She had the unmitigated gall to do it herself and let him down easy.
I shamelessly listened to the entire thing.
He took it with affable good grace, the Boy Scout. Barf.
When she hung up I tickled her to the ground. “You complete me.”
“Like a pin in a hand grenade,” she agreed.
Just perfect.
“You love me,” I told her just to hear it again.
“Yes.”
“Obviously I know how irresistible I am,” I continued.
“Insufferable when you get your way,” she added.
I ignored that. “Now tell me when,” I ordered her.
“When?”
“I want to know the exact moment you knew you were falling for me. Hit me with it. It was when I answered the door in a towel on that first day, wasn’t it?”
She ignored that, chewing her lip, really thinking about it. “I think it was the night of your pool party, when you were acting like a maniac. The way you took care of me like I was your only thought, your only priority. I think that was when I started to get an inkling.”
“Do you want to know mine?” I asked her.
“Let me guess. It was after I showed you Mischief and Mayhem, wasn’t it?”
“A solid guess, I must say. Wrong, but a good try. I was in strong denial but I actually think you had me hooked from ‘Dev is trite.’”
I’d left her speechless.
I kept going. “I’m not sure how you’ll take this, but even though I was slow to figure out the love stuff, I still meant every marriage proposal I ever leveled at you.”
Speechless again. It was unprecedented.
We were married in record speed, which was saying a lot in Vegas.
We hadn’t even pulled out of the parking lot to head home from the courthouse when I said, “Have the IUD taken out. I want to get you pregnant yesterday.”
Her reaction was better than it could have been, to be fair. She just laughed. “Shut up, you wacko. We don’t have to do everything this very second. Let’s take a minute to breathe.”
“I don’t want to,” I was driving, and I caressed her thigh with my right hand, then tried to cop a feel. “I want to fill you with cum with a purpose, and I want to do it this instant.”
She batted my hand away. She was programming the music for the car from her phone, and not ten seconds later the speakers started blaring out You can’t always get what you want.
“Wife,” I said it like an insult.
“Husband,” she matched my tone precisely.
“Ball and chain.”
“Albatross.”
Ro’s parents showed up at my house less than twenty-four hours after she told them about the wedding.
She was right. They were adorable, and when they were finished chewing us both out and sizing me up, they were delightful to have around. As different from my own family as it was possible to be.
Wholesome and somehow wickedly fun.
They adopted me on the spot, and I instantly enlisted them in my plot of convincing Ro to have ten babies with me sooner rather than later.
They were more than happy to, and they were very good at it. I saw quickly where Ro had gotten her irresistible charm.
Her mother’s name was Ginny, and she was as funny as she was cute. Delightful and a little terrifying, just like her daughter.
She was a very kind, serene woman, but her sense of humor was acerbic and dry, a marvelous juxtaposition that reminded me of no one I had ever met aside from Ro.
I was wandering into my kitchen one morning sans shirt when her wry voice stopped me in my tracks.
“I must’ve forgot I ordered a stripper for breakfast,” Ginny said with perfect, biting timing from the kitchen table. She sipped her coffee, set it down, and asked with pointed impudence, “Where’s the music? Shouldn’t Pony be playing?”
I pointed at her. “You can stop that right now. If your daughter can’t get me to wear more clothing, no one else is going to manage it.”
But I did put on a fucking shirt.
Her father’s name was Arnold, and he wasn’t as cute as his girls, but he was damned funny, a dad joke connoisseur.
“Sorry, we had some work,” Ro told them one day as we met them at the dinner table a few minutes later than we’d planned.
“Well, good work, then. From the looks of it, your work should make us grandparents in about nine months,” Arnold said wryly.
Ro blushed down to her toes, and I smiled at him fondly.
It was rather like being in a house full of Ros, so much fun I could hardly take it all in. So many one liners were whizzing around at any given hour it was impossible not to get nailed with them constantly.
Her parents were both retired, and I talked them into staying with us for two months and made them promise to come back in a month even as I dropped them off at the airport.
“I’ll have her pregnant by then for sure,” I told her dad conspiratorially.
It was hard to pull off with Ro in the passenger seat, obviously.
“I’m right here,” she said huffily.
Ro’s parents were very happy about the marriage in short order, but no one—except perhaps for Ro and I—was filled with as much unmitigated glee about it as Iris.
We told Dair and Iris over dinner at their house. It was just us, them, and their kids.
She and her children had danced around the table in a gloating celebration for about five solid minutes.
Dair just watched them, looking besotted.
“You are an evil mastermind,” I told Iris begrudgingly when she sat down again. “Downright Machiavellian.” I looked at Ro. “But sometimes, I suppose, it’s justified.”
Iris snorted. “That’s the point now, isn’t it? Of Machiavellianism.”
I ignored that. Sass flowed around me like water these days.
I did talk Ro into the tattoos on our asses, and it didn’t even take me long. Apparently marriage made that sort of thing ‘more appropriate.’ Who knew?
It was over a year later when she published her first book, Mayhem the Unicorn Stands Up to Bullies.
I was so proud I could hardly contain myself. I did such a large blast on social media to my dedicated horror fans about the adorable, off brand for me book, that I got some disgruntled emails about it. I couldn’t have cared less, in fact that only encouraged me.
Her publisher even set up a reading and signing at a large local bookstore. There was a pretty good turnout of little girls and boys and even some eccentric adults that were instantly taken with the sassy purple unicorn. I acted as her assistant for the event, our three-month-old daughter strapped to my chest in a baby carrier.
I bounced baby Avril and we cooed at each other while I got Ro absolutely anything she might need during the event. I was kind of an expert at it. She kept turning and beaming at me between books. Every time she did it I went and kissed the top of her beautiful head, nuzzling into her silky hair.
Our family was so adorable that I felt sorry for anyone that had to look at us. We were disgusting. Highly exceptionable.
I was in absolute heaven.
I was only sorry I couldn’t deliver her a proper drink when we were halfway through and she made a tequila face at me. She was staying dry while she was breastfeeding.
Oh well, there was always next time.