by Kira Graham
“But—but you have to go!” Cleo babbles, dancing on the spot when I glare at her, put my feet back up, and decide that threatening them is a waste of breath.
“How is hauling this onto a plane, which I am not allowed to be on, by the way, going to be fun?” I ask gesturing down at myself. “Did you not hear me, fools? I peed myself today. Accidentally. It just happened. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to sit here, I want to be in this pretend labor that sure as hell feels like real labor, and I want to do it alone, because I’m crabby and the sight of you all makes me sick!” I scream, losing patience because Rosetta is now walking out of my bedroom with a dress that fit me what feels like years ago.
Rationally, I know that it was just months ago, but give me a break—being huge makes time stretch out so long that it almost kills you. Stupid Achilles Hart and his super sperm. Did you know that most people who have multiples usually go into labor early, but that they deliver babies that are often small and underdeveloped? Well, it’s true—only in my case, these boys are huge! Not the kind of huge that makes my maternal heart go, “Aw, that’s a good thing.” Nope. They’re the kind of huge that makes my vagina go, “No fucking way,” and also means that I am bigger than big. I can’t see my feet anymore, and that’s not just because of my stomach. My tits are massive. Sob.
“Just put the dress on. At least come to Lala’s with us. We can eat, talk, and just hang out,” Rosetta sighs, her eyes pleading until I feel like I want to kill her.
We have this pact going—one that I was forced to make after I ripped a chunk of her hair out in a fit of rage, because I caught her sneaking into my apartment uninvited and going for the dress that I have up on the wall, all framed and hanging there as a good reminder. It was a good idea when I did it, and it still is. So what if the dress is a little dirty? Someone had to eat the wedding cake!
Anyway, the pact goes like this: I won’t have to live in fear, after I give birth, of Rosetta’s sneaking into my apartment to slit my throat, if I do stuff like bow to her wishes. It seemed simple at the time, and, in my defense, I was holding a startlingly large chunk of her hair. And she was crying. I felt it prudent to give in fast, before she stopped being civil enough to bargain.
“Dammit. What part of ‘contractions’ aren’t you guys understanding?”
“Did you see Doc Payne?”
“Yes.”
“And are you in labor right now?” Rose asks patiently, her eyes blazing.
“Well, no…but it hurts.”
“Suck it up. Get dressed. And let’s go. Mindy, stop sniffling, and go tell Grange that we’re heading out in ten. Cleo, get a wet washcloth and do something about her pits; she needs a wash. Sin! Get out of the booze, and come and help me wrestle this whale into her tent—and Teebag!” she barks, ignoring Tee’s growl of fury. “Stop skulking around in the corner, and help me. She bites and has no respect for verbal agreements when she’s in a mood.”
“I told you all that I don’t want to be involved in this!” Tee hisses back, her eyes flitting to me before flicking away, fast.
She looks almost guilty, and when I look at the others, I see some form of unease in all their faces that they can’t quite hide. Except Rosetta, but she’s just evil, so guilt doesn’t exist in her world. Not really. Cleo isn’t looking at me, but that could be because she’s holding her breath while washing my armpits. What can I say? I’ve been sweating since the cramping started. Give me a break. Sin is drinking and avoiding my eyes, and Tee won’t look at me at all. She just leans back in the corner and keeps her eyes on her heels.
“What’s going on?” I ask, narrowing my eyes suspiciously.
They all exchange a look, one that seems conspiratorial, and then Rosetta sighs and slumps.
“Okaaaay. You totally caught us,” she mutters, looking defeated. “We’re being sneaky.”
“No shit,” I snort, helping Cleo out by taking off my robe and slipping into the dress.
It doesn’t close all the way, and I can feel the zipper practically biting into my skin as she gives it one last, breathless tug, before giving up and stepping back. At that, all eyes turn to me, looking less than impressed.
Like I care, I think, pulling a stick of taffy out of my robe, where I like to keep my stash. The one good thing about having huge babies that have completely ruined your body and given you stretch scars—yeah, scars; “marks,” my ass—is that you just stop caring. Now, I eat what I want, and you know what? It feels gooood.
“What’s this sneaky subplot about?” I ask when no one says anything, their eyes still bugging because, dammit, that dress was already a large!
“Er, uh…ahem!” Cleo starts, before Rosetta slaps her so hard that she reels on her feet, avoiding a headfirst collision with the floor only because Tee catches her.
“Shut up! You’re not in the circle of trust, remember? Ahem! We are taking you to Mali-Mali,” Rose says seriously, smiling when I gape and then squeal.
Mali-Mali is the only club in town that I have never been to—not that I didn’t try, but I sort of got a little…unhappy when the bouncer grabbed my crotch while I was going inside, and yeeeeah. I was banned for life. They even have my picture up on a wall and everything. Technically, I’m famous.
“No way! No freaking way. What happened? Did Gunther die? I hope it was painful. I missed six years of their Karaoke Thursdays just because he threw a hissy fit when I hit his brother.”
“Yeeeeah,” Rose says, clearing her throat, and starts to look uncomfortable, while Cleo giggles, and Sin snorts. “About that. Uh, you see…the thing is, Gunther doesn’t have any brothers, Alex,” she says slowly, her lips twitching.
“Bull. I know he does. I was there! I beat him up after he crotch-cupped me, intimately. It was really thorough, Rosetta, and—stop laughing. What are you all laughing about? That wasn’t funny. I was wrongly punished for employing my female rights—”
“Against another chick!” Tee yells, cracking up so hard that she has to grab her knees in order to stay upright.
They all explode with laughter after that, while I just…blink. And think. And grimace.
“No way! That was not a woman…no. Absolutely not. She had a beard!” I scream, my shoulders starting to shake because I will not laugh. This isn’t funny.
Okay, well, it’s a little funny. I shoulda realized when Gunther started yelling at me to stop hitting Bess, but hell, I thought it was just a nickname.
“She had hormonal problems. And she is no longer the bouncer. Now, what do ya say we go hit up that club before you become a mama and have to give up fun things?” Rosetta urges.
“Hell, yeah!”
Chapter Sixteen
Alex
“Hell, no!” Rosetta screams when I grit my teeth and demand that Tee keep driving towards Mali-Mali. “Tee, put that foot down!” she yells, her eyes going wider when I double over, and my whole face starts to sweat.
My hair, which has been swept up into a crazy, wild, perfect tumble of loose curls on top of my head, immediately starts to sag when my head starts sweating, too, and let’s not even get started on the crotch of my panties. Or Tee’s seat.
“But I wanna go dance!”
“The only dancing you’re going to do tonight is the labor dance. Drive faster, Tee. Oh, my God! Is your stomach rolling?” Cleo screams, clawing at the door handle even though it seems as if Tee must be going a hundred miles an hour.
“Sin, hold Cleo down before she throws herself out of the car and gets herself killed. Adonis will murder me if his baby gets tar burn on her ugly face,” Rose mutters, her face popping into my line of sight and looking so calm that I almost want to stop panicking.
Almost.
But look here. My vagina is about to become a Slip ’N Slide to two babies who are larger than normal and extremely early. I can’t be calm. All I can do is scream when it feels like my pelvis is being ripped in two. And sweat. Holy hell, why am I sweating this badly?
“Let me out! I
don’t want that shit on me! Oh, my God—I watched those videos. Did you see how big it gets? This one woman squirted amniotic fluid everywhere when her baby was born. It was gross.”
“Cleo. Shut up! Just shut the hell up!” Mindy screams from beside Tee in the front seat, her eyes a wild blue that gets wilder when she looks at me and sees the wet dress plastered to my legs, all the way from my thighs to my ankles.
I can’t do this. I should just go home, take a nice, hot bath, and fall asleep. I just need some rest. This isn’t labor; it’s just that Hicks thingy that the doctor was telling me about. If I can just—
“Oh, my fucking horse shit son of a bastard,” I groan, doubling over because I don’t think that that other ripping pain was the contraction.
This is!
Breathe. Just breathe. It’ll be okay. Doc Payne knows that you want every drug known to man that is used for these kindsa things, and she’s assured you that you’ll be moonwalking while you push. Don’t worry.
I assume that I’m thinking these things on my own, but it turns out that Sin is yelling them at me while she physically wraps her arms and legs around Cleo in order to subdue her and keep her from jumping. Cleo, in turn, is side-eyeing me like a skittish horse and moaning, as if she’s the one in trouble here. Bitch!
Distantly, I hear Rosetta talking to someone about a change of plans, but I can’t keep track of what she’s saying, mostly because Cleo’s now taken to screaming uncontrollably. Until Rosetta grabs her cheeks, looks her dead in the eye, and hisses. That shuts her up fast—hell, it shuts me up, too, and I feel as if someone’s taken a hot poker to my lower back.
“Now, you both listen here! Alexandria, I am not taking you to a club when it’s become clear that you are in labor. Cleo, if you don’t stop freaking out, I will slap you unconscious. And Mindy, stop crying and praying; this thing is still going down, only now I get to win five grand from Zeus.”
“Huh?” I pant, gritting my teeth because even when the contraction stops, it still hurts.
Is that normal? I don’t think that that’s normal. It shouldn’t be. Who decided that women had to do the whole birth thing, anyway? Oh my God, now my boobs are leaking and making another disgusting mess.
“Where’s Achilles? Someone call that son of a rat bastard,” I whimper, dropping my head onto Rosetta’s shoulder when the pain suddenly eases.
I hear female giggles, as if this is at all funny, and then listen to Rosetta crooning nonsense while I feel like I’m peeing myself again. Is that normal? Oh, my gosh—I wish I’d gotten past chapter seven in those books instead of watching Desperate Housewives reruns with Nate. Damn you, Eva Longoria—you’re just so mesmerizingly sneaky.
It takes forever to get to the hospital, and it feels like I’m going to straight up die by the time someone wheels me into a room. The nurses are all really professional, with the one that I punch in the boob when she tries to look at my hoo-hah hardly even making a noise, and soon I am being gowned, wiped down with a cool cloth, and attached to machines that the nurses assure me are picking up two healthy little heartbeats.
That calms me down some, but only enough for me to breathe in a full breath, glare at Rosetta, and demand that she find Achilles. No way am I doing this alone. Even if I told myself I could.
Achilles
“Would you stop going so slowly and honk your horn?” I yell at Zeus, who is driving like an old man.
All of my plans have gone to shit—all of them. I set Mali-Mali up to look like a Vegas wonderland, something I saw in one of those albums that Rosetta forced me to look at, even after I protested because they’re Alex’s private things. In the most recent one, I spotted a wedding theme that made me not only laugh, but also ask myself how I could possibly not adore this woman. Everything there was Vegas-level garish and so opulent that I fell in love with it immediately.
At first, I wanted to just fly out there and make that whole dream come true for Al, but when I realized that flying was not going to…well, fly, I rushed to put together the next best thing within a matter of hours. The mayor, that simpering ass, somehow rushed us another marriage license after Rosetta called him and made her demands. The parents all got dressed to come down, and even Tee, who I am pretty sure has been watching me for the last three weeks, reluctantly agreed to help us out, though only on the strict condition that if Alex wanted to kill me, she’d get to join in.
“I’m going as fast as I safely can. Just calm down. I read that women in labor can sometimes be at it for over twenty-four hours the first time around. We have time,” he says calmly, his eyes trained on the road, where an elderly couple is apparently of the opinion that ten miles an hour is an acceptable speed.
“We need to get married, you ass! Alex will never forgive me if those boys are born out of wedlock. Put your foot down,” I hiss, trying to breathe through every text that Rosetta sends me, even when she calls and yells at me because, as it turns out, Alex has no fear when she’s in pain.
And Rosetta now has a black eye. Shit.
“Would you stop yelling at me and put on your seat belt? Hey, Father—uh, how you doing back there?” Zeus asks, eyeing the priest who is sandwiched between Grange and Heath, his lip still shaking from the fact that he tried to decline coming to the hospital, until Grange made it clear that that was not a choice. In fact, Heath palmed his gun and made it clear that he had no qualms about doing what needs to be done.
“F-fine, my child—just make this fast, would you?” he croaks, eyeing both Grange and Heath.
They’re both lock-jawed and glaring at me, which they’ve been doing ever since they found out that Al’s in labor.
Adonis, the lucky ass, jumped into a car with Paris, Ares, and Nate, who was cursing so loudly that Paris actually had to toss him into the car as Ares was pulling away. Yeah, okay, I get it. People are really pissed at me for taking so long to pull my head out of my ass. I’m angry, too, but by God, I will get to that hospital and marry my girl before she gives birth.
Please, God.
Or I will never live it down. Or live.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, Zeus pulls into the parking lot and slows down enough for me to bail from the car. Miraculously, I don’t trip over my own feet and fall, and when I run for the elevator, I am as steady as it’s possible for me to be.
What doesn’t seem possible is for Tee to jump at me the way she does as soon as the elevator doors open. What was that? Twenty feet? my mind wonders as Adonis pulls her off of me, and Jack nods towards a door down the hall. I don’t hear screaming, yelling, or threats from anyone as I approach the door, which surprises me, but I soon see why when I push it open to find Rosetta pacing while Alex pretends to sleep.
Hell, I want to laugh because she’s pretending so hard that her face is turning purple.
“You can’t avoid this one, Alexandria! Eventually, you’re going to have to open your eyes and accept the fact that those babies are coming outta your pee pot!” Rose rails, falling quiet when she turns and spots me.
“Oh, thank God. Talk to this denial-centric asshole. She thinks that if she pretends that she isn’t in labor, it’ll stop,” she mutters, running past me and down the hall at a sprint that shouldn’t be possible in those heels.
When I turn to look at Alex next, I meet her red-rimmed, tear-soaked eyes and feel my heart stop dead.
“This is all your fault, Achilles. Sperm should not be able to get through both latex and the pill!” she whimpers, bursting into tears.
I hurry over and gingerly hug her, expecting—and girding my loins for—a punch to the groin. Instead, she clings to me and pants while a machine to my right starts to go off.
“It’s all my fault. You are completely right. You should probably hit me or something. Punch me in the nuts. That way, it won’t happen again,” I murmur, smiling when she huffs and pushes back, only to gape at me when she sees my nose.
“What the hell happened to your nose?”
I shrug, a
grin breaking over my face because she reaches up to touch me, so tenderly and carefully that I feel that instant connection that I’ve been missing for the last few weeks. God, I can’t believe I stood her up—this woman who is always here, always ready to love me. I would deserve it if she told me to get lost, and I would definitely deserve it if she made me leave. I have no right to stay, and that is my own fault.
“I fell down the stairs,” I admit, chuckling when she rolls her eyes and then sighs.
“You’re still gorgeous, dammit,” she grouches, turning my chuckle into a full-blown boom of mirth.
“Adonis says that I look hideous, and Zeus took pics to send to all my exes,” I confess, tickled pink when she scowls and shakes her head.
“They’re ass—oh, my God,” she moans when the machine starts to beep harder, her face screwing up.
“Babe!”
“Shoots and ladders! That hurts—that hurts so bad. Why can’t you push these babies outta your dick hole? Why does it have to be my cooch that gets stuck with all the hard work?”
The questions aren’t really questions, but more like accusations, as I helplessly grab onto her, trying to help her breathe through the pain that’s hitting her. I feel like hell by the time she blows out a breath and collapses, her eyes closing tightly as if she’s praying. Now I get the possum act. If I had to do this, I too would want to pass out and forget that it was happening. But we can’t, and so for me, it’s time to be a man and pray to God that it makes a difference.
“Because you’re a lot stronger than I am, Al, and we both know it,” I whisper, cupping her cheek tenderly while she glares at me, her lips twitching.
“Well, that is true. You’d probably piss yourself and start crying. I didn’t do any of those things!”
Which is probably not true, but she’s in the process of giving me two sons, so I’ll let her maintain that lie for the rest of our lives. Or, you know, until I need leverage.
“Of course not, Al. You’re solid.”
