Mace was technically my boss even though I owned part of the tattoo shop we worked at. He’d needed someone to run it when he was in the Marines and had offered me the position, later selling part of it to me when he came home. I owned forty-five percent of it and being business partners was one of the best choices I’d ever made. Because we’d known each other most of our lives, we had an easy business relationship where we both brought something to the company that made it the success it was. Mace was the more savvy out of the two of us when it came to growing the business and investments, and I was the more arty one who never struggled with creating designs. We worked well together, and it all ran like clockwork with one of us having the other one’s back no matter what, and I respected the hell out of the guy. He’d always been slightly awkward around kids, but he’d entertained Liv on many occasions and hearing his laugh echoing around the shop when she did things never got old.
Looking back down at the baby, I snorted when I saw she’d fallen asleep on her last blink. “Yup, gets more beautiful every day.”
“You should see how she’s looking at Ellis in the photo I just took, Mace,” Linda told him as she took the bottle from his hand and shook two pills out of it. “Take these, honey,” she instructed, passing them to Jose and not letting her take no for an answer. “Been surrounded by more testosterone than sense since I married that one, so accidents like this aren’t unknown to me.” She nodded at Hurst. “Trust me when I say that you’ll thank me for those later.”
In the blink of an eye, she had her focus back on Mace and was showing him the photos that she’d sent me, leaving me to settle both of the Harrison ladies… which was no hardship at all._______________
Four hours later…I’d put both girls in their rooms not long after Liv had fallen asleep. Jose had been struggling to stay awake, and with Liv already out for the count, I’d suggested she have an early night and make the most of it. Making sure Liv was comfortable and that the monitor was on, I’d checked on Jose on my way back to where everyone was, and then we all headed out to the back porch with our beers – except for the ladies who’d volunteered to be the designated drivers for the night – and got comfortable. Texas tended to operate on a degree of warmth that I liked to refer to as ‘I never knew I had sweat glands there’ heat, and it was that warm outside even with it being nighttime.
“Makes you feel like you’re swimming in a hot tub, don’t it?” Hurst commented, holding his cold beer to his forehead. “And, man that outfit and wig made it feel like the fires of Hades were in my pants today.”
“I told you not to wear it,” Linda sighed, holding the back of her hand against his cheeks, always the worrier since his health issues this year, regardless of how relaxed she acted in front of everyone.
“You have a lovely garden,” Sabine murmured, nodding at where my yard was in the final stages of breathing its last breaths. I didn’t have to look at it to know she was lying badly, it looked like shit. I’d tried to keep it all alive, but no matter how much water I put on it, how many of the tips I followed from online forums, nothing had saved it. Now I was considering either putting fake grass down, covering it with wooden decking, or even just laying out stones across the area so I didn’t have to do anything else to it ever again. Tabby, who’d returned with Dave with bags of food for everyone after the Harrison girls had gone to sleep, turned to look at her like she was crazy. “Are you blind? It looks like fire-breathing dragons set it on fire, dug it up, shit on it, and then set it alight again for good measure. If you’re calling it a garden, it has to have green things in it, or at least something in it, otherwise it’s just a…” she stopped to consider her word choices, “well, a depressing space that life forgot about.”
All too soon, the women were gathered around planning out ways to fix it, and describing how my backyard was going to look. “I think grass is best because of Liv. Artificial grass looks great all year, but we know from Dewi and Kali that their poor hands and knees get grazed if they fall on it. So, if we plan the grassy area here,” she scribbled on the napkin, “and then add some swings and a slide for her, it’ll look like this,” Linda told them, finishing her plan on the napkin and holding it up for them all to see. “You’ll need to make sure it’s all properly fenced in,” Maya added, squinting into the darkness. The women continued to grab napkins and draw things on them, all of them full of ideas on how to change it for the better, until the women got distracted by a debate that didn’t involve the design - the difference between the words backyard and garden.