Surprise Packages

by Layla Valentine

  “Wait, eggs aren’t supposed to go bad in the fridge either though?” Valeria’s eyes took on a hazy look of tipsy confusion.

  “You know what I mean,” Staci said, waving the comment away. “The point is, you have plenty of time to have a baby.”

  Hope rose in me as she said that, and Tyra visibly relaxed. “Whatever,” she said. “Tonight’s not the night to talk babies anyway. I just want to party with my girls like old times.”

  “Like old times? We do this all the time,” I pointed out.

  “Not Staci,” Tyra argued. “Not since she had the baby.”

  “Fair,” Staci sighed as she pulled out her phone. “Speaking of which, I better make sure Marco hasn’t burned the place down yet.”

  “Relax,” Alana said, reaching for Staci’s phone. “He’s a grown-up, right? I’m sure he can handle a few hours alone with the baby.”

  Staci gave her a flat look and turned her screen around to show her the string of texts Marco had sent since the last time she checked her phone half an hour before. There were at least a dozen of them.

  “That’s it,” Staci said. “I’m calling him. Back in a minute, girls.”

  “I guess it’s good Donovan isn’t thrilled about the idea of kids,” Tyra said wryly as Staci walked away. “Keeps my future girl nights safe from that nonsense.”

  “That’s why ‘must like kids’ is at the top of Valeria’s dating list,” Alana said with a slow, teasing smile.

  “Man, at this point I’d settle for a man who can do me right—you know what I’m saying?” Valeria pouted as she sipped her drink.

  “What happened to Kevin?” I asked.

  “Girl, Kevin has never done it for me. I tried. He’s so pretty—you saw how pretty he was—and so funny, and smart, and let me tell you he was…” She held her hands about ten inches apart, waggling her eyebrows suggestively. “But he was a total ass about it. He had a whole two moves and tried to convince me that female orgasms were a myth. A myth! Just ’cause I never had one, and he couldn’t get me there, he thinks it’s impossible for women to get off.”

  I’d wondered that myself, honestly, but I wasn’t about to say so.

  “So I ask him, you ever had a girl get there? He’s like nah, it’s a myth. I’m like, maybe it’s no myth, maybe it’s a ‘you problem.’ He’s like, you see what I’m working with? It ain’t no ‘me problem.’ Says he’ll prove it to me. You know how this boy decides to prove it?”

  “Do I want to know?” Tyra asked dubiously.

  “Girl, I didn’t even wanna know. This boy goes out and hooks up with a bunch of chicks. A bunch of them, like six whole women. Tapes it. Shows me the tapes to prove that women don’t orgasm.”

  Eyes popped and jaws dropped all around the table.

  Tyra was the first to shake off the shock. “So…do you need help hiding the body?”

  “Whoa, whoa, body? What did I miss?” Staci slid back into her seat, tucking her phone into her back pocket.

  We got her all caught up, and she stared at Valeria. “Holy cow, I would have lit his stuff on fire and mailed his junk pics to his mother. Need a lawyer, hun?”

  Valeria laughed. “Nah, I’m good. I got better revenge.” She smirked secretively and sipped her drink.

  “What’d you do?” Alana asked, leaning close with shining eyes. “Baseball bat to the car? Sledgehammer to the video games?”

  Valeria shook her head. “Better.”

  “Slept with his brother?” Staci guessed.

  Valeria laughed. “Nah. Better than that.”

  “Proved him wrong?” I asked tentatively.

  Valeria pointed at me and winked slowly. “Bingo.”

  “How’d you do it?” I asked, trying very hard to look interested in her story for the sake of the story itself.

  “I—nah, you don’t want to hear it.” Valeria flushed red and took a sudden interest in her drink.

  “Yes, we do!”

  “You can’t leave us hanging like that.”

  “Spill, woman!”

  “Was it a toy?” I asked.

  “Or a new boy?” Tyra suggested with a waggle of her eyebrows.

  “Or a new boy-toy!”

  “Now you’re just mashing words together, Alana,” Staci laughed. “Come on, Val, how’d you do it? And, I mean, I know that living well is the best revenge, but…I mean, after all that, I feel like you were justified in doing a lot more.”

  Valeria laughed. “I mean…I sort of did? He watched the video.”

  “There’s a video?”

  “We want to see!”

  “Speak for yourself!” I told Alana with a shove. “I love you, Val, but I can go my whole life without seeing your solo porn.”

  “Who said it was solo?” Valeria asked innocently.

  A stunned silence fell over the table, surrounded on all sides by bar-room chatter. We stared at her, wordless, as she turned a deeper shade of red.

  “Oh come on, don’t leave us hanging!” Tyra burst out.

  “Orin! Another round!” Valeria called to the bartender.

  “Please?” I asked, invested in the answer. “We’re your best friends. Who else are you going to tell?”

  “Keep your pants on, ladies, let me get a little drunker,” she said giggling.

  “How drunk do you gotta be? You’re two deep already,” Alana pointed out, poking Valeria in the ribs.

  “Knock it off!” Valeria’s words got lost in giggles. “I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, just—oh thank GOD! Orin, you’re a lifesaver.”

  “Anything for my girls,” the bartender said with a grandfatherly twinkle in his eyes. “Now, sip slow. I have to meet a man about a horse.”

  “Did he say horse or whores?” Tyra asked, blinking after the old man.

  “Definitely whores,” I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes.

  “Be nice to Orin,” Staci admonished. “He’s like a hundred.”

  “Old men gotta get theirs too.” Alana giggled.

  “All right, Valeria. You have your drink, now spill!”

  “My drink?” Valeria asked, wide-eyed.

  Tyra looked at me with exasperation all over her face. “Carmen, you’re the mom around here. Do something about your child.”

  “My child? I don’t claim her.” I laughed. I never let on how much being the nominal “group mom” had started to sting. I’d always been the oldest of our group, and back in college it felt like a badge of honor; but the older I got, and the more real motherhood seemed out of reach, the more I resented the title.

  “Aww.” Valeria pouted, and I relented.

  “All right, all right, fine. You’re my child. But only if you tell the story.”

  “Okay, okay,” Valeria said, waving her hands as if to stop the nonexistent conversation. She took a long drink through her straw, draining it down to the ice and surfacing with her eyes crossed. “Woo! All right, so there’s this guy… He calls himself the O Doctor.”

  “The O Doctor? So, he’s like, what, an old-timey gynecologist?” Staci said.

  “Eww, no!” Valeria made a face. “No, he’s like…a male escort, I guess. But he’s so good. So good.”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Tyra said, getting her auntie face on. “You’re telling me that you hired a hooker, recorded it, and showed Kevin the recording?”

  “He deserved it!” Valeria said defensively. “And that’s doctor, not hooker, thank you very much. Besides, I thought Kevin would learn something if he watched someone else do it.”

  “Did he?” I asked, entranced by the drama.

  “You bet your butt he did. He learned that I can, in fact, achieve orgasm. Guess I learned that too—”

  “Hold on,” Tyra interrupted. “You’d never had an orgasm before? Not even solo?”

  If Valeria turned any redder, I thought, her head would explode. She shook her head. “I never could figure it out. But since the O Doctor…” She trailed off in a shrug, her eyes twinkling. “Kevin wasn’t too pleased about
it, though.” She dissolved into giggles, which were infectious.

  “I bet he wasn’t. He didn’t do anything scary after, did he?” Alana asked.

  “Oh, no. He just blocked me on everything and started trashing me in cruddy memes.” Valeria shrugged, but we could all clearly see that it had bothered her more than she was letting on.

  “Well now you’re free to find someone who cares enough to learn how your body works,” Staci said comfortingly. “Or at least free to call your O Doctor again.”

  “Is that the only name he uses?” I asked dubiously. I was trying not to sound like I was fishing for information, and crossed my fingers that everybody was too buzzed to notice. There were some personal problems I wouldn’t even tell my best friends.

  “Oh no, he goes by Nick Steel.”

  “Nick Steel? The man’s name alone is an advertisement.” I would definitely remember that, I thought. I glanced at my drink and revised. I hope I’d remember that. Or anything after Tyra’s finished giving us all alcohol poisoning.

  “Right? That’s why I picked him. I figured any guy with a name like that must have worked really hard to live up to it. And boy, does he live up to it!” Valeria sighed dreamily, cupping her chin in her hand.

  “You think that’s his real name?” Staci raised an incredulous brow.

  “Does it really matter?” Tyra laughed.

  “Not a bit,” Valeria said. “If his name was Picklesack Gangrene, you’d be singing it by the end.”

  Laughter rang around the table, and we toasted to that. Pretending to text somebody, I pulled out my phone and left myself a note: Nick Steel, O Doctor. I hoped I would remember what it meant by the end of the night; at the rate we were going, I’d be half-dead before morning.

  “What about you, Carmen?” Valeria turned her big blue eyes to me, obviously trying to change the subject. “Any new men in your life?”

  “No such thing as a new man,” I said with a little devil-may-care toss of my hair. “I swear, I keep dating the same guy in different skins. I’m about to give up.”

  “About to?” Tyra scoffed. “Honey, you haven’t been out with a guy in, what, a year?”

  “Something like that.”

  “A year!” Staci gasped, pressing a hand to her heart. “Good lord, woman, aren’t you going insane?”

  “Eh, it’s…whatever.” I shrugged to hide the misery awakening in my chest.

  “You can’t give up now,” Alana said. “What about your plan?”

  I was hoping nobody would bring that up, and I silently cursed my younger self for being so open about my life goals. “Plans change,” I said.

  “So what’s the new plan?” Valeria pressed.

  “To get plastered with my girls and go home to a house with no dirty diapers or man-hair,” I teased.

  “Low blow!” But Staci was laughing. “I swear, if Marco doesn’t stop shaving right after I clean the sink, I’m going to lose my entire mind.”

  “The whole thing?” I asked.

  “The whole thing!”

  Our laughter was interrupted by the bar’s office door slamming open on the wall across from us. Orin stormed through it, shouting.

  “7th Heaven! 7th Heaven! Not Seventh Mediocre Coffee Shop on Seventh Street!” Orin’s bellow rolled like thunder over the din, and every head in the crowded bar turned to see what the trouble was. Orin’s Russian accent got thick when he was upset, increasing his intimidation by a factor of ten. A skinny hipster shrank away from his fury, cowering behind a briefcase.

  “But sir, you don’t understand—”

  “Don’t understand? Don’t understand? No sir, you do not understand! Get out!”

  “If I may, I’m willing to offer you—”

  “You offer me nothing! Get out!” Orin was shaking now, and the bar had fallen silent. Realizing that every eye was on him, the hipster slunk away out the door. Orin wiped his brow and shook his head, then made his way to our table.

  “Another round, ladies?” he asked, his voice still vibrating with leftover anger.

  “What was that all about?” I asked him. He’d been running this bar since the five of us had turned old enough to drink, and he was like an uncle to us.

  “Well, I was not going to tell you until it had happened. I am beginning to think of my retirement.”

  “You’re selling the bar?” Tyra asked, visibly distressed.

  “Not right away, zaika,” he said affectionately. “Simply seeking out the right offer. Someone who will keep my baby heavenly, yes?”

  “Oh, good,” Tyra said, breathing out a sigh. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, shrugging the altercation off of his massive shoulders. “Another round?”

  “Yes, please,” I spoke for the group.

  The rounds kept coming, and soon the trouble faded away into a hazy memory. As the night grew older, the crowd grew younger, and soon dance music filled the bar. The five of us clustered in the very middle of the dance floor, with Tyra the center of attention.

  Better her than me. My friends’ comments on my love life had left me feeling more than a little insecure, and I was hoping to forget they ever happened. My dream life was rapidly fading into the realm of never-gonna-happen, and it was going to take at least another pitcher of drinks before I could forget about it for the time being.

  Dr. O’s Baby is available on Amazon now!

  CLICK HERE TO GET IT

  Also by Layla Valentine

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  His Baby Secret

  Hot Pursuit

  SEXT ME

  Secret Daddy Surprise

  My Protector

  In Deep

  SAN BRAVADO BILLIONAIRES’ CLUB

  Second Chance Twins

  Nanny For Hire

  The Baby Bargain

  Accidental Triplets

  Take My V-Card

  Bought by the Boss

  Four Secret Babies

  My Brother’s Best Friend

  BABIES FOR THE BILLIONAIRE

  Triplets For The Billionaire

  Quadruplets For The Billionaire

  Baby, ASAP