A/N: Mwa ha ha, fear me! I am now steadily making my chapters longer, depending on my mood when I finish them! xD My sentences are still a little choppy in some places, but that also depends on my mood lol
Dawn: Oh, I love the Fourth of July!
Arisa: Yeah yeah! Fireworks, fireworks!
Paul: Can we just start so these two will quit yelling in my ear?
Me: They're your wife and kids. You have to deal with it at home xD
Arisa and Dawn: On with the story! :D
The perfect outfit for firework watching is always hard to find.
Dawn tossed a blouse onto the bed, her attention set on something that would feel comfortable but not make her look like she was getting on in years. Which she wasn't even close to, but a woman has delusions like these sometimes, no? But she couldn't find anything, her shirts either being too fancy or too drab for what she was searching for.
"Ugh!" she cried out in frustration. "I can't find anything in my closet!"
"That's surprising since it's so big. You'd think you could find one thing in that room you call a closet."
Dawn looked up to see her husband walking in as he straightened his tie. But she just rolled her eyes at him as she said, "Oh yeah? Says you." She went back to shuffling through the pile of tops on the bed. "A woman has to have the perfect outfit for everything, and firework watching is no exception."
Paul chuckled at his wife, eying the pile upon pile of shiny, glittery, even the occasional graphic tee sticking out somewhere. He walked over and picked a shirt out at random. It was a yellow maternity top that was thin with a pattern of flowers running across the bottom of the hem at a diagnal angle. "What about this?"
The blunette's eyes widened when she saw the shirt. "I didn't even see that." She reached out a hand and took the piece of clothing from her husband, holding it up so she could see it better. "This is perfect!" Continuing her search on the bed, Dawn managed to scrounge up a black sweater that buttoned up the front, and from their dresser she found a pair of khaki shorts that weren't short enough to be called immoral. This is turning out better than I thought it would.
"Come on out to the living room when you're done getting changed."
Watching as he walked out, Dawn folded the clothing over her arm, frowning slightly to herself. All that was left to find now was a pair of shoes and a little jewelry. After she put all the shirts back into her closet, Dawn set her assembled outfit on the bed so she could search for some shoes on the rack that sat on the floor of the slightly smaller room that rested between Dawn and Paul's bedroom and Arisa's playroom on the other side of the wall. There were bunches of shoes lined up along each wall of the closet, be them sandal, sneaker, or boot. If it was a shoe, Dawn had it.
"Which one, which one," she mused out loud as she scanned the lines of shoes that sat in front of her. Just attempting to choose was making Dawn anxious, becoming hesitant each time her hand touched a shoe, only to return to her side as her eyes inspected each pair in turn. Black, she was thinking. She wanted a pair of black sandals to wear that night. I guess black can be slimming for the feet as well, she thought, relaxing enough to smile a little.
"Mommy!"
Dawn glanced behind her to see Arisa run into the bedroom. Her hair was made up into pigtails set high on either side of her head, her bangs pushed back with blue bobby pins. She was wearing a bubble dress the same shade as the pins, the size of the skirt toned down enough to where it wasn't as poofy. And so she could see her feet.
"Hi, Risa." Dawn turned from her search to face her daughter as she headed back into the bedroom. "What do you need, sweetheart?"
The eight year old grinned up at her mother, two emtpy spaces between her upper canines like blank beacons shining from her small mouth. "Aunt May dressed me up. What do you think?" She twirled around, ruffling the bunched material at the bottom of her dress, and disrupting the small bow that sat above her belly against the material just a bit.
Hearing this Dawn laughed. "I thought she was the culprit." Picking up her outfit from the bed, she went behind a folding screen in a corner of the room. She wasn't bashful about changing in front of her child, but she was getting more and more conscious of her growing belly, which was now poking out more than when she had been pregnant with Arisa. Don't even ask about Paul. Even though this was her second pregnancy, she couldn't stand the thought of him seeing her without a shirt now. Let's just say that the bathroom door was now locked whenever she was in the process of taking a shower.
"Don't you think you're dressed more for a party, or at least something more fancy than a little get together in the Haydens' yard tonight?" the young mother called over the screen as she pulled on a camisole she had grabbed before disappearing to get dressed.
The little purplette tittered at her mother's question as she hopped onto her parents' bed, making sure that she had gathered the skirt of her dress around her waist in the back to keep it from folding in on itself wrong. "Aunt May said that a way to impress a boy is to dress with style."
Dawn chuckled as she walked out from behind the screen carrying her previous clothes. Tossing them in the clothes hamper by the bathroom door, she came to sit beside Arisa on the bed. The girl smiled up at her, those two empty spots between her teeth showing that a pair of adult inscisors were pushing through her gums. "Aunt May always says that."
"Am I interrupting girl time?"
Both of them looked up to see May leaning against the doorjamb with Misty right behind her. They were both wearing jeans, May's top red and Misty's blue. When they saw Dawn with her baby bump showing through her shirt, they burst out into a fit of giggles, as she knew they would.
"Oh, ha-ha, guys." Dawn tossed her previous clothes into the clothes hamper and pulled at the hem of her shirt self-consciously. "Make fun of the pregnant lady while she's getting dressed. Real classy."
"Aw, you know we do it because we love you," May laughed as she pushed away from the doorjamb. She walked over to where Dawn stood next to the bed and lightly touched her belly. "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl yet?"
Dawn smiled at her friend, embarrassment forgotten. "We're not sure yet. I'm going in for an ultrasound in the next week or so. I kind of want to know the gender, but at the same time I kind of don't." She laughed quietly to herself.
Misty came over and said, "I was the same way when I was pregnant with Alexius. But Ash wanted to know, so I figured, what the heck. I mean, I was the one having the baby, so why not know beforehand what you need to buy, instead of getting a neutral color like yellow." She shuddered. "You don't know how much I hated when we still painted the walls in the nursery canary, even after finding out we were having a baby girl. Speaking of which."
She walked back through the doorway into the hall and headed toward the living room. While she was gone, May and Dawn chatted as they sat on either side of Arisa on the bed. There were mentions of how their marriages were going (May's just great if only Rudy wasn't almost a teenager already), how the kids were (again with Rudy being a preteen). Most of the problems were with how the kids were growing up so fast that the parents felt like it was only yesterday that they were waiting outside each other's hospital rooms while they gave birth. Misty had been out of town when she'd had Alexius, so she had to go it with only Ash with her. He was as useful as a block of wood, she'd told them.
As they were on the subject of children, Misty walked back down the hall with Alexius in tow. When May and Dawn saw the girl as she trailed behind her mother, they both squealed at the sight of her outfit. She was wearing the same kind of dress as Arisa, only it was red like May's shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a French braid that began at either temple and ran to the back of her head where they were tied together with a red ribbon. When she saw Arisa sitting on the bed, she reached out and pulled the younger girl to her feet, dancing around with her and circling Misty as she just stood there.
The mothers laughed at their daughter's enthusiasm. May just sat there and grinned as she watched the two girls clapping their hands now in anticipation. "I miss the days when Rudy was like this."
"You miss the days when Rudy acted like a little girl?" The brunette glared at Dawn. This made her change the subject. "Anybody know where Leaf is?"
Misty looked at her watch. "She should have been here by now. She called me earlier to tell me that Reese refused to wear the outfit that she'd picked out for him, saying that he was big enough to pick out his own clothes." She gave a small laugh at this. "White shirt and blue jeans, that's what she'd picked. He wanted to wear red like Alexius, but she told him that the boys had to wear white tonight."
"What did he say then?" Dawn queried, a small grin of her own on her face.
The red head rolled her eyes as she said, "He wasn't having any of it. But she told me that she finally managed to get him to put the clothes on. He just wasn't going to wear the hat."
They all laughed as they thought of the hat that Leaf had bought for the boy to wear that night. The girls looked up from their play when they heard the mothers laughing, but resumed when they figured they wouldn't get clued in.
"Hmm." Dawn stood up and walked into the master bathroom that was connected to the bedroom. It had a large mirror that sat over the twin his/her sinks. She looked at herself in the reflective glass of the mirror, spinning around a couple times to see how her clothes fit her. "I don't know about this now. Should I wear white instead of yellow?"
When she looked up she saw her friends standing in the bathroom doorway, looking at her outfit more closely now. "Well, your hair is patriotic enough for the colors, don't you think?" May said, a smile playing on her face as she teased her friend.
A tongue stuck out at her in Dawn's reflection was the brunette's answer.
So Dawn decided to change clothes. Which initiated another search for a good outfit to wear that night. It was decided that the sweater could stay, but the shirt and the khaki shorts had to be switched out for a white tee and jeans to match the other two mothers in the room. Even if they weren't in America, it was fun to just dress up in red, white, and blue on July fourth every year.
"Okay," Misty said after an exstensive search through Dawn's clothes while May helped the young, expecting mother change out of her clothes. "I think I might have found something for you to wear tonight for watching the fireworks from May's yard."
"You think?" May walked from around the changing screen to where Misty stood in the closet, peering at shirts she held in either hand. "How hard it is to find a white shirt?"
Misty raised an eyebrow at her friend. "It depends on what you're looking for. Do you want it to be off-white, marshmallow, ricotta, meringue?"
Everybody in the room just stared at Misty. Flushing under all the eyes, she went on the defense, saying, "What? I took an art class at a community college last summer."
They all laughed at their blushing friend, then went back to searching for an outfit for Dawn. No matter how simple the entire thing seemed, they managed to make it complicated.
"Oh wow! Look Mommy!"
Arisa pointed up at the sky just as it was filled with a colorful explosion of sparks and fire. This sent the crowd on the lawn of the Haydens' into choirs of "Ooohs" and "Ahhhs". Dawn followed her daughter's finger and watched as another firework flew up into the sky to explode in a shower of purple flame that lit up the dark sky, even more so than its predecessor. She smiled and said, "They're very pretty, Risa."
The Haydens' yard was crawling with little kids and neighbors, all there so they could watch the fireworks that were being shot off in a park nearby. The view in their yard was ten times better than it was at the park itself, so some of the people in the neighborhood had grabbed their kids, some food, and carted everything over to the Haydens' yard down the street. It was so much easier than wasting gas for a ten minute drive a few blocks over.
So, as the kids ran around the yard playing games of tag or Red Rover, the parents sat and enjoyed the food and light show that went on above their heads a few streets over. There were beautiful combinations of ruby and cerulean, indigo and sapphire, emerald and scarlet, all the lights shining like colorful flowers that were bursting into flames before their eyes.
"So, who's having a great time?"
Everybody looked up to see May walking around the yard, making sure that everybody was comfortable and having fun. Rudy wasn't that far behind her, his hands stuffed in his pockets as he trailed behind his mother. All the older women were commenting on how handsome he looked, how much he looked like his father. This just made Rudy blush a deep scarlet, possibly regretting that he had even come out of the house that night. But May probably would have dragged him out sooner or later anyway.
Drew was on the opposite side of the yard, talking with Paul, Ash, and Gary, all of whom had shown up with their wives before everybody else, seeing as that it was one of their best friend's house that they were showing up to. Why not get there early and help set up? Because if they hadn't, they knew that they would have gotten an earful from each of the three (possibly even four) wives. Maybe they would have even sent to sleep on the couch that night for some reason. With Misty, Dawn, and Leaf, you just never knew.
During a break in a game of tag, Arisa and Alexius took the time to run over to their parents and ask for a drink. Dawn obliged and got the girls some punch in plastic red cups that someone had thoughtfully brought. After they drained the cups, the girls thanked Dawn and ran off again for some more games. She waved after them as they ran off, a smile on her face as she turned back to her husband. For some reason, she had found herself wandering the yard filled with people until Paul had snagged an arm around her waist and planted her beside him as he talked with the boys. She'd been standing there with him since then. She was even adding a few comments here and there in their talk, which was surprising her even more.
But just like everything, the party had to come to an end. The light show was over, the last sparks in the sky fizzing as they fell to the ground below. People started to pack up blankets and chairs they had brought for the get together, parents saying good bye to neighbors and taking their children home, the children hugging each other as their parents called for them at the street. It was especially hard for the little ones who didn't want to leave.
"Well, it was fun while it lasted." May looked up from gathering scattered cups to see Dawn and Misty helping with picking up napkins and plates of food remnants. Misty smiled at her brunette friend, a pile of trash all ready stacked in her hands.
"Yeah," she agreed, her eyes roaming the yard in search for her daughter, seeing her still playing with Arisa on the other side of the yard in the bushes beneath a small grove of trees by the side of the house. "You can say that again, May."
Dawn smiled to herself as she used a discarded cup to hold napkins she'd found on the ground. There wasn't as much trash as one would think there'd be, because the people in this neighborhood weren't exactly a messy bunch. "At least there wasn't any drinking tonight."
Laughing, Misty looked at her younger friend. "That you know of, Dawn. I thought I saw a bottle of something in the hand of Harley earlier." The other two mothers stared blankly at her. She blinked at them. "Did you not invite him, May?"
May frowned as she thought, finally saying, "I don't believe I did. But I think this was basically like an open party or something for the neighborhood to enjoy." She laughed a little to herself. "I mean, it's not everyday we can have a party like this that we enjoy, right?"
The other two agreed. When everything in the yard had been picked up and thrown away, they headed inside May and Drew's house, Dawn and Misty calling for their daughters to follow them. Inside the house, every adult collapsed onto a piece of furniture, be it couch or chair, they didn't care. They just wanted some place to rest their legs.
"Okay. Who says we not have another one of those for a while?"
Every adult in the room raised their hands tiredly, the children just laughing at their parents' weariness. With seven adults and three kids, the youngsters were outvoted. Leaf hadn't been able to make it with Reese because the boy had suddenly gotten sick, so she had sent Gary to Drew and May's to enjooy the party for all three of them. Gary had just wanted to spend a little time with the guys, but he had felt a little guilty leaving Leaf home with Reese so sick. But his wife had assured him she'd take care of it. So he'd listened to her and gone.
With May's question lingering in the air, everybody but the people who lived in the house got up to get ready to leave, comencing with the good byes and farewells and see you soons, even though they all lived down the street from each other. Every time was like that. They were just that close.
But one thing about them all was that their children had decided that they didn't want to go home. Arisa and Alexius clung to Rudy's shirt, pleading with their mothers to let them stay. Dawn was more willing than Misty, but both of their fathers didn't want to have any of it. They believed that girls shouldn't sleep over at a boy's house. But Misty and Dawn managed to persuade the two of them enough to where they said as long as they didn't have May or Drew knocking on either of their doors about their children.
So, saying good bye to both girls, the Shinjis, Ketchums, and Gary parted ways at the end of the drive way, Ash and Misty hurring off to their house, Paul and Dawn to theirs. A night without kids? Fun time for the parents. But for Gary?
When Gary got home, he found Leaf sitting on the couch with Reese sprawled out beside her, his head resting on her lap and the TV shining in the dark. Both of them were conked out, the program they had been watching long gone from the TV channel the set was turned to. Gary smiled slightly, going down the hall to the closet and pulling out some blankets for the two of them. As he was spreading a blanket over Leaf, her eyes blinked open, slow to adjust in the dark. "Gary?"
Her husband smiled down at her, leaning forward to kiss her on the forehead. "Go back to sleep, babe."
Leaf smiled. "How was the party?"
"It wasn't that bad. Nobody got drunk, and we helped set up before everybody got there."
"What about the fireworks?"
"Beautiful. But not as much as you."
Even after almost ten years of marriage, Leaf blushed at the compliment. "You were such a flatter in high school, and you still are today."
Her comment made Gary grin in the dark. "Love you too, Leaf."
She reached an arm out, and after he spread the other blanket over Reese, he sank down on the couch next to his wife. Laying her head on his shoulder, she snuggled closer to him, his arm resting around her waist as she steadily fell asleep against him. He followed soon after, his eyes blinking closed and his head falling to rest on Leaf's as they slept easily together. At least until Reese woke up and had to throw up again. Then all hell broke loose as he rushed to the bathroom.
Why? both of his parents wondered as they had to listen to their son puking his guts out in the hall bathroom. Why on a wonderful night did the boy have to get sick?
No matter how many times they asked themselves the question, they could never get an answer. Only this: Because that's their job in life.
So true. So very, very true.
A/N: Um. I think I need to stop these day-before writings xD I stayed up all night to finish the last six pages of this chapter. But I think I can blame that on the three Pepsi's I drank before I started writing lol I should probably also stop doing that, I think it gives me insomnia. And a tummy and belly ache xD
So, while you read my newest chapter, I just might be sleeping in my bed, knocked out from and overdone sugar rush from an O.D. of soda. Hehe, me gustan los refrescos xD
Paul: O.D. from drinking too much soda?
Me: Better than putting my cells might explode from drinking too much liquid in under a time span two hours.
Shinjis: ...?
Me: Human Anatomy & Physiology. Better than cable.