What I found out later, though, was that Marcus didn’t dance. At least not sober.
No, when he was drunk, he busted a move, as did all of the brothers who kept challenging each other to dance-offs. They’d managed to get my cousins all hammered, too, so they joined in until it became a dance battle.
And Jackson caught it all on tape.
By the time we returned from our honeymoon in the Bahamas, our YouTube channel had over a million subscribers.
And the only one who knew about its existence was Sadie, who we paid to keep it a secret.
She had her own payback to give them all for her wedding, so she didn’t mind one bit.
Epilogue
Jackson
Seven years later…
“Oh my God,” I heard Sasha screech as I walked back toward the pool with her glass of iced water. On a technicality, it was ice with a dash of water, but still.
“Yo, you need to stop doing that,” Benny growled. “Someone get a napkin.”
Rounding the gate that kept our son out when he wasn’t meant to be near the pool, I grinned when I saw my wife standing with her hand between her legs.
“Did she cough?”
Malcolm was standing with our son, Luca, in his arms. He’d just turned eighteen months, but the little terror had started walking at ten months, and I swear he was going to be an Olympic runner when he was older. Either that or he’d be an escape artist.
“No, she laughed this time,” he replied, watching as his cousin shuffled over to the gate.
Just as she got to it, he called, “Hey, Niagara, do us all a favor and turn off the tides before you get back.”
My wife had breezed through pregnancy with Luca. No morning sickness, no high blood pressure, no bladder weakness, no constipation, no swelling, nothing. Even her labor had been a breeze. But with this one, she had the bladder control of an elephant with a fly-sized bladder in its body.
She’d also developed bad allergies to pollen when she hadn’t had any before. Last week, she’d brushed against a woman carrying a bouquet of lilies in the grocery store, and her arm had turned bright red, and giant hives had appeared. We’d known she had a problem considering how bad her sinuses were and how much she sneezed, but the skin reaction was worrying.
And, at her cousin’s remark, she’d stopped next to a display of flowers she’d been adamant we planted when we’d bought the property while she was pregnant with Luca. This meant that, as she turned around to say something snide to Malcolm, she started sneezing, and her bladder replayed what’d happened while I was away all over again.
“Pee!” Luca squealed, giggling as he pointed at his mom.
Covering his eyes with his large hand, Malcolm muttered, “Your momma’s a gross beaver, bud. You got any spare diapers?”
“I can’t help it,” Sasha shrieked, losing it altogether. “Do you know how embarrassing this is? Oh my God, why isn’t it stopping?”
She was looking between her legs at where the water was dripping from under her short cover-up thingy she had on over her bathing suit.
Even with pee dripping out of her, I loved her more than all of the oxygen in the universe.
“Uh?” Benny raised a hand. “I’m not an expert, but are you sure that’s you peeing?”
“Lord, again?” a new voice said in disbelief belonging to my sister-in-law as she walked in with Elijah, Bronte, their son Kent, and her pregnant belly leading the way.
“Sasha, I know for a fact you haven’t needed diapers since you were fifteen months old—”
“Overachiever,” Sadie coughed into her hand.
“—so for the love of everything sacred, stop pissing yourself,” Sam snapped as he walked behind my brother and his family with Ryan beside him.
The second he saw his grandaddies, Luca started kicking his legs to get to them.
Unfortunately, even though I’d had it happen to me on numerous occasions, I didn’t get the chance to warn Malcolm to put his nephew on the ground before he took a shot to the nuts. So, on the second vicious leg swing, when that happened, Luca found himself lowered to the ground and free to run to them as his uncle curled up in the fetal position.
“You deserve it,” Sasha hissed. “Watch out for the puddle.”
The way the water was still dripping out of me had me looking at Benny, who was watching me expectantly.
“You think…?”
Rolling his eyes, he huffed, “Look, you know the signs better than me. All I’m saying is that doesn’t look normal to me.”
“Of course it’s not normal. No one pees themselves like this, except for when you’ve got a baby whale pressing on your-—Ohh,” Sasha groaned, her hand lifting to cover the large mound of her stomach now. “Oh, that didn’t feel good.”
“We’ll take our boy,” her dads shouted as Ryan picked him up and Sam ran to get the overnight bags from where they were sitting.