Enjoy Your Stay

by Carmen Jenner

  “I can’t do this. I thought Ana was here. I can’t have a baby and have a random trucker and a … Jackarse deliver it. I need to get to a hospital. I need a drink. I need a—” Another contraction hits, and I scream. “Faaaaaaaaaark me that hurts!”

  “You ain’t got time for that darling. You ain’t got time for anything but delivering this kid. Come on, let’s get you inside.”

  Pep strides into the house—after wiping his boots, of course—and Jackson helps me up the stairs, but then he blocks the door with his massive frame, and says, “What are you doing here, Hols?”

  “I’m kinda about to have a baby, and you’re kinda in the way, so unless you want me to drop the thing out here in the freezing rain, maybe you could move?”

  “You left me. You left with him.”

  “Yes, and I’ve hated every day since!” I yell. I’m wet, and shivering, and looking between Jack and my enormous belly in my soaked shirt, I realise all of us could do with some new clothes. And then I’m screaming again because the pain of another contraction is so blinding that my knees give out. Jack holds me up, and looks down at my face. “You should have gone to a hospital, Hols. We’re not … you’re having a baby, and you came to me?

  “Yeah, you idiot. I drove all night in labour, and then I hopped into a stranger’s truck and prayed he would gut me and take my baby to sell to Brangelina. I came back for you. Now get me the fuck inside.”

  He wraps me in his big arms, and presses a kiss to my temple. “Welcome home.”

  I don’t know which was worse: thinking I’d deliver my baby in the front seat of a Mack truck, or Jack’s face when he looks at my vagina as it’s stretched all out of shape. Either way, none of this is a happy experience. Pep is down at my legs, and Jackson’s behind my head, supporting my upper torso. Every couple of minutes I alternate between screaming at him to get the fuck off me, or continue wiping my forehead with a cool cloth.

  “This is all your fault,” I scream.

  “Uh, no, actually, that would be your other boyfriend.”

  Pep looks up at my face with his eyebrow raised. I frown at him. “Hey, it’s been a really big year.”

  He holds up his hands to ward me off, “Didn’t say a thing.”

  I feel like everything on the inside bottoms out and drops through the floor, and then I feel this insane urge to push. I don’t know if I’m supposed to yet, I admit I kinda skipped through reading the “birthing your baby” section in all of my pregnancy books, because that stuff makes me gag. I push as hard as I can. A scream comes ripping and tearing out of my throat and I grip Jack’s hand hard.

  “Good. You’re doin’ great, Holly,” Pep says, “I can see the head.”

  Jack leans forward a little, and then pulls back in an awful hurry. “Jesus Christ, that’s a head?”

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah, Hols?”

  “I’m trying to squeeze a watermelon out through my hoo-hah, you say one more word, just one more fucking word and I will shove my fist through the head of your junk, and show you how this shit feels. Are we fucking clear, or do I need to bitch-slap you, too?”

  Jack’s face is frozen in fear. He blinks a couple of times, and then his eyes dance wildly between Pep’s and the door. Another contraction hits, and I squeeze his hand so hard that I probably manage to put hairline fractures in a few of his bones. “If you even think about running I will come after you and strangle you with this kid’s umbilical cord. Don’t think I won’t do it. Because I will.”

  He shoots another frantic look at Pep. “Don’t look at him, look at me. I’m the one having a fucking baby!” I scream as I feel the thing push its way further down my vagina. “Answer me!”

  “I … I … am I allowed to speak now? I didn’t know there were going to be questions, Hols. I’m sorry? Could you maybe let go of my hand?”

  “Fuck you and your hand!”

  “Okay Hols, I think you need to just—”

  “Shut the hell up, Jackarse. If I didn’t love you so much I’d be in a hospital right now, high as kite, and abusing the midwives. But I do love you, and I’m here, with a strange truckie delivering my baby, and a man who’s desperate to run for the door at the first chance he gets. So shut the hell up, man the fuck up, and hold my hand. Please?” I look up at him as another contraction hits. And this time, I bear down so hard it feels like I might split in two.

  “I can’t do this,” I sob into his chest.

  “Yes, you can. Come on, Hols, snap out of it, and push that baby out.” He starts yelling as if he’s just taken over for Coach Stark, whipping the Sugartown Slayers soccer club into shape.

  “Don’t yell at me,” I whimper, and fat tears spring into my eyes and spill down my cheeks. “It’s not meant to come out of there. He should just go back and wait a bit longer.” I grab Jack’s shirt, pull his face down so it’s level with mine, and scream, “Why the hell wasn’t I born a boy?”

  “I don’t know, Hols, but I’m really glad you weren’t,” he says, pulling his shirt from my grasp. He smooths the hair back from my sweaty forehead, and kisses the top of my head. “You can do this, baby. You got this. It’s a piece of cake.”

  “This is not a fucking piece of cake, Jack. It’s nothing like cake. Cake is sweet and delicious and fluffy. Childbirth is not fluffy. It’s hard, and gross, and painful, and arrrrrgh!” I scream as my stomach convulses, and another contraction pushes the baby further into the world.

  “Okay, you’re doing real good, love. The head’s out, just one more hard shove, and your baby’s gonna be here. You ready?”

  “No. I can’t. It’s gonna tear me in half, I can’t do this.”

  “Yes you can, Hols. Come on, baby, where’s that feisty redhead I’ve loved since the day we met?” He smooths his hand over my cheek, his thumb tracing my lips. And then he smiles down at me, and his eyes do that crinkling thing in the corner, and I let out a sob, because I can’t believe I’m back. I’m back where I belong, and I have my Jackarse, and soon I’ll have my baby in my arms. “I’m here. You can do this. I got you, and I’m never letting go. Now, I need to you focus on getting that baby out of there, so we can welcome him to the family.”

  I nod and feel another gut-wrenching spasm. This time, I push with everything I have in me. It hurts like fuck, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to need a zipper installed to be able to close my vagina from now on, but I feel a popping sensation, and then a gush of water below, and then the pressure is gone. I let my head fall back against Jack’s lap, and for a half a second I feel like I could just pass out with relief, and then I hear the tiniest little mewling cry, and my heart bursts open with joy.

  “Is he okay?” I ask, as I lean up on my elbows in order to see him better. Pep rubs the baby with a blanket, and clears the mucus from its mouth. He cuts the cord using a pair of kitchen scissors, which is probably one of the grossest things I have ever seen—and I live with Jack and Elijah, so that says a lot.

  “Er … Hols?” Jack begins.

  “He is a she,” Pep says with a smile. “And she’s doing fine. A little on the skinny side, but she’s got a good set of lungs on her, alright.”

  “Wait, what? No, no, no, no. I can’t have a girl. I was a girl. Girls are trouble. I was having a boy, the ultrasound said so.” He wraps the baby in a fuzzy blanket and places it in my arms. “It’s a girl? Aww, she’s so little and pink.”

  My heart just explodes with love. I didn’t think it was possible to ever feel this way about someone you’d only just met, but that thing that people tell you about childbirth, the bullshit they feed you about forgetting the pain instantly because you have a baby in your arms? Yeah, completely false, because I know without a doubt that no matter how long I live I’m going to remember that pain forever. I’m going to remember, and I’m going to relish it and revel in it, because it means I’ll never forget how much I loved her in this moment.

  “She’s perfect,” Jack says, pulling me from my reverie. He smiles down at u
s and traces his finger lightly over her brows. She screws up her tiny nose, and lets out a little bleating sound. “Just like her mum.”

  “You got a name for her?” Pep asks, and then it dawns on me that this is a man who was a complete stranger to me just hours ago. He drove me hours out of his way, risked his life in floodwaters, may not get back to his own family for days, and is possibly about to lose his job because of it. He bought me to my Jackarse, and he delivered my baby, and I don’t even know his real name.

  “I never asked why they called you Pep?”

  Pep’s eyebrows shoot skyward but he answers my question anyway. “Because of the salt-and-pepper hair.”

  I smile, and look down at my beautiful, perfect baby. “Her name is Pepper.”

  “Pepper?” Jack asks with a frown, “That’s not a name, that’s a spice.”

  “Pepper Harris,” I say defiantly. It suits her already.

  Pep lets out a deep chuckle. “Right, well. We should see about getting a doctor around here to look at you two. Jack, you wanna help me clean up here?”

  I don’t hear his response because Pepper’s tiny fist escapes the blanket and lands against my skin, and the only thing that matters in the whole world is that touch, and that we’re home.

  I SEE the lights from the taxi pull up the drive, and hurry to meet the girls at the door so they don’t wake the baby I just spent forty minutes putting down. I pull back the screen and lean against the doorjamb. Ana’s yanking Holly up the path.

  “All I’m saying is they’re motherfucking great boobies. I think it’d be unnatural for you not to want to touch them.”

  “Yes, Hols, everyone wants to touch your boobs, now come on. I’ve gotta tinkle, and then I’ve got me a giant to ride,” Ana mumbles as they stagger up the stairs. I look at Holly in her sexy-as-fuck short skirt and her perfect tits—that, for the record, I would touch at all day if she’d let me—and I feel my cock twitch in my pants. The last couple of weeks have been torture. I’ve seen her whip those things out left right and centre, and I’m never allowed to touch them. We haven’t fucked since before she left for Sydney, and my balls have practically been swallowed up by my arsehole and turned themselves into ovaries.

  “How was ladies night?”

  “Drunk,” Ana mutters as she squeezes past me.

  “Speak for yourself!” Holly fires back, a little too loudly. I cup my hand over her mouth as she tilts her head for a kiss.

  “Shh, you’ll wake our baby.” I warn, as I slide my hand from cupping her mouth to lightly bracing her neck, and lay one on her lips. Holly pulls away, searching my eyes. Hers are glassy, but that could just be the wine she’s consumed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You just said our baby.”

  I shrug. “She is our baby.”

  “I know but, you just … I wanna fuck you so bad right now.”

  “Okay, Drunky Sue, let’s get you into bed.”

  “I had one drink. Not really sure you can call me that,” she protests. “But you can definitely take me to bed.”

  I wrap my arms around her and begin walking her towards our room, then I lean down and whisper in her ear, “Just for the record, I wanna touch them.”

  “Touch what?”

  “Your motherfuckin’ great boobies.” I laugh as I push her into the room, and shut the door with my foot. I spin her in my arms and crash my lips down on hers. She tastes like vanilla lip-gloss. Normally I hate kissing her with that shit on, but tonight I don’t care, because damn, the way she moans into my mouth and rubs her soft tits against my hard chest makes me seven kinds of hard-as-fuck. She climbs up my body, and I barely have time to bring my hands beneath her arse before my back slams into the door.

  “Easy, sweetheart. We’ve got all night,” I whisper when she releases me long enough to come up for air.

  “I need you inside me now, Jack,” she moans.

  Fuck me. I’m gonna lose my shit in three seconds flat if she doesn’t calm down and stop rubbing her perfect cunt against my Johnson.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” I say, and slide my pyjamas past my hips. I shuffle us over to the bed with my pants down around my ankles, and we fall back on the mattress. I kick my pants off onto the floor and push her skirt up her hips so it’s bunched around her middle, and I slide my hands down her body, preparing to take off her underwear, only she’s not wearing any.

  “Holy fuck, darlin’, if I’d known you had nothing on beneath this skirt I never would have let you leave the house.”

  “Oh, really? And what makes you think you can stop me?”

  “My giant cock.” I smile, and she snags my bottom lip with her teeth.

  “Well, it is a very nice cock.”

  “It’s about to shrivel up and fall off if you don’t shut up and let me stick it inside you, woman,” I grumble and she laughs. “Hey, do not laugh. It’s been seven weeks of torture.”

  “Actually, it’s more like several months of torture.”

  “Hols, I’m pretty sure I’ve had blue balls since I met you.”

  “Aw, poor baby. You need me to kiss them better?” she asks as she grabs my cock, and slides it through her wet cunt.

  Fuck me, that feels good.

  She shoves at my chest with her free hand and says, “Off.”

  “Baby,” I whine as I slide off her, and roll over onto my side of the bed.

  She laughs. “I thought you wanted me to kiss it all better?”

  “I do, but I also gotta fuck something or my cock’s gonna shrivel up and turn into a fucking vagina.”

  She licks her lips as she kisses a trail from my nipple to navel. My dick twitches when she dips her tongue into my belly button, and then traces it across and down the hard V of my hips. I thread my fingers into her hair and tug a little. Holly smiles up the length of my body, and then runs her tongue along my shaft. I let out a grunt, and suck in a breath between my teeth as she takes my head in her mouth and deep-throats my cock.

  “Christ, that feels good,” I say, fisting her hair hard as her head bobs up and down my dick, and her free hand cups my balls. No woman ever could suck cock quite like my Holly.

  My moan is interrupted by a crackling from the monitor, and Pepper’s startled little cry. I throw my hand over my face. “No, no, no, no, no. Not now,” I beg, “Not like this.”

  Holly draws her fuckable mouth away from my Johnson, and laughs. “And just when we were beginning to get into it. You better get in there, before she wakes the whole house.”

  I pull back and glare at her, “Me? I can’t go; I’ve got wood bigger than the Eiffel tower.”

  “Well, I can’t go. I’ve been drinking, and you know she won’t take a bottle if my boobs are nearby.” I stand up, and stare longingly at her perfect tits. Can’t say I blame her. I wouldn’t wanna suck on a rubber teat when I could put the real things in my mouth either. “I have to express anyway.”

  Pepper cries again, and Holly looks at me and makes a shooing motion. I look down at my poor misused Johnson. “This shit has got to be illegal,” I mutter. I slip on my pants, and mope out as Holly laughs behind me.

  Walking across the hall, I open Pepper’s door and stare into the soft pink glow of her room. She’s not crying anymore but I can see her kicking her little legs in the new cot. “Hey, pretty girl, what’re you doing awake?” I say as I close the door behind me, and turn on the lamp beside the rocking chair. “You’re not due for another feed until morning, and your mamma’s drunk off her sexy arse. You’re kinda interrupting Daddy’s playtime now, sweetheart.”

  I lean over the side and rub her tummy, and then I notice the black smudges on her upper lip and brows. “What the hell?” I ask, and hear a giggle come from underneath the cot.

  “Sammy Jay Belle, get your arse out here now!”

  Sammy slinks from under the cot with a black Sharpie marker in his hands, and a very guilty look on his face. “What the hell were you thinking, kid?”

  He shru
gs. “I thought the’d look cuter with a mouthsache. And thome killer browth. Anaths alwayth talking about killer browth.”

  I shake my head, and hold out my hand for the marker. Sammy slumps his shoulders and hands it over before he slinks away toward the door.

  “Pull a stunt like this again, and Aunt Holly’s gonna eat you for breakfast.”

  “Theth not my aunty. Theths just Holly. And no one lets me do anything thince that baby came around.”

  “Pepper’s not gonna be a baby forever, mate. You just watch; soon she’ll be crawling, and then walking, and then you two are gonna be thick as thieves.” I take the baby-wipes out of the packet and start rubbing at the smudges on her face. Pepper fusses and carries on like a pork chop, but then her tiny fists grab a handful of my hair and she yanks, hard, while making these frustrated little noises as she tries to scalp me. Jesus. She’s gonna be as feisty as her mother. I kinda pity the guy that gets stuck with this family. One cranky female Harris is enough. “She’s gonna need you to look out for her, Sammy. You think you can do that?”

  “Yeah,” he says as he hangs his head, and shuffles out the door.

  “No more Sharpies, kid.” I yell after him.

  I take Pepper over to the change-table and clean her up, change her nappy, and spend the next twenty minutes patting her back to sleep. When I finally get back to my own bedroom, I’m thinking about all the things I’m gonna do to my woman. I open the door and see Holly starfished on the bed, snoring her head off with a line of drool running down her cheek and pooling onto the pillow behind her head.

  My previously happy and standing-at-attention cock lags, and then I swear to God I feel him die. He just shrivels up and wastes away.

  I turn off the light and crawl onto the bed beside her, and then I wrap her up in my arms and breathe in her scent like a meth-head smelling his next fix. I flip her onto her side, and tuck myself in around her body until I’m swallowing up every inch of her. She sighs in her sleep. I swear it’s the best sound I’ve ever fucking heard.

  Being with her is the best thing I could have ever imagined for my life, and yeah, I might have a kid who is technically not made up of my DNA, but she owns all of my heart, just the way she would if she’d been my flesh and blood. I may be a struggling small business owner that can barely keep his family above water, and I may not have had sex in months, but none of that matters, because I got the woman of my dreams in my arms—and there’s always tomorrow.