Great Sass (Providence Family Ties 1)

Either side of me, Linda and Lily grabbed my hands, both in the same state of oxygen deprivation as I was.

“He’s really getting into it,” Linda shrieked, watching Hurst lip-sync along with the lyrics as he moved his leg in time with the music and pushed that vacuum back and forth.

“What size are his boobies?” I gasped, watching them bounce up and down with him.

“Cantaloupe size D,” she snorted. “At least the left one is. He couldn’t find two equal-sized ones.”

Movement from the left got our attention as Levi was shoved on stage, wearing a schoolgirl outfit like his brother’s and a red wig. Charlotte grabbed onto Luna and made a honking noise like a goose as she laughed.

Give them credit, the men were mortified, but they played along, smiling at the audience as they danced across the stage until another one of them, dressed just like Hurst was but with a blonde wig and black mustache, joined from the left—Parker.

“What did he do wrong?” I asked the girls, pulling my hand out of Lily’s and grabbing my stomach as another pain spread across it.

“He laughed at them all, so Ariana got him a matching outfit to Hurst’s,” Linda told me, smiling smugly. “Now he knows what karma is.”

Halfway through, Noah came on stage with an over the top chest wig stuck to him, wearing leather trousers.

“He got off easily,” Lily shouted at Luna, who shot her an evil grin over her shoulder.

“Oh no, he didn’t. Wait for it.”

Sure enough, when Noah turned around, we saw his white boxers through the huge gaping hole where the arse of his trousers should’ve been.

I’m sure my makeup was everywhere and that I resembled Alice Cooper by the time it was over. I was also slightly relieved because the cramping from all of the laughter was getting fierce.

“We’ve got one final act,” Ariana announced. “This one joined at the last minute, so it won’t be on your programs. However, I give you the final show of the night, Totally Dirty Dancing.”

Fuck me, I needed to find Elijah. God was laughing his arse off at me when he created me without whatever it is you need to burp. I’d had awful bloating for most of the pregnancy because of it, and because I’d laughed as much as I had tonight, it was the worst it’d ever been at that moment. Add that onto indigestion or whatever I had going on, and I wanted to throw up and go to sleep.

Just as I stood up, a light shone on the stage, lighting up my bloody father in a pink dress and wig.

“What the fuck?”

As Time Of My Life began playing, he looked off stage to his right, and Elijah, dressed in a white shirt and black trousers, walked toward him.

“Oh, bloody hell,” my sister screamed, laughing harder than I’d ever heard her laugh before.

I wasn’t laughing, I was standing watching it in horror. My husband and dad, Governor Dahl, were acting out the most iconic dance in Dirty Dancing together.

And it got worse as Elijah took Dad into his arms, then ran his hand from Dad’s wrist down to his side, even getting a giggle like Baby did in the movie.

And that’s when a big gush of water ran down the inside of my legs, soaking my feet.

I was in deep shit.

Somehow, through some dancing miracle, both men copied all of the moves from the movie.

“How long have they been rehearsing this?” I whispered to myself. Elijah had just set up a new company, designing early warning and safety systems for ships—when had he had the time?

Then it got even more bizarre as the other brothers and their dad began dancing down the gap between the tables toward them, and Elijah jumped off the stage and ran up to them to prepare to dance back to where Dad was standing, swinging his pink dress around his knees.

Putting my hand on my stomach, I begged the baby. “Please don’t come out and see this. Wait until it’s all over, I’m begging you.”

Could babies have therapy? Was there such a thing?

The worst pain yet hit me just as Dad was helped off the stage and started running toward Elijah.

“Oh Christ,” Linda wheezed next to me now. “He’s going to do the lift.”

Biting my fist, I clenched my knees together as tightly as I could, a bit like Elijah’s were doing as he braced for Dad’s weight to hit him. Jackson and Marcus appeared on either side and helped Elijah hoist Dad into the air, then both dropped their hands and jumped back, laughing at the panicked look on their brother’s face.

“They were meant to hold him, too,” my sister snorted, now standing too and holding herself between her legs. “I’m going to pee.”

Elijah’s legs buckled under the weight of my dad, and down they went, along with Cynthia.