moonlight

“nineteen years,” she said with a small sigh. “no. not unless she goes into cardiac arrest.”

“they say it’s a good thing that she has to wait longer because it means her heart isn’t as bad as others, but still... waiting is the scary part. i’m up higher on the list than she is, and it just... it pisses me off, she’s a baby. babies should be at the very top of the list. it’s not fair to them.”

“thank you...” she said softly as she looked down at cat, who had stopped eating after hearing her name. “hi, bellissima.”

“you already have the taser and pistol from work, we don’t need anymore firearms in this house. you keep it turned off here, but do you know how many times the babies have reached for it and almost gotten it? what if one day you forget to turn it off? the same thing can happen with a gun. we all appreciate the safety, but we already have the resources --- that i don’t like --- so there’s no reason to have more than needed. we already almost lost cat, we don’t need anything in this house, where she’s supposed to be safe, to possibly put her in harm’s way even more.”

“i don’t know how i feel about that.”

“little kids are stressful. i’ve got two of ‘em 24/7. if they weren’t mine, i don’t know if i’d be able to handle them all the time,” she said as she sat lexy in her lap. “you must be a teacher.”

“i know, but we’re raising them with morals. they’re the daughters of a preacher’s daughter. they’ll have it in them to know to wait for someone they love,” she said. “it’s gonna happen, honey. it’s inevitable. but it won’t happen for a long, long time, huh twins? tell daddy not to worry.”

booker chuckled lightly and nodded. “i have a great dane that’s two inches taller than the average sized great dane, so any other dog is small compared to him.”

"i used to use them. but i never remembered them, so now i used them as laundry bags to separate my girls' clothes," she said with a small laugh. booker watched him, curious to what he was doing and once he held the money out, she shook her head. "no, it's fine. i'm a good doer --- i help when it's needed. there's nothing pitiful about needing a hand now and then."

“oh, yeah. the one bad thing about having kids is that they grow up and don’t listen,” she said, running her hand over lexy’s peach fuzz hair.

“nope, i have a cellphone,” she said, getting to her contacts and adding a new contact before handing her phone to him. “i’ll lose a piece of paper, i won’t lose my phone.”

booker laughed a little and nodded. “yeah, i know. everyone says that. at first, i got a lot of ‘teen marriages never work’ and ‘high school sweethearts never end up together’, but we were more than high school sweethearts. we’ve known each other literally our entire lives,” she said before nodding again. “mhm. we had to prove that we could handle it. but it wasn’t hard. we’ve always been honest with our parents about everything and there was nothing to hide. my parents said they’d sign the consent papers as long as we stayed at their house until we both turned eighteen, and we both had jobs, so we moved into the guest house in the backyard and paid ‘em rent for it. dad insisted that we didn’t need to, but we were going to have to do that once we moved out to our own place anyways, so we got a taste of what it would be like to be on our own early and it was a good advantage. they were less than thrilled when i got pregnant, but my dad was like ‘at least they’re married’,” she said with a shrug. booker looked at the girls for a few seconds and smiled as cat looked up at her. “oh, i know. i’ll be ‘that’ mom. they’re thirty years old, married with kids and great jobs and i’ll still be like ‘your curfew was at 7:30, get your butts home’.”

@bookerharris: my lil squishies. cat has her daddy's smile @aadynftw