Page 71 of Shade
The entire flight back to LA, Willa won’t talk to any of us, so I sleep. Best fucking sleep I’ve gotten in weeks.
It’s when we walk through the door of our house where she has to break up an actual fist fight between Roan and Tiller that she says, “We have to talk,” and puts her hand on her stomach.
“It’s not mine,” Tiller says, smirking.
We don’t know who the dad of her baby is and she says she doesn’t have to tell us. Can you believe she’d keep a secret from us?
Maybe don’t answer that.
And no, I didn’t sleep with her. She’s nearly forty. Believe it or not, I have age limits.
Tiller, he doesn’t, so there’s a good chance it could be, though she’d never have sex with any of us. Roan and Tiller have both tried on a handful of occasions with no success.
To our left, I notice a man sleeping on the back patio near the pool, one leg flopped in the water, the other precariously on the edge. I have no idea who he is but like I said before, our house is more like a hotel. Half the time there are people here we’ve never met. They’re usually a friend of a friend who came to a party with their sister’s cousin’s stepbrother. You follow that?
Yeah, me either. But it’s bazaar shit like that, and we never ask and usually kick them out. Eventually. Maybe after a day or two.
Aside from Taco. You remember him, right? Abu Dhabi? Twelve Jägerbombs?
He came back with us. How, I don’t recall, but I don’t remember yesterday, so that’s not to say I didn’t have something to do with Taco following me home. By the way, it’s illegal for him to be here and we only understand two words he says. Pussy, which he tends to get a lot of here, and blunt. Which he smokes a lot of. Given his two hobbies, he and Tiller are best buds.
Anyway, I’m focused on the guy in the pool, wondering if he falls in all the way, if he’ll drown, and Willa’s attempting to have a grown-up conversation with us.
Taking a seat on the couch, Willa fans herself with the blazing heat ripping through the house. Why it’s so fucking hot in the house might have something to do with the fact that there’s a gaping hole in the side of the house facing the pool. And before you ask, no, I don’t know where it came from.
Willa sighs, using aPlayboymagazine off the coffee table to fan herself. The pages are strangely wrinkled, and there’s something sticky on the cover she may not want to be touching, but she’s probably hot enough she doesn’t care at this point. Her face is literally the color of a tomato. “This baby is coming whether you guys want it or not, and I need to take care of myself, not you three shits. So I have to take about three months off.”
Did you hear the bomb that just went off? It might as well have with the deafening silence that follows that destructive statement.
The three of us without Willa?
Well that can’t happen. It’d be like letting loose a set of triplets with ADD and a traumatic brain injury.
“Three months?” Roan asks, tugging at his hair like he’s confused, eyes wide. “How long are you planning on being pregnant?”
She takes thePlayboymagazine and throws it at his head. The edge of it just misses his right eye. “Shut up. Three months after the baby’s born. I’m due next month.” For some reason, she’s speaking to us like she’s told us all this before. She might have for all we know.
“So who’s going to take care of things?” I ask, joining the conversation. Willa keeps me out of a lot of trouble. I guarantee you if it wasn’t for her, whatever I did or didn’t say to the announcer last night would have gone completely different. “I don’t want a stranger coming in here bossing me around. Unless she’s hot, then she can boss me around all she wants.”
I didn’t grow up with a mother. Willa is like my mother. Sure, Ricky raised me but he’s about as strict as Tiller would be as a father. You wouldn’t believe the shit we got away with as teenagers, and now. Willa has been our only sense of reasoning, so her saying she’s leaving could be pretty bad for me.
You’ve seen my behavior lately. Do you really think it’s wise for her to up and leave me alone? Yeah, me either.
“I’ll find a replacement for you guys,” she tells us, watching all three of our reactions separately, and then focuses on me, the one she knows is going to have a problem with this because I usually have the most shit going on. I spend 90 percent of my time with Willa. The other 10 percent is when she’s sleeping and I get myself into trouble.
You’re wonderingwhyshe has to spend so much time with me compared to Roan and Tiller. Sure, she’s the PR rep and personal assistant to all of us, but I’m usually the one with the most going on. While I not only compete with the X-Fighters, Nuclear Cowboyz, and Nitro-Circus, and any other freestyle event I get invited to, I do modeling for an apparel company, endorsement deals, commercials, and product advertising. I’m basically the freestyle face for Red Bull. Which in turn translates into I need someone telling me where to be and when.
Willa takes in my “What the fuck do I do now?” look and gives me a sympathetic glance. “I’ll still be around, Shade. I just need to take some time off. I have to think about my baby now.”
I try to recall anyone who’s ever been able to keep up with my demands to replace her and the only one I can think of is the manager of Wellington Suites, that hotel we stay at in Seattle every time. That chick can get me anything I need at any time.
“What about that chick at the hotel? We need someone like her. Maybe she can take a leave of absence.”
It’s just like me to think she’ll drop everything and be our assistant. I mean, wouldn’t she?
She’s even used to the shit we pull. We’ve destroyed that hotel a time or two and she always takes care of everything. Sure, we pay for the damages but how many managers would let you come back to their hotel after you made a jeweled lifelike twenty-foot wide vagina in their pool?
Certainly none that I’ve stayed at, aside from Wellington Suites.
