It’d taken us a couple of years to follow in the Brookses’ footsteps, but a few months ago, we’d finally made the decision to vacate our residence in the city and give suburbia a try. The locale wasn’t exactly hopping, but with Kline and Georgia just a few houses down—and their propensity to pretend to very much hate this fact—Cassie and I were in all our glory. We pranked them often, and they bitched when we did. It was just like old times.
Not to mention our “mini” pig, Phil, was now an astounding thirty-three pounds, and life with a monster inside of our apartment with no way to escape had been starting to get old.
Did I mention the life-span on these things can be up to thirty years? Yeah. We are more committed to this pig than we are to our children.
“No,” Kline denied, putting Julia, his three-year-old, down so that she could take off in search of my son. The two of them were nearly inseparable, a fact that Kline lamented fervently. “But I have to go into the office. All the servers are down, and it’s a fucking nightmare. Georgia, Wes, and Winnie had some work to do at the office this morning, Will’s on call, and Melody is busy at the clinic.”
“So I’m your last choice?”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” I teased. “But you did choose me.”
“Can you watch them or not, Thatch?”
“Of course, son. I just need you to do me one little favor.”
“Thatch.”
“What? Is a skywriter scrolling Thatch is my king really too much to ask?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Just tell me verbally then.”
“No,” Kline refused. Not that I expected him to do anything else. He was the least prone to bullshit out of our group of friends, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t try to expose him to it all the time, just for fun.
“Well, at least tell me what the deal is with the animals,” I bartered.
He rolled his eyes. “I can’t leave Stan alone in the house without Evie—”
“And you obviously can’t leave Evie alone in the house for at least a couple more months,” I teased, pinching the cheek of his cherub-like nine-month-old until she giggled.
“Right,” he agreed, but also dismissed. Obviously, he wasn’t in the mood to sit around and shoot the shit with me. “He’s so fucking attached to her, he tears the place apart.”
“And the demon cat?”
“He has a similar attachment to the dog.”
“Jesus fluffing Christ. You’re just as idyllic as the Waltons.”
“Ace has a penis!” I heard Julia yell from somewhere inside the house, and I swear, Kline’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head.
“I’m on it,” I promised.
“I’m so screwed. My daughters are both going to marry your sons, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life crying.”
“Hey! We’ll be officially related.”
“Did I mention the crying?”
I shook my head and laughed before reaching out for the baby. “Come on, Evie. Daddy’s leaving you with fun Uncle T today. It’s a good thing, too. You have so much to learn.”
An angry finger shot out to point at me from Kline’s free hand as he tossed the diaper bag inside the door with the other. “Don’t teach her anything.”
“It’s almost like you don’t trust me, Klinehole.”
“I don’t.”
I lifted his baby up to blow a raspberry on her stomach and smiled into her skin. “Considering you’re leaving your little girls and pets with me for the day, you’ve got a funny way of showing it.”
He sighed.
“What’s the deal? How long are you going to be gone?”
“I’m really not sure, and I’m not sure when Georgie will be done either.”
“No worries,” I reassured. “I’ll just bring them with me to dinner tonight at Wes and Winnie’s place.”
Apparently, all of our women had teamed up to bring about their Mother’s Day wish: spending the night together, getting drunk—except for my pregnant wife, of course—while the rest of us were there to corral the kids. All of the extra people threw another little hitch into my big reveal, but Cassie would be home before we left for Wes and Winnie’s and I’d be able to execute it then. All was still on track.
“Are you sure?”
My best friend pretended to be put out with me, but I ribbed him enough to warrant it. Right then, though, I was worried about how anxious he looked. “Yeah, dude. You okay? You look stressed.”
“What?” he asked, looking beyond me with an expression of pure horror on his face. The repulsion in his eyes encouraged me to do the same. Ace and Julia shot by from one side of the hall to the other, both completely naked.
“Oh, shit. Seriously, I’m on it. Go to work. We’ll see you tonight.”
He looked torn, but finally, he gave in. “All right. Everything you need for Evie is in the diaper bag. She usually naps—”
“When she’s sleepy. I got it, man. No worries. This is good practice since I’m about to be dealing in multiples around here.”
“Okay. Call me if you need anything.” He winced. “Shit. I might have to turn my phone off when I go to the—”
“It’s fine, K. Leave. Let me go get our kids dressed again before my son decides to show Julia the helicopter.”
The helicopter dick swing was a favorite move of mine to make Cassie laugh, and well…I couldn’t be sure Ace hadn’t ever seen me. And my son tended to learn by example.
“I’m going to regret this so much.”
“Bye!” I said with a wave before picking up Evie’s little baby hand. “Wave bye to Daddy.” Stan, and Walter riding bitch, shot through the door as soon as I took a step farther in with Evie, nearly jerking Kline’s shoulder out of the socket with the leash until he let go.
Good God, that dog is a fucking horse.
I didn’t give my friend any more time to protest, instead, kicking the door closed with my foot and moving immediately down the hall to deal with the live nudes situation. And by deal with, I obviously mean get out the neon sign and start advertising.
Relax. I’m joking. Jesus, you make one joke about naked toddlers, and everyone freaks the fluff out.
Three kids under five, one pig, a Great Dane, and an evil cat. Come on, Thatcher. Time to parent the fuck out of this thing.
“Just move a little to the left, Mario,” I instructed toward the group of half-naked men standing in black briefs. The New York City skyline stood loud and proud behind them, while their muscles and white-toothed grins were bound to give women, and most gay men, all the horny feels.
After three more adjustments and another fifty shots, I pulled my camera away from my face and slowly got to my feet. Normally, I’d be buzzing around the shoot like a kid hopped up on pixie sticks and Red Bull, but I hadn’t seen days like that in over two months.
Ace had been a big baby, but I had a feeling this baby was going to be even bigger.
Hell, I’d been having recurrent nightmares about the baby’s head coming out Thatch-size.
Talk about a terrifying thought. My husband was a beast of a man—tall, muscular, and size fourteen shoes. It was safe to say he was big everywhere.
“Want to take a look at these, Cass?” Amanda called from her perch near the laptop wirelessly connected to my camera.
“Yep,” I said with a nod and moved toward her side. My eyes scanned through the various photos in the hope we’d gotten enough amazing shots so we could put this baby to bed.
Hot guys? Check.
Big muscles? Check.
Tight asses? Check.
Cotton candy dick hidden in the background? Check. Check.
“I think we got it,” she added with a smirk once I’d finished scrolling through the photos.
“You bet your sweet ass, we do,” I agreed and turned toward the group of supermodel Adonises waiting for my next instructions.
“I think that’s a wrap, guys!” I called out with a grin. “Great job, everyone. Let’s call it a day,” I added and received several happy hoots and hollers in response.
Instantly, I was hit with nostalgic thoughts of when I was in my late twenties, not pregnant, and one of the models would lift me up onto his muscular shoulders and trot around the set. Sigh. The good old days. No way in Hades that’d happen today unless one of these models was on PCP or had an actual crane parked around the corner to lift my preggo ass.
Obviously, I love my life. I don’t want to be anywhere else but with Thatch and our little family.
But sometimes, a girl just needs to reminisce a little.
Especially, when she’s seven months pregnant with her second child and her lower back feels like it’s about to snap in half and she didn’t get her morning orgasm and she can only drink decaf coffee and…did I mention the no morning orgasm?
I’m pregnant and horny, and my handsome ogre of a husband better make it up to me tonight.
I glanced at the time on my phone and smiled when I realized we’d managed to finish up four hours ahead of schedule. All in all, it was a great fluffing day. Well, besides this morning when Thatch decided to scare the ever-loving sneakers off of me by acting like our son was missing.
Fluffing bastard. He should’ve known that now wasn’t the time to pull pranks on his amazing and beautiful and very pregnant wife. For one, we had a deal. And two, I was a little pissed that I hadn’t thought of pranking him out of the blue myself. And as a bonus reason, I was the miracle of life, for fudging’s sake. He should be treating me like a crystal fluffing princess.