CHAPTER 8
“This,” I say as I look at the blue paint that’s all over my hands, clothes and my hair, “is harder than it seems.” Meggy giggles and doesn’t look much better than I do. Shelby stands in the doorway with her hands on her hips, looking at the room that will soon be for her little baby boy. We’re trying to paint one of the walls in a lovely shade of blue, but so far everything is blue except for the wall.
“How the hell are we going to raise a baby if we can’t even paint the walls of the baby room?” Shelby half cries.
“Well, for starters, we’re not raising a baby, that’s your and Stan’s job,” I answer, getting actual paint on the brush and applying it to the wall. “And if I ever get the urge to procreate, I guess I’ll have four guys to paint the walls.”
Shelby’s eyes widen. “I can’t raise a baby! Stan can’t raise a baby! He’s good with numbers, not with diapers. Do you think I need to find myself three spare men?”
Meggy walks over to the little blond and wraps her arms around her. “There, there, it’s just a little freak out. Stan and you have everything you need to give this kid its own set of traumas for future therapists to make money off of.”
“That’s a soothing thought,” I laugh.
“And don’t think I didn’t hear you casually mention how serious this is between you and all of these guys.”
Crap, she noticed. Shelby cocks her head, the status of my relationship made her seem to get over her freak out.
“How does that work?” she asks.
“You really want to hear that? That’s your little brother.”
“Eh, I’ll pretend it’s someone else. But please tell and let me live vicariously through you.” Then she presses her hands to the sides of her ever growing baby bump.
“What are you doing?” I ask confused.
“The baby is too young to hear,” she says with a look of outrage on her face, making a smile appear on mine.
“It actually works out pretty okay. I think it works because those four boys talk - a lot. About everything. Including all the private stuff. Well, most of the private stuff. Might help that Gil does weird sexual relationships for a living. He’s seen it all, he knows how to talk about it. So we do that, and that seems to work. With everyone’s schedules, O working normal hours, Dean working mornings and lunches, Gil and Jonah out for most of the evenings, we’re all together during the week at various times. It’s never boring, and exciting.”
“And there’s a lot of sex,” Meggy adds.
“Yeah, well, that too,” I answer as I turn my back to them and actually, gasp, start to paint the wall. Perfect excuse not to look at them. I might be having some kind of sexual revolution, but some things are still weird to talk about out loud. Other than with the boys, obviously, because they make me.
“Now tell me how that works,” Shelby says.
“Euh, well, sometimes it’s one on one, sometimes there’s more then one. Let’s just say I’m learning a lot of stuff.”
“And they don’t get jealous?” Shelby asks when she sits down in the rocking chair that’s in one of the corners of the room. It’s actually the only thing in the whole room that’s finished, and the idea of her holding a little baby in her arms while she rocks it to sleep warms me.
“Not jealous,” I answer after a while. “Sometimes they try to outdo each other. Which is a fun game.”
“Aren’t they weirded out by being with each other?” Meggy asks as she also starts to actually paint the wall. My mind goes back to Gil and Dean literally being together, and then about the look of pure fascination on Jonah’s face while he watched O fuck me, his balls almost slapping in Jonah’s face.
“Nope,” I say with a pop. I’m not elaborating on that. Shelby doesn’t need to hear that her baby brother likes to get dicked every now and then. I might understand, because I see what’s happening in front of me and I understand. But to an outsider? That might just be very weird. If I’d have heard someone tell me that her boyfriend liked it when he was fucked by another guy, I totally would’ve Judge Judied her and would be convinced he’s secretely gay. I might’ve been more close minded than I previously believed.
The conversation dies down after that, and we work on the wall in silence. I have some kind of out-of-body experience when I suddenly realize how fucking grown up we are. Meggy has a serious relationship with the brother of one of my boyfriends. We’re painting the wall to the room of the baby nephew of one of my other boyfriends. I’m having not one, but four meaningful relationships without me thinking that we’re fated mates, but feeling like I’ve hit the jackpot. It’s weird. It’s like this stage in life that you think you’ll never reach when you’re an adolescent. But then you blink three times, and poof, it’s there.
Turning around, I press my brush against Meggy’s nose, making it blue instantly. She laughs.
“We’re having a paintwar?”
“No, I just needed to do something severely juvenile. I was actually feeling like an adult there for a second.”
“Well, we can’t have that, right?” Meggy says with an evil smirk as she rolls my arm with her paint roller.
“Oh it’s on!” I yell. But right when I get in position to attack her, a little snore comes from the rocking chair behind us, where Shelby has managed to fall asleep in under two minutes. Her hands are lovingly wrapped around her belly.
“Later,” Meggy whispers and gets back to painting.