Tainted Gold (Providence Gold 3)

“You know – where they waxed.”

Going through the pink and blue squares on the chart and making sure I was on the right line for both of the details that had been calculated, I still didn’t get what she was talking about. “You got your bikini waxed? Does ice get it out?”

“No, dick face. I had to put ice on my vagina because it was red and sore after they tore the skin off it with hot wax, okay?”

“Sounds fun,” I muttered, still distracted. Then I saw the square that my results ended up on. “Boy!”

“No, it was a woman, but I don’t think she’d ever used the wax on her own cooch,” Beau mumbled, sounding distracted herself. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her finger moving on the screen of her phone before she switched it off and shoving it down the side of the couch. “Asshole.”

I wanted to answer, I really did, but this was the second result that said it was going to be a boy. What were the odds of the Chinese and Mayans agreeing on the sex of the baby? What were the odds that both were wrong? The last question was an easy answer – fifty-fifty – but the first question seemed a better one to ask.

“It’s a boy!”

“Again?” Beau asked, getting up and screaming. “Oh my God, I’m gonna be the best aunt ever. Ok, I need to start buying shit. What do boys like? What do they need?” she asked quickly, pacing back and forth.

That’s when a tornado hit, tornado Lily. “The bunny was just about to run and cuddle the kitten who was eating cake,” she screeched as she stumbled into the living room, and then leaned into the wall with her eyes shut. “Now, he has to wait for the next bus, and it ran out of glitter,” she mumbled as she stumbled back to her bedroom and slammed the door.

“She’s a heavy sleeper,” Beau explained, taking in my open mouth and the fact I probably hadn’t even blinked since the first word was screeched at us.

“You think?”

“She sleepwalks,” she shrugged, and then added, “and talks.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Snorting, she reached down the side of the couch and fished her phone out of the little gap between the cushions and arm rest. “You’ll get used to it.”

Damn right I would. Getting up, I put Lily’s bag on the side table, making sure everything was back inside it, grinning at the cherry Chapstick tube again. “I don’t think it’ll take me long.”

That was an understatement. I didn’t have an issue with her sleepwalking, in fact it was kind of cute now that I thought about it. I knew from my brother and cousins some people just knew when they met someone that it was meant to be, and although I wasn’t at the stage of declaring my undying love or asking her to marry me, I had a feeling that in time it would happen.

I was just about to close it up altogether, when I saw a Ziploc bag with a bunch of white sticks in it. Lifting it out, I looked closer and saw crosses, lines and smiley faces on all of them. I was about to ask Beau what they were when I saw one at the bottom with the word ‘pregnant’ on it.

“That’s a lot of piss sticks,” she commented behind me. “How many does it take a bitch to accept she’s carrying a kid in her belly that’s gonna tear her cooter in half in nine months?”

I didn’t want to count how many were in the bag, but the answer was apparently – a lot of them.

Laying the bag down on the table and moving the tests inside the bag so that I didn’t get pee on my hands, I got my phone out and snapped a couple of photos. I wanted to have memories of everything for the pregnancy. Videos, photos, casts of her belly, scans – you name it, I wanted it all.

Moving toward her room, I stopped mid-step when Beau called my name, and turning around to face her, I raised an eyebrow. “Why are you being so cool about the baby?”

“Uh…”

“I don’t mean that in an asshole way. I mean – a lot of guys would call her a liar, running for the hills or demanding a DNA test before they got involved. Why are you being so cool?”

She had a point, but at the same time, I’d had a lot of time to think about this while I was waiting to be released from the cell last night.

“Lily’s from good people,” I explained, and tried to figure out how to word it properly as I walked back over to the couch and sat down. It wasn’t easy for men to verbalize shit like this because we either looked like a pussy or we looked like a dick. “She’s also a good person who goes out of her way to help everyone.” When Beau just stared at me, I continued, “I noticed her not long after she moved here, it was the first time I’d seen her and she kinda just stuck in my mind.”