Page 124 of Totally Shipped
I try to explain this to my sister and she starts dying with laughter. “Only you, Daisy! Only you! You’ve screwed the pooch this time.”
I wish I could laugh about it all, but Brooke said I was going to be charged with public indecency? I start my new job at the Children’s Library next week. They’ll never let me work there with a charge like that hanging over me!
“What am I going to do? Oh, Brooke, what am I going to do? My job!”
I’m sobbing so hard I can hardly catch my breath. Brooke stops laughing and rubs my back.
“They’ll never employ a criminal, especially with a charge like that. Oh, Brooke. I’ve ruined my life.”
“This library job means that much to you?” she asks.
Brooke doesn’t get it. Being a children’s librarian is the last thing she’d ever want to do, but for me it’s a dream come true. “Brooke, it means everything. EVERYTHING!”
“Shit,” she says, then lets out a long exhale.“Looks like I’m going to have to have a public indecency charge against me then.”
Before we can discuss further, a cop enters the room. “Daisy Jackson?”
“That’s me,” Brooke says, raising her hand.
The cop looks confused. “I thought Daisy was the one who got picked up last night?”
“Nah,” Brooke says, putting some irritation into her voice. “My sister was pretending to be me. She does that when she wants to avoid trouble. The person prancing around naked in the park last night was Brooke Jackson.”
By this point, I am frozen and virtually hiding under the bed sheet. The cop comes closer. “Is that true, miss? Can you give me your name?”
After a beat the name comes out in a whisper.
“Brooke.”
“That’s what happened?” laughs Leander. “You got high on shrooms and became a unicorn?”
I nod, all the guys are cracking up. “You know how I’m always quoting from that story,The Last Unicorn?” I ask them as the laughter subsides.
They all nod their heads, still chuckling.
“Well the unicorn is the last of her kind, and she gets turned into a human called Lady Amalthea…”
“Amalthea?”
“Thea?”
“Our daughter is named after your shroom trip?”
Is she named after my shroom trip?
No. No she’s not.
“She’s named after the slightly-magical reason she exists in the first place. If I hadn’t accidentally eaten all that magic mushroom fudge, Brooke wouldn’t have had to save me from a police charge. And I wouldn’t have owed her a huge favor. If I hadn’t owed her a huge favor, I’d have never set foot upon the Mary-Mo.”
Killian pulls me into a tight hug. “That must have been so fecking stressful, but I can’t tell you how glad I am that it happened.”
“It led you here,” says Gray.
“It really did,” I agree. I look around at the four of them. My loves. We’ve had such an incredible journey to get to this place.
A place where I am loved. Where all of us give and receive love completely unconditionally. Thea will never have a moment's doubt of her worth, or of how much her parents believe in her, whatever path she takes.
And that path could beanything. She has five parents with very distinct personalities.
