“Ma—”
“He’s my baby. You know he’s always been weaker than you!”
Jeff groaned, burying his face in his elbow as he slumped on the table.
“Ma, he came at me. He started the fight. I tried to get him to stop.”
“Yeah, and then you kicked me in the chest. Still fucking hurts,” he muttered, rubbing his hand over the very spot where I booted him.
“And poor Blake was dumped in the middle of it!” Ma cried out. “She’s pregnant. The three of you should know better than to start anything around a woman in her condition.”
“Yeah, she’s fragile,” I added on, hoping to win Blake some major brownie points.
Instead, both my mother and my fiancée slowly turned a harsh glare on me. I shrank back immediately, feeling the hounds of hell closing in.
“Fragile?” Blake said quietly. “Did you just call me fragile?”
“Well, shit,” Pop sighed, tossing down his chicken. “Now you’ve done it. Might as well order new windows for everyone.”
“I must have heard him wrong,” Ma said slowly, “because no son of mine would ever call a woman carrying a human life inside her bodyfragile.”
“Ma—”
She stepped forward, the fire in her eyes growing by the second. “Your fiancée is doing something no man could ever accomplish, and not because his body wasn’t built for it, but because men are a bunch of babies who couldn’t handle the demands on the body for childbirth.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Mav muttered.
Ma turned her glare on the man still sitting on her table. “And just how many babies have you birthed?”
He turned bright red, but somehow kept his cool. “None, but I’ve witnessed the beauty of birth before.”
“Then you should know that no man could ever handle any part of his body stretching that far. Can you imagine if your penis had to fit even a baseball through it?”
Mav winced at the description, but Ma wasn’t finished.
“And through all that pain, your spouse is sitting beside you, sighing at how long the whole process is taking. She’s thinking about catching the baseball game or grabbing a beer with her friends. Meanwhile, you’ve still got that baseball in your penis, pushing slowly to the tip. And when it finally gets to the opening, imagine that baseball sprouting arms and legs, getting caught in the most uncomfortable position.”
The way she described it made me want to gag, but I wisely kept my mouth shut.
“And when you can’t push that baseball out on your own, the doctor has to fit his hand into that tiny hole and turn the baseball to fit through that tiny penis hole. Can you imagine it, Maverick? Can you feel the pain of your hole being stretched that far?”
He looked like he wanted to vomit, but she wasn’t done yet.
“And when it’s all said and done, then you still have to push out the scraps of the baseball that got left behind. Meanwhile, your spouse is complaining about how tired she is, how she’s missing out on sleep! Can you imagine it?”
“I can definitely see a baseball with hands and legs,” Mav muttered.
“I can’t speak to any of you right now. Fix your own damn wounds.”
She tossed her towel on the table and stormed out of the room, snatching Blake’s hand to pull her along behind her.
Mav sighed, buttoning up his shirt. “Well, I’m pretty sure she just ruined baseball and sex for me.”
“At least she’s not your mother,” Jeff muttered. “How the hell am I ever supposed to get it up again without her voice entering my mind?”
“How am I gonna be in the delivery room?” My eyes widened in horror as I imagined a baseball baby coming out of my wife’s vagina. “Do you think they could just knock me out during the delivery?”
Pop chuckled, picking up another piece of chicken. “And that right there is why none of you should ever go up against someone like Clara. You should have seen that one comin’ a mile away.”
