I really need to go look at that town again, only played in it during challenges and didn't really get out much, the only name I recognise so far is James Hoppcraft, be interesting to look and see what you did to them in the makeovers.
I did have fun with the makeovers. James doesn't really make any more appearances, though.
I started a DecaDynasty with Malcolm recently, and he made a great founder. I hope he and Mika get together!
Malcolm's always been one of my favorite townies. As it turns out, he's also well-behaved and perfect founding material!
I kind of hoped they would too. Mika certainly didn't.
Chapter 4: Housewarming Gifts
Where Mika woke up felt hard, but all of the mattresses in the house felt that way. Strange how this one didn’t seem to have a lump, though. She swore that all their mattresses did. Her hand ran across the surface, which didn’t seem to end and felt like smooth linoleum under her fingertips. In fact, she ran her fingers over smooth linoleum.
It was the bathroom floor, wasn’t it? She kicked the toilet by accident. Her hand almost broke the glass of the shower door. Mika, feeling like a steamroller ran her over and like a jackhammer was in her brain, tried to get up. She tried to get up, and rationalize why she was there, in a cramped washroom.
“Dear Christ, what happened,” she mumbled, with her stomach on the cool tiles. Everything felt exposed, until she touched herself on her upper back. Her strapless bra stayed, despite all odds, but her regular top was missing. Everything touched linoleum instead of fabric, such as the majority of her legs. She wore long jeans at the party. They ended up somewhere else too.
Mika took many deep breaths. She feared the worst of what could have led her to passing out in her underwear, but didn’t entertain the thought for long. For her own sanity, she assumed that she forgot where her bed was. But in order to think happy thoughts, she needed to punish her hungover mind. Mika needed another beer, if they had it.
She stumbled at first, but soon found her legs again and exited the bathroom. From inside the bathroom, it sounded like there was a conversation or some pillow talk. Someone stayed overnight. Mika didn’t know what to make of that. After exiting the bathroom, she found her guest.
Helen Hall...Mika knew
about Helen. She never formally met the woman, and assumed that she was young and white. However, with deep brown skin and a greying afro, she got Gladsten’s attention about eight months back and things almost looked serious for them. Mika cared for one second, and then walked to the keg to see if anything was left to grow stagnant and lukewarm.
“Good luck breaking the news to her,” Helen said, as Mika took a sip from another drink. Her ears perked up at that, but she tried to brush it off as something that didn’t concern her.
Helen left. Mika went on the hunt for her clothes, while Gladsten got his jeans and shoes back on.
As she buttoned her jeans’ button, Gladsten rubbed the back of his neck and averted his gaze to the floor as if he had something to hide.
“Okay, there is something I need to tell you about last night,” Gladsten said. “And it’s pretty awful.”
“You’ve seen me at my worst for other parties. I’m almost afraid,” said Mika. “Except I’m not. This didn’t exactly bring down the house, and I had, what. Four beers?”
“I lost count. But this is kind of serious, and I feel bad about it. How about a seat?” They took both of the seats in front of the telly. Mika smiled with a soft smile, ignoring a killer hangover.
“If you feel bad about it, did...did you sleep with me, Gladsten?” she asked.
“It’s worse than that. I did nothing,” he said. “But you did something nasty in the bathroom that I think you blacked out for. But to be fair, he was blacked out too.”
“Please don’t tell me it was James,” said Mika, with slight fear seizing her face. “I don’t want to be that sort of homewrecker. I mean, I saw a ring on him. He was drinking a lot too.”
“No, he left pretty early.”
Mika went through the list of guests, ignoring one obvious candidate. But she went through the rest of the male guests. The plain and portly Branch didn’t touch her. Dante made one joke about it, but it wasn’t him either. Whoever sat in the left chair watching the football game seemed like a suspicious sort of guy. He was Kyle, and one of the new recruits that Gladsten got to push around. He passed out in the yard long before Mika got plastered.
That was the end of the list. One last man remained.
“Don’t tell me,” Mika groaned.
“I don’t want to,” said Gladsten.
“Oh god, I did nasty things with Malcolm, didn’t I?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t do anything.”
“What?” She got up from her chair, fists clenched and fuming. “Okay, I’m hoping you were as useless as I was at that time. I mean, you’re my best friend, surely you would have done something if you were sober.”
“I wish I was hammered. Look, Mika, I feel really bad about this-”
“I thought I trusted you, Gladsten!” she yelled. “I thought I trusted you to make sure that I didn’t
totally make a fool of myself. I know I’d do the same for you! But no, you were sober and still didn’t stop me from doing horrible things with that...that nerd.”
“You seemed into it when you were making out against the wall. I thought you were more lucid than you were and changed your mind about him,” said Gladsten. “Gosh, you really don’t remember any of that?” Mika shook her head no.
“I kind of remember taking a shower. Was he in there with me?” she asked. He nodded, cringing a bit as he did.
“Look, we can confront him about this.”
“I just want to forget,” said Mika. “Forget about last night, and forget about him. Can we do that?”
“If that works,” said Gladsten, taking her shoulders. “I’ll help you start. The diner has some great hangover cures.”
“Yeah, I need one of those,” she said, beaming at his offer. “Here’s to forgetting.”
The forgetting process worked well for a few months. Mika rejected a few calls from Malcolm, and he seemed to get the hint. She ran into him looking guilty at the grocery store. But they waved and didn’t share any verbal greetings. Both her and Gladsten stayed sober and focused on keeping a house in one piece, now that they had one.
Gladsten, soon after the party, got a piece of mixed news. Helen birthed a little boy named Allan two weeks after the party, and he had all of his fingers and toes in place. Instead of arranging a shotgun wedding or even writing a child support check, he went home to Mika and tried to make light of the situation. “How does this compare to burning good salmon?” he asked her. “I’m sensing that this might be a red flag. Help me set up a new dating site profile.”
“About time you got some responsibilities,” Mika said. “Maybe it will be a good situation, getting serious about a woman and a family after all these years. I always hoped you would.”
“Why would you wish that on me? I thought you actually cared about your old buddy.” He punctuated it with a laugh and punched Mika in the arm. In jest, of course.
“You’d probably make a better dad than you think you would. You’re cuddly beneath those pecs. I mean, you’d do better than I would being a mum.”
“Well, I hope that you find someone to get serious with! Maybe call Malcolm back, I’m sure he’d love that.”
Don’t worry, they both had a wild laugh at that notion.
“There is one nooboo that I’m a good mum to already, I’ll give you that.”
Mika then sat down to play with Devy and the new wall dancer they bought for him. In spite of being an adult cat, he would be Mika’s favorite nooboo for a long time. Or, it was that she hoped for it to be for a long time.
For a few months, Mika felt great. She got the "promotion" to City Sports Coach, which most days entailed her training rich kids in a one-on-one environment. In front of her students, Mika kept her image as that of a stable, confident woman in great health.
During her swims at the community pool, she got out of the water to break that image. That happened a lot, no matter what she ate. Granted, neither she nor Gladsten were cooks, so she blamed it on undercooked meat. Mika blamed it all on the meat and a fridge as old as she was until she couldn't any longer.
Exercise became her usual therapy, first at the gym. She and Gladsten claimed two treadmills and ran like champions, at least compared to everyone else. They both needed it for work, and Mika started to have a little more trouble buttoning her jeans. She blamed it on...nothing she knew of. Her eating habits were the same, but nothing strained her like the military could. Each day, she would set out for a run with her best friend.
She and Gladsten ran on treadmills and across all of Moonlight Falls. He looked leaner soon after the regimen started. He accompanied her on a diet to speed up her sudden need for weight loss. The results were mixed, with a cut-looking Gladsten, and a bloated Mika.
Am I going mad? she asked herself. She kept a food and exercise log that measured her as taking a huge deficit. Whatever kept her heavy shouldn’t have been there in the first place. It should have sloughed off within two weeks. But it stayed. Mika’s reality crumbled when she couldn’t feel her abs as easily.
Crap, I hope it’s not...oh god no.Mika took a day off to go to the hospital. She would welcome the outlandish or deadly diagnoses first. It could be a tumor, for all she knew. The doctor ordered a blood test. She was really hoping for a tumor, instead of something far more likely.
She cried only a few times in her life. In the waiting room that afternoon, Mika cried. She cried hard and created a pile of tissues as she waited for the results.
“Would you like to know its gender or not?” Dr. Rain said.
“Maybe later,” said Mika.
“I can give you some of our pamphlets. We offer a lot of solutions here, like pre-natal counseling, adoption services, and other-”
“I’ll deal with this on my own, okay?” said Mika. “It just didn’t come at the right time or from the right person.”
Out of pity, Gladsten bought her a new top. Two sizes bigger than her usual size, it hung over her like a loose tunic. It didn’t help either.
The problems compounded and didn’t go away no matter what.
In an ideal world, Mika would avoid the father for the rest of her life. However, Moonlight Falls was a small town. She went to the Red Velvet Lounge, remembered that she couldn’t drink, and also spotted Malcolm. At that point, Mika endured more than two thirds of her pregnancy and couldn’t bother hiding it. Malcolm, not being completely dense, looked petrified. They both ran in the opposite directions.
After that, Mika forgot about Malcolm. He attempted a lot of calls, which she rejected on principle. Those subsided, and she went back to forgetting about
him and going back to waiting for single motherhood and that dubious future.
Gladsten did something to be supportive and took Mika out on a weekend afternoon. He said that The Toadstool was a nice place to hang out, and drinks were optional.
“We can get a cup of coffee,” he said.
“Not a good idea. Helen really told you nothing about how this goes, did she?” Mika rolled her eyes, in a playful way.
“I can still get some.”
He grabbed a mug and sat at the counter with Mika, watching the gardening show that neither of them were interested in. She twiddled her thumbs, and crossed her brows at him. “This is an awful idea,” she said.
“It’s usually a fun place,” said Gladsten. “So, I have a question. If my friend goes steady with my ex, who got the worse punishment?”
“That depends. Which friend, and which ex?”
“Pappy Wolff and Marigold. Talk about an odd couple.”
“Well,” Mika said, with a smirk. “He’s the crazy one, right?” Gladsten nodded. “Yeah, seems like a match made in heaven, actually. He’s a crazy old hound, and she’s a crazy young pixie.”
“God help him explain that to his son, though.”
“Yeah, there’s that.”
“So, there’s the other question,” said Gladsten. “When are you going to stop berating me for not being a good dad, and start getting your babydaddy into the picture?”
“Sometime around never,” replied Mika.
“Maybe you need to put this behind you and start being friends with him again.”
“Nah.”
“It might actually make this less stressful.”
Mika looked at the wall, and just the wall. “Gladsten, it’s good alone.
I’m fine.”
Word Count for this chapter:
2,148Word Count so far:
7,271
