getting ready for the rest of the world

Her legs lock around you and leave no other option.

You are still inside her, still shaking from the one that emptied both of you, and she will not let you go.
The leglock turns the aftermath into a feverish makeout—mouths finding each other again and again, talking in pieces between kisses, the words coming out wet and honest because there is nowhere left to hide them.

“I hope you already did it,”
she whispers against your lips.
“I hope I’m already knocked up. Deed done. Sealed. Before anyone can come home and have an opinion.”

“I hope so too.”
You kiss the words into her.
“I keep thinking about it. That it already took. That we’re arguing about telling people something that’s already true.”

The talk turns, naturally, to what happens when "they" come back.

Tell them. Keep it a secret. Wait for a test, for confirmation, then show up with a fact instead of a feeling. Every option has a crack in it. Telling now means explaining two weeks of an empty house. Waiting means lying by omission every time her mother asks how the holiday was. A test means living in the maybe until a line appears.

“Whatever we pick,”
she says, forehead against yours,
“we do it together. I’m not walking into that kitchen alone.”

“Together,”
you agree. Then the old pattern asserts itself, because it has always been that way.
“Or—better. I handle your parents. You handle my mum. We were always better with each other’s guardians.”

She huffs a laugh, because it is true. You could talk her father down from a burned shed. She could make your mother put extra snacks out seconds before dinner. The wiring got crossed years ago.

“They won’t be against us,”
you tell her.
“Your parents. Us being together. They’ve watched us since we were tiny. This is the least surprising version of the story.”

Sandra is not sure. You can feel the doubt in the way her legs tighten.

“They wanted me to finish uni. They wanted me safe. They didn’t want their house used as a… breeding ground.”
The joke is weak.
“I don’t know. Mum might smile and then cry in the bathroom. Dad might do the quiet thing.”

You both agree on the other half without a fight.
Your single mother will approve. She has been approving for years.

“She asked us when we were going to start dating,”
Sandra says. “Constantly. I thought she was teasing.”

“She wasn’t.”
You kiss her again, then give her the parts she never knew.
“When we turned eighteen she started sneaking condoms into my stuff. My bag. The drawer. Once in a jacket I didn’t wear. I kept finding them and putting them back in the bathroom cabinet like a coward. It became dinner talk. ‘John, you’re an adult.’ ‘John, I’m not stupid.’ ‘John, that girl is at this house more than I am, I would like not to become a grandmother by surprise, but I would also like you to stop pretending you don’t look at her.’”

Sandra’s eyes go wide, then she laughs into your mouth.
“She said that at dinner?”

“More than once. I changed the subject every time. I thought if I admitted it out loud it would become real and I would ruin us.”
You brush hair off her face.
“So now we’re here, possibly already doing the grandmother-by-surprise route, and she is going to be insufferable. In a good way. She’ll feed you. She’ll cry. She’ll say she told me so.”

“I can handle her,”
Sandra murmurs, certain of that one.
“You can handle mine. And if they hate it we still have each other. That’s the part I’m not negotiating.”

You stay locked together while the plan sits unfinished on the pillow between you: tell, wait, test, together. Her parents tomorrow or the day after. Your mother whenever the courage lines up. The deed, they both hope, already out of anyone’s reach.

The talk dies into cuddles.

Neither of you can fall back to sleep. The sun is coming up anyway, thin and gold across the wrecked sheets, and the oxytocin cookes you both quietly, lying in each other’s arms like the night still has a vote. No more plans. No more parents. Just skin and the slow knowledge of being kept.

Then the stray starts singing.

It is not a song so much as a demand—the wierd cat that treats the fence like a stage, a stand-in rooster with no sense of occasion. Sandra loses it. The peace she wanted with her hubby for at least the last soft hour—punctured by a cat, more angry that the world dares to not stop the time when it was needed than an animal. She untangles, slams the window open, and yeets one of her Poké Ball plushes into the garden with the accuracy of someone who has never thrown a ball in anger before.

You come up behind her just in time to see it.

The plush flies in a high, useless arc, well over the cat. The cat follows it with its eyes, polite, interested, and then turns back to the fence and resumes the song as if nothing happened. The Poké Ball lands in the dewy grass and sits there, unloved.

Sandra is cute and pouty in the window frame, naked, marked, defeated by an animal that does not care about holidays.

You step in behind her and embrace her, chest to her back, and cup both of her breasts in your hands like an impromptu bra so she is a little covered while she leans out into the morning. Second-storey sightlines exist. Your palms do the decent thing and the indecent thing at once.

Her back straightens.

The gasp she lets out is long and unguarded, surprise more than sex.

“Oh. That’s—god. That’s so good. I didn’t know they felt like that. Not carrying them. Just—off me.”

You hold the weight for her and rest your chin on her shoulder, watching the cat ignore the Poké Ball with professional commitment.

“I’ll carry them whenever you desire,”
you offer, mild as anything.
“Free of charge. No appointment needed. Union rates do not apply.”

She laughs, still pouty, still leaning into your hands like she has discovered a new kind of hug.

“You’re volunteering as a bra.”

“desperately so”

The cat hits a new note. Sandra mutters a threat it cannot hear. You squeeze gently, just enough to remind her you are there, and she melts back against you instead of launching another plush. The last morning of the empty house smells like cut grass and marker and sleep. Her breasts sit in your palms as if they have always belonged there.