Page 58 of Can't Win 'Em All
Unfortunately, I never learned from those mistakes. I just kept repeating them, which was exactly what I was doing now.
“You mean the night we made Rexanne, right?” I blurted.
Ruby’s face was filled with annoyance when she turned back to me. “I will choke you on the name Rexanne if you say it again,” she warned. “You’re on my last nerve with that name.”
“You’re warming to it. I can feel it.”
“I will freeze to death before I warm to that name.”
Under different circumstances, I might have laughed. I couldn’t under these circumstances, however.
Ihadto know.
“You said you haven’t had an orgasm delivered by anybody since before you were pregnant,” I reminded her. “Technically, you got pregnant the night we were together, so that’s why you’re phrasing it the way you’re phrasing it, right?”
Ruby’s eyebrows cocked. “What?”
She couldn’t possibly be confused. “I said?—”
Livvie was the one who cut me off. “He’s fishing for compliments,” she explained to Ruby. “He’s afraid he didn’t deliver on the orgasms somehow and that’s too much for his teeny-tiny brain to compute.”
That was a gross exaggeration of what I was feeling. And yet, she wasn’t entirely wrong. “I’m just saying that I gave you fond memories that should carry you through the birth.” I puffed myself out because it seemed like the thing to do.
Ruby blinked, then she blinked again. “You didn’t give me an orgasm.”
Right up until the words escaped her mouth, I thought she was going to thank me for reminding her. I figured there would be one of her perfect smiles tossed my way as she pressed her hand to the spot above her heart and trilled at the memory.
I was not expecting what she actually said.
Now, I could’ve laughed at the joke and pointed her toward the velvet ghost Elvis framed artwork that I was determined to place over our daughter’s crib. Instead, I narrowed my eyes. “You take that back.” The words came out a lot harsher than I was anticipating. There was no pulling it back once it escaped, however.
“Take what back?” Ruby challenged.
“There were orgasms.” I was not going to just let this pass. “There were multiple orgasms in fact. There were so many orgasms I thought you were going to explode.”
Ruby folded her arms over her chest and stared me down.
Livvie, however, was mortified. “Are you seriously picking a fight with her in here over orgasms?” She kept her voice low. “That is the most loser thing in the world.”
I held up my hand to obliterate her face and kept my gaze on Ruby. “Are you telling me you faked those orgasms? Because—and this is just me—I don’t buy it. You were too drunk to think that far ahead.”
Rather than admit she’d been messing with me, Ruby narrowed her eyes. “I thought you didn’t remember having sex with me.”
Yup. I’d done it again. I’d put my foot in my mouth, and now I was going to pay a steep price. Weirdly, I didn’t care. I wanted credit for those orgasms.
“I remember parts of it,” I replied.
“Which parts?” Ruby readjusted her arms, causing the shirt to flutter and isolate her little belly. A belly I was desperate to touch for some inexplicable reason. I was starting to dream about that belly, and I couldn’t explain it.
“I remember you lost a shoe.” I looked back on that night and held out my hands. “I can’t remember what happened to the shoe, but we didn’t notice until we were on the skywalk.”
“You carried me,” Ruby agreed. “I remember that part too. I wish I remembered what happened to the shoe because I’ve had nightmares about getting hepatitis ever since it happened. I mean … I know I don’t have hepatitis, but those skywalks are filthy.”
“So filthy,” Livvie agreed.
I ignored my sister and kept my focus on Ruby. “I remember laughing. We laughed the whole way from the Cosmopolitan to the Stone.”
“I remember that too,” she confirmed. “I believe you were telling me about what you being a Las Vegas superhero would look like.”
