Holy shit, this guy was good.
And just like that, everyone went back to what they were doing. Half an hour later, after Dave had repeatedly stressed rules and quizzed me to the point I was getting a headache, Tabby came over and joined us with Rose, who was holding the base of her back.
“I swear these babies are pushing my ass hole out of my body,” she moaned as she sat down and lifted her feet onto the box in front of her. “It feels like all the gravity in the world is centered right here,”—she motioned to the bottom of her abdomen—“and it’s pushing everything down and out. I had two pieces of toast earlier, nothing on it apart from some butter, and the bloating is hell. Add that onto the pressure down below, and I’m not even sure my body knows what to do next.”
“Let her be the example of why you have safe sex,” Tabby snickered.
Dude, no shit.
As a lover of random facts, though, I couldn’t stop my mouth from sharing them. “Did you know that on average, fifty percent of women get hemorrhoids during pregnancy? It can be exacerbated by constipation and labor, too.”
Rose blinked at me, but Tabby leaned forward. “I didn’t have either of those. Is it common for women to get constipated? Maybe I should’ve written down what I was eating and started a blog to help women avoid getting constipation and hemorrhoids.”
Passing the unwrapped chess pieces on my lap to Dave with my non-decrepit hand, I picked up another pile and started on the first bundle.
“Roughly forty-six percent of women get constipated during pregnancy, and diet would probably have a lot to do with it. Women need to eat a lot of bran and roughage to help their bowels keep moving, and pregnancy makes it harder for them to do it.”
Looking at her husband, Tabby frowned. “Did I eat a lot of bran and roughage? I don’t even know what constitutes as roughage nowadays.”
“No,” he snorted as he put the pieces on the board. Thank God someone knew where they went. I’d made the mistake of throwing the box out after I’d bought it, and I’d used the instruction book as my emergency phone note pad, which had then been thrown in the garbage by accident when I was tidying up. “You ate a lot of shit. Donuts, cake, pies, candy—”
“I ate fruit and vegetables.”
“You ate fruit that’d been put into sweet things like cakes and pies, fireball. And I’m not sure tempura vegetables and mashed potato count.”
Shooting him a glare, she turned back to me. “That was for the first five months of the pregnancy because I had bad cravings. I also couldn’t stand the shape of fries, so I went for mashed potato, which is healthier anyway.”
“You added half a stick of butter to them, baby, and then topped them with a shit ton of grated cheese.”
“Both of which are dairy products and good for you,” she snapped.
Looking over at Rose, I caught her licking her lips at the food discussion. Yeah, someone was going home to make cheesy mashed potatoes later.
“I could totally go for creamed potatoes with cheese on top,” she sighed. “I’d put them on top of cake and then sprinkle crushed chips on top of it.”
Dave looked like he wanted to puke, but I was thinking that wasn’t such a bad recipe.
Then the perfect cake hit me. “Oh, what about one of those birthday cakes from Walmart? You know, with the frosting you can never make at home on it, little sprinkles, and…” I trailed off, imagining the taste of it like I was actually eating it.
Shaking his head with a sigh, Dave turned from awesome into demi-god for me. “Okay, fireball, you drive them to Walmart so they can get their nasty shit. We’ll continue getting the house ready.”
I felt guilty about leaving them to do all the hard work, I really did, but at the same time, I wanted that cake and potato deliciousness.
Heaving herself off the couch, Rose grinned excitedly at the two of us. “Take your pain pills before we go, Zuri, and I’ll go to the bathroom. And make sure you take the full dose and not just Tylenol like you did this morning.”
“But you just went twenty minutes ago,” Tabby called after her as she headed over to where all of our purses were sitting on the top of the counter in the kitchen.
“I’ve got two massive turkeys in my womb that don’t care where they spread their wings, Tabitha,” Rose shouted. “And my bladder is now the size of a raisin. Don’t you bladder shame me.”
Deciding to dry swallow the pills—sadly forgetting about how I’d reacted to them the night before in the cake-potato excitement I had going on—I almost choked when they got stuck in my throat.