Fireball (Cheap Thrills #1)(64)

Eighteen months later…

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” I mimicked in a high-pitched voice. “It’s probably just those Braxton Hicks ones they told us about.”

Braxton Hicks my ass the size of Vesuvius! These were the real deal, and I knew this because I was currently standing in a puddle the size of the Pacific in the middle of the effing store. And what was I standing next to? The condoms. Yes, I’d walked down this aisle because people kept bumping into me as I tried to breathe through the pain, and this one had been quiet. All it had taken was a contraction, me grabbing the first thing I could get my hand on which turned out to be the air freshener in my cart which had then sprayed into the air, a sneeze because of it, and the fifty gallon bag of water around my baby burst open.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” a young kid said as he walked up behind me. I groaned when I looked over my shoulder and saw that he was all of eight years old. “I think something’s leaking in your cart.”

Not wanting to traumatize him for life, I just gave him a smile and turned to move away from the evidence. At least, that was my intention, but then the most almighty pain hit me and I ended up screaming.

“Kid, get your mom to call 9-1-1, can you do that?” I panted, checking to make sure he was still there and not running away from the screaming woman, and almost crying with relief when I saw him. “And when she does that, tell her to ask for the police, specifically the sheriff.”

“Right,” he mumbled, moving away from me slowly. “Police, sheriff. Do you need arrested?”

“Arrested?” I growled, the word was still a sensitive subject for me seeing as how I’d now been arrested a grand total of twenty-nine times. “For the love of all things holy, don’t even put that idea in his head. Tell him that his kid is gonna come out any second now, and if he doesn’t get here, he’ll miss it. And then I’ll cuff him by his…” I stopped remembering how young he was and that this was already going to leave a mark on him. “His hands to the naughty corner. Got that?”

Nodding, he ran off hopefully toward an adult with a cell phone. It’s not like I could use mine after all, it was sitting in the puddle of amniotic fluid because I’d dropped it when the air freshener had hit me in the face. That meant when my waters had broken, they’d landed on top of it too. How is this my life?

Just then, I heard a squeal and saw a pregnant Jose waddling toward me. That wasn’t where the noise had come from though, that had come from my little niece who was running at me as fast as her little legs could carry her – right toward the puddle.

I only managed to hold my hand up, and then two things happened at once. My next contraction hit so fiercely that I didn’t get to hold in the little toot – ok, it wasn’t so little it was fucking horrendous – that accompanied it. I also started to feel something happening down under which made me panic. The second thing? Oh, that was our darling little Liv hitting the puddle, her feet skidding across it with the momentum and falling right on her back in the middle of it.

It was a hard choice what disgusted me more – the fact I’d farted so loudly in public, or the poor baby now moving her arms and legs in the mess I’d left on the floor trying to make snow angels in it.

“Well, fireball, you just can’t do anything normally can you,” an amused voice rumbled behind me, almost making my legs give out with the relief that he was here. Seeing the predicament I was in, he lifted me up and started walking toward the exit. “You gonna give me a baby in a couple of hours?”

It was a stupid question because what else could be happening? But it was also a stupid question because I was pretty certain we didn’t even have an hour, let alone a couple of them, before this kid came shooting out of me.

Something which was true, because five minutes later, in the parking lot of the store with the residents of Piersville all there to witness it, my husband squatted down in front of me with his arms out like a catcher, I started pushing out our child. It felt like I’d eaten a thousand chili peppers, shoved a watermelon up my ass, and was now shitting it out with a pineapple in there for good measure.

“This is not a beautiful experience,” I yelled, glaring at Dave who looked like he was watching a horror movie. He probably was, I couldn’t even make it through the first five minutes of the birthing movies people had recommended we watch.

“Shut up and push,” my sister chuckled, appearing over my head from where I was lying out across the seat of my car. I’d seen her pass Liv off to Ellis as she’d followed us out of the store, but she hadn’t said a word to me so I’d assumed she’d gone to get a taco seeing as how that’s all she did these days. She could have let me know she was there, hold my hand, or even tell me I still looked pretty even though I probably looked like a baboons ass right now.

Apparently I’d said all of that out loud because she nodded seriously and said, “It’s true, you do look like a baboons ass.”

Evil bitch.

“Yeah,” I groaned as the next wave hit me. I wasn’t going to be robbed of the pleasure of pointing this out to her though, so I continued, “You’re doing this yourself in a couple of weeks.”

Looking like she was about to rip a handful of hair out of my head, she opened her mouth to say something, but Dave lost his patience. “Will the two of you cut it out? The head’s almost out.”