Love to Hate You: Three's a Crowd

Chapter Fifteen - The Season of Goodwill

'Are you nervous?' Aunt Vee asked, as she stood beside Xander, where he had taken up sentry at the window overlooking the carriage driveway.

'It's not my ideal situation; meeting the parents when she's not even my girlfriend. When I've put three foetuses inside her.' Then he frowned. 'What is the plural of foetus?'

'Foetuses, I believe,' the older woman replied. He snorted. How dull!

'I expect the collective noun for a group of foetuses is something like "an obligation" or "a life sentence".'

'An obligation of foetuses... A life sentence of foetuses...' Vee mused, trying them out for size.

'Maybe we should just cut to the chase as call it "a clusterf*ck". By the time you add in the devout Christian parents, the weird younger sister and the fake religious brother. When you consider that I'm the father, could it really get any worse?' he asked, voice thick with resignation.

'That's just nerves speaking,' Vee told him. 'And it could certainly be worse. You were worried when you thought there was a problem with the scan. Yes, you fainted when you found out that you're having triplets, but your initial reaction was fear at there being a problem. You are overwhelmed by it all and I know that to some extent, you're going through the motions under sufferance, but you do want to be a good father to these babies, don't you?' He nodded; a minute nod, as though he couldn't bring himself to fully commit to the gesture.

'And you get on well with Amy. You had a wobble when it came to moving in together, but the fact that you both agreed in principle... that's quite telling, I think. She wanted your support, and on some level at least, you want to give it, and believe that you actually can.'

'I don't really know what I'm supposed to do,' he admitted, his focus still fixed beyond the window. 'When we're alone it's... sort of normal. But then we're with other people and there's baby talk, and I have to stop kidding myself that we're spending time together by choice.'

'But you are. She's four months pregnant. She's not at death's door. If you spend time together right now it's because you both want to.'

'We're going to be living together – temporarily at least – and I don't even know where we stand with one another.'

'Have you slept with anyone else? Since you found out about the pregnancy?' Vee asked gently. He turned to her, glancing over his shoulder with a frown.

'Not since I met her, actually. You know I went to Italy for a month or so; that was why we stopped seeing each other. By the time I got back, she was telling Vicky she was pregnant...'

'Do you want to be romantically involved?' her voice cautious, because it would be very neat and convenient if he did. If Amy wanted the same thing, and yet Xander did have issues. He was not reliable. A failed attempt at romance could very well be worse than no attempt at all.

'Sometimes the idea of having family – someone of my own,' he added, when he sensed that Vee was about to insist that she was his family, 'it... has a kind of appeal. But Amy needs to appeal, and I'm not sure that long term, beyond sex, she does.' He blinked rapidly. 'I'm not sure that I'll ever want to have sex with her again. She told me about her bowel movements, for Christ's sake.'

'Darling,' Vee laughed, 'you're complaining to a woman who spent years wiping her son's backside. I'm married to a surgeon and my son's a GP. I've got two grandchildren.' He only looked at her, his face saying, "what's your point?' Shaking her head at him, she said, 'bodily functions are part of life and you at some point, you tend to become acquainted with other people's, as well as your own.' When he still didn't appear to have reached an epiphany, she threw up her hands in dismay. 'Lord, you're hard work! You do realise that when you have sex with a woman, you're only a tiny membrane away from her rectum. Your penis has probably as good as rubbed up against the movements she's not yet had!'