by Tara Sivec
We finally break apart, and I rest my forehead against hers.
“I’m scared as hell you’re going to regret this,” I tell her softly. “You’re giving up so much. You’re giving up your dream job and living in your favorite city.”
“I’m gaining a shit-ton more than I’m giving up, believe me. I don’t need fancy parties, or hanging out with asshole celebrities, or the hustle and bustle of a big city. I just need you, and the girls, and a simple life,” she tells me.
“There’s going to be nothing simple about raising two girls. Especially when they hit puberty,” I remind her. “Speaking of that, how good are you at giving the birds and the bees talk? Because I’m warning you right now, I want no part of that shit. It’s already giving me nightmares.”
“Do I have to use clinical terms, like penis and vagina and menstrual cycle? Or can I go all out, saying dick, and pussy, and the movie Carrie in your pants?”
I shudder in revolution, shaking my head at her.
“You know what, maybe we’ll just rent a movie from the library that explains it all,” I tell her.
“That might be the best option,” she agrees.
“You’re really staying? I get to keep you, smartass comments and all?” I ask with a smile.
“It’s your lucky day, Hastings. The nerd finally gets the girl. And she’s a pretty awesome girl, if I do say so myself.”
“Cookie Brookie?” I mutter.
“Yes, Cunty Clint?”
“Shut up.”
I silence her outrage with another kiss, smiling against her mouth when I think of how much fun it’s going to be giving this woman the simple life she wants.
Epilogue
CLINT
Six Months Later
Pushing open the door to White Timber Times, Mia and Grace look up from the back corner of the room when they hear the chime from the bell above the door, both giving me big smiles and waves. They’re sitting in teal-colored beanbag chairs, on a small square of black-and-white zebra print fluffy carpet. Tucked into the corner behind them is a V-shaped bookshelf, filled with bins of Barbie dolls, coloring books and crayons, books, board games, and other things to keep them occupied when they’re here. Mia is brushing a doll’s hair in her lap, and Grace has a pair of earbuds in her ears, listening to music while she flips through a book about Babe Ruth.
My eyes move over to Brooklyn, on the phone behind her desk, and I give her a wink as I make my way across the room and perch my hip on the front corner of her desk. She smiles at me, rolling her eyes as she points to the phone against her ear.
“Uh-huh. Yeah. That certainly is interesting, but I’m not sure if it’s newsworthy,” she speaks into the phone, rolling her eyes at me again. “Well, because Bud Moore always gets drunk and lights things on fire in his soy bean field—Wait, what? He lit the entire soy bean field on fire? It’s March. There’s two inches of snow on the ground. How is that even possible?”
Brooklyn turns her chair to the side when Mia walks up to her, holding the phone between her ear and her shoulder to scoop her up and set her on her lap. Mia leans back against her chest, and Brooklyn wraps her arm around her waist as she turns back to face her desk, my heart flip-flopping in my chest, like it always does when I watch her with my girls.
“Yes, Mrs. Marshall, I understand how dry hay and gasoline work.” Brooklyn sighs, reaching her free arm out to type one-handed on her laptop.
Brooklyn is like a fucking superhero, and she amazes me every day with the things she’s accomplished since she decided to stay here in White Timber. Two days after she read her cons list to me, after we’d had plenty of time to screw like rabbits all over the farm, she contacted Ed Franklin to ask about taking over the paper. He owned the building outright, and had for years, telling her she could have the damn thing, just so he wouldn’t have to continue paying insurance on it. By the end of the week, she’d cleaned the dust off of everything, added her own style by painting the walls teal, hung black-framed photos of a bunch of her favorite articles from Glitz around the room, hired someone to come out and replace a part in the small printing press located in the back room behind the office, and set up a play area for the girls. A week after that, the first copy of The White Timber Times in two years was in everyone’s mailboxes on Sunday morning. A copy of the front page of that issue sits in a frame on the corner of her desk, and I smile every time I see it. It’s a picture of Katie Johnson surrounded by all her shopping bags, and the headlines says “Katie Johnson: Sometimes it Pays to Take a Gamble”.
I also have to smile when I see the other framed photo on her desk, a gift from Brooklyn’s dad when she reopened this place. It’s the picture from The New York Times of Brooklyn passed out on the ground, with her skirt up around her waist after she’d just been punched in the face. I was pretty surprised when Brooklyn decided to display it out in the open, but she said the only way she could appreciate what she has is to remember where she came from.
Like I said, fucking amazing.
Brooklyn finally ends her call, setting her cell phone down on the desk as she wraps her arm around Mia to join the other one still holding her securely.
“How was your day, dear?” I ask.
“The usual. People lighting shit on fire, people getting drunk and lighting shit on fire, and Eric Fellows demanding I put in a retraction this week that he wasn’t drinking vodka when the sheriff gave him a ticket for riding one of his cows down Main Street,” she tells me.
“Wait, so he wasn’t drunk when he did that?”
“Oh, he was drunk. He just wants to make sure everyone knows he was drinking whiskey and not vodka, because vodka is a sissy drink, according to him,” she says with a shake of her head.
“You ready to pack it up and head out to the farm for dinner?” I ask, sliding off the desk and moving around it to pull Mia off of Brooklyn’s lap and perch her on my hip, so she can use both of her hands to type a few more things on her laptop.
“Yep. I just need to grab a change of clothes from upstairs,” she tells me, closing the lid of her laptop.
“No need. Mrs. Sherwood washed the stuff you’ve left there, so you’re good to go.”
Brooklyn moved into the apartment upstairs from the newspaper when she decided to stay. She said it would be crazy for us to start living together so soon, and that we needed to date like normal people for a while to make sure we wouldn’t kill each other before we cohabitated. I sort of understood where she was coming from, especially with the convenience of being so close to her brand new business after she got it up and running, but it’s been six months. This shit is getting ridiculous.
I want to fall asleep every night with her sprawled across my chest, chattering away about the things she’s putting in the paper that week. I want to wake up with her in my arms every morning, listening to her bitch and moan about how I get up at an ungodly hour to work on the farm. I know she sometimes works crazy hours, especially if a story comes in at the last minute, or there’s an edit that needs to be made to one of the upcoming town functions, but just knowing she’ll be coming home to the farm eventually is all I want.
As Brooklyn grabs her purse out of the bottom drawer, and Grace gets up from her beanbag chair to join us, I decide to wait until we get to the farm to tell her that I lied when I said Mrs. Sherwood washed the stuff she’d left there. I mean, technically she did, but she also helped me sneak up the back stairs to Brooklyn’s apartment today while she was busy working, pack up all of her things, and move them out to the farm.
Since I told her I had a meeting with a grocery store client in the next town over, she kept the girls with her all day at the paper; they had a teacher in-service day and didn’t have school. I gave Grace the job of making sure Brooklyn stayed distracted all morning while we moved stuff, telling her to cough really loudly if we accidentally made any noises upstairs.
I even played dirty by packing an entire gallon Ziploc bag full of candy in Mia’s backpack she brought with he
r. Since there’s currently three pieces of candy corn stuck in Mia’s hair, and she’s practically falling asleep in my arms as the four of us head outside and wait on the sidewalk while Brooklyn locks up, I’m assuming she’s crashing from the sugar high she’s been on all day. She most likely drove Brooklyn slightly insane while she worked.
“Of course she’s quiet now, when you get here,” Brooklyn complains good-naturedly with a smile.
She wraps her arm around Grace’s shoulders, and I use the hand that’s not holding an almost-passed-out Mia against me to lace my fingers through Brooklyn’s as the four of us walk to my truck.
“She ran in circles around my desk for an hour, screaming at the top of her lungs, and sat on top of my desk for two hours after that, telling me a story about her friend at school who drank too much purple Kool-Aid and pooped green for three days,” she finishes.
“Two hours for a green poop story?” I laugh.
“It was a very detailed green poop story.”
Brooklyn holds the back door of my truck open so Grace can get inside, and waits for me to buckle Mia into her booster seat. Backing out and closing the door, I turn and wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her against me.
“Still thinking it was a good idea to stay here and have a simple life?” I ask her with a smile, as she slides her hands up my chest and drapes her arms over my shoulders.
“The absolute best idea,” she replies, lifting up on her toes to kiss me. “As long as you have at least three bottles of wine with my name on them in your fridge, and you put on a pair of khakis and nothing else after the girls go to bed.”
I do, in fact, have three bottles of her favorite wine in my fridge. But I did that for my own protection, just in case she wants to kick me in the balls when she realizes I’ve moved her into my house.
I also have my kitchen table set with my mom’s good china, candles lit in the middle of it, and a giant pile of cream cheese stuffed pancakes waiting for her, along with a diamond ring in my back pocket that I bought the day after she decided to stay.
And next to Brooklyn’s place setting at the table are three pieces of torn notebook paper. Grace, Mia, and I each made a list of all the cons we could come up with if Brooklyn were to say no to my proposal.
I’m pretty sure she’ll say yes.
And maybe after enough of that wine, she might even let me convince her that since she loves Mia and Grace so much, maybe having a child together at some point in the future would be an awesome idea.
Brooklyn and I separate and get into the truck. As I pull away from the curb and head down Main Street toward the farm, she looks over at me and smiles.
“You’re lucky you came with a built-in family, Hastings. Shelly Bradford brought her new baby in this afternoon when she dropped off the weekly list of activities at the library for me to put in the paper this week, and when that thing started crying, my ovaries shriveled up and died,” she shudders.
Orrr… maybe not.
Epilogue
Brooklyn
Two Years Later
“Jesus, you sure do complain a lot. It’s not that bad, you big baby.”
An inhuman growl comes out of my mouth when I glare at my husband.
“I don’t even understand how this happened, with you having such a tiny dick and all,” I mutter, panting and groaning in pain while I squeeze Clint’s hand so hard it makes him wince.
The nurse standing on the other side of my bed looks back and forth between us with a shocked expression on her face. I’m too busy wondering what the hell I was thinking when I decided to do this shit naturally to deal with her.
“It’s fine. Don’t worry. This is just what we do. It’s totally normal,” Clint reassures her, like the sweet guy he is.
The sweet guy who finally managed to convince me that we should have a baby. And honestly, how could I say no? A perfect blend of the two of us, with my sparkling personality and his good looks? Who would turn that shit down?
“Fuck your face and fuck your mother!” I shout, as another contraction rips through me, and I clench my teeth and try to remember how to breathe, a wave of emotion immediately coming over me as my eyes fill with tears and I look over to the far corner of the room. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean that. You’re a lovely woman and I adore you!”
Clint’s mother just laughs softly, pushing up from her chair to come over and stand next to the nurse.
“I know, sweetie. It’s fine. I said worse things to their father when Clint and Ember were born,” she reassures me, reaching up to brush some of the sweaty hair off my forehead.
“She did. She called me a scum-sucking bag of garbage and told me to go fuck myself,” Clint’s dad adds from his chair next to where his wife just vacated.
Katherine and Sean Hastings started coming home to visit from Florida more often right after Clint tricked me into moving in with him. Katherine was always like a second mother to me; actually, she was pretty much a mother to me after mine left, and we’ve grown even closer since I married her son and legally adopted her granddaughters. I stopped caring a long time ago that my mother didn’t want me, but Katherine makes it that much easier to leave all of that guilt and sadness in the past, even with her daily phone calls when she’s not in town and constant meddling, which I can’t help but love.
“How about we do another check and see if it’s time?” my doctor asks, walking into the room and grabbing a pair of rubber gloves from the box on the counter.
“Allen, let’s go get some coffee. Looks like things are heating up, and I know I don’t want to be in here for this shit,” Sean says to my dad, both of them getting up from their chairs and heading to the doorway.
“Hey!” I shout to my dad once the contraction ends. “Aren’t you going to give me any kind of advice before I do this?”
“I’ve never pushed a kid out of my peehole, so what kind of advice could I possibly give you?” he says with a shrug. “Don’t screw it up.”
With that, he walks out of the room, with Clint’s dad trailing behind giving me a wink and a smile, just like his son always does.
My relationship with my dad has definitely gotten stronger with each passing year. Especially when I finally came to the realization that he was an old man set in his ways and would never change. It doesn’t hurt my feelings anymore that I constantly have to be the one to call him, or go over to his house to check up on him, and he never calls me unless he needs something. That’s just the way he is. He’s a stubborn shit, but I love him.
“All right, Brooklyn. Next contraction, I want you to push,” my doctor says, his head buried between my legs at the end of the bed with the sheet pushed up over my bent knees.
I turn to the side as much as my giant stomach will allow, clutching tightly to Clint’s hand with both of mine.
“I changed my mind. I don’t want to do this. I don’t even like kids!” I tell him in a panic.
He just smiles at me, resting his arm on the pillow above my head as he leans down and presses his forehead to mine.
“Liar,” he whispers. “You love Mia and Grace more than anyone.”
“Yeah, but I had to grow to love them. I can’t just grow to love my own kid!” I argue.
“Quit your bitching and push my new niece or nephew out of you already,” Ember complains, walking into the room to stand next to her mother. “I didn’t even like Lincoln the first four months after he was born, due to the postpartum depression. What you really need to worry about is that thing ripping you open from vagina to asshole, and shitting on the table.”
“I hate you right now.” I glare at her, my eyes widening when I feel another contraction start to tighten my stomach, and feeling like my ovaries are being ripped from my body.
“Go ahead and push, Brooklyn,” the doctor instructs, his head dipping back down and getting right up in my business.
Clint puts his arm around my back and helps me sit up, and Ember and Katherine give me words of encouragement as I try t
o push this thing out of me.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I bear down as hard as I can, doing everything to try and forget about the pain, but it’s fucking impossible. This shit hurts!
“We are never having sex again. Ever,” I grunt, panting heavily when the contraction ends. “Your penis is too close to me right now. It needs to be at least ten to fifteen feet away at all times from now on.”
Clint kisses my sweaty forehead and just chuckles, the bastard.
“Here comes another one. Push as hard as you can, Brooklyn. You’re doing great,” the doctor tells me.
“Dad, Mia wants—Oh my God, my eyes!” Grace shouts, coming to an abrupt halt in the doorway, smacking one hand over her own eyes, and the other over Mia’s standing next to her, before she continues to scream. “I can never unsee that!”
“I want to see!” Mia complains around a mouthful of Kit Kat, trying to smack her sister’s hand off her face.
“Sorry, Brooklyn!” Mrs. Sherwood apologizes, coming up behind the girls and wrapping her arms around both their shoulders. “Mia wandered off, and when we found her, she insisted she needed to see you to make sure you were okay.”
In between breathing heavily and trying not to kick the doctor in the face just to give me something to do other than think about how much this fucking hurts, I glance over to the doorway and do a double take when I see Mia.
“Mrs. Sherwood. Is that… blood all over the front of Mia’s shirt?” I pant, looking at the red splatters all over her lavender shirt.
I should probably stop calling her Mrs. Sherwood now, since she officially became my stepmother last year when she married my dad, but old habits are hard to break. It feels weird to call a woman who practically raised me by her first name.
