Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 95147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
She no longer hid from stares but held her head up and just basically ignored, especially when her hand was in mine. I taught her how to walk into places like she owned them and how to grey-rock ignorant motherfuckers, and wouldn’t you know, instead of whispers and stares, she now had people starting up conversations with her.
Her newfound confidence made her even more beautiful to me, at least, and I guess the idiot brigade caught a case of, if you can’t beat them, join them because she was beating back friends left and right. At least she had the good sense not to fall for that superficial bullshit.
She didn’t need any new friends anyway. Between my sisters and Nat, she was covered, and my ass was paying the price. Why is it that whenever females get together, a man is always the pinata at their party? I had to tell all of them to get the hell out of my face and leave me out of their shit more than once.
And guess what? Roz is the worst of the bunch. If this one says I did some shit with her lying ass, my little sister reads me for filth and puts me in my place while the terror laughs her ass off. Then I have to hear from Jackie, my sister-in-law, and Nat because they have some sort of network going against me.
That’s one of the reasons I stayed out of their wedding planning bullshit because I was never right about anything, according to them. What’s so wrong about a kegger at the reception, I ask you? Or me wearing the suit of my choice instead of a tux which I had no interest in wearing? Apparently, weddings are for women only, and we men just had to show up. Since that was their take, they could have that shit and plan it themselves.
Apparently, that wasn’t allowed, either. She wanted my input, but all my ideas were stupid. By the third or fourth time they ganged up on me, I washed my hands of the whole thing, and no matter how she sulked and pouted, I refused to put myself in the middle of that hell again. She could spend all my money on her froufrou shit, but I’d be damned if I was saying one more word about ‘her’ wedding.
Once we had that behind us, it was time to focus on the little one; that was a whole other minefield. I went to all the checkups before the midwife started coming to the house to do her thing. That’s when the question of whether or not we wanted to know the sex reared its ugly head. This one wasn’t sure if she wanted to know or be surprised. That question took weeks to answer.
She decided she didn’t want to know, but then the others wanted a gender reveal, and we got back on the merry-go-round. They settled on a baby shower, where they lost their damn minds again. It took three cars to bring all that shit back to the house, and we already had a nursery full of shit because as soon as we got back from the honeymoon, this one had been shopping for the baby. Women confuse the hell out of me.
We’re not going to talk about the nursery or how it took knocking down one wall between two rooms to make the space bigger for something that was the size of a damn peanut. Or the weeks it took to get it done the way she wanted. Thankfully, I hired professionals to do that shit, or I’d have shot myself in the head a long time ago. Steph, my Steph, is a demanding little shit.
“Hey, you, it’s been eight hours with this shit; what’s going on?” The midwife, who had brought another one along for the birth, just smiled at me like I asked her for the time or some shit.
“We’ve talked about this, Mr. Donovan; some births can take hours, sometimes days. Your wife is doing very well; the baby’s already crowning.”
Did she say that shit to piss me off? What days? And what the fuck is crowning? This ain’t no coronation; it sounded more like a beheading, what with the way my wife was screaming the place down. “Leave her alone Mace.”
Of course, she had strength to ride my ass. “Go give the others an update.”
“No dice, I’m not leaving you.” I’d won the toss about who got to be in the room with her when she gave birth. Not that there was any doubt. I didn’t even take part in that particular argument.
I sat in the kitchen listening as the argument heated up between Nat, my sisters, and my mother as to who deserved to be in the room. When they started getting out of hand, I just simply walked past them with the final decision, me, I was going to be the one holding her hand. I drowned out their arguments, including hers, because they were stupid.