After Forever Ends by Melodie Ramone
My dad had made reservations for a nice dinner for the entire wedding party at an upscale pub in town. Dad had a quick dinner and a celebratory pint and then left off for the airport straight away. After making sure all the children had a bite, I let them go home with Oliver’s parents. I told Ana that we’d pick them up, but she shook me off, “Nonsense! How often do I get them all at once? You and Oliver have a nice night alone!”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes, have a wonderful time with your friends!”
I thanked her profusely and returned to the table where the Boys from Bennington had decided that we should all change clothes and meet up at another local pub that the twins had haunted since before they were legal. “Oh, this place is great!” Lance raved to his girlfriend. He had obviously been there before, “It’s out of control!”
The place was out of control. It was no understatement. Ollie, Alex and I used to go there when we were young and the night always ended up in some sort of trouble. Alexander and Merlyn were standing on a table leading a crowd in a rendition of a Welsh drinking song when Oliver and I entered. The place was already smoky and crowded and the dance floor was filled even without a DJ.
“Oliver!” Lance called, holding up two drinks, “Silvia! Come have a pint with us!”
“What took you so long?” Laurie McGhee demanded with a smile. She took the glass from Lance and handed it to me, “Come do a shot with me!”
I tossed back whatever it was that was sitting on the table and chased it with the bitters, then tossed back the next one that Lucy handed to me and chased that as well.
“There’s nothing you and I won’t do, Alexander Dickinson!” Merlyn sang to Alexander as he lifted him up off the table by his waist and twirled him around.
Alex put his hands on Merlyn’s shoulders and bent one leg at the knee, pointing his toe up like a little girl, “I’ll stop the world and melt with you, Merlyn Pierce!” He swore, nuzzling the top of his old friend’s dark head with his nose.
“Oh, aye,” Oliver smiled, picking up a shot for himself, “This is going to be a party!”
Oliver and I were not ones to drink much, but it seemed like multiple shots and bitters were an excellent idea that evening. Before I knew it I’d lost count. I was sitting at a table downing another shot when Alexander came and put his hand over the top of the glass.
“Slow down, Sil, or you’ll throw up like little Gryff!” He took the shot and had it himself. “All over Merlyn’s wife!”
Penny thought this was hysterically funny, “Oh, give the girl the drink! She looks like it’s been awhile since she got out! I’ve been puked on loads of times!”
“Yeah!” I picked another, “She gets puked on a lot!”
“You’re bladdered,” Alexander told me. He rubbed my head affectionately. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you wasted. Can you handle it at your age?”
“I’m a fucking Scot!” I told him definitely, “Of course I can! I could out-drink you the day I was born, Welshie! Can you handle it at your age, Old Man?”
“I’m not bladdered!”
“I can’t believe you married my sister!” I cried, “You better be good to each other or I won’t know which one to kill!”
Alexander said something, but I couldn’t hear him over Penny’s laughter and the general noise of the pub, which was filling up rapidly. We did another shot together and then another with Oliver and the two of them took me by either hand and led me out on to the dance floor.
Oliver and Alexander actually both danced quite well for men of their size. When we were younger we’d go clubbing in Finsbury on Turnmill Street. We’d dance shamelessly and seductively, the three of us, with me pinched in the middle. I’d been asked more than once how I knew which one not to kiss. I’d never admitted it, but once I had kissed Alex on accident, to which he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and said, “Ewwwwwwww!” It had turned out to be so funny that all of us still joked about it from time to time. The three of us were doing something similar that night, only my little sister was in on it now as well. “Twincest!” We were shouting and laughing, “Long live twincest!”
I was so pissed that night that I’m not quite sure what all happened other than I spent the majority of my time dancing with Alexander, who kept grabbing my bottom, and with Lucy, who kept grabbing my bottom, too. It seemed to be a game grabbing my bottom that night as Oliver and Penny were at it, too. I was grabbing their bottoms to make things even, of course. Alex and Lucy left there first, somewhere around one in the morning, since they had a plane to catch in London at ten. After that I lost a drinking game to Merlyn, told some woman off for flirting with my husband and danced with Lance and Oliver, sandwiched between them like a floozy. I remember Lance’s girlfriend joining us, squeezing herself into the mix with Oliver, and after a moment Penny pushing her way up, squishing Lance between her and me. His head was caught, smashed between our breasts while Merlyn snapped photos. It was extremely naughty and terribly funny, even after we were all back to a normal state.
A few hours later when they had sobered up, Lance and his Daneen bid us farewell.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” Oliver told him sincerely. He gave Lance a slap on the back that sent him forward a step.
“We’ll all get together soon!” He promised as he helped Daneen into the car. “Silvia,” He held his arms wide. I bent to give him a wet kiss on the cheek, “Take care of this hopeless mess you married!”
“I will! I love you, Lance Crosby!”
“Well, I love you, too, Silvia Dickinson,” He said mildly as he shut his car door and drove away.
“Sandra Ashby’s got a thing planned in the fall,” Merlyn was saying as he headed for his own car, “Are you two going?”
“We wouldn’t miss it!” Oliver hung his arm over my shoulder, “Lance says he’ll be there, too!”
“We’ll see you then for sure then as well!” Merlyn grinned, “My God, you two don’t look a day older than you did leaving Bennington!”
“I’m not sure we are,” I told him seriously.
He laughed, “Well, you’re the lucky ones then!” He got into his car and rolled down the window, “See you!”
“Take care of those precious babies!” His wife called.
We waved as they drove away.
“Well, Sil,” Oliver turned to me, “Should go and get the kids from Mum’s?”
“Are you mad?” I leaned into him and bit his shoulder softly, “She asked to keep the four of them! There’s no one at the cabin! We’ve got a night of snogging ahead, you!”
“I’ll do more to you than snogging then!” He picked me up around the bottom and ran toward the car with my middle crushed to his belly.
“You bet you will!”
Oliver plopped me on the bonnet and gave me the same look I’d seen him give a good steak when he was starving. He put his hands in my hair and pulled my face to his. I wrapped my arms and legs around him and snogged him like we were teenagers. He pulled my bottom tight against his middle, “God, Silvia, you are so damned sexy…”
“Oliver,” I tilted my head as he licked my neck. I popped a few buttons off of his shirt shoving my hands into it and clawed his chest, “We’re on top of a car in a car park…”
“This is new,” He agreed, pulling my chemise out of my skirt.
My heart was pounding in my chest. “Oliver…” I couldn’t decide if I was going to keep kissing him or tell him we needed to stop. One of my shoes fell off. I had to hike my legs higher to keep from sliding off the car. He pressed me down. “Oliver…” I was tugging at his belt. I decided that I liked kissing him better than stopping when we were rudely interrupted.
“Oy!” The man shouted and then belched loudly, “They got rooms above the pub, yous!”
“Ah, go get your own then!” Oliver shouted back, but we straightened up. He took a step away from me and turned toward our heckler. His shirt was ripped open, his belt was loose and his hai
I slipped off the car to find that my skirt had gone sideways and half a breast had worked its way out of my blouse. I tucked it in hurriedly, but couldn’t figure out how to get my skirt on straight. I stood there fooling with it and turned an ankle in the one shoe I was still wearing.
“Hey!” The man shouted again, “You’re my kid’s doctor, ain’t you?”
“I am not!” Oliver yelled back, heading around to his side of the car, “I’m his twin brother! The good looking one!”
“Giving it to his wife on his car?” He laughed, “If I was your twin brother I’d kill you!”
“If I was my twin brother I’d kill me, too!” He replied and then looked confused, “Did I say that right? If I was my…”
“Oh…piss off!” I shouted, picking up my shoe and yanking open the car door, “You’re about a pint past sober! Mind your own business!”
“Ma’am, I was watching you inside. You’re about ten past sober!” The man laughed again and walked back into the pub, letting the door slam.
I sat in the passenger’s seat and shut the door.
Oliver got in the car, “Well, that was a bit awkward,” He said mildly, sticking a key in the ignition, “We should go somewhere much more private than that, don’t you think, Love?”
“Definitely.”
He looked over at me and motioned with his thumb, “Back there all right with you then?”
“Perfect!” I was over the seat before him.
It was not quite light out when we woke up naked and tangled in the back of the car. “Oh, good God!” Oliver slipped on his jeans, slowly and with great effort, “I think someone blasted a rocket off from between my ears.” He hit his head on the window closing his button and pressed his hands to his skull.
“Where is my skirt?” I fumbled with my knickers and finally just dropped them on to the floor and picked up a shirt.
Oliver looked about and then pulled it out from under his legs, “Here. Your shirt’s buttoned crooked, Love. Actually, that’s my shirt.”
“I don’t care,” I pulled up my skirt and gave up almost immediately on zipping it.
Oliver yawned and rubbed his head, “It’s a good thing I didn’t drive. I think I was a bit more juiced up than I realised. Lord, I have to pee!”
“Well, go do it!”
“I will!” He pulled on his undershirt and got out of the car.
“My neck is killing me.” I whimpered as he got into the front seat.
“When we get home I’ll rub it for you.”
“I think I’m going to puke.”
“You probably are.”
“Oh, I feel wretched, Oliver.”
“You’ll be all right.”
I decided it was better for me to stay in the back instead of joining him in front. We drove on in silence until he pulled up at the end of our path and stopped the car, “We’re home, Love. You all right?”
“My head hurts.”
“Sorry,” He said sincerely.
“Don’t be. I did this to myself.” I lay down on the seat.
We were both quiet. Oliver dozed off in the front for about an hour while I suffered in the back. Finally, I shoved the door open and vomited all over the grass. I felt much better when I was through.
“That was commanding,” Oliver observed, putting a hand on the small of my back, “Are you through, Love?”
“I think so.”
“You ready to go in then?”
“Oh, yes,” I got out of the car on the other side as to avoid my mess and began to make my way across the garden. I was about half way when my skirt, which I had not zipped, fell down and I tripped over it, sprawling in the grass. It seemed like too much of an effort to get up, so I didn’t.
Oliver sat beside me, “Bare arsed, face down on the lawn. God, I’m proud I’m married to you,” He waved a piece of gum before my eye, “Here, Love, chew that. It’ll help the taste in your mouth. At least you had your hair back, eh?”
“Aye,” I took the gum and put it in my mouth, turning on to my back with my eyes closed. Oliver collapsed beside me flat on his face with his arms to his sides.
Both of us slept for a little while. When I woke, I rolled on to my knees. I spat out my gum and focused my eyes on the cabin. I was gauging the distance, considering whether or not I wanted to make a crawl for it.
“You know, Silvia,” Oliver rubbed my thigh, “You’re beautiful when you’re recovering from a night of debauchery. Want to give it another go?”
“Oh, yes. Right here, Sweetheart. It’s just too far to the house.”
Funny how it all happened. All in one day, Alexander married Lucy, Oliver and I saw a bunch of old friends, got drunk, almost had sex in public, wound up making love twice in our car, then did it again later in our front garden, passed out and woke up freezing in the November chill, oddly with sunburns on our bottoms and backs.
Best of all, six weeks later I discovered that I was pregnant.
Who would have guessed Lucy would be, too?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Antonia Rose and Elizabeth Elena Dickinson were born eight and a quarter months later at ten sixteen and ten twenty six am respectively. After a rough pregnancy that included going into full blown labour at only five months followed by three months of taking drugs and lying flat on her back with her feet up to avoid it happening again, Lucy had gone into labour early once again the night before.
The whole thing was very scary. Oliver called to tell me that the water had ruptured on one of the amniotic sacks while he’d been at the house. He’d gone with Alexander to take Lucy to the hospital and there was no stopping it now, early or not, the babies were coming. Lucy took this quite calmly. She was, as any other first time mother, completely clueless. Oliver came home after an hour or so, saying that her labour was progressing very slowly and we didn’t need to rush out. Alex would call when it got serious.
And so we spent an evening with all four children in the cabin and we went to bed without much concern. Alexander called us at about nine in the morning to tell us that she was in full blown labour. After hours of only mild contractions, she had completely dilated within twenty minutes, was in horrible pain, and by the time she was to begin pushing she had become hysterical.
“Can you come?” He sounded desperate, “Right now, Silvia?”
“I can,” I said uncertainly, “I have to collect the children…”
“I need you now! Lucy needs you now!”
“We’ll be there straight away,” I assured him. There was something in his tone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I hung up with Alex and told Ollie what was happening. We were out of the cabin and on the road to Newtown in a flash.
When we got to hospital, I could hear Lucy screaming all the way down the hall. “I told her she needed to take the drugs,” I covered my ears with my hands. I felt like I was going to vomit, “A natural childbirth, she said! Oh, my poor, stupid little sister! Listen to her!”
Oliver wrapped me in his arms, closing my one ear with his chest and the other with his hand, “It’s OK, Love. There are doctors with her.”
“Is that Mummy carryin’ on?” Nigel, obviously concerned, turned and looked at Oliver. Ollie reached out and put his hand on the boy’s head, but said nothing.
Edmond and Ana had been there when we’d arrived. Ana was sitting in a chair to my right, clutching her purse in her hands. She looked pale. “Eddie,” She made a motion with her eyes, “Take the children and go down the hall, please,” Edmond nodded and gathered up the children. With promises of crisps from the vending machine, they happily followed him out of the waiting room. Ana stared straight ahead, but her chin quivered.
“Mum?” Oliver said gently, taking a step toward her, “Don’t cry! It’ll be fine! Oh, come here! I’ve got arms for both of you!”
She stood and fell against her son. Oliver was holding us both unde
I nodded. Alexander took my hand. I waddled as fast as I could along behind him, being eight months along myself. I looked over my shoulder and watched Oliver draw his mother in with both arms. “Be strong for her, Love!” He called after me. “She’ll get through it!”
“They gave her something to calm her down, but she’s asking for you. She’s lost it completely!” Alexander was stressed. I could see the vein pulsing in the side of his neck as it only did when he was very upset, “I’ve never seen anyone like this!”
Lucy was lying in her bed moaning when I entered the room. When she saw me, her eyes widened. She looked crazed, not at all like sweet little Lucy, “Oh, Silvia!” She held her hand out for me, “I’m dying, Silvia! I’m dying just like Mummy…”
“Lucy!” I went to her side, “You are not dying!” She went into a contraction and screamed bloody murder. “Lucy!” I got right in her face, “Look at me! I said look at me!” I knew I only had seconds before she contracted again.
My sister looked into my eyes, but she was completely dazed, “I killed her, Sil! She died having me!” She screamed again, “Make it stop! Make it stop!”
“Lucia Dianna Cotton!” I grabbed her chin and forced her to look into my face, “Mummy didn’t die having babies! Mummy died because she fell! She fell, Lucy! She fell off of a ladder hanging curtains in a shop at her job!” Lucy contracted again. She screamed wildly, “Lucy! Come back to me!” I put my hand on her sweaty cheek and made her look into my eyes again, “She hit her head, Sweetheart! She died from too much blood inside her head, not because she was having babies!”
“I always thought…I thought I killed her…” She screamed again, pounding her head back against her pillow. “Please! Please! Stop!”
“Oh, God, Lucy! No! It was an accident! A stupid, silly accident!”
“I didn’t do it? She didn’t die because of me?”
She tilted her head back and screamed again, but not with as much force. I could see the strength draining out of her.