Tainted Gold (Providence Gold 3)

“Anyway,” Levi drawled, nodding at the pinatas. “As fun as it is tormenting him, and trust me, I intend to do that myself,” he glared over at him. “We’re here to find out if we’re having a girl or boy…”

“It’s a boy,” I said loudly, but they all knew I didn’t know that for sure.

They’d be sorry when the Mayans and Chinese proved them wrong in a second.

Not missing a beat, he continued, “So, let’s get whacking the big giant sperm.”

“Now there’s a sentence you never thought you’d say,” Noah chuckled, pulling Luna into his side and smiling down at Jamie who was playing with her feet in his arms. “Uncle Levi said they should whack the big giant sperm,” he told her in that voice you can’t help using with a baby. “Isn’t he silly, he is, yes, but there’s a big sperm right there. You’ll never need to know what that is, because Daddy and your uncles will shoot the ass…”

“Noah!” Luna snapped, glaring at him and then smiling down at her daughter who was laughing uncontrollably – probably at her dad’s face because I know it made me laugh when I saw it. God, I loved my niece.

“Let’s go,” Lily muttered, picking up the stick.

Hanging from another branch was the pinata we’d ordered in a normal circular shape. It had seemed innocent and non-gender specific at the time, but now it looked like the sperm was heading toward the egg. My fucking family!

Sighing, I waved at Senor Spermatozoa. “Hit that one first.”

With strength and anger that surprised me, Lily started hitting it. When nothing happened after ten conks to the sperms noggin and tail, Archer walked into the house and came back out with the bat he’d used when he was in high school. “Here, use this.”

Taking it from him, I walked up to the still smiling jizz monster and gave it my all. What felt like a thousand hits later, but was only thirty-seven when we counted thanks to the video Levi had taken, it burst open and out popped… condoms?

“You’re welcome,” Gramps shouted as he started picking up handfuls and handing them out to all the members capable of making babies.

Why did I think it would be nice to have him here? In fact, why didn’t we just hold this gender reveal somewhere like Mexico, where no one would fuck it up?

Glaring at him, I turned back around as Lily started beating up the round pinata now. Because this one wasn’t made of concrete, it only took three hits of the bat to open it.

I held my breath as the hole in it got bigger and waited to see a color come out of it.

What came out was a rainbow of colors – in the shapes of kids' toys, balloons and candy, and all with The Little Mermaid as the theme.

“What the hell? Are you having a fish?”* * *Hanging up the phone, I pinched the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut.

The woman had one flipping job to do – one. Put the right colors into the pinata, seal it up and deliver it to my parents. How was that so hard?

Apparently it was very hard when you hired your five-year-old twin nieces to do the job because you were understaffed thanks to the stomach bug that was going around.

How is this my life? Seriously, someone explain that to me.

The woman was also worried because we’d chosen to go with shapes for our colored confetti pieces too – specifically blue penises with balls, and pink vaginas that looked like the devil’s head. It’d seemed funny at the time because the likeness between the female reproductive system and the head of the big man in the fires of hell was uncanny.

Now, as there was none of those left in her offices, she had to assume that somewhere, a little mermaid was crying because her pinata looked like the ultimate lesson in how babies were made, sponsored by Satan himself!

Those poor kids.

As for us, we were going to have to wait for an appointment with our OB/GYN to get another scan done. And just to add that little bit more to the shit storm, my family were taking bets on the gender as we sat around eating vagina cake. Thirty-five percent were going with a girl, forty-five believed the Mayans and the Chinese too, but for some reason twenty percent were saying it would be both a boy and a girl. When I found out who Gramps had bribed to say that, I was going to string them up.

This was the worst, and I’d bet the most surreal, gender reveal party ever.

I’d grudgingly admit that the cake tasted freakin’ outstanding – so long as you closed your eyes and didn’t think about what it was that you were eating, that was.