“Please, please, please stop crying,” Fenny begged. She’d been left alone with Lilly for all of ten minutes and already things were descending into abject misery. “Look, I know you’ve been dropped on me and I’m a stranger and you don’t know me and I don’t know what to do with you, but did you ever stop to think how upset I might be about all this? I’m not exactly having a ball either.”

Lilly let out another ear-shattering wail.

“Ok, let’s see, you were changed 15 minutes ago, Brad fed you, you shouldn’t be tired, oh crap, teething. Did he have the sense to put a teething ring in the fridge?” Fenny wandered into the kitchen with Lilly in her arms only to find that no, of course there was no teething ring. “Where’s an Otter Pop when you need one, huh?” Fenny mused.

She rifled through the diaper bag looking for a teething ring and trying various toys, none of which amused Lilly. “Do you have an off switch someone neglected to tell me about?” She was answered by a warbling scream. “Why aren’t you like this with Brad, huh? Oh thank god, a teething ring,” she breathed as she finally found it at the bottom of the bag, “now only another 15 minutes of shrieking until it gets cold. This thing better make you happy, or I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“Now don’t hurt yourself out there,” Gina commanded as she rubbed sunscreen into Paul’s back. “You’ve had enough problems with this musical of yours without having to call Melbourne to tell them you broke your leg surfing in California.”

“I wouldn’t talk,” Paul scoffed, “you just abandoned your newly-regained job.”

“Only ‘cause I wanted to be with you,” she cooed, and closed the bottle of lotion.

“Oh, well that’s alright then,” he smiled as he turned around to kiss her. “The ocean awaits,” he announced and headed of.

Gina rolled her eyes at Paul as he gingerly stepped into the water. “A bit out of practice, hey?”

“It’s cold,” Paul informed her.

Gina shrugged and leaned back on her towel, grateful that it was still early and the beach wasn’t crowded. There were some joggers and a dog walker or two, and the water was dotted with surfers all up and down the coast. The surf was far from spectacular, but it would do for a nice bit of recreation and served Paul’s needs. She watched with a quiet smile as he paddled out to the breakers and perched on the board, waiting for a wave. It was wonderful to know that he was hers again, they were together, and they were happier than they had been in a very long time.

Lilly lay in her playpen in the middle of the living room chewing on her teething ring and hitting her stuffed moose with her toy monkey, and Fenny frowned at her. “That can’t be a good sign.” She got up to pour herself another cup of tea, and Lilly began to fuss. “You’re gonna grow up to be such a diva,” Fenny grumbled, “heaven forbid I not fawn over you for a whole three minutes.”

Lilly made a few whining noises and waved the teething ring at Fenny in a way that made Fenny think she just might want to be picked up.

“What do you want to do?” she asked as she leaned down to grab her. “I’m not used to entertaining babies. You’re supposed to read to kids, right? You want a story? You have no idea what I’m saying, why would you want a story. No, not the glasses,” she grumbled, pulling them away from Lilly’s fingers.

Fenny sat on the couch and placed Lilly, squirming and unhappy, in her lap. “Look,” she began, trying to hold Lilly’s attention, “I think you and I are going to have to learn to live with each other. I’m going to be marrying your daddy, and I’m,” she sighed, “I’m going to be your stepmother, and you’ll probably grow up to hate me, but look, I’m trying here. And you don’t care.”

Lilly grabbed hold of the neck of Fenny’s shirt and began to blubber. “This is so not gonna work,” Fenny sobbed, and decided this would be infinitely easier if she didn’t still have the remnants of her first hangover to deal with at the same time as a crying infant.

Gina looked up just in time to see Paul hoist himself up on the surfboard and ride a wave. Granted it was a small wave, but he looked quite spectacular doing it, edging towards the end of the board and seeking out Gina on the beach to wave at her. As she waved back, he lost his balance and fell off with a splash into the water.

She was startled a bit at first, but the wave passed and the board surfaced along with Paul, and he paddled back towards shore smiling giddily. “Having fun?” she asked.

“Having a blast,” he chimed. “Come in with me.”

“No,” she said, the smile instantly dropping from her face.

“Please?” He undid the leash and dropped the board to the sand and leaned down to grab her hands. “It’ll be fun, I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Paul,” she complained and tried digging her heels into the sand, but she couldn’t get any purchase and was soon dragged into the cold water. In no time she was up to her shoulders in the water, shivering like mad, and had both legs wrapped around one of Paul’s.

“Problems?” Paul asked with a laugh.

“Bastard,” Gina hissed, then collapsed into nervous giggles.

“Ah, so you’re one of those that loves anyone that feeds you, huh?” Fenny smiled at Lilly as she sucked away gleefully at her bottle. “I had a dog like that growing up.” The phone rang and Fenny scooted off the couch carefully, then realized her hands were full. “Hold that,” she said to Lilly as she set the bottle on her chest so she could answer the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey Fen,” Brad said cautiously. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, not too bad,” Fenny shrugged. “I haven’t managed to kill Lilly yet. She’s stopped crying for the time being.”

“Good to hear. I just wanted to check on you, see if you were doing alright.”

“Once I got the teething ring in the fridge, everything was ok.”

“Teething ring?”

“I’ll explain when you get home,” she sighed. “When’ll that be?”

“I’m not sure,” Brad said disappointedly. “Not too late though.”

“Good. Just out of curiosity, have you managed to stay clothed in this little film?”

“Yeah, I’m just playing some numbskull in a diner, wouldn’t do to run around in a tube sock.”

“Pity,” she laughed.

“What are you complaining about, you got to see it all last night,” he chuckled.

“Did I?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” he sighed dejectedly, “I forgot you forgot. Speaking of which, how’re you feeling?”

“Well, I don’t want to die anymore. Hangovers aren’t fun, why do you do that to yourself?”

“I dunno,” he answered. “Oh, hey, I gotta get going, I’ll be home as soon as I can, I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said and he hung up.

“Now, when the wave comes, lift your feet up off the ground,” Paul advised, “and it’ll pick you up and take you towards shore.”

“Feet off the ground,” Gina repeated hesitantly.

“It’s not like the ground’s gonna go anywhere,” he chastised. “It’s fun, I promise.”

“If I die, I’m gonna be so pissed at you,” she warned.

It had taken Paul ten minutes to convince Gina to let go of his leg and stand on her own, and now convincing her to surrender herself to the power of a wave was proving to be an even more difficult task.

“Just once, and if you don’t like it, I’ll leave you alone. When’s the last time you heard of someone dying from body surfing?”

“There’s a first time for everything,” she mused.

“Ok, here comes a wave,” Paul said excitedly. “Now turn around…” They turned to face the shore, Gina significantly more hesitant. The wave had crested and the swell was approaching. “Now,” Paul cried and they both picked their feet up and the wave carried them the few yards towards the shore.

Gina surfaced sputtering on salt water and glaring at Paul. “I think maybe I should stick to waving from the shore, and you should never give anyone any more water lessons,” she declared as she headed for the towels.

“I thought you wanted to learn to surf,” Paul pouted.

“Not anymore I don’t,” she grumbled. “I’m happy being the doting wife, thanks.” She squeezed some of the water out of her hair and plopped down on the towel. “You go ahead and surf, I’m gonna go get some ice cream,” she announced happily. “You want something?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“Ok.” Gina kissed his salty cheek, grabbed her bag and headed for the ice cream parlor she’d seen on the promenade. “Be careful,” she called over her shoulder.

“Yes Mother,” Paul chimed as he headed back out with the surfboard.

Fenny stepped back to investigate her progress and heard Lilly babbling and cooing to herself. She dropped her palette and brush on the table next to the easel and padded over to check on the child. “Hi there,” she said as she found Lilly with the moose in her mouth again. She gestured to be picked up again and Fenny obliged, holding her on her hip and wandering back towards her painting. “This is what I do for a living,” she announced as she squinted at it, wondering if the blue was the proper shade. “While your Daddy goes out and plays make-believe. I used to play make-believe,” she mused. “This is funner. And funner isn’t a word, so don’t use it. That’s what my mother used to tell me, and you can see how well it worked. You should be so glad I’m not raising you, I’d drive you nuts with all my babbling.”

Lilly reached out towards the painting and gurgled a bit as she kicked her feet excitedly. “Maybe you’re an artist at heart,” Fenny smiled. A thought occurred to her, she took mental inventory of her art supplies, pondered the toxicity levels of it all, and nodded to herself. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

Gina smiled politely as she was handed her ice cream cone and sauntered out of the shop to head back to see if Paul had managed to kill himself yet. She was careful to walk in the shadows of the buildings to keep her ice cream from melting too quickly, and as she wandered past a coffee shop, her heart stopped. He may have been hiding under a baseball cap and a truly awful Hawaiian shirt, but there was no mistaking him.

Greg.

Fuck.

She hurried past, but it was as if he could sense her presence and he stepped away from the table set up on the beach-side patio and called to her. She closed her eyes and braced herself before she turned to him. “Hey Speccy,” she greeted him casually.

“I thought you were back in Australia,” Greg said, grinning down at her.

“Yeah, well, I’m back again,” Gina said with a slight, uneasy chuckle.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were back in town?”

“Paul’s with me,” she announced weakly. “He’s actually down there surfing.”

“Better than up here with us,” he smiled.

“Greg,” she began, but didn’t know where to go from there.

“I’ve missed you,” Greg cooed and reached for her hand. She felt foolish standing there with a chocolate ice cream cone in one hand and Greg’s warm fingers entwined in the other.

“I missed you too,” she breathed, and felt herself slipping. She averted her eyes to the ground.

“I haven’t seen you since, well, since you left my apartment.”

“I know,” she nodded, trying not to let her body tingle at the memory of the last evening they had spent together. “I’m sorry.”

“You spend a lot of your time slipping out of my bed,” he mused.

“I spend more of my time in your bed though,” she smiled.

“You know that’s not why I love you, right?” he asked cautiously. “I mean there’s more to us than just sex.”

“Of course there is. Look, Greg,” she began, and looked up into his eyes, “I…”

He leaned down and kissed her, a light, fleeting, wonderful kiss that made her head swim. He pulled away and it took a moment for her to open her eyes and remember to breathe. “I love you,” he whispered.

She rested one hand on his chest for a moment as his gaze held hers. She didn’t know what to do, but she couldn’t handle his eyes and had to tear herself away.

Paul’s blue shorts and pale green board caught her attention as he wandered on shore and her heart seemed suddenly to explode. “I have to go,” she babbled, and turned to leave.

“Gina,” he called after her. She quickened her pace. “Fuck.”

“Not bad for a baby,” Fenny mused and flinched away with a laugh as Lilly joyfully hit the piece of canvas board with her spread hand. Fenny glanced over at their first attempt at art, some heavy card stock which Lilly had promptly crumpled up and torn in half.

Fenny took Lilly’s hands and wiped the tempera paint from them, investigating the red paint smeared across the canvas, the tiny little blue handprints across it and yellow footprints. “What color now? How about pink, you being a baby girl and all.” She shifted Lilly in her lap and reached for the white paint to mix in with the red. “I’ll write your name for you, how’s that? Or do you wanna try?” she laughed as Lilly grabbed the brush in her hand and began chewing on the end. “Worse than my cat.”

Fenny wrangled the paintbrush away and with a few strokes wrote out “LILLY” in simple letters across the top. “Look at that, your first artistic endeavor,” Fenny announced. “It needs something, though…” She managed to get up off the kitchen floor with Lilly, placed her in her playpen, and headed for the box of art supplies under her easel and pulled out a bottle of glue and some fine silver glitter she didn’t remember buying.

“Think Daddy will like it?” Fenny asked and set the “piece” on her easel to let the glitter border dry. She turned to see Lilly curled up with her moose. “Had a rough day, huh?” Fenny sighed and covered her with the light blanket. “I like the idea of naptime.” She flumped on the couch and turned on the television with the volume turned down low.

Gina hurried up to the towels they had set up and opened her mouth to say something, anything, when she noticed his arm was bleeding. “I thought I told you not to hurt yourself,” she said as she sat next to him to investigate his wound.

“Fucking fin took a chunk outta me,” Paul growled and gave the surfboard a spiteful kick.

“It wasn’t the board’s fault,” she grumbled. “Come on, let’s get back home.”

“Already?” Paul whined. “I didn’t catch a big wave.”

“You wanna go back out there bleeding to attract a shark?” she countered.

“Are there sharks in LA?”

“Do you want to risk it?” she asked fiercely, glancing up towards the promenade, not sure whether she wanted to see Greg there or not. No, she definitely didn’t, she told herself. “Let’s go.”

“I thought we were leaving Fen with the baby,” Paul reminded her confusedly.

“They’ve had all morning together, one of them could be dead by now for all we know. Come on, come on.”

“Alright, I’m coming, I’m coming.”

She raised her eyebrows at him and seemed to loosen up a bit. “Without me?” she teased.

“Get in the car,” he laughed.

Lilly had been asleep for close to an hour. Fenny had given up on afternoon television and settled on some old Cary Grant movie, which she glazed right over and actually slipped briefly into sleep. Someone was shot on television and she jolted awake, face down on the couch, and the surreal image of Paul beneath her hit her hard and fast, and she tried to shake it off. “What kind of a freaky dream was I having?” she murmured to herself, then realized it hadn’t been a dream. “Shit,” she murmured, then caught herself and guiltily looked over to Lilly’s playpen, glad to see she was still asleep.

“I hereby vow to never drink again,” she breathed, “if it’s going to make me try to defile Paul.”

Fenny lay back as the night played through her mind, the dancing foolishly, the first come-ons to Paul, denying she was drunk, the cab ride home discussing the quality of his suit and the hemline of her dress, the molestation on the couch, Paul dragging her to her room. It was all so humiliating, and Fenny could only hope that Paul had been kind enough not to share this story with any other human being.

She smiled to herself and hummed subconsciously as she suddenly realized what Brad had meant when he’d said she’d “seen it all last night.” The memories, fuzzy as they may have been, made Fenny’s blood pulse maddeningly through her body. She still didn’t know what had gotten into Brad, but if her memories were any indication of what had actually happened, she’d have to find whatever documentary he’d watched on tape.