“Getting payback,” I replied, watching the doors like a hawk.
“What for?”
This was a good question. I couldn’t remember what he’d done, but I knew that he had it coming. She seemed like she’d understand though, so I just shrugged.
Her hum proved I was right.
I’d told her earlier that I needed her to give me a ride to sort something out, and when I’d directed her here, she’d assumed it was to pick something up.
When we’d remained sitting in the car, she’d not questioned it until twenty minutes later, proving how long she’d been married to her husband Ren. She hadn’t even questioned why Ariana was driving the car behind us. Or why she’d gotten out and moved a car behind a wall in the parking lot before getting back in her own.
Some things you just didn’t need to question for them to make sense– eventually.
That was when my target walked out.
“There he is,” I hissed, ducking down and holding my phone above the dash until he filled the screen.
Hitting record, I watched, giggling, as Tate walked toward where his car should have been, but now wasn’t. He didn’t look too confused though as he turned in a circle looking to see if he’d gotten the wrong row.
That was when things got really fun.
He did what I knew he’d do– held his key fob up in the air and, because we weren’t far away from him, with the help of the zoom on the camera on my phone, I saw as he tensed his thumb to press the unlock button on it.
Each time his muscle tensed, I’d hit the horn in the car making it beep. Periodically, Ariana would press her horn, and it ended up with us alternating the beeps between us. I’d go, then she’d go, and each time he’d turn in either direction looking for the car.
“I want a go!” Maya chuckled, pulling up her own phone and taking over beeping the horn for me.
After half an hour, he tapped on the screen of his phone and looked behind him in confusion to the wall where his car was parked.
“How did he do that?” I asked Maya.
What kind of car radar did he have? Did he call it? Images of Kit from Knightrider came into my mind, and I started to panic in case it told him who had done it.
“Car tracker,” Maya muttered, quickly sliding down in her seat when Tate turned to look behind him.
I was glad I hadn’t voiced my Knightrider theory out loud, especially seeing as how I was still recording.
Hitting the off button, I rang Ariana.
I wanted to get out of here before he passed by us.
“That was fun,” Maya mused as we breezed down the road toward where the houses were. “We should do that again. Oh shit, you should come to ours next time.”
And there began a great friendship!
Epilogue 1
Noah
“Hey, you seen Luna?” I asked Archer as I walked past him.
“Kitchen,” he mumbled around a mouthful of cookie.
Luna and Mom had perfected the Funfetti cookie recipe and now they were available all the time. Then again, she was pregnant so my wife could have whatever the fuck she wanted.
“It’s basic algebra, Luna,” I heard Madix sigh as I walked around the corner and saw her sitting at the table glaring at him. “You’re a smart girl,” he ignored the sneer she shot in his direction at the world ‘girl’ and carried on. “How can algebra be such an issue?”
Snorting, my brother Levi leaned back in his chair and watched the show in front of him.
Standing up, she waddled over to her brother and poked him in the chest. The fact that she had to reach up to around the height of her head to poke him there never failed to amuse me.
The arguing continued with Vlad growling, backing his mom up, but my dad distracted me when he joined me where I was to watch them too.
“Ever see the You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon music video?” He asked as he looked between the siblings.
“It rings a bell.”
“Well, Paul Simon is standing next to Chevy Chase in it. Paul is roughly five foot two, Chevy is almost six foot four…”
At that mental image, I burst out laughing. This was apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back for Luna, who finally told her brother what her issue was.
“Stop calling it math, it’s not freaking math,” she yelled, leaning into him on the last word for another chest poke. “Algebra is a freak of nature. It’s numbers having sex with the alphabet, and some kinky asshole decided that it was math. Why is that even taught at school? Do you know how perverted that is?” It was an empty question if ever there was one, and even her behemoth brother didn’t have an answer for it. Snapping her head in my direction, she continued, “Our precious babies aren’t going to a school where they teach perverted shit. It’s mathematical kink, pure and simple!”
“Well, I guess we did slip a into b and multiply,” I snorted, forgetting that her Leviathan sized brother was right there, as was her pit bull - also known as my brother.
A quick look at their faces clued me into the fact I needed to run, and fast!
I’d been looking for Luna to give her back her phone she’d left on my desk. So, before I ran for my life, I tossed it in her direction.
“Catch it!” I yelled, turning for the door. At the sound of a thud and that sickening ‘I’ve just shattered my screen’ noise, I spun around and looked back at her. “What part of ‘catch it’ didn’t make sense?”
“I thought you said, ‘cat shit,’” she explained, looking down at her phone.
When she looked up, she had tears in her eyes and all four of us visibly melted– the thoughts of death forgotten. For now.
“Didn’t it sound like cat shit to you too?” we all nodded and made the right noises as she started crying.
It had been an easy pregnancy– apparently. She hadn’t been sick, she hadn’t had any bleeds, she wasn’t swelling anywhere she shouldn’t be… people said it was easy. What those people didn’t see were the tears.
Couldn’t wear a pair of panties she wanted to? Well, they were her very favorite pair of panties and her kooka wouldn’t feel right not wearing them. So, she started crying and apologizing to her vagina.
Couldn’t wear a pair of shorts she’d wanted to? Well, they were her very favorite pair of shorts and her legs were going to feel like she hated them. So, the tears came, and she was apologizing to her vagina.
This continued with everything– everything. There was only one piece of toilet paper on the roll? The toilet paper hated her and didn’t want to be part of the wiping process. Cue the tears!
It was the strangest shit ever, but our doctor had said not to worry and that it was just hormonal.
I’d found out what her deal with the washing machine had been through a sheer fluke. I’d gone to put a load in to help her out, and something had blown inside it when I’d turned it on. Fortunately, no water had gone in, so we got the clothes out without any mess, but she had been almost inconsolable. When I’d asked her why she liked the machine so much, the story of their ‘affair’ as she called it had all come pouring out.
I will never admit to the reason for my bruised foot that afternoon being the hard kick I’d given it as we took it to be disposed of, but I got my revenge. And when the new one arrived, I announced that I was in charge of laundry, and she hadn’t argued.
Yeah, fucking right!
Three months later…
Luna
I’d heard all the horror stories about giving birth. I’d also heard all the funny ones from Noah’s cousins’ wives about the effect it has on a man.
Apparently, I was one of the lucky ones because my husband didn’t faint, nor did he throw up. I didn’t tell him I hated him, and apart from the one punch to the balls during a contraction, he’d dodged every other hit I’d aimed at him.
“Why won’t she come out?” I wailed, pulling the top of my body up to try to push the baby out.
She was just stuck. Stuck! How did you get stuck in a straight tunnel?
I’d been pushing for two hours and they were threatening a C-section, which I did not want. I’d seen the videos, I’d also seen videos of fish being gutted– the similarities were too much for me. No flipping way.
‘Millions of women have them, Luna!’ Well, good for them! Millions of fish want their balls and guts back, too. Is it happening? Un-bloody-likely.
Noah was rubbing my back and whispering to me when the doctor came back in.
“The operating theater is ready now, Luna. I think we need to call time on this one.”
I wanted to cry. I was a failure. I couldn’t even get my baby out of a straight tunnel. How was I going to get her in a diaper? What if I missed her mouth with my boob and blinded her?
I was well aware that I was a hormonal mess, I’d been like this throughout my pregnancy and they’d reassured us I would go back to normal once my hormones went back to normal. I couldn’t wait for that day, it was driving me insane!
Bawling into Noah’s chest, I nodded my sweaty face and tried to say okay. I was so caught up in the tears that I missed Madix walking in until Noah turned me to face the other side of the bed and I saw him standing there with his hand over his eyes.
“Mad… Ma… Madix,” I wailed. “She doesn’t like my vagina, and they’re gonna gut me like a f… f… fish!”
Without removing his hand from his eyes, he reached out with his other one and waved it around in the empty air looking for me. Moving forward, I stuck my sweaty face right in his palm.
“Luna, you can do this. All you have to do is think of how time sensitive it is.”
“What do you mean?” I asked my brother, wiping my nose on his palm and smiling when I saw the grimace on his face.
“Well, remember when you were little, and we’d pull a funny face at each other, and Nana would tell us our faces would get stuck like that if the wind changed?”
And I thought I was weird. What did this have to do with what I was going through?
“Uh, yeah?”
“Well, you’ve had her in the chute for two hours,” he reminded me. “What if what Nana was saying was true? Two hours with her head right there…”
Holy shit. Two hours with a baby’s head stretching me?
Spinning round to face the medical crew who were standing watching us in amusement, I growled and pushed.
“Get out, get out, get out!” I yelled, grabbing both Noah and Madix’s hands, and then pushed like I was shitting my ever-loving heart out. Not that I needed to, but the nurse had told me earlier that that’s what I was meant to do– so I did. “Whatever happens, forget it happened. Do you hear me?” I yelled at the room and pushed again.
Both men yelled as I crushed their hands, and then my little daughter screamed her head off at the same time as her mommy when her shoulders split me in half.
It was a group affair.
And there wasn’t a poop in sight, I swear it!
“What’s her name?” the nurses asked as they did whatever it was that they did down the business end before the cord was cut.
“Oh shit,” my husband gulped.
At first, I thought it was because of what he was looking at as he reached over with the scissors. Then I worried that he’d cut the wrong thing.
But then I realized that my husband, the one who had begged me for months to be allowed to choose our daughter’s name, had forgotten to do that one crucial thing.
I was going to kill him!
Epilogue 2
Noah
Tonight was the night. Our eldest daughter, Jamie, had her first basketball game. Well, it was kind of basketball, about as much as it could be for five-year-olds.
I walked in with my three-year-old son on my hip. Not because he wanted to be, but because he was such a little shit that he had to be. If I let Leo run around, he’d steal the balls and tear down the nets.
Last time, I’d found him under the bleachers looking up one of the other mother’s skirts. Trying to explain that your little kid was curious and not a pervert was awkward as fuck!
He was such a pain in the ass!
I’d eventually had to admit to my wife that I’d forgotten to pick a name for our daughter when she was born. Actually, the excuse I’d gone with at the time had been that I was so overwhelmed with emotion over the birth of the baby, that I’d forgotten what I’d chosen.
I later came up with Jamie and it had been an immediate yes from her mother– thank shit!
Seeing Luna sitting down already, the baby in her belly about to burst out, I took a struggling Satan over to sit beside her.
“How kind of you to finally turn up,” she snorted, watching as Jamie dribbled the ball like a pro. She was only five, but she was as tall as a nine-year-old, so it wasn’t hard to track her progress down the court.
“Your son decided that he was hungry,” I informed her, plonking him down on my lap, then wrapping my arms around him and holding on for dear life.
“Did you have to stop for a snack?” she asked, sounding distracted as she rubbed her belly. This baby was the most active to date, which didn’t bode well for us if Leo was anything to go by.
“No,” I hummed, watching Jamie aim and throw the ball at the net. “Go Me-Me!” I yelled, dodging the fist that Leo threw in my direction.
At that moment, Madix arrived with his own child burden and sat beside us.
“Did she score?”
“Sure did,” I replied, grinning proudly.
“Why does your kid have threads hanging from his mouth?” he asked after a couple minutes of watching the game in front of us.
“He got hungry,” I repeated.
“Noah,” Luna asked hesitantly. “What exactly did he eat?”
“The seatbelt.”
I was spared from a verbal ball crushing by Jamie dribbling up to the net, a child height one, and freaking slam dunking it so hard that the pole fell over.
“That’s my girl!” Luna yelled, standing up and shooting her fists in the air.
As the sounds of the crowd cheering died down, I noticed the water on my leg.
“You little…” I growled, holding Leo in the air by the waistband of his pants. “Your son pissed on me!”
“No, that was me,” Luna said, her voice trembling like she was about to cry.
“You pissed on your husband?” Madix asked in disgust. “This is a child’s event. There are little kids everywhere including your own– and mine…” he continued talking at us, but I realized something crucial and tuned him out.
“Baby, did your water break?”
“Uh, huh!”
“Do we have time?” I asked the age-old question.
After the first baby, you kind of started to get an idea of how much longer you had until the baby popped out. Of course, ninety-nine percent of the time you were wrong, but still!
“Nuh uh,” she shook her head and started panting. “Noah?”
I was trying to come up with a plan of action that involved… my mind was blank. The baby was coming. What was I meant to fucking do?
“Ya?” I replied, looking for an exit. There had to be a freaking exit.
“I think I can feel it’s head!”
And then all hell broke loose.
Luna
“You gave birth in a gym,” Levi chuckled, sitting in the recliner while I tried to get what had happened out of my head. Not that it would ever happen. No, it was going to be stuck there for life.
“During a kids basketball game,” he reminded me, laughing even harder.
We hadn’t had time to run to the exit. My son, Hudson, had decided that he wanted out then and there.
As soon as I’d said the word head, I’d been unable to hold back the squeeze that had pushed it out even further. Letting go of Leo, who had started running around like he was an actor in 300, Noah had pulled me down onto the floor where I’d wriggled out of my panties and thanked God that I was wearing a long dress.
It had only taken three pushes and out Hudson
came, his screams joining the horrified screams of the kids who’d just been playing basketball.
Unfortunately, during the pushing, my dress had ridden up which meant that they might have seen my poor husband catching the baby, all covered in blood and gunk, and pulling it up from between my legs.
They were going to be scarred for life. Hell, I think Noah was going to be scarred for life seeing as how he’d been down the business end for all of it.
“So, when are you having the next one?”
I looked over at his laughing face and reached for the only thing that was within arm’s reach– my sneaker. For some reason, it was on the couch instead of by the door, but at that moment I’d say it was some sort of divine event, as I lobbed it at his head and listened to the smack it made as it hit his forehead.
“Ow,” he whined, holding his head. “What was that for?”
“I thought I saw a bat,” I informed him, looking past him and catching sight of something that would really scare the hell out of him. “By the way, your son is eating dog food again.”
Quicker than you could blink, he was out of his seat and running for the kitchen.
“What have I told you? I gave you a damn banana on the way, boy!” he shouted, pulling the menace away from Banshee’s food.
Vlad’s food was on one of those bowl support things for taller dogs so they didn’t have to bend down as far to eat, but Banshee’s was always just the right height for Levi’s son who seemed to have an addiction to the stuff.
The dog in question chose that second to come tearing through the house after Vlad, wailing his head off. My dog was such a screamer.
This, of course, set off my new baby, who had been asleep in the bassinet beside me. His wails joined in Banshee’s, and then the other kids started screaming too.
To some it might have seemed a chaotic mess, to me it was family. Something I’d wanted for so long and never thought I’d get.
Then my husband walked into the room, searched around, his face visibly softening when he saw me holding our newborn son. Walking over, he sat down beside me and pulled me under his arm as he ran the tip of his finger over Hudson’s nose.
Until Fools Find Gold: A Providence Gold Series and Until Series Crossover Page 16
