"I am a successful artist,"I wrote across the top of the page. Then, I sketched a meerkat holding a color palette and sticking his tongue out the side of his mouth as he mixed red and white paint into pink.
"I can't possibly buyanother thing," I said to Talia. She had already dragged me to every baby store in the Costa Diablo area. Today, she had driven us even farther south to the northern suburbs of San Francisco. Though we were far from the trendy parts, like Fisherman's Wharf and other touristy places, everything was still fucking expensive. As in San Francisco proper, the store overheads were high and everything was twice as expensive as it was online.
"We're not shopping," Talia said. "We're looking."
I heaved a sigh and followed her into the furniture store. Thank goodness the doctor had confirmed only one baby. At seven months pregnant, I had more than made up for my weight loss during the first trimester. Now, I waddled.
The bigger I got, the more Mika fawned over me and claimed I was the sexiest man he'd ever seen. At first, I thought he was either full of shit or trying to curry favor with the unhappy man in his bed, but no. He couldn't fake the way his pupils dilated whenever he saw me naked.
"You have a pregnancy fetish," I said one night when he got down on his knees and sucked my cock into his mouth while staring up at me around the curve of my baby bump. Instead of answering me, he angled his head to the side and took my cock to the back of his throat.
"What do you think of this one?" Talia asked, pulling me to a walnut bassinet arranged in a corner display case.
Heat rushed to my cheeks. "Um, it's fine?" I stammered. She didn't need to know I was thinking inappropriate thoughts about her son, who had sent us off with cheek kisses and told us to, "Have fun," not two hours ago.
"Fine isn't good enough." Talia huffed and pulled me down an aisle loaded with cardboard boxes. Without the furniture on display, we studied the pictures on the boxes and tried to imagine what they would look like in the nursery. After a few minutes of staring at dimensions, I gave up and wandered to the aisle's end cap, where a wire bench waited for me with open armrests.
Talia found me a few minutes later. "Stay here," she said. "I found more displays. I'll bring back pictures, and you can tell me what you like."
That sounded better than her hauling my pregnant ass all over the store. While I would have liked to see some of the rocking chairs, dressers, and changing tables in person, I believed her when she said she only took pictures of the sturdiest ones.
She handed me her phone, and something caught my eye in the corner of a picture before I flipped past. A paint palette dangled into the shot she'd taken of a combination dresser and changing table. "What's this?" I zoomed in on her photo.
"A mobile, I think. Want me to get another picture?"
I shook my head. "I'll come with you."
She helped me off the bench. I'd pinched a nerve in my lower back by sitting, which only grew worse as we walked. Finally, we reached our destination, the hideous table from the picture, but above it, perfection. The mobile was of a baby sea otter wearing a yellow raincoat and carrying a blue umbrella. From the umbrella's rib tips hung hand-painted whimsical ornaments on clear plastic string.
Talia waved to a salesperson. "Where can we find this?"
She smiled. "Isn't it adorable? The artist is local, and we're running low on stock. If I can't find a box in the back, do you want the floor model?"
"Anything, yes, please." As she walked away, I whispered, "I want the artist's address. That's the cutest fucking thing I've ever seen! If he could turn my meerkat designs into three-dimensional art, we would rule the world."
Talia pulled me into a side hug, resting her head on my arm. "I'm so proud of you."
"Me?"
She gazed up at me with her no-nonsense mom look. "You never let anyone tell you that art was frivolous. You lived your dream, no matter what. That takes guts."
"Mika must have liked science when he was a kid," I ventured, not wanting to be brave all by myself.
She barked a laugh. "Baseball. He was going to play for the Giants. We took him to games, coached him in little league, and he even won some trophies. Then some asshole told him shifters can't play professional sports, so he gave it up when he started high school."
"Shifters don't have their own teams?" I asked.
"Rec leagues, no humans allowed. We can't let them know of our existence, though a good portion of the world already knows about us from their relatives. We are the worst-kept secret, but if we went public, we would be hunted by the same people who think two alphas, betas, or omegas shouldn't be together."
That reminded me of my alpha dad. I'd left a message for him a week ago, but he hadn't called me back. Couldn't say I blamed him after the way I left things ten years ago.
The salesperson returned with a box. "You're in luck! This was the last one in back." She handed us the box and a slip of paper with a business name and address. "I might have overheard you on my way back there. He's not as local as I thought, since the business address is in Costa Diablo, but he and his husband are both artists." She pointed to my tattoo. "That looks like Keith's work."
I stared down at my meerkat. "It is. He's the husband?"
She nodded, and Talia's gaze drifted between us as though we spoke another language.
"If you talk to them, tell them I said hi!" the salesperson gushed. "When I turn eighteen, I'm getting one of the flash pieces from the machine."
