Page 134 of Lemon Crush

I took a sip, my lips puckering and throat burning. “Did we earnthat muchof it?”

“Were you not there for the sameAliensreenactment I was?” Bernie shuddered dramatically. “Phoebe’s birth was easy by comparison and nowhere near that graphically disturbing. When you have a baby in the hospital, the nurses whisk away all the evidence while you’re bonding so you don’t have to see it. It’s not just floating up around you like?—”

“We all saw it,” I said, putting my hand on her arm to stop the description. “It’s burned into our retinas and through all time and space. A thousand years from now, people will still tell the story, but allwe’llremember is that you cried harder than the rest of us combined when you got to hold Sammy for the first time.”

She slid me a grin. “Pretty sure you gave me a run for my money, August.”

“Pretty sure nobody was looking at me.” Sammy’s hands were just sotiny.

“Also, she’s remembering wrong,” Morgan said, dragging a cushion from a patio chair and dropping it on the other side of me before joining us. “I heard some horror stories from Yvonne aboutyour birth experience in the hospital, Bernie. You were just too blissed out and in love with your bundle of joy to notice. Like Phoebe was today.”

Bernie’s smile softened. “She’s going to be a great mom.”

“Speaking of Yvonne, she and Phoebe are asleep now. Todd and Wade are taking turns holding Sammy and making breakfast.”

Another Sam in the world. Samantha Lane.

“I can’t believe your kid just had a kid, B.” I looked over at her, wide-eyed. After the last hour I’d thought I was all cried out, but saying it out loud, I felt more tears welling. “How did we get here so fast?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Bernie said a little morosely. “At least she waited to make me a grandma until she was a grown woman with an education and a reliable partner.”

“You sound so grown up right now,” I whispered, and she elbowed me with a laugh. “You’ll have to get a new tattoo to balance things out. Or maybe beat all the men on the racetrack three weeks from now.”

“I approve of both of those ideas.”

“To Bernadette,” Morgan raised her glass with a tired smile. “Officially the sexiest grandmother I know.”

“Why thank you. You’re a lovely and devoted dogmother yourself.”

She smirked. “Yes, I’m very proud. They may shed on all my clothes and poop outside, but they’ll never ask for my car keys, invite me to be at their home birth or tell their therapist what a bad mom I was.”

They turned to me expectantly.

“Don’t look at me. I can’t even keep a plant alive, and I’m the human Merlin barely tolerates.”

“But you handled this whole experience like a pro.” Morgan sounded impressed. “Wade told me you kept Todd’s brain fromexploding, stood up to the evil grandmother, and distracted Phoebe between contractions.”

Bernie cleared her throat. “She also helped a certain someone make it to the sink before she could get sick all over my floor.”

“I thought we promised never to mention that again.”

I snickered. “Yay me.”

“Oh, and you got a haircut and sent your book in yesterday,” Bernie added. “So, we can call you the hottest writer we know again.”

“Huzzah.” I’d have another drink to that.

Morgan laid her hand on my arm, her expression intense. “You finished your book? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, between yourExorcistimpression, all the bodily fluids and the screaming, we were kind of busy,” I told her. I mean, giving birth was a beautiful thing and I adored my godchild and her new baby with all my heart and soul, but there was no denying the process was also a teensy bit…gooey? And Phoebe hadn’t held back her feelings or her volumeat all. My ears were still ringing.

I seriously loved that girl.

“There is a lot of bullshit involved in being a woman, isn’t there?” Bernie said thoughtfully after taking another sip of her mimosa. “Think about all we have to deal with throughout our lives. And I’m only talking about the biology, because I could rant about male privilege for the next year.”

She absolutely could.

“The painful periods you hate until they start to go away,” she went on. “The hormones, the cramps, the aching boobs and unexpected hair growth. Then pregnancy, which is always one wrongly positioned fetus or maternal health issue away from being a life-or-death emergency. And what do we get at the end of it all? When we’re done growing the next generation of humanity with our own bodies, so our entire species doesn’t perish from the earthbefore the boys figure out how to get their sex-bots to do it instead? Menopause.”

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