“Stop riling him up. He’s going to do Riverdance on my bladder now!”
“I wonder how big he’ll be?” Isla mused as she picked up Dewi and swapped her with me for Kali. “You know,” she continued as she unsnapped the popper things on the crotch of the bodysuit, “there’s an old wives tale that says that the weight of the father determines the weight of the baby. How much did Ren weigh when he was born?”
“I dunno? Wait, I’ll text Colette!”
I gently stroked Dewi’s little button nose and her soft hair, taking in her features. Dewi had Luke’s blonde hair, and the rest of her was her Mom including her beautiful hazel eyes. Little Kali had his Mom’s dark hair and the rest of him was his Dad. Taking in the differences seriously amazed me. How could they be twins, but look so different?
“I swear, everything about this baby is just beautiful and perfect. Kali too.” I really loved these little guys. They’d healed something in me somehow.
“Fuck me,” Maya whispered as she looked down at her phone.
“What?” We were all still on edge about what had happened only a matter of weeks ago and the fact that we still didn’t know who, why or if they were going to do it again. “What happened?”
She was still staring at her phone and hadn’t said anything, so I snatched it out of her hand and looked at the screen.
“Oh shit,” I burst out laughing waking Dewi out of her mini nap which she let me know was not bueno by screaming at me until she went red in the face. Normally I’d be panicking about how to fix it, but I was too busy laughing at what Mom had text back to Maya.
“Someone tell me what’s going on. And for the love of God Cole, try and stop her crying before this guy starts…” too late, Kali was joining in now, earning me an extra glare from his Mom.
“She says…” Maya whispered staring into space. “Ren was…”
“Jesus. Cole what the hell did your Mom tell her? What was he, eight pounds? Eight and a half pounds?” Still laughing, I held up the phone so she could see the screen. “What the hell?” Isla sat back and patted Kali’s back as she tried to process what my Mom had just told us. “You’re going to need a new bajingo, Maya. Nine pounds ten ounces?”
At that point, the alien burst out of the guy’s stomach on the television making Maya go even paler.
“I’m going to have a wind sock!”
“A what? What the fuck is that?” I popped Dewi’s bobo in her mouth and lifted her to my shoulder to rub her back.
“One of those things that you see on a runway at the airport,” Isla filled me in and then held her phone up to show me a picture of the huge orange tunnel things that were blowing in the wind when you looked out the window of the airplane. I stopped laughing because the thought of that being a vagina was just disgusting! “Hey, I had two babies, and I’m not inhaling furniture when I sit down,” Isla shrugged.
“I can’t do this! I’ve changed my mind. We’ll just keep him in there and…” Maya trailed off.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Maya. You don’t even know that the baby will be that big.” Isla chuckled beside me and then whispered, “she’s fucked!”
Moving Dewi off my shoulder so that my laughing wouldn’t shake her around, I went to say something smart to Maya about black holes when the most God awful sound came from the baby in my arms.
“No, not again!” I couldn’t go through being covered in baby shit again. It had taken me days to get the smell off of me last time.
“I thought you said that everything about her was beautiful and perfect?” Isla gasped through her laughter.
I was just about to pass her off to Maya when the smell hit me, and I started gagging. “Oh my God, put it back in!” I couldn’t stop the retching. “What the hell do you feed her? She’s just a baby! Oh, lord Jesus, my eyes are burning!”
Getting up, I handed her to Maya, whose face was now looking slightly green, to enjoy and ran out of the house rubbing at my eyes. I got as far as a bush and had to give into the nausea that was almost suffocating me. “Jesus shit, it’s like fuckin’ napalm!”
Walking into Jilly’s, I immediately clocked the table where everyone was sitting. We were meeting for something to eat, but I had Ebru plans too. I’d thought about it long and hard, and I was going to ask her out. I had what I was going to say planned out and had rehearsed it in front of the mirror at work; I just hope she’d say yes.
“Cole my man! How’s the balls?” Ren the fuck face asked as I sat down on the empty seat at the end of the table next to Ebru. The truth of the matter is that they were still uncomfortable, but at least the swelling had mostly gone down on them.
Shooting him the bird, I turned and looked at Ebru. “How are you doing, baby?”
“I’m good, Cole. You?” She wasn’t looking her normal cheerful self, and the smile she gave me didn’t reach her eyes. It looked strained and forced like she was in pain or something. Oh, fuck me, what if she was sick? Could a nurse look after themselves?
“Good, baby,” I kept my voice low so that the others couldn’t hear us. “Are you okay?”
Giving me another tight and forced smile, she started picking at the label on her bottle of beer. Looking up, I saw Caleb looking at her worriedly and grit my teeth. He’d been spending a lot of time with her lately and it was killing me, even though it was my own fault. He must have felt me glaring at him because he looked over at me and discreetly nodded his head in Ebru’s direction and shook his head in a ‘not good’ way. I lifted my chin back at him and tuned back into the conversation around me while watching Ebru out of the corner of my eye.
“Yeah, you don’t have to give birth to a fucking Thanksgiving turkey big enough to feed forty people you asshole!” Maya was saying to Ren while everyone else winced at the mental visual.
“Baby, we don’t know that he’s going to be as big as that. And hey, Mom gave birth to me and she’s okay, right?” Ren replied, trying to calm her down.
“Have you seen the size of me?”
“It’s true,” Tony spoke up from the other side of Ebru. “Her ass has at least quadrupled since you knocked her up. In a couple of weeks she’ll be visible from spa…” he broke off with a flinch and then wheezed, “What the fuck, Isla?”
The little pixie sitting opposite him holding Kali just smiled sweetly in return. It was so hard to get angry at her, especially with the gorgeous little baby in her arms who was looking around the place before stopping on me and whimpering.
“Ah, he wants Uncle Cole,” Isla said, changing the subject and standing up to walk the baby around the table to me and then passing him carefully into my arms which I’d held out the second he’d started whimpering. I wasn’t going to say no.
After listening to Maya make more analogies that the state of her vagina would be in after she gave birth, Luke took over the conversation steering it far away from time portals and civilization inhaling black holes. It was just as well because Tony was now gray and was now glaring at Isla across the table. I had to say, I wasn’t feeling much better, and I hadn’t seen what he had when Isla gave birth to the twins.
“Are y’all ready to order?” Jilly asked from beside me. I hadn’t heard her arrive, so I jumped which woke up Kali who started wailing. Grabbing his bobo from Isla, I popped it in his mouth and put him on my shoulder, calming him down instantly. “Well, I never thought I’d see the day that the Cole Townsend would be the baby whisperer.”
Her words cut me deep considering what I’d lost and apparently the tight smile, that I was now forcing myself to give her, didn’t go unnoticed by the other occupants of the table. Thankfully, though, giving their food orders was the priority.
After she had left, Isla got up and went to walk around me in the direction of the bathroom giving me the opportunity that I needed to speak to her. I gave her a two-minute head start and then got up.
“I’m going to take Kali for a wander around the place,” I said, not aiming it at anyone in
specific and not caring who heard me and who didn’t.
I’d just gotten to the corridor leading to the toilets when Ebru came out of the ladies and saw me walking towards her.
“Hey,” she looked down at Kali who was asleep with his head on my shoulder and her face softened before she looked back up at me.
“Hey baby, I wanted to talk to you alone for a second.” Looking back down at the baby and raising an eyebrow, she pointed out the obvious with just a look. “Well, alone-ish.”
I looked behind me and then down the hallway and took a deep breath. Fuck this was hard. “I wanted to say sorry about when I kissed you at the bonfire. What came out wasn’t what I meant. Listen Isla, I really like yo…”
I was just building up steam when I heard the voice that had haunted me the week before. “Cole!”
It screeched before something hit my back, waking up Kali and making him cry. Please, let it be a nightmare. Please, let me be having a nervous breakdown. Please…”Oh my God, you have a baby?”
Turning around to look at the poisonous bitch who couldn’t sound more horrified if she tried, I made a point of rubbing Kali’s back and gently bouncing him to calm him down. I’d heard that babies and animals could sense evil and I guess this was the proof that that was true.
“I’m gonna go and sit down,” Ebru said quietly from behind me, and then walked past me and the evil cow who was still staring at the baby in my arms.
Once she’d left, I focused my attention fully on the bitch from my past, Adele, who had ruined my life. “What do you want, Adele?”
“I…I didn’t realize that you were a father,” she said, looking at me in shock.
“I’m not, you made sure of that didn’t you?”
“Cole, listen,” I couldn’t listen to any more of her shit and started to walk around her. “Please, wait. I want to explain.” I could hear the whine that had plagued our relationship in her voice. That fucking whine would make an appearance every time she wanted something or wanted to apologize for doing something, and I fucking hated it as much now as I did back then.
Spinning around carefully because of the precious bundle in my arms, I looked at her with all of the hatred on my face that I felt towards her. “There is fuck all that you can explain, Adele. What you did? Fucking shit, what you did was the most disgusting thing you could have done, and I hate you as much now as I did the day you told me.” Her face lost the sweet smile, and she took a step back. “You’re not worth my time,” I snapped and turned around to walk back to the table.
“You okay?” Brett was standing by the bar as I walked past it and from the look on his face and the glare that he was shooting over my shoulder, he knew what had been going on…well to an extent. No one knew what had actually gone on aside from me and the bitch behind me.
Giving him a quick nod, I walked up to the table and passed Kali back to Isla. “I gotta go, guys. I’ll catch you later.” I didn’t wait for a reply before turning around and walking out.
It’s gone…
Fuck me, I hated that bitch.
Ebru
I watched as Cole walked out of the bar. What had happened? Who was she? My stewing was interrupted by Brett taking Cole’s vacated chair beside me.
“Did he leave?” he asked, leaning back and glaring over at the woman who had interrupted Cole and me, and who was now standing at the bar flirting with some guy.
“Yeah. Is he okay?” The only answer I got back from him was a shrug.
“Wait a fuckin’ second, is that Adele?” Ren growled from his chair, leaning back and looking in the direction of the woman at the bar. Brett nodded and looked grimly at the table. “What the fuck is that bitch doing back here?”
Looking back at Brett I asked the question that was rolling around in my stomach like acid. “Who is she?”
The look in Brett’s eyes when he replied made that acid burn harder. “Cole’s ex.”
Obviously, Cole still had feelings for her or she wouldn’t have affected him as much as she had. That realization hurt me more than I ever would have thought it would.
At that moment our food was delivered to the table, but with the loss of Cole and what this week was to me, anyway, I’d lost my appetite so all I could do was pick at it. When would life stop hurting me?
Chapter Four
Ebru
Two days later…
Closing the door to my apartment, I took off my shoes and moved in the direction of my bedroom as I thought about the night that I’d just had with Caleb and Reed. Johnny was away on business, so we’d gone out for dinner and then went to watch a movie. Normally I didn’t go out when I had work the next day, but I needed a distraction tonight.
Tomorrow was the anniversary of my big sister’s death, the day that I dreaded every year. All day I’d been going through the ‘this time six years ago was the last time that I spoke to her,’ ‘this time six years ago was the last time that I sent her a stupid selfie,’ ‘this time six years ago was the last time I hugged her’. The memories were suffocating me, and I was struggling not to cry and give into the depression that was now a given.
Louise was three years older than me and had only been twenty when she died suddenly. For months she’d been ill and the Doctors had just shrugged it off. When she was at college it started to hit badly, and she was literally dropping like a plank of wood and would feel dizzy a lot of the time. She’d gone through so many tests, and, in the end, the Doctor had told us that it was all psychosomatic.
My parents were self-involved and preferred to follow the Pagan mentality which wasn’t an issue, but the fact that they were negligent when it came to us was. If it hadn’t been for Louise, I wouldn’t have had anyone in that house. I had put what they did to me in a box so that I could move on with my life and not let it rule me, but what they did to Lou I’ll never forgive them for. After hearing the psychosomatic diagnosis, they had decided that they wouldn’t pursue further testing as it was all in her mind and told her that meditating would help. Louise had been terrified and devastated at the diagnosis and the way our parents had responded to it. On one occasion, at a family gathering, she’d blacked out, and they’d told my uncle not to call an ambulance. That was four days before she passed away.
The day before she died, she’d called me to say that she didn’t feel well and I’d gone to see her at her apartment; that was the last time I saw and hugged her. The next thing, I got a phone call at 5AM from her roommate saying that she’d come home late from a party and that Lou was on the couch and wasn’t waking up. Joy had already called 911 before she called me and I rushed to get to her while I listened to her tell the paramedics what was wrong when they arrived.
I knew that they were trying to resuscitate her when I arrived because I’d heard it all down the phone, but it was too late. I’d run into the apartment just as they confirmed that there was nothing else that they could do for her, and I’d stood staring down at my big sister, my best friend in the world, lying on the couch surrounded by medical supplies and some wrappers from the equipment that they’d used. I remember screaming and begging her not to leave me and trying to stop them from taking her away, but nothing worked. To this day, whenever I thought of that moment I had to remember her smiling and laughing because the last image I have of her is not how she was while she was here.
My parents hadn’t been upset when they got the phone call telling them. I’d stayed at her apartment wrapped up in her bedding that smelt so strongly of her, so I didn’t know about their reaction until much later when Joy told me. Apparently, when she’d called them, they’d been quiet and had then started talking about how Louise was weak mentally and had let her ‘psychosis’ take over her life and kill her.
At her funeral, they’d been more concerned and upset by the fact that I had insisted on it not being a Pagan service because Lou wouldn’t have wanted it that way. Thankfully, the funeral was beautiful, and we had to put a screen outside of the ch
urch because so many people turned up to show her their love. I might be biased, but I never met anyone who hadn’t loved Lou; she was just the sort of person that everyone loved, and I was so damn proud of her.
I’d ended up going against my parents' demands and had also ordered her a headstone that I could change her picture on anytime I wanted. On the bottom of it I’d had the thing that I thought was most applicable to her engraved.
She lived her life for those she loved
And those she loved will never forget her
I remember the day it arrived and was placed on her grave. I’d sat talking to her and crying for six hours, I just couldn’t leave her. In the end, I’d had to because it was too cold so I’d said the words I always said when I had to leave her, “I love you forever,” followed by what had become my standard goodbye. Laying my forehead on her grave, I’d whispered, “I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again, lady.” I’d been saying those words longer than the song had existed for, so maybe it was her? Or maybe I just needed therapy. “Sleep tasty, sweetheart,” I said, before getting up and doing the one thing that I struggled to do every time I came to visit her - leave her behind.
On the way home I’d passed a tattoo parlor where a friend of mine worked and had gone in and got a tattoo done. Now, on my ribs on the left side near my heart it said:
Forever in my heart
Forever on my mind
And always the brightest
star shining in the sky
I’d also had her initials tattooed under it. For some reason, carrying her around with me had helped, but every day had been a struggle after she died.
It had taken us nine long months to find out what had happened to her. At the inquest; they told us that she had been suffering from a condition called SADS or Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. Her blacking out spells had been her literally dropping dead he said because her heart had gone into an abnormal heart rhythm. The irony was, when I got home and looked up the condition, had she been diagnosed properly it would only have taken something like one pill a day to save her life. I had a huge gaping hole in my life and heart that would be impossible to fill, and there wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t think of her. Heck, six years on, I still went to call her when something happened.
Until Forever (Providence Series Book 3) Page 3