Choosing Forever

by Mary B. Moore

  Knowing that if we didn’t move the conversation along quickly that Cole would be reading us all of the words and it would end up in a heated debate, I changed the subject.

  “What are the plans for tomorrow?”

  “I wanted to take you to Lyme Regis, to the Jurassic Coast, at some point. I know you all want to go to London too, though, so it depends on which one you would like to do first,” Sabine looked at the group and waited for them to make up their minds.

  “Wait, there’s a Jurassic Coast?” Tom and Cole looked at each other and back again. They loved the Jurassic Park movies and had dragged us to more dinosaur exhibitions that we could count. “As in seriously Jurassic?”

  “Yes,” Sabine replied slowly. “As in – dinosaurs. This is what Jurassic is, no?”

  I tuned out the arguing that followed as the women tried to get us to go to London first and then the Jurassic place later on in the week. Picking up my phone, I did a Google search on what I wanted in London and placed the order. I had to do this right. The place said the item would be ready the day after tomorrow, so that was that.

  Coleman had grabbed me earlier and had told me that our uninvited guest from the other morning had finally spilled and that he had been hired by an American to get as close to Sabine as possible. He knew that he was working on his own though, and Coleman and his men had reviewed all security footage which had proven his claim, so I was breathing a little easier. Yes, there was still someone after my family, but now I could actually see Sabine and keep her safe. Plus, we were surrounded by a team of security experts, so I felt more relaxed than I had in a long time and I wanted to do this now. I needed to do it now.

  “Actually, with the twin’s stomachs, I think we should hold off on a trip tomorrow just to give them a little bit longer to settle,” Isla saved me from announcing the decision to the group. I knew if I’d suddenly stepped in and said no to going to London tomorrow, that they’d have a million questions why and then the whole thing would be ruined. After a chorus of understanding noises, she asked Tom, Gramps and Cole, “What happened, anyway?”

  “They got hungry,” Tom explained. “I still had the bags of munchies that Ebru had been carrying around, so I gave them something to eat. It was like maybe five-minutes later that they just shit everywhere!”

  “What did you feed them?” Luke asked.

  “Um, let me think. Oh, the breadsticks and then some strawberries. You said not to give them kiwi’s because they were allergic, and there wasn’t any of that in there…”

  “You gave them strawberries?” Isla gasped. “I told you they were allergic to Kiwi’s and strawberries!”

  “Nuh uh, you did not,” Tom shook his head adamantly. “You said okay to strawberries and no to kiwi’s. You heard it, right?” He looked over at the two other occupants of the car who were looking blank. They obviously hadn’t been paying attention at all, so everything being said was news to them.

  “I said strawberries and Kiwi’s,” Isla stood up and put her hands on her hips, glaring at Tom.

  I’ll give him credit, the guy tried to get up off the floor so he could adopt the same fighting stance, but squealed when he tried. This was how it had been all day; I’m sure that the people of the City of Bath would remember us for a long time thanks to this special snowflake.

  “You did not,” he argued from his place on the floor after rolling back onto his front.

  “Well, you brought it on yourself,” she sniffed as she sat back down again. Luke was sitting glaring at Tom, as was Ebru.

  “You fed them my strawberries,” Ebru hissed. Obviously, this was worse than feeding them to kids who were allergic to them. “I was looking forward to those.”

  Realizing he’d be screwed taking on a pregnant woman, Tom just sniffed and buried his head back in the neck pillow, before pulling back and looking at it funnily.

  “Does this smell…off to anyone else?” He asked the group. We all looked at Gramps whose mouth was twitching as he stared at the wall. He’d decided that wooden toilet seats were barbaric and had taken Tom’s neck roll into the toilet with him that morning to ‘cushion the shitter’. That would account for it smelling off, in fact, it would probably glow in the dark when the lights were off.

  “So,” Sabine’s voice sounded a bit wary, which was understandable with the angry pregnant woman and the angry mother of the shit twins still glaring at Tom. “We go to London the day after tomorrow?”

  After everyone had either murmured their agreement or nodded their heads, she relaxed next to me on the couch. Wrapping my arm around her shoulders, I pulled her closer and breathed in the smell of her hair. I would admit (to myself only) that I’d taken her pillow from the Houston house back to the ranch with me just so that I could smell her. It had worn off after a week and now just smelt like a pillow that needed washed, but it still had her on it so I hadn’t changed it. Now, the instant calmness that swept over me as I breathed her in was crazy.

  Putting my hand on her stomach over where I figured the baby was, I closed my eyes and thought about the trip to London. I wasn’t going to fuck this up. In fact, I was going to make sure she knew exactly how I felt about her…that’s if my family didn’t fuck it up for me.

  Eight

  BRETT

  When we’d all woken up this morning, I hadn’t wanted to get out of bed. I’d spent another night holding Sabine and even though my dick was aching, I had loved every second of it. I’d even gotten to hold her hair out of her face when she was sick, something which had scared the shit out of me because she hadn’t done that since I’d been with her. Apparently, it was all okay though, and that the morning sickness reared its ugly head periodically.

  I’d been ready to take her to hospital in case it was food poisoning or something worse, but the women had calmed me down and explained that it was ‘normal’. Normal my ass - that amount of puking first thing in the morning wasn’t ‘normal’. I had watched her closely all morning, but then she’d suddenly jumped up and decided that we all needed to go for a pub lunch.

  This time, I was driving, not Cole. I’ll grudgingly admit that I almost fucked up and drove on the wrong side of the road a couple of times too. This opposite road shit just didn’t come naturally after you’d spent your entire life driving on the other side.

  When she’d told us where we were going, no one had believed that a place would be called that, but low and behold, we were now sitting in a pub in a place called ‘Westward Ho!’. It even had an exclamation mark as part of its name.

  Once we had ordered and had all gotten comfortable at the table, Tom immediately started talking about the names of places and roads in the U.K.

  “Look at this Welsh one and try and pronounce it,” Maya chuckled, handing her phone to Tom and Cole, who was sitting beside him.

  “Llllll…Lanfair….pwllgwyn…there’s no freaking way that that’s a legit town name,” he growled.

  “It is,” both Maya and Sabine replied at the same time.

  “How the shit are you meant to pronounce that?” Cole asked passing the phone around all of us.

  Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch? Nope, I had nothing!

  After throwing out a few more road and place names, our food arrived. We’d decided on their daily special of the seafood platter as a starter and five of them were placed along the table while the kids had chunks of apple and carrots.

  Looking around, I could see that our choice was the popular one in the bar with pretty much every table loaded up with the platter too. We’d obviously chosen well.

  We all reached over and loaded up our plates apart from Cole, who sat staring at the plates like they were poisonous snakes.

  “Why you not eating?” Tom asked around a mouthful of food. It was disgusting, I could see the partially chewed smoked salmon and fuck knows what else all rolling around inside his mouth.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Mom told him off, glaring. It was one of her rules - p
roper table manners. No if’s, and’s or but’s.

  “But, Mom,” Tom continued to talk with his mouth full of seafood. “I’m masticating!”

  “Jesus,” Gramps hissed and pushed his chair away from Tom. “We’re in a bar you dirty bastard. And there are kids right there! Keep your hands above the table.”

  Cole ignored the argument going on beside him and continued to stare at the food, looking disgusted. I stopped chewing and looked down at my own plate of the stuff, hoping that if he’d seen anything wrong that he’d have told us before we tucked in.

  “What is it?” Ebru finally asked, bringing even Gramp’s and Tom’s attention back to him as Cole covered his mouth.

  “I can’t eat that!” He was sounding nauseous and panicked as he shook his head.

  “Why not?” Mom asked, passing him a glass of iced water. The guy looked like he was gonna throw up all over the place.

  “Because!” He looked nervously over at the kids who were babbling away and shoving apples in their mouths.

  “Because what?” Mom pushed.

  “Just because, okay,” he hissed as he reached for the water and took a big gulp of it.

  “Does it look off?” I asked worriedly seeing as how my pregnant woman was currently eating a plateful of the shit.

  “No, it’s not that,” he muttered, looking back over at the kids again.

  “For the love of everything holy, will you just spit it out!” Gramps snarled. He was hangry and this was holding him up because if Cole was going to say he saw something crawling over the food or that it didn’t look right, there was no way anyone wanted a mouthful as they heard that news.

  We all started to ask him what the hell was wrong when he finally snapped. “Because it’s like the entire cast of the Little Mermaid. You’re eating pretty much all of the characters, okay?” He started pointing out pieces of seafood as he explained his problem further. “There’s Flounder, there’s Sebastian,” he pointed at the lobster. “Oh, and that’s probably Ariel herself!” Unfortunately, out of frustration, he pretty much bellowed it, so every patron in the pub, and their kids, heard it.

  Suddenly the chorus of kids screaming and crying because they were eating the Little Mermaid characters filled the room, ours included.

  “Guk ne fuck,” Tom whined around a huge mouthful of the food before spitting it out on his plate. “Sebastian! Flounder!” He said before gagging and then went running in the direction of the restrooms.

  Sighing, I sat back and wondered for the billionth time why they had decided to torture me by hijacking my trip here.

  Looking over at Sabine to gauge her response to the recent family fuck up, I saw her staring down at her plate looking guilty, before taking a forkful and shoving it in her mouth. Well, at least he hadn’t put her off seafood for life too.

  The next day, London…

  I’d broken off from the group and, using the maps app on my phone, had found the shop I’d placed the order with. It was now sitting in my pocket, safe and sound.

  Now to decide what to do with it.

  We’d agreed that we’d meet at Buckingham Palace, so I took a slow wander toward it, enjoying the sights around me. As I walked toward the Palace, I couldn’t help slowing and staring at it. Obviously, everyone has seen it in photographs or on the news, but seeing it in real life was something else.

  After queuing up and paying the fee to get in, I walked toward the shop. I knew from the text that I’d gotten before I arrived that most of the family were in there, but more importantly, that’s where Sabine was.

  Walking around the corner, I saw her and the other ladies watching Grams who was talking to some old chick. Getting a bit closer, I realized it was actually an argument - in the middle of Buckingham Palace.

  “Well I never!” The old lady gasped, putting her hand up to the scarf around her neck.

  Turning my back on the arguing duo, I looked over Sabine to make sure she wasn’t feeling sick or looking like she was going to run for freedom. Nothing could have tuned out what was going on behind me, though.

  “Oh, I’ll just bet you have,” Gram snapped. “You’re nothing but a hoochie patoochie mama.”

  “Please tell me she’s not doing the head and hand movements too,” I begged Sabine who looked a perfect mixture of amused and horrified at the same time.

  “The circular head one?” I nodded. “Yes, she’s still doing it with her palm held up in the woman’s face.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  That wasn’t the worst thing, though. Again, if I’d known that what was about to happen was going to happen, I’d have left them at home. Or divorced them.

  I should really get a lawyer.

  HURST TOWNSEND

  AKA GRAMPS

  It was an impressive house, I’d give the Queen that. Following behind the tour guide, I switched off and took shit in. Maybe a bit too much gold? That chair over there though, Linda would love it! It was high backed and had a ton of padding under the red velvet. I wonder where they got it from?

  “Over here is the throne that the Queen sits on for official duties and photographs,” the tour dude said, pointing at the chair I’d just been looking at. Oh, Linda would definitely love that big sucker too.

  I was just about to ask where I could buy one, when I saw the crest on the wall.

  “Cole, check it out. That should be above your door at home, it’s got a unicorn on it!”

  He followed where I was pointing and just shook his head. The guy was bored to shit, but the women had made us come here and had then gone to the shop while we got stuck with this boring shit head. Story of my life, this is what always happened at times like this. Unless it was the White House, Linda was the one banned from that place, not me.

  Finally, making it around the entire fucking place, he brought us to a staircase with the most awesome bannister I’d ever seen in my life. Age be fucked, I was gonna own that railing.

  Nudging Cole, I pointed over at it. He immediately knew what I was gonna do because he was shaking his head faster than should have been humanly possible.

  Laughing at the waste of movement, I walked up to it, turned around and placed my leg over it and let go.

  “Hell yes,” I shouted half way down. They must really polish this sucker because the one at home took way longer to get down. I didn’t even get splinters from this one. “Lindee look, watch meeeeeeee,” I waved at her on my way down. She was staring through the tiny glass window of the shop with her arms full. Getting to the bottom, I jumped off and turned around to take a bow.

  Standing back up again, I came face to face with a pissed off policeman.

  “Would you kindly come with us, Sir,” he gestured to the three others standing beside him.

  “English bobbies! Holy shit, I need my photo taken with y’all.” I could just see it on the wall at home. “Cole, Tom, Jack – take a picture!” I yelled up at them, but they all had their backs turned to me and were looking at the wall like it was a Picasso.

  Thinking back to where I’d hang it, I wasn’t paying attention when one of them got a pair of cuffs out of the holder on his vest.

  “Okay, Sir. You’re under arrest for…”

  Oh shit, Linda was gonna kill me. Chancing a glance over at the glass window, I saw her looking over at a wall and when the assistant came over and pointed at me, I clearly saw her shrug her shoulders and say something. I was also pretty fucking sure I’d seen her say, “I’ve no idea who he is,” before going back to picking shit up.

  Turning around to look at the boys, who were still walking around and faking interest in the shit around them, I realized I was on my own. Sighing, I held out my hands and watched as they secured the cuffs around my wrists.

  “So, funny story…” I started as they led me toward a door with a signing saying Private on it.

  The whole time I was waiting for at least one of my family to come to my rescue. Would it have killed them to say they were my carers or something? I’d done
it for them plenty of times in the past. Betraying bastards!

  BRETT

  Eight hours and one Police caution later…

  “No, I’m not talking to you,” Gramps huffed as Gram sat down next to him. “You left me in the Tower of London with no food, no clothes and a big black bird that was eyeing me like I was his next meal.” Mom handed out plates of spaghetti to us all and sat down next to Dad to watch the show in front of us – my grandparents. “That man tried to have sex with me,” Gramps added indignantly.

  “Shut up, you old fool,” Grams said calmly as she twisted the pasta around her fork. “He was frisking you just like when you get stopped and patted down in the States. You were taken to the Police room in the Palace, which was really nice. You also had ‘coffee and biscuits’ according to the officer that I spoke to. In fact, you ate all of their biscuits.”