Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75478 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75478 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“I think you’re gonna need to hire that poor woman a full-time cleaning lady to put up with a horde of your kids.”
“You’re probably right on that,” I agreed, circling back to the back porch.
I could picture Bonnie sitting there, belly round, knitting a blanket for another baby while I chased the others around the yard.
It was a good fantasy.
One I hoped to make a reality one day.
“You think it has enough bedrooms?” Valen asked as we walked through a dated kitchen that needed some serious TLC. But I was excited to have something that we could put our mark on.
“Depends.”
“On how many kids you want?”
“On if the basement is as nice as it looked in the listing photos.” At his blank look, I shrugged. “Bonnie has to have a craft room. But I don’t want her sitting in a creepy, dark, spider-ridden basement to do that.”
Opening the basement door, we made our way down. It wasn’t promising right at first. But as soon as we rounded the corner, the space opened up.
The sun sparkled in through French doors and generously sized windows, chasing away any dark corners.
“The floor is hideous,” Valen decided, running his shoe over the dark blue and gold floral carpeting. “But this is nice.”
“Lots of wall space for built-ins,” I said. And floor space for workstations.
“Well, that’s everything you wanted, right?” Valen asked.
“It is.”
“You gonna buy it?”
“Fuck yeah.”
Bonnie - 6 months
“Zima! Leave the poor squirrel alone,” I called through the kitchen window, watching our dog chase a squirrel up onto the fence.
“Run, Petey,” Perish called to the squirrel that, yes, he’d named. He was crouched down, digging out broadleaf plantain weeds by hand because ‘if we didn’t get ahead of this, they would take over everything.’
I was still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that this was my house. Our house.
We hadn’t fully moved in yet. Pretty quickly after closing, a bunch of pesky little issues with the place popped up that needed to be handled.
The back porch that looked so gorgeous was just freshly painted rotted wood. There was a leak behind the tile in the primary bathroom, meaning it—and all the drywall and the floor—needed to be torn out and replaced. Oh, and we couldn’t forget the fact that literally every tap in the house was set up wrong, so the hot was where the cold was supposed to be, and vice versa.
So we’d been spending some of our free time at the house, but sleeping at the clubhouse at night. It was kind of nice. We got to introduce Zima to her new home while we worked on little projects. Then we went back to where she was most familiar to sleep.
Though, the clubhouse was feeling a little more cramped these days. What with the new prospects all trickling in within a few weeks of each other. New prospects not only meant less space, but a lot of parties. And I mean… a lot. All day and all night sometimes.
Sully and I did partake—hanging out in the pool, showing everyone how to use the ‘adult playground,’ or playing cards—but we just as often wanted to kind of just hang out by ourselves in his room.
Actually, more so, we wanted to stay in the room. Crafting, watching movies, talking about the house and the future. Which, apparently, involved quite a few kids.
That was something I could totally get behind. Especially after seeing how amazing Sully was with all of the kids. Not just with the fun stuff—though he was good with that—but with the fighting, the boo-boos, the overtired fits, all of it.
And, yeah, the longer I was with him, the more I felt that little tug in my belly at the idea of us having our own kids.
“How’s it coming?” Sully asked, walking up behind me, wrapping an arm around my belly and resting his head on my shoulder.
“What do you think?” I asked, gesturing toward the little floral border I’d painted along the top of the window.
When we’d first stepped foot inside the house as homeowners, we’d both decided that we didn’t want some bland, boring, builder-model-looking home. We wanted to fill it with personality and fun.
So we picked bold colors. We hung unique artwork. And, yes, I hand-painted little details along windows or on the stair risers.
“Are those…” he started to ask.
“All the flowers you got me for Valentine’s Day? Yep.”
“Love it,” he told me, turning his face to press a kiss to my neck. “Not as much as I love you, though,” he told me, making my belly swoop. “If Perish wasn’t out there, I’d show you just how much.”
“He’s very worried about the lawn,” I told him, smiling as Zima came running up to him, dropping down on her front legs, her butt in the air, and barking at Perish, likely thinking he was playing some sort of game.