his lap. I adjust myself into a straddled position. “It’s a fuck yes.”
I smile, and lean in to kiss him. It’s immediately deep and passionate. He runs his hands from my shoulders down my back, to my ass and pulls me closer. I can feel him pressing up against me and wonder to myself if we’ll make it to the pool if we keep this up. My answer to myself is, it doesn’t matter, because we can absolutely do both. I press into him more, drawing a low sound from his throat. I know what that means… we’re not making it to the pool. He moves one hand to under my ass, the back of my thigh really, and moves the hem of my shorts out of the way. The very moment I feel his fingers touch me, a sound from the foyer makes us both stop dead.

The door.

“Shit!” I jump off Josh’s lap and sit next to him. After one glance, toss a throw pillow at him, to place just right.
“I thought he wasn’t coming back tonight?”
“He said he wasn’t! Hold on, I’ll figure this out.”
I get up, adjust my clothes, and go to the den doorway. I intended to get into the foyer area before Dom can get to the den, but he meets me at the doorway. He can clearly see Josh sitting on the couch behind me. Not that it matters, his car is clearly in the driveway. But I know what we were doing and… this is just all kinds of weird.
“Hey...”
“Hi. Didn’t mean to interrupt…” Dom looks past me towards Josh and gives a terse nod. “Josh.”
“Dom.” I can’t help but look back, as Josh nods back in the same manner. The pillow is gone, as Josh is sitting up, leaning forward a little. Okay, that works too. Turning back to Dom I glare.
“I thought you weren’t coming back here tonight?”
“I’m not, not technically. I just needed to get something I forgot upstairs. But I didn’t want to just walk by and not say something, that would be rude.”
“I see.” I don’t know what else to say.
“Wouldn’t have offended me.” I glance back at Josh, glaring.
“Be that as it may…” I turn back to Dom. He sounds perfectly calm, but I can tell by his eyes that he is not. At all. Fucking actors. “… Bree, I’d actually like to speak to you for a minute. In the kitchen?”
So, in private. Fine. “Okay.” I glance back at Josh, and he nods.

I follow Dom to the kitchen. As soon as we get past the island, he turns, staring at me with his arms crossed.
“What? You wanted to say something?”
“Yeah. In the interest of full honesty… I’m not really sure how I feel about him being here.”
I cross my arms now, matching him yes, but also indignant. “Excuse me?”
“It’s just… you and I going out to the other’s place is one thing, but having them here in the house is something else.”
“First of all, you said you weren’t going to be here, so what difference does it make?”
“I just—"
“And furthermore, my name is on the house title, I’ll have anyone I want here.”
Dom sighs, stepping back and letting his arms fall to his sides. “I really didn’t think you’d resort to playing that card.”
“I didn’t want to, but you’re making a big deal out of nothing!”
“I’m really not. I’m just telling you how I feel.”
“Okay.” I nod. He has a point. We agreed a few weeks ago to be honest with each other. “Well, here is how I feel about that. It’s not as if you never knew about Josh until now, and Heath isn’t here. Amy has him for the night.” Dom nods back, picking up my unspoken point – that our son wouldn’t be seeing anything that might confuse or upset him. “You had to know something like this was going to happen eventually.”
“I suppose so. Just didn’t expect it so soon.” He sighs hard. “Okay. Fine. So what you’re saying is, that when you’re not here I can do the same thing?”
I shrug. “I don’t care. She can come anytime she wants, whether I’m here or not.” I realize how tight I’m holding my crossed arms, by feeling my nails digging into my skin. I recall my conversation with Wyatt, about pretending I’m not angry about this when I really am. I shouldn’t have said that just now. But it’s too late. I doubt he’ll take me up on it. Dom scoffs.
“Yeah, okay. Don’t be surprised if I never test that statement with you here.”
“When I say I won’t be here? I won’t be.”
“Okay. I get it. I’m not supposed to be here. You know what? Forget I said anything.” He holds his hands up, conceding.
“That easily?”
Dom shrugs. “You’re right. I said I wouldn’t be here, so this shouldn’t have been an issue. And it won’t be, I’ll be gone in a few minutes. I just need my phone charger and tablet.”
Dom walks past me towards the stairs. I turn as he passes and watch as he stops on the bottom step and looks back at me over his shoulder. “You guys have fun.”
I watch him go up a few steps before turning back to the den. I can’t decide if there was sarcasm in that last sentence or not.

Walking back into the den, I sit next to Josh.
“Is everything okay? Should I leave?”
“No, not at all. It’s fine. He’ll be gone soon.”
“Are you sure? It sounded like it got a little heated.”
“For a minute, but it’s fine. We came to an understanding about having people at the house.”
“Maybe—"
Just then, we hear the door slam, hard. I assume Dom slammed it on purpose so we would hear that he was gone.
“See? He’s gone, and he’s not coming back tonight.”
“Maybe it was a bad idea for me to come here after all.”
“Nonsense. I’ll have anyone I want in my own house.”
“Okay. Then maybe it was a bad idea for you to let him stay here until he goes to Los Angeles.”
I sigh. “Yeah. I had that thought too. But I already said yes and I’m not going to take it back now.”
“I wouldn’t ask or expect you to. My point was that maybe we should just stick to my place.”
“Its’s fine, babe.” I grab his face and kiss him. “I promise. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good.” I get up and sit on his lap, as I was before Dom’s interruption. “Now can we not talk about him anymore? I would really like to enjoy this sleepover.”
“Done.” With a smirk, Josh grabs my ass as before, and pulls me tight against him. I kiss him again, deeply. We’ll just have to get to the pool later.

{{ Monday, March 25
Kenner, LA
Veterans Memorial Park }}

Since I’ve been away from SCW, the days and weeks seem to be going by quickly. After the day Dom came into the house when Josh was there, we made an effort to not allow something like that to happen again. I even spent one whole weekend at Josh’s (I took Heath with me) to give Dom plenty of time to do whatever he wanted at the house. He never told me that he brought Robin there, but when I got home I could tell. I honestly wasn’t bothered at all. I told him I didn’t care, and I don’t. Now if I had walked in on it like he did… I don’t know.

Anyway, even though I haven’t been at SCW shows, I’ve still been keeping up. And Simon is really starting to piss me off. He can’t get Amy to cuss him out much less talk to him, so he’s decided to antagonize me, instead. He’s out there spewing garbage. I’ve done my best to ignore it, but it’s not easy.

As for the divorce proceedings, so far so good. When Dom and I aren’t talking about Josh or Robin, or his TV show, we get along just fine. We got the financial things with our banks taken care of, and went to court this morning. Everything was approved and we were given a final hearing date in April, almost three weeks from now. That should be the end of it. He will be leaving tomorrow though to go to Santa Monica. Filming on the show’s second season starts towards the end of April, so he wants to do some cleaning up and such at his house there to make it livable full time, rather than just set up as the vacation house we were using it as. He says he isn’t sure how long he will be gone, but he’ll have to be back before the court date, so no longer than that.

Tonight for me though, will be… interesting, to say the least. Jaina convinced me to go with her to the circle she’s been a part of for a few months now. I knew about it, but no real details until she asked me to go, after I mentioned missing the community aspect of church. If these people really had that kind of atmosphere, then maybe Jaina is right and I’ll actually like it.

It's just before sunset as Jaina and I walk across the parking lot at Veteran’s Park. The group always meets at a certain shelter towards the back of the park, and several people are gathered there already.
“Oh look, Maia and Jessie and Becca are here. Maia is sorta the leader, but not really.”
“How does that work?”
“Like… as I said, we’re not set up like an official coven, so there’s no quote-unquote high priestess. But she keeps the schedule and runs the group chat and stuff like that.”
“Oh, I get it.”

As we approach the small group, a tall black-haired woman, who looks older than Jaina but younger than me walks up with a smile.
“Jaina, you made it! And this must be your aunt you told us about.”
“Sure is. Aunt Bree, this is Maia.” The woman offers her hand. I take it.
“Hi, nice to meet you. Thanks for letting Jaina drag me along.”
“Oh of course! Thank you for attending. We welcome anyone who’s interested to join us and observe, or participate if you like.”
“Thank you.”

We join the others. Jaina introduces me to Jessie and Becca, young women about her age. Two more women arrive, older than me. They introduce themselves as Lindsay and Megan. Shortly after their arrival, Maia stands near a picnic table under the shelter and gets everyone’s attention.
“Good evening, ladies. Thank you for coming. I see we’re a few short tonight, but that’s okay. Jaina here brought her aunt, Bree, as a guest tonight. Let’s do our best to welcome her.” A small round of applause goes around. I wave at everyone. “From what I understand, Marie was feeling a little under the weather tonight, Casey has class, and Kenzie couldn’t get off work. Let’s send them the energy they need to handle what they need to handle.” I see nods go around the group. Jaina had already told me why Marie stayed home “Okay. All of that said… let’s line up!”

In the grassy area next to the shelter, I see an altar with some candles and a statue of some sort on it, and four markers in the grass. I follow along behind Jaina as she tells me the proper responses to the questions joining the circle.
“How to you come to circle?”
“Of my own free will.”
“How do you enter this circle?”
“In perfect love and perfect trust.”
After getting some smoke waved around me and some oil dabbed on my forehead, I followed Jaina around the circle and took a place next to her. I can smell the oil, it’s woodsy, like rosemary mixed with something I can’t place. Maia goes to the altar.
“The circle is cast.”
Everyone else replies, “Blessed be.” I didn’t know I was supposed to say something. Oh well. I’m here to learn something, aren’t I?
“Good evening and welcome to March Full Moon, or traditionally called the Worm Moon. This name came from the way worms were observed to come out of the ground in spring time, when the ground thawed from winter. Now here in the south, our ground never really freezes so that doesn’t really apply, but we like to use traditional names. What we can take from this is more important. This time of year is a time of new growth, blossoming, letting the old fall away to make room for something new.”
I look sideways at Jaina. She grins at me. If that wasn’t an apt description of my life at the moment, I didn’t know what was.

I mostly listen and observe as the women go through the ritual. Maia spoke more about the coming abundance and new beginnings. They had some juice and home made bread slices in a part of the ritual they called ‘cakes and ale.’ It reminds me a lot of communion at church, except instead of representing the blood and flesh of a deity, it’s a blessing to everyone to never hunger and never thirst. At the end, Maia poured out some juice and crumbled some bread into the grass as an offering to the goddess. After this they recited a chant I can’t remember about closing but not breaking the circle.

After, everyone meets under the shelter again. Maia walks up to me.
“So, Bree. What did you think?”
“It was… all new, and yet somewhat familiar at the same time. I used to be Catholic.”
Maia nods sagely. “We hear that a lot. They borrowed many things from the old ways.”
“That’s what my sister-in-law told me. Jaina’s mom.”
An odd look comes across Maia’s face, but quickly passes. Does she not like Amy?
“Right. It’s starting to become more known. Did you like the ritual?”
“I did. The words and the message were beautiful. I think I needed to hear some of it.”
Maia smiles. “Good. I’m glad you got something from it. Do you think you’ll come back?”
“I’d like to.”
“I told you!” Jaina beams beside me.
“Great! You know, it would be great for the community if someone like you were known to be involved.” Oh. So she does know who I am.
“I don’t know. Amy is much more well known than I am, and she’s been involved in this community for years.”
That odd look comes back. “Yes, but… she likes to do her own thing, and everyone knows it. She’ll go to major events, but things like this? The regular practice? She doesn’t do that and… no offense but it rubs some people the wrong way. Not me. I’ve just heard others say.”
I glance at Jaina and she shrugs. So it must be true. “I see.”

As Jaina and I head back to her car, I voice my thoughts. “Jay. Is Maia up to something here? Wanting me involved, and what she said about your mom?”
“No. She’s not wrong. There’s a group of people who see solitaries as sorta stuck up. These women don’t, not Mom, they know better. Maia just wants to get the community more involved. Since the city’s biggest coven disbanded last year, things have been scattered. She wants to fill that void, and she knows Mom won’t want to help. She’s not the group type, you know that.”
“It’s true. Well, that sounds like a good idea, then.”
Jaina smiles at me as she drives us out of the parking lot. We turn onto the main road and ride quietly about a minute.

Fill a void.

Maybe something like this was exactly what I needed, just like Jaina thought. I felt like something was missing, too. Maybe the pieces would start to fit together.