It Happens

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Not that I was bothered by that.

  Zee had a way of making my heart seek him, and I knew that was the same for our kids.

  That’d been the way it was since day one.

  I’d actually started back to work early, taking the babies with me when I went.

  Sure, they loved their mama, but when Daddy stopped by on his lunch break? It was like his entire world lit up, along with theirs, too.

  “Mama open?”

  I turned to find our youngest, Eitan, staring at me expectantly holding out a juice box of his own.

  Eitan looked like his daddy.

  Tall for the age of three, he was lean, mean, and in charge.

  His fiery red hair and constant scowl was seriously so much like his father that it hurt sometimes to look at.

  I took the juice box just as Annmarie, my oldest at the age of four and a half, walked into the kitchen with a massive cupcake in one hand, and a bottle of chocolate milk in the other.

  Now that girl? She was all me.

  She was introverted, stayed to herself, and loved her daddy something fierce.

  Her long, jet black hair and pale skin were only a few of the traits that she shared with me.

  “Mom, I’m going to eat this outside.”

  Then she was gone.

  Annmarie and Aggie were twins. After our first invitro-fertilization, the two of them were the result.

  Our first try we got the babies that we wanted.

  Eitan happened naturally—though they said that once you got pregnant and had a successful pregnancy, it was easier to get pregnant for the second time.

  And it was.

  Which had been our mistake.

  We’d expected to need invitro-fertilization with our next one, so we hadn’t been careful, going about our normal sexual routine as it’d been for the years before that—no condom in sight.

  And when I’d gotten pregnant six months after the girls were born, I hadn’t even realized it until I was well over four months along.

  “Open!” Eitan bellowed.

  I narrowed my eyes at my young son, but it was his father from the other room that had me wincing at him in sympathy.

  “Get in here now, little boy,” came Zee’s annoyed growl.

  “Better go, baby,” I suggested, shooing him with his now-open juice box.

  Eitan took it and drug his feet as he walked away, looking for all he was worth as if he was headed to the gallows.

  The kids respected their father, unlike me.

  But that was also due in part to the fact that he was a police officer and their father, and I was just their mother who gave them everything they could ever want within reason.

  One day, my kids wouldn’t be there to ask me to open a juice box because they’d be adults and capable of doing it themselves.

  One day, I wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night to a baby crying and my eyes so tired that I could literally join my baby with tears, too.

  One day, the computer paper that I’d bought for my office wouldn’t be scattered all over the floor, cut into tiny, impossible to pick up with your fingers pieces.

  There wouldn’t be any more poop-stained underwear. There wouldn’t be any more shoes in the middle of the kitchen floor for me to trip on.

  No completely untouched Pop-Tarts thrown into the trash because they were the wrong flavor.

  No half-full sippy cups found two weeks later smelling of rotten milk.

  No more sloppy kisses and peanut butter stains on my shirt because a messy baby wanted a kiss in the middle of dinner.

  I sniffled somewhat loudly and went back to my laundry, but I couldn’t help it.

  I started to cry.

  I’d never thought that I’d get babies.

  Hell, at one point, I never thought I’d have Zee.

  “Daddy, Mommy is crying again!” I heard Aggie cry out in alarm.

  I heard the ottoman go back so fast that I knew it’d flown halfway across the living room in his haste to get up.

  I used the towel that was in my hand to dry my eyes, but it was useless.

  I was well and truly worked up at this point.

  Zee filled the doorway, and out of watery eyes, I looked up to find him staring at me with love in his, not amusement.

  “What set you off this time?” he asked.

  I swiped away my tears.

  Today was Annmarie and Aggie’s first day of kindergarten.

  I’d seen them off on the bus—a bus they’d begged to go on despite both me and Zee being able to take them into school. When they’d gotten off the bus about an hour ago, neither one of them seemed to miss us in the slightest.

  It also didn’t help that I was already an emotional mess because I was six months pregnant with our fourth. My mood swings were all over the freakin’ place.

  “You didn’t open Aggie’s drink for her,” I muttered.

  He grinned. “She didn’t bring it to me, or I would have.” He paused. “But why are you still calling her Aggie?”

  I shrugged. “Her red hair paired with her soft white skin and her obsession with mermaids…it doesn’t bother me to call her that.”

  “You’ll just do anything not to call her Agnes, won’t you?” he teased.

  That was true…

  “It just doesn’t fit her,” I admitted. “She doesn’t feel like an Agnes to me. She feels like an Aggie.”

  Which was true. Aggie fit her. Agnes was just…old.

  Not to mention the original Agnes was alive and kicking, and she hated me.

  The day that I married Zee, she told me that I would never be good enough for her grandson, and she wouldn’t forget that there was a better version before me.

  Which had hurt.

  But, like always, I’d sucked it up and chosen to let it go, even if she didn’t.

  When Zee had asked to name her Agnes, I’d agreed, only because he seemed so excited about using that name.

  But then, at the twins’ birth, the elder Agnes had taken one look at her namesake and proclaimed her ugly.

  Sure, she’d said it teasingly seeing as Aggie had a cone head to end all coneheads, but you didn’t tell anyone that their child was ugly. Not even jokingly.

  They may be ugly but saying it and thinking it are two different things.

  “Aggie doesn’t like that name anyway,” I jokingly said.

  “Whatever,” Zee laughed and pulled me into his arms. “What are you going to name this one?”

  I shrugged. “I figured that I’d leave it up to you. You’ve done a pretty good job at it the last three times you’ve chosen.”

  He winked. “That’s because you’ve agreed with me for the most part, Agnes excluded. I’ll have to brainstorm and let you know what I come up with. I still have a few more months.”

  I squeezed him tight around the waist, and then stepped back, my tears drying on my face.

  “I have two more loads to get done today before I can leave,” I told him. “Aggie and Annmarie have gymnastics at four, tutoring at five thirty, and soccer practice at seven. You can handle the boy?”

  Zee gave me a droll look. “I was born to handle that kid.”

  I snorted and reached for another towel, not bothering to hand Zee one.

  If there was one thing I’d learned over the last five years, it was that Zee sucked at doing laundry. So unless I wanted all my clothes to be wadded up and wrinkled seeing as he thought that was considered folding, I had to do it myself.

  Not that I minded.

  Where I did the laundry, he always did the dishes.

  Where I vacuumed the floor, he always mowed the lawn.

  We had a give and take relationship, and for the most part, we got along famously.

  Most of the time.

  We still had our moments, and when those moments came, neither one of us was worried about scaring the other off with our anger.

  We fought. We
made up. We fought again. We made up again.

  There was never a dull moment in the McGrew household.

  “You’re not wearing your ring,” he accused, jolting me out of my thoughts.

  I held up my hands for him to inspect more closely.

  “They’re swollen again,” I told him. “I couldn’t get any of them on today.”

  And there were a lot.

  As each year passed that we were married, Zee would buy me a ring. Since two of those years I was pregnant, some of them were even on the larger side so they would fit me.

  But this pregnancy?

  It was definitely worse than all the rest.

  I was tired more often. I was irritable all the time, and Zee had to be a saint or something because I hadn’t had sex with him in six months.

  Not because I hadn’t wanted to, but because I was too nauseous. All the damn time.

  Any time he started to get on top of me, or I started to make my move on him, the nausea would hit. At this point, he’d stopped trying.

  I missed him.

  Missed the way he felt inside of me.

  Just thinking about it made me want to jump him.

  I dropped the towel back into the dryer and walked to the laundry room door. Once I looked both ways, I closed it quietly and then locked it.

  But just as I walked over to Zee and started to take off my shirt, the doorknob jiggled and a whining voice said, “Mom! Dad! You should come see what your son is doing!”

  Aggie’s voice stopped us both cold, and I sighed.

  “Next time,” he growled. “We make sure they’re all otherwise occupied.”

  I laughed, throwing my arms around him and holding him tight.

  “I love you, Ezekiel McGrew!”

  He placed a kiss on my cheek. “I love you more, Jubilee McGrew.”

  I looked down at our hands wrapped around each other, and I spotted the tattoo that he’d not only drawn for me but also tattooed permanently onto my body.

  It was a cover-up of our scars, so to speak.

  Well, not really.

  More like an enhancement.

  He’d lined the scars with beautiful colors, starting at a dark, vivid blue at the top, and dimming into an almost icy blue at the bottom. Then he’d had a good friend of his tattoo the same design on his, starting with the vivid blue on top, fading into the light, icy blue at the bottom.

  When we held hands, it looked like mine connected with his, and vice versa.

  Though, technically it did.

  And around my tattoo on my hand was a name—Annmarie. On his hand was also a name—Eitan.

  It was, by far, my most favorite tattoo that he’d ever done for me.

  I had many tattoos.

  There was another one on the top curve of my ass, and another on the inside of one thigh.

  Pretty much when he needed a human canvas, I was it for him.

  And I always would be.

  Because, despite our differences, we were made for each other.

  “Mommy, I’m serwiwous!”

  “Better go, baby,” I whispered. “I have some laundry to do.”

  He growled into my neck. “I love when you talk dirty to me.”

  What’s Next

  Keep It Classy

  3-5-19

  Prologue

  Nice butt.

  -Bathroom sign

  Turner

  10 years ago

  16 years old

  “Look, it’s the fat fuck that likes to play like she can race cars,” I heard from my side.

  I didn’t bother to look up.

  In fact, I would’ve driven right back out onto the track had my fuel not been low and my father not been standing in the pit road giving me a look from hell.

  Now his back was turned, and he was talking to a few of his pit crew, and I was wondering how in the hell I was going to get out of this car without hearing it double time from the asshole twins.

  I swallowed hard, wondering if I could just sit here until they left.

  But then my dad’s voice barked out, “Get out now, Turner Hooch. We’ve got places to be!”

  I took the steering wheel off, placed it next to me, then started the painstaking process of getting out of the car—through the window—while others watched.

  I didn’t miss the boys snickering at my side. I also didn’t miss the ‘look at that fat ass slide out of the car’ or the ‘do you think she needs to be greased?’

  I felt a tear hit my eye as I swung my first leg out.

  Then, before I could control it, I lost my footing on an oil slick next to the car window and fell the rest of the way out of the car.

  I hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud, and then stared up at the quickly dimming night sky as I tried to catch my breath.

  My hair was laying in the oil next to me, and I was having a hard time deciding what I should do next.

  Should I roll to my side and get up on my hands and knees before using the car to push up?

  Or should I use the car to pull myself up from the position I was currently in?

  My father saved me, however, by walking over and offering me his hand.

  “You okay, baby girl?” he asked.

  I took his hand and felt my six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound father haul me onto my feet.

  But did he have to add the grunt of exertion at the end?

  Yes, he probably did.

  Which set the asshole twins off even more.

  It was at this point that there was no denying that they were laughing at me.

  Yet my father, being his clueless self, ignored them and kept his gaze on me.

  “You okay?” he repeated.

  “Sometimes, I don’t think she can get any fatter, and then she does,” I heard someone else say.

  My head dropped.

  “Let’s go, baby,” my father urged, guiding me away by placing his large arm around my shoulder and pulling me into his body.

  We made it all the way out to the truck before he said, “Don’t listen to them, sweetheart.”

  I scoffed.

  “Yeah, like it’s that easy to do,” I muttered almost to myself.

  He didn’t reply, only kept his arm around me until we were at his vehicle—the one that was given to him by his sponsor, Chevrolet—and guided me inside the vehicle before closing the door behind me.

  I automatically reached for the seat belt and latched it into the lock, repositioning myself until the belt wasn’t digging so uncomfortably into my chest and belly.

  We made it all the way home in silence, and by the time I arrived inside the house, I was about to break down all over again.

  My dad had heard.

  I was embarrassed.

  So, so embarrassed.

  Usually I kept all the problems I was having to myself.

  If he’d known that there was a problem, he would’ve kicked the asshole twins out, and then I would’ve heard it even more while we were at school.

  But this time there was no hiding the problems.

  Nor the tears.

  “Baby, wait,” my father said before I could head in the direction of my room.

  I stopped until I was in the mouth of the kitchen, then turned and stared at the man that knew how to mend my heart. The only man that had ever been good to me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What they said? Don’t take it to heart,” he tried.

  I heard the distinctive shuffle of my mother entering the room and turned to find her staring at us with wariness on her face.

  I turned back to my dad.

  “You don’t understand,” I whispered, eyes filling with tears. “You’re not fat. You don’t know what it’s like!”

  My mother made a sound in her throat, and I looked over at her to see that she was staring at the ground.

  My mother, Patty, did know what it was like.

 
She’d always been a big-boned woman and had gained a lot of weight over the last ten years.

  Hell, she and I sometimes even shared clothes at this point.

  I was not happy with my body.

  I was not happy with the way that I couldn’t seem to control it even with diet and exercise.

  Where some people accused me of not trying, I had to point out that I did try. A lot.

  But unfortunately, my mother passed down her thyroid to me. A thyroid that hadn’t functioned correctly since I was nine years old.

  From that point on, I’d put on weight. A lot of it.

  So much, in fact, that I was now known as Turner-Turner to the people at school.

  Turner-Turner meaning I was as big as two people, that way they called me Turner twice. Or sometimes Turner Squared.

  “I don’t know what you want me to do about it, baby,” my father whispered brokenly. “If I could stop them, I’d do it. I’d tear every one of those fuckers’ hearts out and feed it to them. But you’ve forbidden me to say a word or step in. I’m running out of options.”

  “Not one option,” I pointed out.

  My father’s face went stormy. “You’re not getting surgery. You’re sixteen. People die from surgery!”

  I raised my hands up in a praying position and gave my father everything I had.

  “Please.”

  He looked sick to his stomach.

  “I don’t want to lose you, baby,” he whispered.

  I smiled sadly. “Daddy. I’m just telling you now, if this keeps on, you might. I can’t live like this. Being in your shadow makes my heart literally break. I’m the racer’s fat kid. I know you’ve read the media reports lately.”

  Dad closed his eyes, unable to deny that one.

  “Please, Daddy. Please,” I begged.

  “Let her, Garrett Lee. Just let her.”

  I looked over at my mom, who had her back straight and her eyes wide open.

  For once she was being firm with my father.

  He realized it just as well as I did.

  “Fine,” he grumbled. “But if anything happens to you, I’m going to be pissed.”

  I smiled, the first genuine smile that’d graced my face in a very long time.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

  What’s Next 2

  Hissy Fit

  3-19-19

  Chapter 1

  Women my age are supposed to be able to look suave and sophisticated while walking in heels. Me? I manage to trip over thin air.