Making sure I’d done everything on my usual end of day list, I shouted bye to him and walked out to my truck. The forecast for our area was for heavy rain and storms, and I wanted to get home and make sure the girls were safe before it hit.________________About the amount of time it would take someone who couldn’t wait to get home. So, in Ellis’s case, seven minutes and eighteen seconds exactly…The skies had opened just after I’d started the engine of the truck, and they hadn’t let up throughout the whole drive home. In fact, it had all just gotten worse with the winds picking up and thunder rolling in, and by the time I pulled into the garage and hit the button to close the door behind me, the roads were a mess. I had a tornado alert on my phone and the area we were in was usually only at a slight risk of them hitting, but even ‘slight’ was too much if you asked me, so I’d move us all down to the basement if it looked like one was brewing near us. That said, if one did hit, the likelihood of it taking out a cell tower and the Wi-Fi was high, so I’d have to listen carefully for the sirens going off. Locking the electric door of the garage, I moved over and opened the side door to make sure we had put away all the tools from our work in the backyard. Thankfully they had been, so I shut and locked that one, too, and crossed over to where the door that led into the kitchen was, stopping when I saw all the food on the counters.
Not making a noise, I scanned what I could see of the room, and frowned when I realized it had all come from the refrigerator and not the cupboards. What the hell?
“Who in their right mind would do this to their ass?” Jose’s voice groaned from an area of the kitchen I couldn’t see from where I was standing. “It’s so swollen.”
Walking as quietly as I could across the tile floor, I peeked around the corner and saw a sight I never… actually, a sight no one would ever have thought they’d see. Jose was sitting in the fridge – like legs bent, feet on the floor, ass in the appliance type of sitting in the fridge. From the looks of it, she’d also taken out all of the shelves so that she could do it properly, which would account the crap that was now relying on the air conditioning to keep it as cold as possible.
Just then, Liv started making her ‘hangry calls’ from deeper in the house, the hand unit for the monitor that sat on the counter broadcasting them loudly to us. She wasn’t one of those babies who screamed and cried until they were fed. Not Olivia Harrison, instead she grunted, made monkey noises, squealed, did some sort of siren noise, and then ended it by chanting 'ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.’ Seeing as how her favorite food was bananas, we figured that’s what the end part was supposed to be, but for all we knew she could be yelling insults when we didn’t magic up the food as soon as she opened her eyes. Jose pulled my attention back to her predicament by whimpering and calling out, “I’ll be there in a second, sweetie. Mama’s ass is in the refrigerator.” Propping a hip against the counter, I cleared my throat which made her jump and scream. “Yes, and why exactly is Mama’s ass in the refrigerator instead of say… the milk?” I picked up one of the cartons next to me and shook it in the air.
Groaning, Jose leaned further back into the fridge so that her shoulders were pressed against the back of it and closed her eyes. “I know I should probably be embarrassed, maybe even regale you with a tale of torture and woe.” Bit dramatic, but ok? “However, this feels way too good for any of that to happen, so trust me when I say – I really needed it to feel this good.”
I wasn’t sure what would motivate anyone to do what she was doing right now, regardless of how good it felt, and doing a quick mental run through of all the possibilities left me with only one idea. “Have you got a fever? I’ve got Tylenol if you want some?”
“No, no fever, and I’ve taken Tylenol and Motrin, but nothing’s working.”
Hearing Liv getting more agitated, I walked closer to where Jose’s feet were and peeked in, checking her over and making sure she was ok to leave while I got the baby. When I didn’t see anything obvious, and she didn’t look like she needed an ambulance, I asked, “Are you gonna be ok if I leave you for a second to get the princess?” Weakly lifting her arm in the air, she gave me a thumbs up and let it thud back down onto her thigh. Well, alrighty then!