Summer Menagé IV
AnniKay

Sam/Mercedes/Puck
Disclaimer: I own Nothing…Murphy, Falchuk, and Brennen along with Fox and others own this fandom and all the characters there in…Anything you recognize obviously belongs to them.

THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.

THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her beta reading awesomeness.

AN: This is the next story in the French Lessons Universe. It will be from many different perspectives, and will take care of the summer between Commune's collegiate sophomore and junior years. Again, it is planned as a series of connected one shots. I hope that you will read, enjoy and review.

Chapter 20

Not a Bad Thing (Justin Timberlake)
Lauren PoV

I was having what was simultaneously the happiest and hardest summer of my life. It was happy because I was happy. I had enough money in the bank that I'd had to invest some so that I wouldn't run afoul of the FDIC limits. I would have more in the fall after my scholarships all hit the comptroller's office and got refunded to me. Puck had put me in touch with his uncle…who was totally outside our league. I'd done some research and Saul Mayzer was strictly BIG MONEY. The fact that he was willing to help piddily investors like me and Finn…was only because we were tight with his nephew. But I was not one to not take every advantage life gave me. After all, I was stuck with the fourth biggest natural hurdle it could give. I wasn't a black male, a male of color or a woman of color so I wasn't born as far behind the eight ball as I could have been…but even being a White woman rather than a White man meant that I would have to fight harder and work harder to achieve my dreams. Thankfully, my creator had seen fit to make me one of the most stubborn people ever.

She had also made me pretty damn smart. And it didn't take a genius to realize that the second Mrs. Paley had paid us for her husband's crimes, Finn Hudson had started thinking hard about replacing the cute little promise ring he'd given me for Christmas with an actual engagement ring as soon as possible. That left me in an emotional conundrum. I'd believed that I would have more time to decide how I should answer him before he popped the question. I talked a good game about how sure I was about him and I belonging together for the rest of our lives and putting rings on things, but I was just as scared as any not quite twenty-one-year-old would be at the thought of forever. As a wise man once said, 'Forever, that's a mighty long time'. As soon as we got home I realized that if I was going to have to make that decision sometime in the next hundred and four days…I needed to get my thoughts together. The best way I knew to do that when thinking about emotions and that whole bullshitty hornet's nest was to talk to my mother.

Mom wasn't like other moms. She rode, maintained, repaired and sold Harleys…other choppers too but Harleys were her favorites. She dressed like a biker chick on her relaxed days and a higher priced madam on her dressy ones. She was awesome and never failed to make her family feel like the center of her world. She hated cooking and being tied to a kitchen though. I agreed with her on that one. But one area where she was as traditional a mother as any ever…she was the parent to go to for discussions of emotions or to unravel feelings. I was not a procrastinator by nature. Not about major things anyway. So the second week after Vince and I got home, I asked Mom if we could have lunch or something just the two of us. "Sure, Meelaya, why don't I make us appointments for Jewels for this Saturday, we can have a mother-daughter spa day."

I agreed even though I knew that would mean waxing. Momma swore by it. It did last longer, but there was nothing that could ever convince me that the tradeoff was worth it. Still, I pulled on my big girl panties and sat through the beautification rituals with my mother when she wanted me to. She got us in later Saturday afternoon after she and Vince closed the store at five. Mom had seen a serious bump in business since she'd hired Vince that first summer. Apparently, bikers could be a little racist…not all of them, but enough that Black bikers didn't fuck with White biker places until they knew for sure. Once they realized that Momma not only wasn't racist, but she wouldn't let that bullshit into her store or shop, every black biker in northwestern Ohio who wasn't in Toledo or Dayton started checking her shop out. A lot of them became regular customers. They found that Momma was a harmless flirt who never wanted them, but made them feel like she did…so for them it was a safe place in more than one way.

When we got to Jewels, Momma and I did the whole spa shower thing, then were shown in for facials. "So, what's on your mind, Kotik." She asked me as Sofia started working on her face and Ulyana went to work on me.

I sighed. "I think Finn's getting ready to ask me to marry him?"

"Oh, is that all? That boy…young man…wanted to ask you at Christmas. He just didn't feel that he could with the kind of ring he could afford at the time." She laughed.

"But Momma…I don't know what to say when he asks me."

All three of the other women in the room stopped and looked at me. I rolled my eyes. At least it was just the two of us and the two spa matrons there. They had a code about gossiping about the patrons…they would do so amongst themselves, but never outside their crew and never in English. I'd asked Greta about it senior year. "It is a yes or no question, Lauren."

My sigh spoke volumes. "I know that Momma. But we haven't even finished college. We have no life experiences. What if we get married based on our current relationship and then he decides that he doesn't want what we have anymore? What if I decide that I don't? What if he decides that he wants a skinny girl? What if I decide that I want a different guy? How, at twenty, can I be expected to make a decision that will follow me for the entire rest of my life?"

All three of them laughed at me. Hard. "Meelaya, you're wanting assurances that your life will be perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect life. As for your last question, you've already started doing that at eighteen. You don't think that what college you go to is a major decision that will follow you for the rest of your life? What you need to ask yourself is whether you meant what you said when you were up on that witness stand a few weeks ago."

"Of course, I meant it. I meant it then and I still mean it now…but what if five years from now, ten years from now I stop meaning it." I said cautiously.

Ulyana tapped my cheek. "You're a cautious person, Lauren Zizes. You're more scared of pain than you are of anything else, yes. You try to avoid it more than any other person who's sat in our chairs. But life is pain. You cannot live and avoid pain any more than you can avoid breathing or peeing or pooping. Your Dr. Martin Luther the King…he said, 'We must substitute courage for caution.' That is what you must do."

"Bah," Sofia interjected. "She needs to ask herself what scares her more…maybe losing him later or definitely losing him sooner. That is how I lost my Uri. I wanted to wait. We were too young. What did we know from living? He found girl who trusted him enough not to doubt her heart."

Momma nodded. "Do you love Finn?"

"More than I ever thought I would. He is not at all who I thought I would end up with." I said honestly.

"Yeah, well, I've said it a million times. Big Show is married." She teased gently. "Lots of people marry exactly who they thought was their perfect type. Then they end up miserable. Later they find that who they thought they should want wasn't anything like who they needed. Do you need Finn in your life? Can you see a future where you are with someone else?"

"Not unless he decided he wanted to watch." I muttered.

I got two and a half side-eyes. Momma's was only half of one because she had more information than our aestheticians. "They say it's not good to explore your wants and desires with the man you're going to marry…but that makes no sense to me. You might as well make sure that he can please you in the bedroom and you don't have fake things or hide things." Sofia finally said thoughtfully.

"Yes, but what if he no longer respects you once you've been all marevnyy in the bedroom." Ulyana argued.

Momma answered for Sofia. "Then he wasn't the one for you anyway. If he can't respect you for being a woman who has wants and desires and needs…then he doesn't respect you in the first place. Every human being had those." She said wisely. "I dated a guy like that before I met your father. He really and truly believed that the female orgasm was a myth created by Cosmo to give women unrealistic expectations of men. As you can guess, I didn't date him long."

I laughed. "Finn may not be the brightest bulb in the world, but he knows better than that. I have no doubt that he respects me…almost as much as he does his mom. Granted, he doesn't fear me anymore. I used to scare him more than any other chick…even Sue Sylvester, Tana and Cedes."

"Respect is better than fear." Sofia and Ulyana said at almost the same instant.

"Do you want to marry your Finn?" Sofia asked me. I couldn't hold back a smile at the very thought. No amount of fear or uncertainty could over shadow my true feelings on that subject. "Then you know your answer."

We did move on to other topics after that. They had said what they wanted to say. I only wished it was that easy for me. I would be sure and then a thought would hit me out of nowhere, and the worry and doubt would come swooping back in. Funnily enough, I never had a moment of doubt when I was with Finn. In those moments surety wasn't a strong enough word for what I experienced. At least the summer offered me not just time and energy to work out like I needed to in order to be able to meet the weight requirements for the Olympic trials, but it offered us time together where we were able to talk about my concerns. Even if I didn't admit I was having them.

As far as Finn was concerned, we were just talking about the future. "So, where do you see yourself in five years?" I asked him one of the mid-June evenings when we'd only had time to talk.

He shrugged. "I guess that kind of depends. I mean, we'll be where ever you need us to be. I can teach wherever, I can even coach wherever. Plus, twenty-twenty will be another Summer Olympics…so you'll need to be in training."

It made me feel both awesomely good and kind of nauseated that he was building his future around me and I was doubting that we even had a future. "Well, where do you want to live?"

He thought about that for a minute. "Well, the South or the Midwest tend to be the most serious about high school football. I think if we do move to the South, we should try to live near the beach. Georgia seems to pay their high school football coaches the best though." He said honestly. "I was reading online and they have over twenty school districts where the head coaches make more than a hundred grand a year. I know I wouldn't start off as a head coach, but I'm sure that I could get there in five to ten seasons."

"Why high school? You don't want to be the next Urban Meyer or Nick Saban or Steve Spurrier?" I teased.

He shook his head. "Naw, I want to make a real difference. Help people like Coach Beiste helped me and Coach Taylor was there for Vince. You know Coach Meyer is awesome, and I'm learning so much from him…but I think by then the assholishness is too deeply rooted in most guys."

We started a laugh, mainly because he wasn't lying. "What about Kids? And don't lie and say you don't want a couple."

Finn laughed at me. "Hey, I would never lie…not about something that important. But we'll have plenty of time to have kids of our own. When I make head coach, we can adopt. Then when you're ready to stop competing we can have a couple of our own."

"Competing?"

He smirked. "Well, you want to get to the Olympics. Once you've made the team, you're not going to stop until you have a gold medal. But just one probably won't be enough so you'll continue to compete until you've had at least two maybe three if you can manage it. Now, the way I figure it, then you'll probably transition from Olympic Wrestling to professional wrestling. With gold medals and being tight with music stars, the McMahons would be crazy to let TNT scoop you up. You'll compete in the WWE until you've won and defended the Heavyweight championship a time or two to prove that you aren't a novelty act or a one hit wonder. Knowing you, you might just hit the WWE after we graduate if you the Olympic gold isn't enough to keep you amateur for four extra years. By the time you're thirty-five, you'll probably feel bored and want to be home with me and the biracial and multiracial kids we've adopted. Then you'll be ready to transition into filmmaking. We can have our first while you're doing Commune and Tana's music videos to knock the rust off. We can have our second after you're nominated for your first Golden Globe or whatever."

"Sounds like you've given it a lot of thought." I finally said when I was able to speak. The life he'd just described sounded pretty much perfect.

He pulled me close. "Those are my happy thoughts when home work is hard or some of the guys on the team are assholes."

I shook my head a little bit. "Yeah, but you didn't say it like it was just happy thoughts…you said it like you believe it." I said quietly.

"Of course, I believe it. I believe in you."

That conversation stayed with me all through wrestling camp. It worked better than anything else ever had to quell my hunger pangs. It helped me to realize that I may have said I was having doubts, but what I was really having were insecurities. I knew I was a strong, independent woman who didn't need a man. Yeah, I might not have needed a man…but I did need Finn Hudson. That camp was harder than I'd ever experienced before, but I went to it knowing that I didn't just have my own cockiness, my own confidence. I had the faith and belief of a man who loved me more than most people could ever quantify. When I got back, Finn was acting weird. But it wasn't just him though, my whole family was weird. They barely let us have any time to ourselves. And half the time Finn opened his mouth to speak, one of them would jump in to finish his sentences. It was strange…and very suspicious. When he said that he was having trouble keeping my birthday present a secret, I started to tell him I knew what it was. But I didn't I just gave him what he needed.

I had the bomb ass birthday. It wasn't huge or anything crazy, just me and Finn and our families. Great dinner, I kept to my meal plan though…I was a determined broad. Opening gifts was my favorite part though. It always had been. I was a little shocked when Finn didn't propose to me that night. A little shocked and a lot disappointed. Like Sofia had said all those weeks before…I knew my answer. I sure as hell wasn't complaining. I would never not want to go to a WWE pay per view…even one of the lesser ones. I knew I would be rocking my gifts from Kurt and my 'Taker tank top for the actual event, but I ended up having to go shopping to get some new clothes that actually fit my body again. I was down to an eighteen-twenty and didn't own much below a twenty-four, so I needed to shop. I'd lucked out with my summer job that summer. I usually didn't bother working, but Dad had big upped me to the rest of the parents for what I'd done for his website. I just lived in fear that he'd learn about the other website development I'd been doing for Cedes' background singer Xena. Anyway, I was brought in as Amicitiae Amore's IT tech for the businesses in their office park. They were paying me twenty grand for the summer and they let me off whenever I needed for my camps. No way was I saying no. Best of all for me that particular week, there were several stores that had what I needed in my budget right there in the Friendship Village Shopping Plaza. I just hit a different store every day. TJMaxx was Monday, Serendipity was Tuesday. The lingerie boutique, Adore Me, saw me Wednesday. Then Thursday, I hit Nine West, and the accessory stores. I was going on that weekend trip looking good. Friday, I took my lunch break at V&L Salon. When Finn picked me up, I was ready to go, and I was amazing.

The trip was easy. Checking into the hotel wasn't as smooth, but it was managed. Finn and I got to be our truest selves for longer than an hour for the first time that whole summer. A hot shower allowed me to take care of Finnie. I washed him gently and then rubbed a nice thick cocoa butter lotion into his skin before we got dressed. Aftercare was so important to maintaining a sub's trust and happiness. Then we had free room service. Their wings were awesome…they were fried after they were smoked though so I only had one and let Finn have the rest. My dinner consisted of a big ass salad with pan seared salmon. I was a little bit jealous of Finn's BBQ pork steak, and roasted garlic smoked mashed potatoes, but I kept myself on the straight and narrow. Working our dinner off was a hell of a lot of fun. We didn't even have to try to bother being quiet. When we woke in the middle of the night and wanted each other again, we took what we wanted. The next morning, we woke up late and showered together. Then I did my hair. We had a room service breakfast, and we went sightseeing. We visited the Old Courthouse, it was monumental. Then we took a tram to the observation deck. It was awesome. Then we went to the National Blues Museum. We had dinner on a Skyline Dinner Cruise that went down the Mississippi River and under the arch at sunset.

We went back to our room and made love and then we let Finnie and Ma'am out to play. That was big fun. Sunday, we had a pretty lazy day. We had breakfast, I blogged a little. We watched some TV. We did go to the fitness center and work out. Yeah, it was a vacation, but I was on a mission. The day before we'd walked a lot, so we took a day off from our usual hard work out. After we got showered, we dressed up for our evening. I put on my fly outfit and felt awesome. Finn put on a great pair of jeans, an almost black graphic tee that I didn't get a chance to see what the graphic was. He'd put on an Undertaker "The Deadman Lives Eternal" varsity hoodie too quickly for me to see the tee-shirt. We had an early dinner at the Hard Rock Café and walked to the arena. Our seats were so freaking great that I almost couldn't believe it. We were front row center, ringside, right behind the barrier. There was no way we wouldn't be on the TV. We made it in time for the pre-show, I loved R-Truth. Even if he did have the Jones Twins hairstyle. I hated having to watch him lose to that smug ass Wade Barrett.

The show opened with Randy Orton versus Sheamus. This was definitely Finn's match. He liked both guys. Near the end of the match, Sheamus got in a Brogue Kick on Orton, but wasn't able to follow through. Sheamus fought off Orton's try at a RKO and turned that into the Texas Cloverleaf but Orton punked out and broke the hold by grabbing the ropes. They popped for the crown and got pumped up, then Orton executed an RKO and got a three count, winning the match. The vid of backstage was interesting…Stephanie McMahon was a trip to me. Next up was the Tag Team Championship, The Primetime Players and the New Day went head to head. They were always fun to watch. Titus O'Neil ended up winning the match for the Players. I loved JBL and Michael Cole's commentary. Jerry 'the King' Lawler was hysterical. I had a love hate relationship with the DIVAs division. Mentally, I always held them up to icons like Mae Young & the Fabulous Moolah, or Chyna, Original Lita… hell even Trish Stratus to the chicks in the division now. Some of them were awesome wrestlers, but they didn't seem to get the accolades they deserved.

The next match was between Bray Wyatt and Russev was a vicious back-and-forth with a lot of reversals and signature moves. In the end, a hooded person attacked Russev with a Superkick, which let Wyatt execute Sister Abigail for the win. It turned out that the hooded person as Luke Harper, to me that spoke of a Wyatt family reunion. Team BAD was all about the swag that night. It wasn't a bad match…a three way between Sasha Banks, Charlotte and Brie Bella. There was some good back and forth. I was team Charlotte, just because she was Rick Flair's kid. I was so happy she won…and damn that was a nice Figure Eight leg lock. It would have been nice if the commentators would finally make up their minds if the Bellas were supposed to be heels or babyfaces from week to week. I knew one thing. No one would ever convince me that they were unbeatable mega-heels. I felt bad for Sasha Banks…it was her first pay-per-view and she didn't even get to come out to her own music. Cena versus Kevin Owens was my match of the night…at least to that point. Like their prior two encounters, it was another brutally vicious back-and-forth. We were entranced watching as Owens kicked out of three Attitude Adjustments, including one from the top rope. Finn grabbed my hand both times that Cena kicked out of Owens' powerbombs. Then there was a total slug out. That was great to watch. KO executed an Attitude Adjustment and applied the STF on Cena, but, of course, Cena managed to break the hold. In the end, Owens submitted to the STF, which gave the win to Cena. Truth be told, I screamed like an eight-year-old Hogan fan in back in, like, eighty-seven when Cena beat Owens... that was how much I hated that asshole.

The Miz popped up to kill some time since the IC title match was cancelled. He talked shit about how he was the toughest guy in the building. Then he said that Big Show has been missing since the Attitude Era, which was more than epic because then Show came out and knocked Miz the hell out. Why, oh why couldn't they have just made that a match and cut, like, ten minutes off Russev versus Wyatt? I'd have killed to watch The Big Show kick The Miz's ass for a while. We got a break before the main event and that was needed. I had to pee so bad. Thankfully, even though I was a chick and clearly dressed like a chick, at five-eleven and, after the summer I'd had, pretty muscular, no one stopped me when I hit the men's room with Finn. It wasn't my fault the line was shorter. The night had been so interesting, I had never even noticed that Finn had kept his hoodie zipped up all night. When we got back into our seats, it was seconds before the show went back out live.

Just as the camera moved in front of us, Finn opened his jacket and pulled something out his pocket. I wasn't really paying him attention…the show was back. But the cameraman pointed over at Finn and my jaw DROPPED. His shirt said 'I Love You. Please Marry Me'. He had a gorgeous ring and everything. I screamed, grabbed it…I think I nodded like a bobble head on national television. I laid a kiss on my new Fiancé that made that cameraman very glad it was a pay-per-view. Then Brock Lesner's music started, and our moment was over, as far as the cameraman was concerned. It took me a minute to be able to pay attention to the match. There were kisses to be had and some people around us congratulated us. When I focused back on match, I was able to watch Lesnar kick ass. He hit Rollins with thirteen or fourteen German suplexes. Seth Rollins managed to build an offense, sort of. But, in the end, Lesnar executed an F5. That should have been all she wrote, but before the ref could count the pinfall, the lights went out. When the lights came back up, the second-best moment of my night occurred. The Undertaker appeared. He hit Lesnar with a low blow, a chokeslam and two tombstone piledrivers. I lost my voice screaming in delight. It may have been already somewhat strained. Anyway, the end result was that Rollins was disqualified but he kept the World Heavyweight title. I didn't care the wheres or whys… I got to see Undertaker live. I got engaged to the man I loved and who believed in me even more than I believed in myself. That was the single best night of my life.

When we got back to the hotel, the manager sent us up a complimentary bottle of non-alcoholic sweet sparkling pink champagne. We drank it off of each other and then we had all the sex. No, seriously. We made love all night. We had breakfast and then made serious love all day. We didn't actually leave the room until we checked out the next morning. While we were waiting on our plane, I broached a subject that I wasn't sure was going to go down smooth. "I want to tell our family and our friends, but I want to put our feet down and tell them that we're not going to make any planning decisions for at least eighteen months."

He tilted his head. "Why?"

"Because I want to be involved in the process…but I can't be distracted with a million decisions." I told him in all honesty.

I could never say enough how grateful I was when he said, "That's a good point. We can tell everyone that we'll start planning three or maybe six months after the Olympics."

God, I loved that man.

The rest of the summer cemented our decision to tie ourselves together more permanently. We told our family immediately. I wasn't surprised that Kurt had helped Finn find my ring. The way Vince told the story of all the different times Finn had dragged him around Lima to look at rings and how he'd tried to help Finnie go ring shopping outside our hometown just for the two of them to get busted by me had me laughing until my sides hurt. Of course, then Dad had to tell about when he joined Finn and I for lunch and how many times he had to cover for Finn to keep him from blurting out that he'd found a perfect ring and telling me all about it. Burt told me about how proud Finn and Kurt were when they came back from their shopping excursion. "You've gotta tell her how many actual stores you went to." Carole laughed. So, Finn told us all about the ten or twelve stores he'd gone to with Kurt and the seven others he'd gone to with Vince. We had a great time and I loved my ring.

But we held off on sharing things with our friends. It wasn't on purpose. But the rumors that James was planning a massive proposal for Fabray and she needed the drama so I told Finn we should let her have it. "That will keep people from trying to get us to start planning sooner than we want to anyway."

I'd been surprised how easily our family had accepted me and Finn's choice not to start planning immediately. Then again, I was pretty sure that Momma and Carole had started making dream boards and I just knew that if I checked Momma's Pinterest page, it would already have wedding shit pinned. I knew that they were happy though, so I didn't say anything. Besides, I was planning on letting them and Kurt and Cedes and Tana tell me what all I needed to pick out anyway. I would be the one making the decisions, but I had no clue what all the decisions I'd need to make were.

We spent time together as a family talking. I reached the decision that by Christmas, I was going to get myself a car. I was kind of hoping that by then Saul would have made me enough money that I didn't have to touch the principle for me to get the tricked-out Ford Expedition EL of my dreams. It wasn't all about the money side of things. I didn't have time the rest of the summer. The day after we got back from St. Louis, Unique had orientation and since I had the most flexible schedule of all of her roommates, I went down with her. I said it was to make sure that things went smoothly with getting the keys for our rental and picking out me and Finn's room…but the truth was that I wanted to be there just in case someone had to be put in their place for trying to come at her about her gender identity or what the fuck ever.

However, neither of us minded being the first ones to see the house. It was ridiculously cool. There were easily enough bedrooms for all of us. And they had been decorated for us. I had a dedicated place to work on my film class or my software design and development projects. But there was another study space on the second floor. I did tell Unique that she could hang out with me in my study if the guys got to be too much for her. She and I talked a lot those two days, when she wasn't at one of the activities. She was good people…but Finn was right. Unique was definitely Mercedes and Kurt's love child from the future. It was pretty hilarious, how much of those two were present in her personality,

I was probably a pretty bad employee those last few weeks of the summer. After U and I got back from her orientation, I missed three days that next week. Then the week after that was my last week. Still, I had done a lot of good work. Over the course of the summer I designed two more websites, both of which included one time and recurring pay features. I fixed more than a few improperly set up networks in the office plaza, and defragged innumerable hard drives across the board. My last week was devoted to making sure that the Love, Learn & Play Child Care Center was all set up with two separate but tangentially linked network systems. In the office there was a two desktop and two portable point of service setup that would allow the adults to manage the daycare's inventory, payroll, accounts payable and receivable, the employees' timesheets, let parents pay in person if they wanted to and allowed Mrs. Richardson to track the kids progress as far as learning key skills. The second system was really unique. The daycare center itself was actually more of a school than a daycare center. It had a classroom that was dedicated just to teaching the kids all the building blocks, colors, numbers and counting, letters, phonics and reading that kind of thing. There were four computer stations, just the right height for three and four-year olds. Those desktops were work horses, user friendly and loaded with all the best learning software, Sesame Street, Jumpstart…they may not have been the newest, but all the reading software taught phonics and sounding words out. The math software would teach sorting, measuring and simple adding and subtraction.

The classroom also contained two book cases of easy reader books, a rack that held four V-Tech InnoTab Maxes, four iPad Minis, four LeapPad Ultra XDi Learning tablets, four Amazon Fire HD six kid's edition tablets and four Samsung Galaxy Tab Three seven point oh tablets. I personally made sure that the internet access would not allow any of the computers or tablets in that room to access the adults network, had the absolute best firewalls I could design and would only be able to reach age appropriate sites. Those kids weren't even able to access YouTube when I finished with that little gem.

The classroom also contained height appropriate, brightly colored work tables with five chairs at each. One corner was decorated as a reading area with a comfy chair for the adult reading the book and a plush kiddie looking rug for the kids to sit on. There were two light wood linen cabinet looking cabinets behind the reading 'nook', that held crayons, coloring books, those fat red pencils we all learned to right with, paper…kids' handwriting paper, regular notebook paper and blank copy paper. The bottom 'drawers' were actually file cabinets that held picture sheets and toddler appropriate worksheets. The classroom was stocked, well organized and very clearly just waiting on the kids to come in and learn.

I was a little jealous. The daycare center I'd gone to when I was little was nowhere near as cool as that one. I was kind of nosy, so I took the tour Deacon Richardson offered me. His wife was at the Jones' church where she was still minding the little ones until the new space was completely ready. He started with the room next to small two work station the office that contained the grown-up computers. It contained the 'staff lounge'. The room wasn't very large, just enough room for a table with a few chairs, and 'lockers' for the teachers to put their things away before their shift. There were two adult bathrooms off of the lounge. Each containing two stalls and two sinks. I'd needed her employee roster to set up the system for her, so I knew that she had two teachers and an assistant for each of the age ranges. Four stalls for ten to eleven employees seemed like a good ration to me. Beyond that there was a storage room/laundry room that had a good size, high efficiency washer and dryer and all of the necessary laundry and cleaning products. "Little Mercedes' assistant has us all set up with subscriptions from Amazon Prime, so we can get all the detergents and fabric softeners and everything in the hypo-allergenic varieties. My 'Nita loved the idea of not having to send the kids dirty clothes home in Ziplocs. She or one of the teachers can wash them and replace the accident clothes in their cubbies." He said proudly.

Then he showed me the play rooms. There was one for each of the three age levels Mrs. Richardson dealt with, six weeks to nine months, ten months to two years, and three and four-year olds. There was a sign on the door leading into the first playroom that said "Remember, NO OUTSIDE SHOES Zone'. "The babies will be on the floor a lot as they get tummy time and learn to crawl." Deacon Richardson explained when I expressed confusion. "Not only is it cleaner not to allow shoes that go outside into the room, the chances of hurting an unseen baby's hand or foot are decreased too." Even though he told me the room would be cleaned again before any kids were brought in, we both took off our shoes. The infant room held ten cribs and five partially stocked changing stations, but the center of the softly carpeted room was wide open. The only other furniture in that room were two small adult sitting areas that would give the 'teachers' for the infants' clear views of the babies when they were asleep or whatever.

Accessible from the 'infant' room was a small kitchenette with a medium sized white refrigerator for bottles, three, shiny white base cabinets with drawers rather than doors and a stainless-steel countertop. The last cabinet had been replaced with a trash compactor and recycling bins. There was a small sink, perfect for rinsing out bottles or washing those soft baby spoons and a two-eye range top, perfect for reheating bottles. The upper cabinets were the same shiny white of the lower ones. The one that I peeped into was stocked with a rainbow of glass jars of Beechnut Organic Baby Food. Deacon Richardson said that Hudson had set them up with a way to get the baby food in bulk which really reduced the cost and Mrs. Richardson felt better about having to increase her rates if she included at least one meal per day for her kids.

The ten months to two-year-old room looked like a soft Gymboree playland but with cubby stations around the walls. The ones nearest the door were empty, waiting on the kids' backpacks or whatever. The rest contained age appropriate imagination toys. Colorful, soft, building blocks, the big toy cars that even little kids could manage, play phones and play doctor sets there were two tiny kitchenettes between three sets of cubbies…they even had a couple of those weird tables where you could move the colored balls along the colorful metal, twisty, twirly track thingies. My mom didn't transition me to a non-pediatrician until I graduated high school. But even when I was driving myself to my yearly checkup, I would still spend my entire wait playing at those kinds of tables. Those things were wicked cool. There was a story corner in that room that had a pretty, plush carpet, a comfy seat for the teacher and a bookcase full of kids' books behind it. The walls had shapes, the alphabet and numbers all over the place and so did the rugs and playmats all over the room.

We walked through an interesting bathroom. Everything in the room was miniature. The counters held two sinks each and they were the wheelchair height ones so they were less than three feet high. There was a stable, built into the floor step stool in front of each one. The soap, hand dryers and everything were mounted a lot lower. The kids would be able to do things with a lot less help than in a more traditional bathroom. The toilets weren't as tall as I was used to either. I think they were the compact kind designed for tiny bathrooms. They, too, had built in step stools in front of them and they had kid sized seats too. The cutest part was the half wall between the two toilets. It would give the kids a measure of privacy, but let the teachers be able to keep watch over the munchkins. there was a locked door that Mr. Richardson opened to show me a fun little supply closet.

While the bathroom wasn't a Jack-in-Jill deal, the supply closet was. the other door led us into an identical, but bigger, bathroom. The three and four-year-old bathroom was able to take four children at one time. Their playroom was somewhat larger as well. They had zones more so than the younger kids. They had a 'theater' section with little kid sized chairs on small risers facing a forty-inch, wall mounted flat screen with a built in DVD player. That new area, and slightly more mature toys and books were really the only difference. I did notice that the wood in the rooms where there would be more sleeping, was darker than

There was a large nap room that the kids would only enter to go to sleep. It didn't have those crappy cots I remembered from nap time either. No, there were twenty-six dark wood, daybed looking toddler beds arranged around three of the four walls of the room. The wall that housed the door of the room had twice as many cubby shelves as beds set up, so they were the right height for the kids to be able to get or put away their own things. Each cubby had a little nameplate awaiting a sticker assigning it to a particular child. There was also a nice plush armchair and an end table that would hold the Nap Supervisor. Against the wall on the other side of the end table was a dark wood linen cabinet. The linen cabinet held clean sheets and mattress pads for the toddler beds. Parents would be responsible for providing a blanket and small pillow for their children. I noticed that on top of the well anchored and lockable cabinet, was a white noise machine. I checked the make and model and it was all self-contained, not one of the ones that were Wi-Fi enabled.

There was a second, larger, kitchen where the older kids and staff food would be prepared. "We'll get daily fresh fruits and vegetables delivered from that pretty little grocery store Anita fell in love with the minute it opened last March. Anita said that she would shop for the meats every Saturday when she does our shopping and we'll cook them and bring them in done so they just need to be reheated. Less chance of one of the little crumb-crushers to get a hold of anything under cooked if we handle that part ourselves." The kitchen was separated by a half wall from the dining area. The dining area contained two regular tables with six seats each and nine toddler height tables with six little chairs at each. "The kids will nap in shifts, but all have their lunches and snacks together. Well, not the infants, that's why they have their own kitchenette. There's a supply closet off that little kitchen that holds six stackable high chairs and four of those little bouncer seats for the bottle babies."

"Won't it be crazy with all those kids in here at one time."

He shook his head. "No, you've gotta teach them how to behave when they are little. Like the Good Book says, 'Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.' that's Proverbs twenty-two and six…true in first century BC…true in twenty-first century AD."

I smiled. "Okay, I'm gonna need you and your wife to live another twelve…maybe fifteen years. Because when I have kids' I'm going to bring them here." I laughed.

"Life last and nothing happen." He joked. "But you know, the kids aren't the only ones Anita Bell is training. She's hopeful that one of her new teachers will be the right person to take over when she is finally ready to actually retire."

We talked a little longer and he showed me the reception area and the security and surveillance system that Rangeman was providing them at a reduced cost. I wondered for a minute, but then I realized, this daycare would be the only one that Emma Pillsbury-Gruber would be able to handle. It was so clean it was pristine…and since I was pretty sure that Mercedes had absorbed her need for clean from Mrs. Richardson as a child, it would probably always be that way. Yeah, Mr. Pillsbury-Gruber was a smart man. Even if he did look like he should be a beefcake magazine model. I shook off that thought as I did one final double check on the charging station for the PoS that be available at the intake desk before heading out. I'd handled the Richardsons' and their new staffs' in-person training on the system the night before and I was only there that day for the final system check and walk through. I was available via phone and I had created myself a remote passthrough into their system in case I had to trouble shoot anything long distance. Even though IT, software, network design…none of that was my dream career…it was still really nice to know I was that damn good at it in case I ever needed a backup plan.

That weekend Finn, Vince, Karofsky, LaKeith and I all moved into our duplex. But we barely had time to unpack. Wrestling, football and Swimming camps all started that Monday. The following Saturday was technically our day of rest, but it was also Unique's move in day. At least she brought some help in the form of Ryder and Jake, fresh off his time on the road following Commune, along with her mom, aunt and uncle. Helping her with her stuff wasn't the exhausting part…I was tired from all the times her family thanked us for being so good to her and looking out for her. Their gratitude became exhausting. Besides, she was one of us, of course we were going to look out for her.

We had another full week of our sports camps while Unique experienced 'Welcome Week'…aka…real freshman orientation. My parents came down the last Saturday before classes to take Vince, Finn, Netta and I out for dinner. They were even cool with Vince bringing his girl Therese. Turned out. they had a massive surprise for us. that whole evening was the perfect end to the perfect summer. Then it was back to the educational grind. That summer was interesting. I started it with determination, stubbornness and tenacity and I ended it mostly ready for the Olympic trials, engaged and with a legally official brother. Interesting was one hell of a word for it. I was so excited for the future and so secure in the knowledge that I was loved in every single way humanly possible that I felt ready for whatever may come.

I almost forgot to post this...Sorry, I'm seriously mentally visiting Wakanda until I can go see Black Panther one mo' gain. (How many times have you seen it?)
Leave me a review to get me through until next weekend, when I can go see it again.
TTFN,
Anni