Choosing Forever

by Mary B. Moore

  “Don’t forget the smell of burning,” Ren added as he walked past us on the way to the toilet. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been paying attention to Gramps shitutation and walked into the toilet that he’d only vacated a couple of minutes prior. “You can smell that a mile awa…oh Jesus Christ! What…who…oh my God!” The gagging sounds filled the space. “Oh Jesus, I can’t throw up. I’d have to put my head in the toilet and it’s worse the closer you get,” he got out through the gagging.

  I was about to smile when the smell that had escaped through the open door hit me and it took everything in me not to join my brother. I just knew that any retching or puking would make my side hurt even more, and I couldn’t take the painkillers because I needed a clear head.

  “Close the door,” Cole squealed, running in Ren’s direction and accidentally standing on Tom’s ass.

  Finding the barf bag that was in the storage space beside me, I opened it and started to breathe slowly into it hoping that it would filter the air. It worked, but then so did the entire can of air freshener that the attendant sprayed.

  Now, now it was four in the morning and we were waiting for the cars that we’d called ahead for and reserved to arrive. The ladies were all huddled behind us with the sleeping baby Crystal, as the men all stood with the hire guy who had come in specially for us. He had sent three of his men to get the vehicles for us and we’d spent the time while we waited trying to figure out what he was saying to us.

  As we all nodded at another question, I watched his goatee blowing in the wind. I could see the heads beside me all moving as the long tentacles of the goatee, that reached his stomach, moved in the gusts of wind. It was blowing behind him, and one of the tentacles broke free of the floating mass and went up his nostril. He hardly registered it as he continued talking to us, gesturing as he spoke with a huge grin on his face. The chunk of beard stayed firmly up his nose the whole time, not budging an inch.

  “I think it’s wrapping itself around his brain,” Cole muttered beside me, and I was inclined to agree. It looked like more was going in now every time he took a breath.

  Just then, he snorted and the chunk came out and went into his mouth.

  I finally discovered how painful throwing up with a bullet wound in my side was as I just made it to the bushes beside us just as the cars pulled up. I had company in my humiliation though as Tom waddled up beside me and threw up too.

  After a lot of dry heaving, I took the bottle of water that Dad was holding out to me and rinsed my mouth out.

  “You might wanna chew this,” Ebru muttered, passing me a piece of gum. “Your breath smells like moldy ass. You’re meant to be winning Sabine back, not melting her face off.”

  “What the fuck are these?” Gramps asked, looking at the vehicles that had pulled up in disgust.

  We’d been given people carriers, which were the biggest vehicles they did, and there were a couple cars for the security that would be with us throughout the trip. I was leaving all of that shit to Coleman to figure out and deal with. Call me a dickhead, but Sabine and my baby, and it was my baby, were my priority.

  Once we’d loaded them up with our bags, and the women had gotten in the cars, Cole decided that he was the driver for ours.

  “Right, let me just get the chair adjusted and…” he’d gotten into the left side of the car and had lifted his hands up to grab the wheel, encountering nothing but air as he grabbed around, valiantly still searching for the wheel. “What? What’s happened here? Where’s the wheel?”

  “Over there shit for brains,” Ebru snapped from behind him as she ate a bag of chips and opened a Kit Kat. There had been vending machines in the airport and because she was ‘starving’, we’d had to load up for the hour-long journey to where Sabine was staying in Appledore.

  Looking over to the other side of the car at where the wheel was, Cole still hadn’t figured out what was wrong. “Why is it there? That doesn’t make any sense?”

  “They drive on the opposite side of the road,” I murmured, starting to feel a bit worried about trusting him to get us there in one piece. We were meant to be leading the way for the others. Plus, I was already injured; would I be able to survive a car accident?

  After a couple more minutes listening to him discuss how fucked up it was, Cole finally walked around to the right side of the car and turned the engine on. Meeting Coleman’s eyes, he nodded and moved into the front passenger seat as I decided to get in the back where it was safer.

  Any strength that I had left fled me, and I leaned my head back, listening as Coleman gave him directions out of the airport and onto a road called the M5 that would take us where we needed to go.

  I was just starting to go into a light sleep, when I heard Coleman yell, “What are you doing? You’re on the wrong fucking side of the road.”

  “Don’t yell at me,” Cole screamed back. “I took the turn off that you told me to, and this is what happened. They drive on the wrong side here. Why would they do that?” Cole was almost hyperventilating as he jerked the wheel of the car, turning it around and going straight back up the exit that he’d driven the wrong way down.

  Thankfully, with it being the middle of the night, there wasn’t that much traffic around so he only encountered one irate driver during the maneuver.

  Finally, after lots of swearing and wheel jerking, as well as yelling back and forth between Coleman and Cole, we were on the right exit. Coleman was even slowly starting to let go of his lock hold on the dashboard in front of him.

  I made the mistake of closing my eyes again, giving into the exhaustion that was trying to take over my body, and was jerked out of my near sleep state, once again, by the sound of a horn blowing constantly to the right of us.

  “Sorry, sorry, my bad,” Cole muttered holding his hand up. I heard a gasp and the sound of the window lowering. “Well, that’s just fucking rude. I said I was sorry!” He yelled at the driver of the car beside us, who was making a wanking motion with his hand and then gave Cole the bird.

  “You had your hand up the wrong fucking way,” Coleman roared. Obviously, he’d reached his max and was done trying to help Cole out nicely.

  “It was the peace sign, you big shit!”

  “No, this is the peace sign. This means fuck you!” They argued back and forth in the front of the car, holding their hands up and twisting them as they both tried to make their points to each other.

  Ebru stayed quiet throughout. The only sign that she was even awake was the crinkling of wrappers and munching noises.

  Eventually, through some miracle, we made it to Appledore by four-thirty in the morning, driving slowly as we took in the beautiful village around us.

  “I thought you were joking when you said it was called Appledore,” Cole sounded incredulous as we passed an official sign with the town’s name on it. “Do you realize that this is probably where Dumbledore was from?” His tone totally changed to almost a kid’s excited one. “Holy shit, we’re in the land of the ‘real Potter’. Oh shit, oh shit.”

  Coleman sighed and continued to direct him. Pulling up in front of the beautiful house that I’d seen in the photos of Sabine, I felt my heart start to speed up. She was inside there, my baby was inside her-inside there.

  I was just getting out of the car as the front door opened and out she walked, totally oblivious to the group of her in front of us. Then again, it was still really dark so she could be forgiven for not seeing us, but her lack of awareness was worrying.

  I didn’t have the chance to yell as a dark shadow rushed up behind her, just as another one appeared out of the shadows and took the first one down with a thud. Sabine jumped and screamed as she turned and saw them.

  I ran as fast as I could across the road toward her, Coleman right behind me, to get her away from the fighting pair. It wasn’t a small scuffle, there were full on punches and choke holds happening and they were rolling toward her at a fast rate.

  I got to her first and pulled her out of the way just as one
of the figures reared back to punch the other. The one on the receiving end flew backwards, landing where Sabine had been standing seconds before.

  “It’s me,” I said quickly just as she screamed again, this time right in my face. Her struggles stopped immediately, and she gave me some of her weight as she slumped recognizing my voice in the dark. The stitches in my side were screaming at me, but all I could think of was getting her to safety.

  Coleman detoured and joined in with the pair on the ground. How he knew which one was which, and I assumed one of them was ours, I didn’t know, but he must have because he grunted something out to one of them and they both launched themselves at the remaining guy who was still fighting hard beneath them.

  There was another round of tussling, and then one of the forms on the floor punched the other hard and just like that it was over.

  “Clear,” Coleman called out as he took something from one of his guys and secured the unconscious figure’s hands behind him. I watched as a couple other men came forward, picked the guy up and carried him away.

  “Deal with this shit,” I ordered Coleman and was about to turn back to Sabine to hug her and start begging, when she lifted her foot and stomped hard on mine. The she elbowed me in the side, right on the bullet wound.

  Stars burst in front of my eyes, and I lost my grip on her as my knees gave out with the pain.

  “Oh man up and get off the ground,” my beautiful girl snapped above me. Even the sound of her voice and knowing that she was in front of me couldn’t distract me from the pain, though.

  “He was shot,” Mom explained, her voice coming from right in front of me. The pain was that bad that I hadn’t even heard her walk up.

  “I took it in the ass,” Tom whined, no doubt waddling as he walked up to us.

  “Oh my God,” Sabine gasped, dropping to her knees beside me. As I lifted my hand I saw the blood on it again.

  “Ah fuck,” I slurred just as I did the manliest thing I could, and passed out for the second time in twenty-four-hours.

  Six

  BRETT

  Just to complete my humiliation, I was now having the three busted stitches in my side fixed by the guy from the photos. Whom I’d just found out was also her neighbor.

  “I’ll just finish this one and then pad you up with a dressing,” the guy whose name was Finlay, Finlay, informed me as he worked on my side.

  After I had passed out, he’d come out of his home after hearing noises and seeing the big group of people in front of Sabine’s house, and I’d been carried inside where he’d looked at the damage done to my wound. I’d been out cold throughout this and had only come back around when he was filling the syringe with local anesthetic beside me. I’d, obviously, had a minor freak out, until Sabine had explained that he knew what he was doing and to stop being a ‘fucking baby’.

  Not wanting to make matters worse for my dignity, I’d lain there while he got to work with my family watching everything. I could have done without Tom’s occasional snorts and laughing out the word ‘dead’ as he lay face down on Finlay’s floor, though. Yes, admittedly the guy was good looking, and yes, he lived next door. And, yes…movement caught my eye and I couldn’t stop the growl that slipped out as he put his hand on Sabine’s leg as she said something.

  “Control yourself,” Sabine hissed at me, throwing me the evillest glare that I’d ever seen on her face. Unfortunately, she just looked so fucking cute doing it, that I grinned making her scowl harder.

  “I’ll wrap it tight when I’m done,” Finlay broke into the tension between me and Sabine. “Don’t take the dressings off for twenty-four-hours, though, just to prevent infection and give it time to heal. It had ripped pretty badly,” he muttered, tying off what I hoped was the last stitch. “Unfortunately, I only have these bandages.”

  My eyebrows almost met in the middle of my forehead as I looked at the lime green bandage with paw prints, fucking paw prints, on it.

  “Uh, so, how does this guy know what he’s doing?” Gramps asked from behind me. It was punctuated by one of Tom’s snorts and the word ‘dying’ being gasped out, so I gave Gramps the nod seeing as how he was closest to him. Unfortunately, Gramps forgot, either whether it was intentional or not, and kicked him in the ass…right on the bullet cheek.

  The scream that filled the small living room seemed to echo off the walls and increase in volume as it echoed around us, making us all cringe. Thankfully, Mom took control of the situation and helped him waddle out of the room.

  “He’s a vet,” Sabine explained once the noise from the big sniveling bitch stopped as Mom closed the door to the other room.

  “Thank you for your service,” we all replied automatically. It was just the done thing. Regardless of which allied military you served in, you were entitled to that respect and gratitude. I hated him a bit more for it than I already did, though, and then I felt guilty that I felt that way. The guy had risked his life after all.

  “Which branch?” Gramps, the nosy bastard, queried. “I knew some British military guys once. Really great men. Could drink anyone under the table too. I was also military when I was younger,” he puffed out his chest as we all stared at him. That was a big fucking lie.

  Cole snorted, “When? The Civil War?”

  “No, you weren’t, you big fat lying shit,” Grams snapped at him. “You filled in the paperwork, bought the uniform and forgot to hand the forms in. That doesn’t count.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” he replied, glaring at her. “They were shut when I went to hand them in.”

  “Because it was one in the morning and you were drunk out of your skull…” she shrieked, leaning in toward him. “And, you were wearing the uniform that you bought out of a costume store! It. Doesn’t. Count!” Every word was punctuated with a poke to his chest, hard enough to visibly move that side of his body.

  The look that came over Gramps’ face should have had us all covering our ears. It was the one he got when he had something dirty to say – which happened a lot. With his eyes half mast, he pointed out loudly, “That’s not what you say when you want to play ‘Hiding the General’.”

  Grams stopped poking him as a blush turned her face pink. “Yeah,” she agreed loudly. “I do like it when we play Finding My Privates.”

  We all let out a chorus of strangled noises and gags as both Finlay and Sabine turned slowly in Gramps direction looking confused and disgusted.

  “Um, I’m a veterinarian,” Finlay explained slowly, as if he was explaining something to a child.

  Once the meaning of what he was saying registered, I couldn’t help the relief I felt knowing that he hadn’t been in the military. The smugness at the fact had me grinning too. Again, I got a dirty look from Sabine, but it just made me grin harder this time.

  Finlay went back to finishing off wrapping the bandage around my mid-section, but even the paw prints couldn’t ruin the high I was now feeling.

  “So, does he get a cone of shame too?” Cole asked as he finished sticking the end of the bandage down. “I’m only asking because, it’s raining like a bitch outside and if he looks up for too long that thing will fill up fast.” The saddest thing about it all was that he was fucking serious too.

  After a couple minutes of us all staring at Cole not knowing what to say, Mom came in and broke the awkwardness that now had Cole shifting from foot to foot.

  “I’m so sorry, Finlay. I’ve got another one for you,” she sighed, gesturing towards where Tom was.

  Just as he left the room, Ebru sat down with a loud huff and shouted, “I’m hangry!”

  Cole was instantly in soon-to-be-father mode. “Where’s the nearest Taco Bell?” He asked as he went into the maps app on his phone. “I’ll get her five of those to tide her over.”

  “There’s no Taco Bell here,” Maya, who’d been asleep on the couch, explained with a yawn as she stretched.

  The gasp of outrage and disgust from Ebru teamed with the look of terror on Cole’s face was hilarious.
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  “You big fat lying bitch!” Ebru hissed. The normally sweet woman had bouts of Satan with her pregnancy hormones, and I would have felt sorry for Cole, but I’d had years of his shit so I felt no pity for him.

  “Who doesn’t have Taco Bell?” he looked out the window like he’d see the magic taco sign beckoning him, saving his life. “That’s…oh shit.”

  Ebru sat glaring at him and rubbing her stomach periodically, until Sabine said the words that would save Cole’s life, maybe. “There’s a large store not far from here. We can go and see what they have.”

  And, so started the next fucked up adventure. Before we left, I’d tried to get Sabine alone, but she’d just snapped ‘later’ and had stormed out of the house with the rest of my family. I really should have spared myself the next dose of humiliation, but because Sabine was going, and I’d do anything to stay close to her, I stupidly joined them.