“It’s my pleasure. I’d hug you, but…” Liz motioned toward her large belly.
“It’s all good. When are you due?” Xeni asked as they headed through the sliding double doors. A security guard that couldn’t have been more than eighteen smiled and nodded at them.
“In a few weeks. This kid is ready now, though. I can feel it.”
“I can’t imagine what that must feel like.” Xeni had been pregnant twice before, each time for a whole hot second, but she’d never reached the point where the woes of the third trimester were even close to a thing.
They walked further into the store, passed the remains of a back-to-school display and stopped in the women’s clothing section. “I say that like this isn’t the easy part. Once they come out, you realize you’ve made a terrible mistake and you have a whole ass human to take care of. I’m kidding. I love my daughter so much.”
“Oh, I do get that part. I teach kindergarten.”
“Oh okay. So you do get it,” Liz laughed. “ThatI can’t imagine. I’m terrible with other people’s kids. Dealing with a few dozen of them at once? No way. P is like the weirdest kid, but she’s my weirdo.”
“No, that totally makes sense. Every school year, it takes a little while to get the kids settled in the classroom, get them used to being away from home, from their parents, their nannies. But once things are rolling, those kids are my favorites. They become my babies. Last year I wanted to fight the kids across the hall. Sass mouthing me every day at recess.”
Liz let out a high pitched “Ha!”
“Can’t fight toddlers, but you think about it from time to time.” Xeni let a wistful sigh. Thoughts of all the start-of-school drama she was missing at that very moment made her chest feel a little tight. She pushed the feelings down and turned to a rack of corduroy, spaghetti-strap dresses.
“So what are we looking for? How can I help?” Liz asked. “I suggested Target because you give off a pretty chill vibe, but not like pottery-instructor-who-thinks-they’re-woke-but-belongs-to-the-local-country-club. A lot of the boutiques in town are like that. Old White lady expensive in this very particular way. Plus, they never have my size.”
Xeni didn’t have a hard time believing that. Liz had to be close to six feet tall and, even without the baby who was currently renting her womb, she was rocking some serious curves. Xeni knew what it was like being Black and trying to shop in certain parts of L.A.. She imagined Liz had enough awkward, slightly racist stories to tell.
“Probably smart to come to a big chain store too. Small town. Small stores. Lots of questions.”
“Oh, you think you’re going to escape the questions? If that’s what you’re hoping for, you should probably leave town now,” Liz teased.
“Ugh. Too much to ask for? Can’t just swoop in, marry someone, claim an inheritance and leave?”
“Uh, no. I arrived here on textbook shady circumstances and my husband, Silas, basically just drove me around the first day and introduced me to everyone to get all the speculation out of the way. He knew people would start showing up at the farm to meet me and after we got engaged, they did.”
Xeni chuckled a little. “What were the shady circumstances?”
“I used to be in corporate litigation and a former client tried to have me killed.” She said it all calm and cool, like she hadn’t just mentioned attempted murder. “Silas’s brother stashed me here until things blew over. Well—until that client blackmailed me and had me fired.”
“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Honey, that’s beyond shady. I’m just going through drama with my mom and my aunties. Someone tried to kill you?”
Liz stepped close and dramatically took Xeni’s hand between her warm palms. “That’s why I came with you today,” she said, her tone only half joking. “If anyone knows what it’s like to find themselves, a city bitch through and through, in Kinderack County married to a half Scotsman who’s bigger than barn, it’s me.”
“So you’re not from here?”
Liz dropped her hands and turned back to the racks. “Girl, no. I’m from the Bronx. Been here over three years and my sister still hasn’t forgiven me. She hates driving up here.”
“Well, I’m not staying, but if for some reason I bump my head and decide farm living is the life for me, you’re the first person I’m talking to.”
“I don’t know. It didn’t take that much persuading for me. Let me stop lying. Silas didn’t even have to ask. Moving up here was my idea.”
“Yeah, but it sounds like you’re pretty in love and from the looks of things,” Xeni shot a meaningful look toward her Liz’s pregnant belly, “making the most of it.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. It took me a whole hot three days to start falling for Silas, but if there’s one thing those McInroy boys have in common, it’s their big hearts. I’m not saying you’re gonna wanna make this for real, but Mason will get in there, right in the center of your chest and make himself nice and comfortable. He’s a real sweetie.”
“Does the gianteverythingrun in the fam?”
“Well, I don’t know if Mason’s packingeverything, but yeah.”
“Sorry. I wasn’t talking dick size. I just meant, I didn’t know if Mason’s overall dimensions were an anomaly. I take it Silas is a big man too.”
“Both their dads and their moms are not small people. Silas has a twin. Not as swole, but just as tall.” Liz took out her phone and showed her a family photo from their wedding. Yeah, her husband and his brother were pretty large. Pretty hot too. Xeni swallowed, not sure what to make of the fact that Mason was bigger than them both. And how that fact made her a little warm between her legs.
