by Annie Dyer
“You were feeling horny. Claire was staying at Amelie’s, and Jackson and Max were away with cubs. Callum was fast asleep and I was trying to write an advice when you walked up behind me and started massaging my shoulders.” She turned to look at me. “The next thing I know, you had my blouse unbuttoned and my bra undone, I was bent over the desk with my skirt pushed up and I was well on my way to my second orgasm.”
The hand I placed on her shoulder was batted away.
“Don’t think we’re having a repeat until I get my present.”
I threaded my fingers through her hair instead. “Do you remember afterwards when we were in bed? What you said?”
“I told you that you’d just got me pregnant.”
“How did you know?”
“I just did. Something happened. It might’ve not been that exact time, but it felt like it. And nine months later we had the twins.” Her hand went to the envelope on the desk. “I wanted to tell Payton and Seph that they were conceived with the beautiful, romantic making of love, and not a good hard fuck over your desk, Grant Callaghan.”
I laughed. “We should’ve told them about it. At least it would’ve kept them out of here.”
“True. Let’s see where I’m heading next. The place where you knew you were a mother.”
She looked at me confused.
“Let me take you there.”
Before we remodelled the house, we’d had a bedroom with a small room just off it. That was the room where Marie had moved Callum to when she moved in. He’d been a baby, not even old enough to have a big boy’s bed, and he would wake in the night without crying a lot.
It had bothered Marie. She said he was used to having no one there when he’d cried, so he’d just stopped. For months, if not longer after she’d moved in, she’d start the night with him, being there whenever he woke, come to bed with me later on, but in the morning, I’d find her back with him, on the rocking chair or when he did get his big boy’s bed, in there with him.
“Callum’s room,” she said as she opened the door. It was now a dressing room for the second master suite and the room where Eliza was sleeping.
We peered in at our granddaughter, Claire and Killian still downstairs, making the most of an hour without having to parent. Eliza looked angelic, blonde haired, long eyelashes on her fair skin, her breathing soft and deep.
“There was a night when I came in here to see where you were. You were asleep in that small bed with Callum. He was curled up to you and you’d fallen asleep holding him. I took a photo of it because it was the time when I realised I couldn’t love anyone more. You were saving my son and me as well, and it was that moment when I understand why I’d had to meet you in that elevator.” I closed the door, my words quiet so as not to wake Eliza.
“You never told me about that night.”
“It was every night, Marie. It was every day. There’s one more envelope, but I didn’t want to risk waking the baby.” I handed her the second crumpled envelope I had in my pocket.
Marie took it, but I caught the wetness in her eyes.
“This is the last? Then I can have my gift?”
“I have another gift for you in the bedroom after…”
Her hand came out and slapped me, but it was playful. I could be getting lucky later.
“Let’s see what this says.” She paused, reading it. “You’re never going to let me forget that are you?”
I gave a quiet laugh. “It was unforgettable.”
“The place of you finest cooking creation. It was my first Christmas dinner. I had no idea what to do…”
“Let’s go down to the kitchen and see what’s there.”
What was there was Seph and Callum, somehow eating leftovers. I didn’t make a comment; the nights of finding my children devouring me out of house and home made this unremarkable.
“Your father’s had me do a scavenger hunt. And Callum, don’t eat any more of the panettone; I’m using it for a dessert in a couple of days.”
Callum nodded, his mouth full. He didn’t even try to speak.
“Do you remember your first Christmas here?” I knew what her answer was going to be.
“You’ll never let me forget. I was so desperate to make it the perfect Christmas for you all.” Her sharp eyes found the present on the side.
I’d debated leaving it in the oven, but given that it had been on for most of the day, I’d decided it was a stupid idea. “It was the perfect Christmas. We made memories and laughed and were together. No one cared about the food being burned.”
“Can I have my gift before I toast you like I did the turkey?”
I handed the present over to her. “I hope you like it.”
She unwrapped it carefully, pausing to look at the cover as soon as the paper was off.
“Grant… where did you get all these?”
It was a simple gift, a photo album put together over the course of many evenings from the pictures I’d collected between me and the kids. There were the photos from New York when we’d first met, the first day back at school pics of the kids in their uniforms, birthdays, Christmases, our wedding and honeymoon.
“Wow.” She took it to her favourite chair and sat down. “This is amazing.”
We spent the next hour going through the book, reminiscing and remembering about each of the memories the photos recalled.
Until she came to the last page.
“You didn’t.”
“Hmmm,” I tapped the picture. “It was that or a dick pic. And I thought the kids would prefer that.”
Marie shook her head. “All of those brownie points you just earned have gone straight down the drain, Grant Callaghan.”
I knew she was joking. “It was a seminal moment.”
“You took a photo of my burned Christmas dinner and put it in here.”
I grinned, my hand on her back, travelling up. Callum and Seph had disappeared a while ago and everyone else was elsewhere, probably sleeping off a Christmas dinner that hadn’t been burned.
“It was a good memory of an amazing day.”
“I was so upset that day wasn’t perfect.”
“But it was. Because we saw how much you loved us all, and when you look at that book again, you’ll see how much we all love you.”
She closed the book and turned to look at me. “Grant Callaghan, you’ve never stopped amazing me in all these years.”
I stood up. “Fancy letting me try to amaze you in another way?”
Marie, my wife, laughed. “Let’s see if you’ve still got those moves.”
“Oh, I’ve got those moves alright.”
“Come on then, stud. Let’s go upstairs.”
23
‘How to Improve Your Sexual Performance’ – from Jackson to Maxwell
Seph
When Max and Victoria had planned their wedding, they’d booked it for the evening, giving everyone the hours before to travel to the village and get ready, or in my case, sleep off the second Christmas dinner I’d managed to chow down before I’d gone to bed, and the additional snack at two in the morning when I’d gone inside for juice in the kitchen and managed to find another tray of pigs-in-blankets in the oven.
Why I was looking in the oven was a question for another time, as that wasn’t where water came from, but I went back to bed with another full stomach.
Tradition hadn’t been kept in that Max and Victoria had spent the night together, so the knock at the cabin door at precisely four minutes to eight shouldn’t have been unexpected.
“Fuck.” Shay’s groan was loud and drawn out. “Did you actually lock the door last night?”
I sat up and heard my stomach rumble. The day was going to involve some form of physical exercise otherwise there wasn’t a chance of even one ab surviving Christmas. “I didn’t fancy having Eliza using my stomach as a trampoline, so yeah.”
“One of us now has to move to unlock the fucker.” There was another long groan, one that sounded as if he might just be i
n pain.
“You okay?”
The garbled sentence that came back suggested he possibly wasn’t.
“I’ll get the door.” I yanked on a pair of sweats – hoping they were mine and not Shay’s as so far we weren’t the tidiest of cabin-mates.
“Good plan.”
I ignored him, sprawled out on the sofa bed with the heater on and a blanket just about covering his junk.
“Can’t you sleep with clothes on?”
He sat up and shook his head. “Get too warm.”
“What do you do when you sleep at the hospital?”
The banging at the door got louder.
He grinned. “I’m either in scrubs or in a bed where I don’t need clothes on.”
“Fuck off.”
I turned the key and my eldest brother barged through the door, looking about as stressed as I’d ever seen him.
“It’s utter fucking chaos in there. No one told me a wedding involved that!” He gestured to the house. “We need to escape. Somewhere.”
He looked at my feet and back up again. “Are those your sweats?”
“Possibly not. These yours, Shay?” I looked over at Shay.
“They look like mine.” He squinted, no glasses on yet and hopefully not wearing his contacts.
“They’re a bit tight actually. Round the thigh and groin area.” I looked at Shay and got ready to dodge anything he might throw.
“I must’ve shrunk them in the wash then.”
Max shook his head. “You should both still be in nursery school.”
I leaned against the wall – no way was I sitting next to Shay while he was wrapped in just a blanket that would now need decontaminating – and looked at my brother. He was stressed, worried and not in control, three things that could lead to an automatic blow up of epic proportions.
“What do you want to do this morning? Because at some point you’re going to need to get ready and all that shit. Sort your pocket hanky out and cummerbund, whatever it is.” I knew we had to keep him sober, just allow maybe two fingers of whisky for his nerves before he went into the church, and we also needed to keep him active, else he’d start to stress.
“Something where I can lose a few pounds of Christmas dinner.”
I looked at Shay. Shay squinted back, then nodded.
Forty minutes later we had everyone rounded up at the indoor rugby pitch we’d used a few days ago, two text messages from Shay knocking the deal out of the park. Somehow, we’d managed to get all of us together. One of Mum’s friends from the village, who I remembered babysitting me when I was about five, had turned up to help with Teddy and Eliza and give Katie a lift with her three. We also rounded up a school friend of Jackson’s. This meant we had a full complement of brothers, cousin and future in-laws for a game of five-a-side, as-little-contact-as-possible rugby as we were released on pain of death of getting any marks, bruises or cuts that would be seen in photographs.
It was pretty inevitable that someone was going to get a shiner, we just needed to make sure it wasn’t Max.
“How are we doing this?” Max looked round at our group.
“Warm up – properly because I don’t fancy accident and emergency – then I vote we split off in age: wisdom versus stupidity.” Killian rubbed his hands together.
I smothered my groan and looked at Shay; he was wearing the same sort of misery I was. When we trained, it was either Killian or Eli who coached. Eli was more technical, Killian was a barbarian, mainly because he’d been in the marines with Nick, and they’d turned him into a machine.
His fitness sessions were the worst idea of a PE lesson: shuttle runs, burpees, fast circuits that didn’t give you time to breathe with intermittent sets of press ups. It was a form of torture. Shay had only been at one, but I could tell he was already envisaging the vomit that he’d be yakking up.
“We’ll start with butt kicks.”
I caught Shay’s look of pain.
Max, however, looked far more relaxed than I’d seen him since he’d crashed the cabin early this morning, so I decided it was going to be worth it. And I might even find a second ab under the mince pies.
Forty minutes later, I figured we’d walked into the ninth circle of hell and the devil was named Killian O’Hara.
“How the fuck does he do all this and talk?” I was doubled over, trying to get some blood back into my head and clutching my shins for stability.
Owen laughed. He wasn’t struggling at all.
“Have you been doing extra training or something?”
“A bit more fitness and less weights. That’s why you’re struggling. You’ve put muscle on and weight, but you haven’t added to your cardio so your endurance is shit.” He clapped me on the back. “You going to survive the game?”
I managed to lift my head. “I’m sure Victoria won’t miss me if I die before the wedding.”
He clapped my back a bit harder. “We’ll make sure you get a good send off.”
We were divided into age: me, Shay, Owen, Callum and Jackson – a bit of a spread of ages – versus Nick, Max, Kilian, Eli and Tommy - Jackson’s friend from school, who was just a few days older than Jacks. While my team should’ve had the advantage of youth, I already knew there was no way we’d beat any side with Killian and Nick on it. Eli was faster than any of us and the two O’Hara brothers were just too quick and read what we were about to do far too well.
We got hammered. Jackson was not happy.
“Who’s hitting the weight room?” Killian’s voice rang out like a sadistic PE teacher.
Shay lay on his back, a fine layer of sweat covering his torso.
“If I move, I’m going to be sick.”
I prodded him with my foot. “You’re the doctor. What do you advise?”
He groaned and moved onto his side, putting himself into the recovery position. “Let me die.”
I prodded him again and left him to it, deciding that weights were probably a good idea. We’d only played for forty-five minutes, three fifteen-minute sessions, giving us time to hydrate because we knew there’d be a lot of beer consumed, and shots. A handful more guests were arriving later, staying in the village after the meal at the pub and the band that Vic didn’t know about, but Max had booked.
The groom was on a leg day, loading up a bar with an impossible amount of weights, or maybe not impossible.
“You need a spotter?”
He nodded. “Probably two once I’ve warmed up.”
He was taking his anxiety out on lifting iron.
“You know she’ll be walking down the aisle in a few hours. She’s not going to change her mind.” I checked his foot positioning, knowing that was where he’d fuck up because he’d forget his feet.
Going to the gym together in the morning was something we did, especially since Jackson had to change his training routine after Teddy was born. I knew that in a few months, Max’s routine would change, when his baby was born and yet again, life would change. We were all moving forward, or nearly all of us.
“I know she’ll be there. She was mad enough to move in with me and agree to marry me, so I’m pretty sure she isn’t going to change her mind. I just want everything to be right for her, you know?” He lifted the bar and started squatting, repping it out.
“Decent form. Want me to film it?” It wasn’t vanity, but a training technique. Max could watch and see if he needed to improve on any aspects.
“Next set. Grab K to spot too.”
I yelled Killian to come over when he was done with the leg press. Clearly, legs were the thing of the day to train, unless you were Shay and still lying on the floor.
He cleared ten and racked the bar, breathing heavily.
“You going for a PB?” Killian came over.
Max shook his head. “Won’t manage it today because of the sprint work you had us do, but I should get close. Can you grab a couple of twenties?”
Killian and I searched the gym for four twenty kilo weight plates, loading them o
nto the bar.
This was therapy, a way to distract himself, because we all knew he was shitting it. Not at the prospect at marrying Vic, but at the prospect of not.
“Were you nervous before you married Claire?” I looked at Killian. I’d been a kid when he was hanging round our house between years at university. He was eight years older than me, so I was barely in secondary school and he was a full grown adult.
“Have you met your sister? Course I was fucking nervous. I wake up every morning nervous.”
Max laughed, stretching out his legs.
“Seriously?”
Killian shook his head. “No. I was nervous before the wedding because it’s unknown – you have no idea what it’s going to be like to be the groom and the centre of attention. But I’m not scared of your sister.”
“You’re the only one in the world who isn’t.” Max grinned
It was a fair comment from Max. Claire had tried her best to murder him and Jackson when they were younger, just kid pranks, but they almost did some damage.
Killian just laughed and barked something at Max about form as he got ready to squat again.
A minute later and he’d smashed what he was trying to achieve, then pointed the bar to me.
“Let’s see what you can do, little brother.”
I stripped the bar of a few plates, knowing I needed to warm up first. I checked my footing, looked at my hand placement and took the weight of the bar on my shoulders. I felt my brother’s eyes assessing how I was doing and knew he was approving as no tips were given. Ten squats later and I racked it.
“You made that look like child’s play.”
I didn’t smile. “Pretty much like you’ve made everything else look.” No one else was in earshot. Killian had gone back to work on isolating quads; Shay had appeared and was working on triceps.
“What do you mean?” He added weight to the bar.
I shrugged. “You’ve done so fucking amazing. And I’m really fucking pleased you’ve got Victoria. And the baby.” The words were blurted out, my well-used filter clearly not switched on.
