“Why do I smirk so much?” Mavis asked. “I’m not a particularly smug or supercilious person. Why can’t I have a shy smile, or a fond smile, or an occasional grin? Or a moue? A moue in the sense of a flirtatious pout would be awesome, although a few grimaces of distaste for Mikhail and his roaming hands during the judges’ comments would have been okay, too. Why can’t I have a moue?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been pretty much banished from existence until my recent engagement.” Tabitha flashed her ring in the light from the window of Mavis’s condo. “I’m not in a position to understand current authorial conventions in fanfiction.”
“That’s true. I’m glad you’re back, actually. I was getting tired of all the drama with Karl.”
“Drama? With Karl? My Karl? How do you have drama with Karl?”
“I’m supposed to be secretly in love with him.”
Tabitha trilled merry peals of laughter. “Oh God. Why am I trilling merry peals of laughter instead of laughing like a normal human?”
“I don’t know. Maybe our author has been reading attemps at Regency fiction. Or getting into the Denim Vodka.”
“The Denim Vodka doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” Tabitha smirked. “Wait a minute. Now I’m doing it, too. Why am I smirking?”
“Our author got tired of writing ‘said’, I think.”
“Now I really need the vodka. You?”
“I can’t. I’m pregnant.”
“Again? Isn’t that like the third time this month? Maybe you should sue the people who make your NuvaRing. Is Mikhail with you this time, or did you throw him out thinking you weren’t worldly enough for him?”
“It’s not Mikhail.”
“Karl? My Karl?”
Mavis hung her head in shame. “It wasn’t my idea. It wasn’t even Karl’s idea. One minute I was giving him an affectionate peck on the cheek to congratulate him on your engagement, the next minute my lips were on his and before I knew it, I was doing something called ‘deepening the kiss’.”
“Better than smiling/groaning/moaning into his mouth, I guess. But you didn’t get pregnant from kissing.”
“No, next thing I know I was on the kitchen counter and we were deepening something else.”
“On the counter?”
“Yes, and I had left a corkscrew on it, too. Ouch.”
“I can’t wait until some of our authors get older, gain a little experience, and see the advantage of mattresses,” Tabitha sighed. “We have a new one.”
“Sleep Number or Tempur-pedic?”
“Sleep Number with a memory foam top. So what are we going to do about the baby?
“You’re going to run me out of town. Wait, is that ‘you’re’ or ‘your’? You are going to run me out of town, I’m going to convince Mikhail that the child is his, and for about a decade I will tolerate a loveless marriage in which we have two more children.”
“Mikhail can’t count to nine?” Tabitha said off-handedly while trying to fit “Mikhail”, “Mavis” and “loveless marriage” into one coherent sentence. She gave up.
“It’s the accent. Accents automatically remove 15 IQ points. Unless they’re French.”
“How about if you tell Karl about the baby, I bow out gracefully, and Mikhail and I go through a few bottles of Denim Vodka and have drunken sex?”
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