by J. A. Huss
“What are you up to?” I laugh.
“You’ll see,” she says, finishing up and walking back to me. She slips her coat off, piles it on top of mine, and then eases down into the water next to me, taking her glass back. She’s got a small remote control in her hand that she clicks, and then the side of the house comes to life with a movie.
“What did you do?”
“I made us a movie.” She laughs. “I don’t make many these days, but I got an idea last Christmas. I knew then that the kids were growing up too fast, so I spent all year putting this together. And maybe we don’t have all our special moments in here, but we’ve got enough, Ronin.”
The film starts and it’s the movie I made the day Sparrow was born. Ford and Spencer are there. Ashleigh and Veronica. Five is still small in Ashleigh’s arms, and Kate is clinging to Ford. Spencer is holding a Cinderella version of Rory, and Veronica is leaning over Rook, cooing down at Sparrow.
“That’s when it became real, you know?” Rook is looking at me with wide blue eyes. “Our wedding was the start, but Sparrow was when it became real.”
I totally get it. “Yeah,” I say back softly. “She made us real.”
“And every day after that just got better and better, Ronin. So I put it all together into a movie for us. So no matter how fast they grow, we’ll always have this to remind us of what it was like in the beginning.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Ford,” Spencer calls across the great room. We put all the kids except Cindy to bed an hour ago, but Spencer had exactly seventeen toys that need assembly. Somehow he got the impression that I am part of his production line.
“No,” I deadpan back at him. Five was never into toys that needed to be put together. He liked musical things. Puzzles and computer games. And Kate, well, she did like that stuff, but she grew out of dollhouses by the time she was eight. After that it was all horses all the time. She got a new horse last year. Charlie. And she’s not ready to upgrade. So this year she’s getting gear from that equestrian catalog the girls will be modeling for. “I already put together the Tiny Town Garage, the Tiny Town Hair Salon, and the Tiny Town Pet Groomer. I’m on strike.”
“We’re done, dude. I was just going to ask if you guys could watch Cindy for a few hours.”
“It’s two AM. What kind of child needs watching—”
“Yes,” Ashleigh says, already on her feet, reaching for Cindy. “We’d love to. Go see what Veronica’s doing.”
“Thanks, man,” Spencer says to me, like I’m the one doing him a baby favor.
Rook and Ronin are already in bed, so now it’s just me, Ashleigh, and the third wheel. “Well,” I say, taking a sip of Scotch as I glance at Cinderella. What kind of name is that? I don’t even bother. Spencer took his pack of princesses way too seriously. “I feel like I haven’t seen you all day, Ash. I missed you.”
She smiles at me. No, wait. She’s smiling at Cindy.
I forgot. She wants another one.
“Ford,” she says in her serious tone that means she’s got something on her mind. “I think—”
“Wait,” I say, stopping her mid-sentence. “I know what you’re going to say. I’ve seen the signals.”
“You have?”
“Yes. You’re sad that the kids are growing up and you want another one. I get it, Ash. And I know why you haven’t made a big deal about it all these years. I appreciate that, you know.”
“Yeah, but Ford—”
I put another hand up. “Ashleigh, wait. I’m just saying that I sorta agree.”
“You do?” Her eyes go wide.
“Yeah. Kate, man.” I have to laugh. I told Ashleigh what she did on the slopes today. We are alike in that respect. We get a kick out of all the strange stuff our children do. Most parents would be upset about their fifteen-year-old practically kidnapping a princess and taking her all over Colorado. And we gave him a stern talking-to about that when he got home. The whole united front thing. He’s in charge of shoveling the driveway tomorrow morning before we leave to go to my mother’s.
But secretly we love how innovative he is. And Kate. She lights up my life. I don’t know how all these years got away from me. I don’t understand how she went from footied sleepers to selling ski lessons to buy a car. It doesn’t make sense.
“I’m with you, Ashleigh. If you want a baby, I’m ready to make another one.”
She laughs.
“What?”
“Who says that? Make another one?”
“What? That’s how it happens.”
“OK, never mind,” she says, still shaking her head. Cindy is half asleep, but fighting it hard. Her teething seems to be under control, but now her schedule is all off. “But that’s not what I was going to say.”
“What? I thought you had empty-nest syndrome? I thought you were craving another baby? I thought you missed all the spit-up, the dirty diapers, and the constant neediness?”
“Well, that’s all sorta true.”
“Then why have you been acting weird?”
She shoots me a sly grin. “I can’t believe you haven’t noticed.”
“Noticed what?” I ask, taking another sip of my drink.
“My candy pussy.”
And my fifty-year-old Scotch goes shooting out my mouth. “What did you just say, Miss Li? I might owe you a spanking for that remark.”
She laughs hard. Hard enough to wake up Cindy from her almost-slumber. Cindy quickly gets a cuddle to soothe her back to sleep.
Once that crisis is averted, I get another giggle. “I’m pregnant, Ford. I took the test last week and I didn’t know how to tell you, so I’ve been trying to keep it a secret until tonight. And holy shit, you are so off your game. I can’t believe you ate me out last night and didn’t even notice.”
Fuck. When was the last time Ashleigh and I had a conversation about candy pussy? Back when she was pregnant with Five, I guess. We have sex six times a week, at least. And at least two of those are of the naughty variety. But holy shit, she knows exactly what to say to spice things up. She’s always known exactly what to say. It’s so easy for her to make me happy. “Mrs. Aston, you are my soulmate. I love the fact that you remember how much I love your candy pussy. And…”
And… this is the part she’s been waiting for. The part where I react to her news. Considering that I’ve been against the idea for fifteen years, I’m not surprised she was acting strange all week. “And I know it’s my fault we don’t have more, but now really is the perfect time.”
I get up and walk over to her. She’s sitting on the floor in front of the tree, cradling Cindy in her arms. So I sit down next to her and take the baby. Trying it on for size again.
Cindy squirms, but I place her up close to my chest the way I used to hold Kate. The way I used to hold Five. And she rests her heavy head on my shoulder.
“Yes,” I say. “I’d like another Kate. I’m not ready to grow up yet.”
“Good,” Ashleigh says, her eyes bright with mischief. “Because we’re having twins.”
Chapter Sixteen
I walk upstairs, my mind on the Bomb and what’s about to happen, when my eyes wander to the thin slice of light leaking from under the door to the attic stairs.
Five, I say in my head. I was so mad at him. I was almost ready to overstep my bounds in the library a few hours ago.
But my princess. I sigh. Whatever it is they feel for each other, it feels real to them. My thoughts wander back to when I first fell in love. God, I did some stupid things. It feels like it was yesterday when I snuck into that apartment James sent Ronnie to after her old one was… declared uninhabitable. I probably owe James a drink for that, now that I think about it fifteen years later.
But everything when you’re young is so immediate. And when you’re a teenager, it’s so much more immediate.
I knock on the door to the attic and open it up before anyone answers. The boys might’ve fallen asleep with the light on, but somehow, I don’t think so
.
When I climb the last step and peek around the wall, I’m right. Oliver is asleep. He’s snoring with an R2D2 blanket all wrapped around his legs.
But Five is awake.
As soon as he realizes it’s me he takes a deep breath. Like he’s steadying himself. “I’m sorry, Mr. Shrike,” he says. “You have every right to be angry with me.”
The Mr. Shrike typically comes off condescending when Five says it. But not this time. And this kid, he’s never been afraid of me. I’m sure he’s much more afraid of Ronnie’s brother Vic than he is me. But this time it comes off as… sincere.
“I was talking to Rory earlier.”
He swallows.
“And she said she had a real nice time with you today. Except for one part.”
His eyebrows shoot up. This time, it’s in surprise. “She didn’t care for something we did today?” I shake my head and let out a long breath. Five’s face falls, like he’s a complete failure. “Did she say which part?”
He sounds defeated. Like he did his best and it wasn’t good enough. “She did,” I say back.
“Do you mind telling me what it was? Just so…” He stops and looks out the window, like he’s imagining another day in his mind. A day where he gets it all right. “So I know how to make her happy if I ever get a next time?”
“She said she didn’t get a kiss goodnight.”
His smile starts small, but it grows so big in the span of a few moments, he has to turn his head to hide it.
“She said she’s sad, Five.”
He turns back to me, his smile gone now.
“She thinks you’re going to forget about her.”
“I won’t,” he insists.
I nod, agreeing with him. But my Baby Bomb is smarter than the rest of us. Because he will. She’s right, he will. It can’t be helped. “Sometime,” I say, thinking about Ronnie earlier in the day and the present that Rory brought home tonight, “sometimes there is only one thing that can make a person feel better. One person. Love does that to you. And right now, the only thing that will make her believe that you will be back is a kiss. So you have my permission.”
He stares at me with his mouth open. In fact, we stare at each other for several seconds in silence.
“Did you hear me?”
He nods.
“But I have conditions, Aston. Don’t—”
“I won’t,” he interjects.
“—hurt her,” I finish. “And keep your hands—”
“I promise,” he says, standing up so he can look me in the eye.
“—above the shoulders.”
“I promise, Spencer. I’ll do it right.”
I nod at him, and then turn to go back down the attic stairs. But then I realize what I really want to say and stop one more time. “Just make her happy, Five. That’s all I want. Just make her happy.”
I walk back down after that, feeling like this is the end of something. Or at the very least, the beginning of the end. Princess Rory’s childhood, I guess. It’s the beginning of the end of her childhood.
How does it go by so fast?
That thought is still on my mind when I get to our bedroom door. The lights are on, but Ronnie’s not awake. She’s all curled up in a chair over by the bay windows, a red blanket wrapped around her body. The red blanket is good luck, I realize.
“Bombshell,” I whisper, leaning down into her ear. “Wake up.”
“Hmm?” she mumbles as I swoop her up in my arms. “What’s going on?”
I don’t say a word. Just carry her out the bedroom door and down the back staircase.
“Spencer?” she asks, as we get to the bottom of the steps. She’s so tired it took her all that time to properly wake up. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” I say back, walking down the long hallway that leads to the indoor pool. We are accosted with the smell of chlorine as I kick the swinging doors open with one foot and carry her over to a long patch of fake grass near the doors that lead to the outside.
I set her down and her legs straighten so she can hold herself up. But her eyes are everywhere. She’s looking at everything I have laid out on the grass.
“It’s a stupid inside pool and not a buckeye tree. Plus the grass is fake, so it hardly counts. But I was informed by our daughter that this is what you need to snap out of your funk. She went and picked it up from the shop when she was in Fort Collins with Five today.”
Ronnie’s still looking at all my supplies as I finish this statement. But then she looks up and her lip trembles. “You’re going to… paint me?”
At first I think it was a mistake because of the trembling lip and the threat of tears. But then I realize they are good tears. The smile is late to the party, but another moment and it’s there too.
“Rory did this?” she asks.
I nod. “She’s got you pegged, Bombshell.” And then I let out a laugh of relief.
“We had fun, didn’t we, Spencer?”
We’re caught in the same moment from the past. The day I painted her up as a fairy and we waited for nightfall so I could take her picture as we made love under the moonlight. It was in my gran’s old atrium. The one I had to demolish in order to save the buckeye tree trapped under the glass.
“We’re still having fun, Veronica. I think you just need to be reminded. So I’m gonna do one more masterpiece on your beautiful body. And then I’m going to fuck the shit out of you as the camera takes our picture.”
She throws the blanket off and stands there on the grass in a pink and white nightie. “What will you paint on me, Spencer?”
“You’ll have to wait and see. Now sit here and eat cookies.”
She smiles and a chuckle bursts forth. But she takes a seat next to the plate of newly decorated cookies, and picks one up that says, Mommy.
“I know baking cookies makes you happy. And I’m pretty sure eating cookies makes everyone happy. So you’re gonna sit here and eat cookies and be happy.” She looks up at me, those bombshell eyes finally—finally—bright again. “Because if you’re not happy, then I’ve failed you, Veronica Shrike. And I’m not a guy who likes to fail.”
She draws in a deep breath. “Do you want me naked?”
“I always want you naked.”
She pulls the nightie over her head and then slips her matching panties down her legs. “I’m ready then.”
“Me too.”
I’ve never painted this design on her and looking back, I should’ve. I should’ve done it a long time ago. I start with the airbrush filled with black paint and before long, her thighs look like latex. Her arms are kept bare, but her middle becomes a red corset, painted to perfectly accentuate her amazing cleavage and waist, complete with little satin ribbons crisscrossing their way up her stomach until it looks like the corset is so tight, her girls are spilling out.
I give her red boots that end just past her knees, and golden bracelets that I stole from Wonder Woman.
I paint a white triangle on her bosom, and she breathes deeply as she waits to see what I will put in the center of the diamond of white.
An S, of course. In the Shrike Bikes font.
“S for Shrike?” she asks.
But I shake my head as I clean up the airbrush, put everything away, and then take out the camera and set it up on the tripod.
I silently drape the red blanket over her shoulders and fasten it at her neck with a ducky-headed diaper pin. No,” I finally answer her question as I take off my shirt, unbuckle my belt, and let my pants drop to the ground. “An S for super. Supermom,” I say. “Superwife,” I whisper as I walk towards her and wrap my arms around her middle.
The camera starts beeping in intervals, just like it did back when we were in college.
“Superbomb,” I say, right into her mouth as I kiss her. “You’re my Super Bomb. You’re perfect. And I love every inch of you. I don’t ever want you to forget that, Mrs. Shrike.”
The real smile appears then. The one I was looking for a
ll day each time my eyes found hers. The smile that says we still like all the same things. We still like our farm, and our pack of children, and the pound puppies we’ve adopted over the years. We still like the buckeye tree, and motorcycles, and leather jackets.
We still like each other. We still like each other and it will always be that way.
Chapter Seventeen
I text Rory from the great room, standing in front of the tree. Come down here, I say. And bring your phone.
But I don’t get an answer. She might be asleep.
I hear a creak on the old wooden stairs and my eyes shoot up to the top, where Princess Rory Shrike stands in a pink nightgown that almost reaches to the floor. I’m still wearing my suit from the ballet tonight, and it feels wrong somehow. Kate was right, the suit is all wrong.
She is still a girl and I already feel like a man. It will never work out the way we want it to. It will never be the same once I go to school for real.
But then she smiles and her feet are flying down the steps. “What are you doing out here, Five?” She’s beaming with happiness, and it makes me feel like every doubt I just had was false. That we do have a chance, but we have to take it now. It makes me feel like this is our one moment to get it right.
I’m going to do it right, I silently promise her.
“I talked to your dad a few minutes ago.”
“Oh, my God, what did he say?” But she’s not worried about what he said. She’s excited that we are down here alone. That we aren’t done with each other yet.
“He said,” I say, my own excitement building with hers, “you were disappointed with something.”
“I loved our date, Five. Every minute. I’m not disappointed.”
“No?”
She shakes her head and her golden-blonde hair shakes with it.
“So you weren’t unhappy that we didn’t get our first kiss?”
