Just Good Friends (Cheap Thrills Series Book 5)

by Mary B. Moore

  Blinking at it, I tried to correspond those words with anything butt related and couldn’t come up with anything. “Leave it, and we’ll try the next thing on the video.”

  The two of us watched the small screen closely as she went through what we needed to do, but the problem was I really couldn’t figure out what she was talking about.

  Fortunately, Garrett was having the same issue. “This isn’t going to work. I can remember some of the stuff she wanted us to have use, but I couldn’t see how we were meant to do it. If I play it again, can we mirror it on your television so we can see it properly?”

  “That’s a genius idea.”

  So, that’s what we did. With all of our supplies lined up, we sat and watched it carefully.

  “I’m kind of screwed when it comes to pulling her legs back like she says to. If you sit on that side and pull it back, I’ll sit on this one and hold it with my forearm, and we can get it done like that.”

  Blushing, he looked down at the baby who was gnawing on a fist and smiling at him. “I’ll hold both of her legs and look the other way, so I don’t see her…” he paused and waved at her crotch. “It’s indecent.”

  “Then look the other way, you pussy!”

  Carefully, the two of us got into position, moving slowly, so we didn’t scare her off. Like he was handling a bomb, Garrett pulled both of her legs back and up, making her giggle, and leaving the little button things on her crotch accessible.

  “Damn, she’s adorable. How are you so stinky, baby princess?” he cooed, getting a squeal out of her. “You’ve got an ass like your daddy, don’t you? I know, I went to take a leak after he’d been in the bathroom last week, and I about died.”

  I don’t know how much she understood, but she was laughing like it was the funniest thing ever. Then again, even I was finding it funny.

  Once I had the poppers open, I carefully peeled the bodysuit away, revealing the diaper. I felt like I was taking part in some sort of animal discovery show, peering through the tall grass at a lion as it fed on a gazelle.

  “I see the diaper,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth at him. “I’m going to lift the front panel a bit higher up until I find those sticky pieces she mentioned.”

  “They’re called the tabs, not the sticky pieces.”

  Shooting him a glare, I lifted the bright pink material and breathed a sigh of relief when I found them.

  The problem was, now that I was getting closer to ground zero, I was getting performance anxiety and couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do.

  “Got them. Do I cut them off, or do they tear off?”

  “You peel them back. I think they’re like Velcro.”

  Cracking my neck, I went in and peeled the first one back, and then moved onto the second one.

  “I wonder why she doesn’t use reusable diapers,” Garrett mused just as I was finishing the second tab. “It’s better for the environment.”

  “Would you want to be surrounded by shit soup when it was soaking time for them?”

  Dry heaving, he turned his head the other way as I pulled the front of the diaper away from Sheena’s chimichanga, bracing for the worst and sighing with relief when it wasn’t there.

  “No bogeys. I repeat, no bogeys.” Looking back up at the television, I tried to remember what she’d said came next.

  “You need to remove the dirty diaper and put it in one of the baggies Tabby had in the bag.”

  Reaching over and picking up the bag we’d opened and laid out—the stress of what we were doing had made me forgotten we’d done that—I pulled the rest of it out from under her and tried to fold it up so it would fit into it.

  “Holy cheese doodles, it’s like trying to make origami.”

  Another dry heave sounded from him. “Just get rid of it. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to last.”

  Picking up the packet of wipes, I tried to open them with my left hand, but the sticky tab refused to pull away from the plastic.

  “I’m stuck. If I hold the pack down on the ground, can you pull on that little bugger there and get it away from the plastic?”

  Glaring at me, he did just that, and after some tugging and fighting with it, we finally had the wipes open. To help me do it, he’d had to put both of Sheena’s feet in one hand and lean over the top of her, meaning that her feet had gotten closer to her face. This was a huge mistake on our part because it managed to push some wind out of her.

  Pvvvvvt!

  The problem was, as soon as the cute toot sounded, I had a moment’s panic where I had to check to see if it’d slipped out of me.

  Look, we all did it at some point. Like when you were running around the field during PE at school, and each time your foot touched the ground for about five steps out came a parp. Or if you bent over to pick something up. Or even when you went to the bathroom at work, and that bluster of wind came out and embarrassed you mid-flow as it reverberated off the porcelain.

  Sadly, bodily functions were a way of life, and there was no way of avoiding them. I just couldn’t remember ever doing one with my feet up by my face.

  The good news was, I was fairly sure it had definitely come from Sheena’s butt.

  Garrett had the same concern I did because he froze and did a slight wiggle, then relaxed. “Wasn’t me.”

  “Like something that delicate would come out of your ass,” I snorted, leaning in to wipe the baby. “This isn’t too hard, you know. I thought it would be worse than thi—”

  You know how people say you can jinx something just by saying it and putting it out into the universe? Well, this situation was proof of that theory because just as I was about to pull my hand away, a louder fart vibrated against the palm of my hand, making me jump back.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I just held my hand in the air and looked at it, totally horrified that it had a cute baby toot on it.

  Choking and struggling between laughing and gagging, Garrett moved slightly farther away, accidentally pulling her legs back with him.

  And then it was on.

  I was just leaning in with a clean diaper when something I didn’t know could happen happened.

  Something had upset the poor baby’s stomach, and with her legs pulled back as far as they were, it was like a water pistol for the poop chute.

  The vilest smelling doodie shot out of her butt, traveling about three feet across my wooden floor and also hitting my thankfully gloved hand, which was sadly in the line of fire again.

  The first thing to sink in was that there was shit spraying out of the poor kid.

  The second was that it was on my floor and could sink between the wooden floorboards.

  The third was that it was also on the towel Tabby had in the diaper bag, and I had no clue how to get shit out of a towel. I’d never had to do it, so I wouldn’t know where to begin.

  The fourth was that it was now dripping from my hand—legit dripping—and even though I had a glove on, I had shit on my freaking hand.

  The fifth was the smell. Holy shit, it was like the time we went to Mexico, and Dad ate food from a street vendor that looked dodgy as fuck. Because the bathroom in our suite was next to my bedroom I’d smelled it all night, and every time he went, it’d just gotten worse.

  The sixth was that she was happily playing with her toes while she squeezed down, and more came out. If that were me, I’d be running for the potty.

  And finally, the seventh was that Garrett’s previously dry heaves were sounding like they could be ‘productive’ heaves soon. I’d have dookie and barf to clean up, and I didn’t think my back, my hand, and my stomach could take it.

  Sheena stopped doing her stomach tensing and red face things long minutes later, and Old Yeller finally settled down. The mess and stench were unbelievable, though.

  Looking up, I noticed that Garrett had somehow managed to get the hair clip I’d foregone earlier and was braving the pain to have his nasal passages clamped shut with it.

  “What
are we going to do?”

  Keeping his face pointing away from me, he lifted onto his knees and grabbed his phone out of his back pocket.

  “DB? Yeah, you gotta get to Zuri’s and fix what your daughter just did.” Silence. “She’s fine, but we’re not.” Silence again. “I’m telling you, there’s no way in hell either of us will survive doing what needs to be done, and your daughter’s ass is possessed by a demon, so you need to fix it.” Silence. “Right, and bring bleach. And more paper towels.” He paused and glanced at me. “And maybe some air freshener.” There was a beat of silence as he listened to what Dave was saying, and then he added, “Yeah, probably a couple of them. I think we’re going to need them for a while.”

  After the call ended, I did a mental run-through of what towels I had that I didn’t like.

  “Okay, I’m going to pick her up,”—I’d have to put my cast under one of her armpits and hold on carefully with my good hand—“and then you pull the doodie towel away and put it in a bag. My towels are in the cupboard in the hallway, and I don’t have much of an attachment to the one with the cat on it, so bring that one back, and we’ll put paper towels on top of it in case she blows again.”

  Getting up, he jogged over to the kitchen, pulled out a large trash bag from under the sink, ran through to the hallway and found the towel before running back to me. “Can you hold her long enough for me to get the towel under her?”

  Nodding, I carefully put my casted wrist under Sheena’s armpit and pressed my fingers in as best I could without hurting her, ignoring the pain it caused on my back and arm. Then, I used my other hand to lift her off the ground and watched as Garrett leaned in to pull the dirty towel out carefully.

  Just as he was about to pull back, she decided to pee all over his bicep, which was right under her.

  If I hadn’t been worried about dropping her, I’d have laughed myself to the point of also needing a diaper at how horrified he was when he looked up at me, with her still peeing away happily.

  Yanking his arm back, he jumped up to his feet and held it in the air like he was expecting it to fall off. The dry heaves that had been coming out of intermittently before that moment changed to ones that sounded like they might just end up being less dry and more... well, wet.

  He’d been close to puking before, but now he was damn near on top of it. The force of them had him bending over with his hands braced on his thighs.

  And that’s what Dave walked through my door to see.

  A large splash of baby poop across the floor, a balled-up shitty towel half hanging out of a plastic sack, his daughter giggling with poop on her legs and a puddle of pee under her, Garrett hunched over and gagging, and me holding her watching it all like it was either a dream or a nightmare.

  Five hours later…

  Not to say that he was dramatic, but watching Garrett rub Neosporin into his raw arm from where he’d scrubbed it hard enough to take some skin off was kind of amusing.

  “Don’t laugh,” he growled, squeezing some more out of the tube and rubbing it into another raw patch. “I’m not used to people peeing and shitting on me.”

  “She’s not people, she’s a baby. Plus, you’re about to become an uncle, so you might wanna rethink your issues.”

  Picking up the lid for the tube, he put it back on with angry movements and then tossed it on the table on his side of the bed. “They’ll be angels.”

  “Ah, that’s right,” I murmured, wincing when some of the wounds on my back pulled. Damn it, these things were itching badly now. “You’re going to have double trouble.”

  “Me and Raoul are Irish twins, so we were super close when we were little. We used to go out into the garden or stop on the way home to sword fight,” he snickered.

  As an only child, I envied him that part of his childhood. I also had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Okay, explain Irish twins to me. I didn’t know your family was from there? And what in the hell is sword fighting? Like with swords?”

  He’d been lying on his back, but when I started firing questions at him, he rolled onto his side so that we were face to face. Thankfully he’d also kept a t-shirt on tonight because sometimes when you were lying as close as we were, the vagina wanted what the vagina wanted, and a bare chest didn’t help it hold back its demands.

  After the day we’d had, I didn’t think I could take another part of my body twisting itself up in knots, even if it was in a horny way.

  “Irish twins are born within the same year. So, I was born on January fifth, and then Raoul was born on December twenty-third.”

  “Wow, your dad was eager,” I chuckled, laughing harder when he glared at me.

  “We don’t discuss that. It was immaculate conception, and they were blessed by it three times.”

  “If you insist.”

  Scowling at me now, his top lip curled at whatever was going through his head, and then he shuddered. “And how did you get to twenty-four and not know what sword fighting is?”

  Shrugging a shoulder, I went with the truth. “Because I’m a girl who was more into art and science, so I never took part in sports.”

  Now it was his turn to laugh. “Pretty girl, yes, sword fighting is a sport, but not the way we did it. We used to pee at the same time and try and knock each other’s direction off by aiming our pee at theirs.”

  I was torn between finding it funny and finding it disgusting. Boys really are gross!

  Reading my expression correctly, he nudged me gently. “Come on, you know you want to laugh.”

  “No, I just know that after Sheena’s display today, I swore off having kids. Now, hearing that, I’m doubly sure I don’t want any because there’s a fifty percent chance it’ll be a boy who’ll have pee wars with his friends, and fifty percent chance it’ll be a girl who’ll have an ass like an assault rifle.”

  Throwing his head back onto the pillow, Garrett burst out laughing, unaware that it put him at the perfect angle for me to swoon over.

  I shit you not, I was swooning.

  The man had a beautiful deep laugh to begin with, but when he was like this, I could see the muscles and tendons in his neck, fantasize about what his stubble would feel like rubbing over me, enjoy his smile and laughter and the way his—

  “Zuri, why are you licking your lips while you’re looking at me? You did that when you were making your cake concoction with Rose, and I’m not sure I like it,” he asked, pulling me out of my musings and making me gag this time.

  Regrets, we all had them, and that concoction was one of mine. My stomach hadn’t been in a good way the next day, and I could still feel it protesting.

  “I was picturing—” I only just held back the gag “—mashed potato with jelly beans.” If I was honest, the prospect of eating those damn potatoes ever again was slim to none.

  “You know,” he mused, sliding an arm under his head and staring at the ceiling, drawing my attention now to his bicep—yup, the one that got peed on. “My mom calls it creamed potatoes.” This time I couldn’t hold it back, and the violence of my stomach squeezing even made a noise come out that made him jump. “You okay?”

  Oh, he did that on purpose. The words would say he was concerned, but the tone didn’t.

  “Can we stop talking about it?”

  His mouth twitched as he scanned my face, but thankfully he nodded and changed the subject. “I’m going to kick DB’s ass at work tomorrow.”

  So was I. Maybe not at work, but the next time I saw him out of uniform.

  “Was it necessary for him to get my toothbrush to clean the grooves in between the floorboards?”

  “To be fair, yeah, it was,” he sighed. “It just sucks that you had an electric one.”

  It wasn’t just an electric one, it’d been a limited edition My Little Pony electric one. Now, even if I changed the head on it, I’d have a turd toothbrush, and I just couldn’t do it.

  “I hope I find another one. Those ponies brightened up my morning, and I loved t
he magical noise that came out of it after the two-minute timer was up.”

  This time when he started laughing, I was close enough to watch it in high definition. My slutty vagina enjoyed it immensely, but my back and arm didn’t when the mattress started moving with it.

  It was strange having Garrett in my bed and spending so much time with him, but if this was what our friendship consisted of, I was happy to grab it with both hands and legs and hold on tight.

  But a girl could dream, right?

  Chapter Seven

  Garrett

  “You know, Zuri needs a protection dog,” DB told me as we watched Alejandro working with the guy teaching de-escalation techniques. “And security.”

  It’d been a week since the accident, and I’d just had my stitches taken out. Zuri had seen the doctor after me, but he wanted hers to stay in for another three days, so she’d gone home in a shitty mood.

  Apparently, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how itchy her back and arm were. Given the scarring up my side, I kind of could, but being the sympathetic guy I was, I hadn’t mentioned it and instead offered to try and find something to help her.

  But what DB was saying was true.

  “A while back, she told me she’d never had a pet because of her parents' jobs,” I murmured, nodding when Alejandro immediately approached the scenario the instructor had set up with the right body language. For some reason, this made DB stiffen beside me.

  “Three weeks ago, I decided I was done being just friends with her, so I did some research and started looking for things to show her how serious I was. Part of that included getting her a dog because she gets so excited when she sees one. Just as well your dad’s dog had a litter that went into training and I bought her one.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then DB asked, “So, what did her parents do?”

  “Not a clue,” I shrugged, frowning when I thought again about how little I knew about her family.

  “Maybe it’s time to get her to open up a bit if you’re looking at changing your relationship status?”

  Nodding in agreement, I turned when the door opened, and in walked Tabby with Sheena in her arms.