by Night, H. T.
“Five days to be exact,” Yomaida said.
“I’ll try to take you under my wing,” Tommy offered, “and help you to feel at home here, as a Carni. It seems like you need a mentor right now, a friend of your own race, with a true understanding of what you face now.”
She smiled and said, “Thank you, Tommy. That means a lot to me.”
When she turned to me, I gave her a hug and said, “It’s great to see you again. I’m sorry it is under these circumstances. But welcome to our crazy, mixed-up creature world.”
Chapter Four
Like an animal shelter busting at the seams with barking dogs and meowing cats, our house was becoming a home for every misfit paranormal creature person who needed help. Yomaida was our newest tenant who needed a place to stay. Tommy had taken an immense liking to her. The two of them seem to be really getting along and they chased each other in the hallway and played in the swimming pool in the bunker like two puppies in love. Tommy had never been one to take anything slowly. Yomaida also struck me as a person who was in need of affection and love. So, combining those three elements tended to make for fast-track lovers. I think that was the case we were dealing with. The fact that they were both werewolves in a house of vampires probably gave them comfort in one another, with their werewolf state being a type of glue that bound them together in a common understanding of what they had to conquer every day. I was also highly aware that there was more than that going on between them, something tender and sweet with a glimpse of magic. All I could say was, “Here we go again, Tommy boy. A pretty girl, looking up to you. It’s Yomaida, with her pretty dark eyes that say, ‘I want you bad, big boy’ or maybe they say, ‘I want you big, bad boy.’”
Tommy just smiled big when I said that to him while we were power lifting in the gym, just the two of us—for maybe the first time, didn’t seem to be open with me about his feelings for a woman. He kind of kept his heart guarded and I didn’t blame him. After our competition for Lena, and the fallout that followed, he kept his intentions for Yomaida very close to his vest.
Tommy gave Yomaida his bedroom. I figured it would only be a matter of time until it became their room. I did give him credit at being a gentleman and not assuming that she would want to share the bed with him. He crashed in my old room the first couple of nights, but I had a feeling that wasn’t going to last much longer, not the way she was looking at him and twisting her hair around a finger. I had been sleeping in Lena’s room for almost six months now. So, the room was just being used as my storage unit for my vampire wardrobe. My wardrobe had become more bad ass, over the past few months, than ever before. I figured it was time to dress the part. I had a number of trench coats and Goth gear that I got online. I lived the part.
I woke up at 5:00 p.m. and it was almost dark outside. I rolled over and kissed Lena right smack on her lips. She gently opened her eyes and smiled at me. “So, what’s on your agenda today?”
“Crib buying!” I said with obvious fake enthusiasm.
“Crib buying? I thought you wanted to wait.”
“I think I waited long enough. I’m not sure if you’ve seen yourself recently, but you’re about to burst.”
“Trust me. I see myself every day. I just can’t see my toes.”
“Well, aside from a little toe jam, your toes are beautiful.”
“You always say the nicest things.”
“You know I think you have very sexy feet, and your toes are a big part of that.”
“Thank you.”
“I know you have to be near a bathroom at this stage in the pregnancy, so I’m going to ask Tommy to go with me.”
“Sounds good. So, is Tommy still sleeping in your old room?”
“Unless, he sneaked out and crawled into bed with Yomaida, I’m pretty sure that’s where he is.”
Lena sat up and said, “I’m a bit confused still on how you knew her.”
“I told you, I met her in Mexico. She needed help, so, I got her out of there. It’s really not a big deal.”
“Did you sleep with her?” Lena asked.
“Why would you ask that?”
“You and I weren’t together when you took that trip. If you slept with her, I feel I deserve to know, if she is living in my house.”
“Your house, huh?”
“Well, it’s all of our house. It’s just as much mine as anybody’s.”
“Sweetheart, you have nothing to worry about. I never slept with her. I saved her from a bad situation. I gave her back to her family in Anaheim. She is a real good person. Also, I think Tommy is crazy about her. He showered three times yesterday.”
“Wow, it is serious. Tommy thinks showering is taking a dip in the pool or sitting in the Jacuzzi for an hour. I swear I saw him take a bar of soap in the Jacuzzi last week. He’s like an animal.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if he was an animal.”
“That’s not funny.” Lena stared at me and said, “I don’t want him to get hurt. Tommy is a fantastic person, and he deserves a remarkable woman.”
I grinned at Lena and said, “Well, if this doesn’t work out between you and I, it’s good to know you have a backup plan.”
“Don’t go there, Josiah. You know how much I love you. Tommy is dear to both of us for so many reasons.” Lena paused then said, “And, none of those reasons are that I am secretly in love with him. All I am, is a friend who wants the best for him.”
“So do I, babe,” I said. “Trust me on that one.” I started putting on a pair of jeans. I had my tighty-whiteys on. Before Lena, I used to sleep in the nude. Lena now has me wear underwear when I sleep next to her. She says that she hates having my tallywhacker poking her in the back all night. I told her, my constant erection is a compliment to all that good estrogen she oozes. Somehow, being the Mani Chosen One had amped up my sex drive exponentially and my performance was one of a long-lasting nature. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed like I might have even grown an inch in that department. Just being near Lena had me in a state of near-constant arousal. I was practically sex on tap.
Lena and I had a phenomenal sex life. We had been making love multiple times a day, all the way up to two weeks ago. I think we could still get it in if we wanted to, but I didn’t want her to go into early labor from all of those multiple orgasms. I thought I would exercise some semblance of self-control a couple of weeks before she was to deliver and just let her woman parts rest until the big event. She was going to need her strength for the delivery. So, I was leaving her in peace below the waist. For now.
“Josiah?” Lena asked. “Can I talk with you before you take off with Tommy?”
“Of course. Are you feeling okay, babydoll?”
“I’m doing all right. This isn’t about me. This is about us. You understand that when the twins are born that we will instantly be a family.”
“We’re a family now,” I assured her.
“Are we?”
“Why would you ask that?”
Lena sighed. Something was obviously weighing heavily on her mind.
“Josiah, why haven’t you asked me to marry you?”
I looked at Lena, terribly surprised. Oh shit! Where did that come from?
“You haven’t even hinted that is something you would want to do, Josiah,” she continued and her voice rose in pitch and volume, as if she was headed for tears.
Lena’s statement shocked me. I wasn’t exactly sure what brought this on, but I needed to give her an answer quickly. “I don’t know why we haven’t talked about it,” I said, equally as unsure as the question itself.
“We have never talked about the elephant in the room and I am almost done with the pregnancy. We say words, like always and forever, and you’re the one. But, we never have talked about getting married. Why not?”
Oy. This was unquestionably bothering Lena. I shouldn’t be surprised that she felt this way. The truth of the matter was that, I didn’t even know the protocol for the Mani, when it came to marriage. Di
d we even get married after we became Mani? I had never heard of it.
“Lena,” I said, “I have never talked about it because I didn’t think it was an option for us.”
“Why wouldn’t it be? We aren’t animals. We have a highly developed society. Not like the Carni.”
I ignored that slam to Tommy’s kind. I said gently, “Lena, do you know of any two Mani who are married?”
Lena thought about it. “I don’t know any off the top of my head. But I’m pretty sure there is no creed against it. There must be some Mani who are married, somewhere!” Lena seemed unusually adamant about this particular subject matter. I wanted to respect her feelings, but at the same time, this subject matter had taken me by surprise. If she expected me to have all the answers, it wasn’t going to happen in a split second.
“Look, Lena, I love you with all my heart. By all accounts, I already feel we’re married. I realized just saying that isn’t enough. You need to understand that you’re the love of my life. Hell, you’re the love of any life I have from now and till eternity.”
Lena smiled, but she needed more. “Sometimes, Josiah, I look at you and feel like you’re no longer mine. Everybody needs something from you. I want to know this: when is it my turn? When is it my time to have you all to myself? You’re always training with the guys. You’re always running off with Tommy, doing God knows what. I understand that you have a calling on your life that is greater than I am. All I am asking is for you to see me as the last love of your life and make a commitment.”
“Wow, you don’t think I see you that way?” That broke my heart, hearing Lena say that.
“Right now, we’re ships passing in the night on most days. Just once, I want you to take the time you spend on helping others, and give that same attention to detail to me. Is that too much to ask?”
“Of course it isn’t.” I felt awful. How could I do this to her? I thought I was giving myself to her. “Lena, I am so sorry you feel this way. I promise to make it up to you.”
“You don’t have to make anything up to me. I just want you to, every once in a while, stop and see me for what I am to you, for who I am to you: someone who is hopelessly devoted to you and committed in my heart. Why can’t we make it official?” she nearly whined. And I had to feel compassion for her. She was as big as a house with my kids squirming inside of her. Of course she wanted the validation of a wedding, a ring, the whole long white dress thing that was ingrained in her previous Tandra upbringing and mine, too. I just didn’t want her turning into Bridezilla.
I crawled back into bed and laid right next to my girl. “Look, sweetie. I do see you. I see you every day, every minute of the day.” I crawled up next to her face and leaned in and gave her an emotionally passionate and deep kiss. It was one of my better ones.
Lena looked at me with a bit of sultry sass in her eye. “You better watch kissing me like that. I just might make you stay back here in the bedroom, and we can figure out a way to make my water break. We can get this show on the road.”
I kissed her forehead. “That sounds very hot and very disgusting.”
Chapter Five
I cuddled with Lena for about an hour, until her voice dropped back to normal levels and then made my way over to Tommy, in my old bedroom. I knocked on the door.
“Hold on!” Tommy hollered from inside my room.
“What are you doing in there?” I asked. I heard a couple of hefty grunts and, seriously, did not want to know the answer to my question.
I was about to walk away, when Tommy called out, “Come in.”
I was nervous. I fully expected to open the door to find my best friends underneath my covers sweating. Nope, Tommy was standing in front of my full-length mirror on the closet lifting weights. He had two 50-pound dumbbells and was curling them as if they were 10 pounds. He looked ripped. He had cut down a few pounds over the past few months. He probably could have posed for his own calendar with the body he was sporting these days. “You’re looking cut, bro,” I said. “I can actually count to four on your six pack.”
“Shut up. There are six muscles prominently on display. Just because this body makes you feel all tingly inside is no reason to hate on the love machine that is right before your eyes.”
“Definitely no hating here. Look, what do you want me to say? That you have a perfectly chiseled body which makes the other guys jealous? Maybe you would like it if I would drop to my knees and bow before your optimum body and ask you to please, please make a workout video that will give me abs like yours.”
“Look, Josiah, if you want to drop to your knees and show me your gratitude and your fealty, that’s on you. Just watch the teeth this time.”
“Okay, now I just threw up a little in my mouth.”
Tommy put down his weights and walked over to me. He placed his hand on my stomach. “You’re getting too skinny, Josiah. We need to start pumping iron again. Just because you’re some bad-ass vampire who is able to do a thousand things, which no other immortal can do, doesn’t mean you’re going to be naturally ripped. Take it from ‘Big Daddy,’ you need to work to look as solid as me.”
“Big Daddy? Is that what we’re calling ourselves these days?”
“I need my name to fit my stature.”
“What? You’re a middle-aged graying father who is about to have a mid-life crisis?”
“Silly rabbit, I’m talking about how the ladies refer to this mass of love flesh that is standing before you.”
“Does every day have to be this way? Where we spend an hour talking about your ripped muscles before we can move along to the topic that actually needs discussion?”
“I’m my favorite subject.”
“Of course you are. Look, do you want to go to the mall with me?”
“The mall? During Christmas time? Are you high? It’s six o’clock on a Friday night, a week before Christmas. It will be a zoo out there.”
“Shut the hell up, get dressed and meet me at my truck in ten minutes,” I said, ignoring Tommy, even though he was making sense for once. “We are going to the freaking mall whether you like it or not!”
“I love it when you take control, Josiah. It’s really hot. Will there be a Sbarro’s pizza on our date?”
“Arrgh,” I growled and I left his room to get ready to go.
Tommy eventually made his way downstairs and we made our way to the mall. The mall out here is called The Mall of Victor Valley. It has a crapload of stores and was busy as hell even when it wasn’t Christmas. We were about a minute away from pulling into the mall parking lot when I needed to change lanes to get over to the right. I turned my blinker on to signal that I was moving over. There was a giant blue truck that wouldn’t let me in the lane. I honked and the jerk sped up instead of letting me in. The guy behind the giant blue truck let me in and was now behind the asshole. This truck was the biggest thing I had ever seen on a street. I couldn’t imagine this truck being street legal.
“What an asshole!” I said to Tommy.
“You’re telling me. Look at his ridiculously sized truck. You know, any man that would make such a public display of mechanical girth obviously has a small dong.”
“You have a lot of experience with small dongs?” I asked, jokingly.
“I’m being serious,” Tommy continued ignoring my comment. “Check the guy out. There is no reason, on God’s green earth, to ever have a personal vehicle that big. It serves no purpose other than having people say to you, ‘Damn, that’s a big fucking thing you’ve got there.’ The only guys who would need that kind of validation are men who never hear a phrase like that.”
I laughed. Tommy had a point. “So, you’re saying this dickhead has such a small pecker, that he went out and bought this grotesque-looking vehicle, just to hear the phrase, ‘Damn, that’s huge?’”
“Is there any other reason? Think of the gas alone. That guy probably gets seven miles per gallon.” Tommy then reached over and started honking at the guy by pressing my horn. Then Tommy
started shining my ‘brights’ on him. I had a decent-size truck, but it was nothing, in comparison to this beast that was in front of me.
“Tommy, stop it. You’re going to piss him off, and the last thing I want to do is get into it with a guy on the way to go crib shopping for my family.”
“Crib shopping? I thought you were going ring shopping for Lena. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.”
“Aw, shuddup,” I said good-naturedly. I guess it was obvious to Tommy that Lena had her panties in a twist about having a baby out of wedlock. Two babies.
At the light, the giant blue truck turned right into the mall parking lot. I didn’t trust Tommy’s antics. So, I decided to whip around the truck and move on with the situation. As I whipped around the truck, there was a stop sign on the other side of him. So, I was right next to his vehicle. I was on his left side which meant Tommy was right next to the guy. I knew that was not going to be good.
As predictable as my best friend could ever be, he rolled down his window and motioned to the guy. “Roll down your window!” Tommy yelled out the window.
“Tommy, freaking stop it,” I said, sounding just like my father.
The guy rolled down his window and said the worst thing he could possibly say to a guy like Tommy who was itching for some drama. “What the fuck do you want, dirtbag? Nice puny truck. Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”
Tommy looked at me and said, “Oh, hell no!” Tommy hopped out of the car and yelled, “Listen two-inch wonder! You don’t own the road! If someone has his blinker on? You don’t speed up to cut him off!”
“I don’t, huh!” the guy yelled out. “Who the fuck are you to do something about it?”
“Why don’t you get out of the car and I’ll show you who I am!”
“Tommy, stop it! Get back in the truck,” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “This guy isn’t worth it.”
