Chapter 22

I was just about to leave work on the Friday evening, when my phone rang: it was Angela.

"Hey, you got plans for dinner?" she asked.

"No, but I'm guessing you have a suggestion?"

"Yes, Sally asked me to invite you over here for dinner, she wants to meet you!".

"Your 10 year old daughter wants to meet me? OMG, what have you told her about me?"

"Nothing bad, don't worry. She's staying here last night and tonight, so last night we were having a chat, and she asked me to tell her about you, and I said 'why don't you just meet him and make up your own mind?'. So want to come over?"

"Yeah, why not. When?"

"As soon as you're ready, don't want to be having dinner too late, she's only 10."

"Ok, I'll probably be there by six, that ok?"

"Excellent.

I knocked on the door, and moments later it was opened, not by Angela, but by a 10 year old girl.

"Hello, you must be Justin, please come in," she said. "Mum's in the kitchen doing dinner".

"Ah, so you must be Sally then... Hi Sally" I said in greeting. Sally was dresses like a quite typical young kid: brightly coloured clothes - clearly still a few years before she became untra-fashion-conscious - and pink trainers. Her hari was quite cute too, a few inches below her shoulders.

I followed her through to the kitchen, where Angela was working on dinner. "Hiya!" I said in greeting. She motioned me over, then when I was 'within reach' she gave me a simple kiss on my lips.

"Dinner will be about 15 minutes: you ok with fish fingers, chips and some simple veg?"

"Sure, it's been a while since I had fish fingers, I used to love them as a kid!"

"Good. In the meantime, Sally, can you and Justin set up the table for dinner?"

"Excuse me, but what should I call you?" asked Sally.

"Justin is fine."

"Ok, well, Justin, can you get the cutlery out of that drawer, and I'll get the table mats out...." It felt a bit odd being ordered around by a young teenager, but what the heck. Between us we sorted out the table: something tells me that she went a little over the top, that much of what we'd done was because I was there, a visitor."

"So, what do you think to your mum having to wear braces?" I asked her, trying to get a conversation running.

"I think she's really cool!" she replied. "I'm probably going to have to get braces soon as well..." she added, smiling so I could see her teeth. As a 10 year old, her teeth were a mix of baby and adult teeth, and I could see that the adult teeth she was getting were not especially straight.

"You gonna be ok having braces then?"

"Yeah, I'll be ok.." said Sally

"I took her to see my ortho a couple of months ago," explained Angela, who had just walked in with 3 glasses of juice. "For the moment it's a 'watch and monitor' thing, but she's coming with me to my appointment in a few weeks time, so my ortho can check her out again. She's probably going to need some sort of 'active appliance' to help her bottom jaw grow a little more, plus she needs her top jaw widening a bit. After that, it will be braces to straighten her teeth out." It was good that Angela was doing something to fix Sally's teeth while she was young - she was still growing, and her jaw still soft, so her teeth would be sorted out quite easily and quickly. Plus, at that age, she'd probably cope with braces a LOT better than if she was 15 or 16, when looks matter so much more.

Dinner itself was simple, but actually rather nice: Fish fingers, chips, sweetcorn and green beans. Angela was right, Sally was quite bright, and very able to talk and communicate well: if she kept on like that, she would do well in life.

Angela had explained when she called me that, as a 10 year old, Sally needed to be in bed by 9pm, and would need a bath before, so I'd need to be gone by about 8:30 at the latest. After dinner, which included some ice cream for pudding, we played cards for a little while, then watched one of Sally's cartoons. At about 8:15, thing had naturally come to a bit of a pause.

"Well ladies, I think it's maybe time for me to go, so you, young Sally, can get ready for bed. It was lovely to meet you! Now, you and your mum need to have a chat, to decide if you're ok with me coming to see your mum while you're here - I'll be honest, I won't mind if you prefer me not to be here..."

"I think I like you, Justin, so you can come and visit mummy any time you like, I don't mind..." replied Sally with a cute smile.

Chapter 23


"Hey, I don't suppose you're in town, are you?" asked Angela. It was Saturday, and I was, in fact, in town doing a bit of shopping, when Angela had called me.

"I am actually, why?"

"Well, I'm at 'CostaLoadsa Coffee' over in Back Street with a friend, I thought you might like to come and join us."

"Yeah, ok! I need to buy something on the way, so I'll be about 10 minutes."

"Black Americano?" she asked

"Yeah, that's right.... see you soon....".

Well, that was a nice surprise, but nowhere near as big a surprise as I got 10 minutes later when I got to CostaLoadsa... I had walked in the front door, and started looking around. They weren't instantly visible, so I guessed they might be at the back, where there's a sort of 'lounge' area, with nice sofas and so on.

I found Angela at the back of the coffee shop, sitting on a settee over to the side. As she saw me, she smiled, letting me see her lovely golden brackets, plus a tantalising glimpse of her elastics. Also sitting on the settee was Ellie. Oh, crap: I got a feeling that was in trouble! And I did not doubt that they had been talking about me. I mean, from what I knew about the two of them, the only time they've ever actually met was at Simon's funeral, so why ELSE would they have gotten together? When Ellie saw me, she too smiled, sufficiently widely that I could see not just her upper labial wire, but her lower one too. They moved to the ends of the settee, making a gap in the middle for me to sit down. On the table, in front of me, was my coffee.

"So, doesn't your girlfriend get a kiss?" asked Angela with another very obvious smile, once again letting me see her gorgeous golden braces.

"Don't be silly," added Ellie, "neither of us is ACTUALLY his girlfriend. But maybe he should give both of his POTENTIAL girlfriends a kiss....". Ellie smiled at me, letting me see her lovely Hawley retainers once more, then leaned towards me, and put her hand to my face, turning it to face her. "Don't worry," she said, "it's ok..." and she put her lips to mine, and gave me a very gentle and sweet kiss. "You'd better give Angela one too....".

I turned to my right, where Angela was. She too leaned towards me, took my face in both her hands, and put her lips to mine, then quickly gave me a little tongue, before pulling back.

I was completely speechless: what WAS going on? I leaned forward, picked up my coffee, and took a small sip.

"So, I thought we were supposed to be open and honest to each other?" said Angela.

"Oh, don't be so unfair to him," said Ellie, "From what you said earlier, I suspect he never told you any actual LIES about him and me.... just maybe not ALL of the truth. Mind you, from what he told me, I thought you were 'just a platonic friend'... but I guess I never actually asked him to be TOTALLY honest with me!" The two girls started giggling a bit, but each of them then took one of my hands in theirs.

"Ok, so what's going on?" I asked.

"Well, you've told me a couple of times that you'd met up with Ellie: my brain interpreted that as going on dates with Ellie, and it seems I was right, although I underestimated quite how much your relationship had developed. Anyway, I thought it might be useful to 'compare notes' with her, and boy were those notes interesting! It was very clear that you actually liked us both, quite a lot in fact... and we are both quite certain that our braces feature in there, but we have both noticed something: there were two words you seemed to positively avoid using when you spoke to us. The first was 'love', and to some extent I could understand that, after all, you are a guy! But given how 'close' you were getting to both of us, I was slightly surprised. The other word you were avoiding using was 'girlfriend'... I never remember hearing you even mention or hint about that word even once. Once we two got talking, we worked out why: we reckon that you were finding it hard to commit to just one of us....." explained Angela.

She was actually spot on correct. I did actually like BOTH of them. A lot. They were quite different from each other, and thus I had slightly different feelings for each. Let me be clear, my feelings had become quite genuine, and I had just gotten myself into a position that I wasn't really sure how to get out of.

"Is she right then?" asked Ellie. "DO you like both of us? I mean in a more than trivial way?"

"I do, actually. You are both quite different, and I guess that's part of why I like - ok, maybe I should say 'love'? - you both. I've enjoyed every moment I've spent with each of you."

"So, how do you feel about having a girlfriend? Are you ready for that level of commitment?"

"Yes, I would like a girlfriend, but I'm scared that if I chose one of you, I'd upset the other, and I don't want to do that."

"We had a feeling you might say something like that, and we think we might have a solution. Maybe not what you might call 'orthodox', but let's see what you think..." said Angela.

"And that is...??" I asked.

"Do you think you could cope with having TWO girlfriends?" suggested Ellie.

"TWO girlfriends?" I asked, slightly shocked.

"Yes, that's right," said Angela, "we both become your girlfriend. Look, I've noticed that when you've been with me, you've always treated me as your centre of attention, and that's better than some toe-rags I've dated! And it seems that Ellie and I get on ok, so if there's any problems, I'm sure we can sort them out in a friendly way."

"And maybe we can sometimes all go out together, like today?" said Ellie. "I guess it depends if you're ready to take that step...".

And THAT is how I ended up dating two girls at the same time! Ok, how I ended up having TWO BRACED GIRLFRIENDS.


--- THE END ---

Hmm just when it gets nice it's the end.. i would like to read more, how the special relationship is continueing .. Short or later one relationship will get stronger...

Hmm just when it gets nice it's the end.. i would like to read more, how the special relationship is continueing .. Short or later one relationship will get stronger...

There's two sides to stuff posted here, the first is that it is a story, with characters. The second is that it's about braces. And while it's relatively easy to keep a story going, developing the characters, letting that story still have a good amount of braces content is MUCH more difficult - if you want to avoid repeating yourself that is.

We writers are VERY aware that the audience here wants braces, and the more the better! You can almost guarantee that, as soon as you throw in something more extreme, like publically worn headgear, you are more likely to get comments on your story.

Braceface2015 is quite right, when he says that we should just write what we want... the question is then whether you guys are interested in stories that we might write, with little braces content? I guess I'll find out soon, as the fairies / witches story will have minimal braces in it.

No, Matilda is a newish film, based on the musical, Matilda... "Matilda, an extraordinary girl armed with a sharp mind and a vivid imagination, dares to take a stand against her oppressive parents and head teacher to change her story with miraculous results"