"Pick A Card, Any Card..."

"Damn; my pussy is sore," Tracy whispered as Emily tried to find the sheet where they had signed out.

"Yeah," Emily agreed, found the sheet and signed them back in.

Emily's roommate was on her cell phone again when Emily came in. Again, the two ignored each other. After putting her clean clothes away, Emily grabbed the three textbooks of the classes she and Tracy shared and walked down to Tracy's room.

"Fuck, I'm starting to get a killer headache," Tracy admitted after they'd been studying a while.

It was the alcohol and marijuana wearing off, but neither girl thought of that fact.

"Shit; all I got is one Tylenol," Emily complained.

"Bet Calvin's got a ton of them," Tracy suggested.

"Uh huh; we're in college," Emily reminded her friend. "You can't just blow Mr. James for a passing grade anymore."

"I told you he wanted to fuck my ass last time?" Tracy asked as she tried to concentrate on their Algebra assignment.

"Didn't have to tell me; I was right there," Emily reminded her.

Sunday, both girls dutifully called their homes and talked with their families. Then Tracy called Ted.

"Hey, Calvin; what you doing?" she asked.

"Sitting here, fixing make some Buffalo wings and watch the Saints and Titans," Ted answered.

"Ooh, got enough for us?" Tracy asked.

"I don't know," Ted answered and pulled a handful more of the wings out of the freezer bag. "How many you think you can eat?"

He picked them up and drove them back to his trailer.

He was glad he'd made fifteen wings altogether; they did not stop until there was just a pile of bones.

Throughout the game, though, he had to keep telling them to be quiet.

"No, Emily, I am not switching over to the Lifetime Movie Channel; I don't care if it's halftime," he said.

"No, Tracy, as soon as this is over, we are not watching E! there's another game on," he stated.

"Bed's right there; go take a nap," he suggested.

At six o'clock, he made a pot of spaghetti, fed them, then brought them back to the dorm.

"Bye Calvin," Tracy said.

"Love you, Calvin," Emily said and they ran, through the rain to the door of their dormitory.

Thanksgiving Day.

Ted picked his mother up at the Baylor Lake Senior Community. After lifting her up and putting her into the truck, he folded her wheelchair and put it in the bed of the truck.

"Now, why are we going to, where the hell is Turning Point?" Edna May Klein asked.

"Right by Hearst," Ted said. "You should be pretty familiar with that, right?""

Hearst? Hearst what?" Edna May asked.

"The women's prison?" Ted said and laughed when his mother slapped him.

"I may have deserved to go there, but I never got caught, Mr. Smarty Pants," Edna laughed. "Now, who lives there?"

"My girlfriends," Ted said.

"Girlfriend? It serious?" Edna May asked.

"Pretty serious," Ted agreed.

Outside of Alexandra, he pulled over to a gas station and helped his mother out of the truck and into her wheelchair.

"Hi, y'all got a bathroom?" he asked the bored looking clerk and she just pointed.

"And I'll be filling up, pump four, and hear?" Ted said as he pushed his mother toward the unmarked door.

"Uh huh," the woman said.

And even though she knew she shouldn't, Edna May grabbed a chocolate covered cream doughnut.

"Mom, you know I'm going to tell Dr. White about that," Ted said.

"God damn, Ted, what?" the woman said. "It's one doughnut; like it's going to kill me."

"Mom, they already had to take one leg, want them taking the other one?" Ted asked.

The Websters and the Williams families were already friends, having been neighbors for more than thirty years it was decided that, since the Websters' stove had all four burners working, they'd have Thanksgiving dinner at Emily's home. But Tracy wasn't allowed to just run over to Emily's home; Mrs. Williams made her daughter actually help with the dishes they'd be bringing.

"Now, this Ted guy, y'all are pretty serious?" Mrs. Williams asked.

"I really think I'm in love with him," Tracy said.

"Well, good thing," Mrs. Williams said as she mashed the sweet potatoes for the sweet potato casserole. "Since you're already pregnant."

"What?" Tracy shrieked, almost dropping the baking pan she was buttering.

"Honey, didn't hide the pee stick good enough," Mrs. Williams said, shrugging. "Now, Emily seeing anyone?"

"Uh, yeah," Tracy said, measuring out the corn meal for the cornbread stuffing.

"Who's she seeing?" Mrs. Williams asked.

"Uh, Ted too," Tracy admitted.

"Because when I found your pee stick, I told Yvonne she might want to see what was in Emily's trash can," Mrs. Williams said. "And guess what?"

Tracy didn't answer, already knowing Emily was also pregnant.

They heard a truck pull into the clamshell drive and Tracy ran to the living room window to peer out.

"He's here!" she whooped. "Ted's here!"

""Finish mixing the cornbread stuffing and you can go," Mrs. Williams said.

Tracy and Emily knew that Ted's mother was slightly older, and they also knew that she'd lost one leg to diabetes, and was on dialysis three times a week, which was why she lived in a nursing home.

But the woman was still quite a shock to them. At age seventy nine, she looked more like Ted's grandmother than his mother.

"Yeah, I'm fifty one, my youngest is already married and out the house and doctor says 'guess what?'" the woman cackled.

"So, why y'all call him Ted? I thought Ted was short for Theodore?" Tracy wanted to know.

"Ted?" Mrs. Webster asked. "Emily keeps calling him Calvin."

"His niece, Savannah, no, don't blame me, I told my daughter that's a horrible name, and anyway, Savannah's what? Four? Five? Anyway, she wants to take a nap with the baby, and her mother says 'no, Sweetie, that's not a teddy bear, that's a baby,' so we just started calling him Teddy and it just got shortened to Ted," the woman said, eyes twinkling.

After the meal, a meal in which Edna May helped herself to several carbohydrates and not one, but two pieces of pecan pie, after watching the Lions and Cowboys football game, Ted roused himself off the couch.

"Well, I've really got to get Mom back to the home," he said. "I sit on that couch one minute more, they'll just have to come get her."

Mr. Williams and Mr. Webster flirted with Edna May, both fathers hugged Ted, inviting him back for Christmas, and both men hugged and kissed Emily and Tracy as Ted put their suitcases into the back of the truck.

"You wanted to kill him too?" Mr. Williams asked Mr. Webster.

"Minute I found out Emily was in the family way? Yeah," the man admitted. "But then I seen how he takes care of his momma."

Emily and Tracy sat in the cramped jump seats and both giggled when Edna May started snoring, a loud, rumbling snore before they were even onto Highway 467. And before they even turned off of Highway 467, both girls were also snoring.

They roused slightly when Ted stopped at the nursing home, both told Edna May good bye, told the woman they loved her, then slipped back into slumber until Ted pulled up at his trailer.

"We got to tell you something," Tracy mumbled as she staggered from the truck.

"Yeah, in the morning," Emily said.

"And don't be waking us up like you always do," Tracy ordered.

Day after Thanksgiving.

Ted Came home from breakfast with his mother, made two cheese and vegetable omelets with plenty of bacon, then marched into the bedroom and grabbed Tracy's leg.

"Ted, no, damn it!" she squealed.

He gave her small backside a stinging slap.

Emily was already scrambling out of the bed, but not quickly enough.

"I told you don't do that!" Tracy screeched at him.

"Did you? Sorry, forgot, come on breakfast," Ted said.

He sat at the table and drank coffee while they both ate the omelets.

"Where'd you learn to cook anyway?" Tracy asked, mouth full of food.

"Gross," Ted chided her. "My sister Paula. She's actually one of the cooks at Dustin's."

"Dustin's?" Emily asked, mouth also full.

"Your mommas never told y'all don't talk with food in your mouths?" Ted asked them. "Dustin's; it's this little shit hole out in ElGee, but best Southern cooking you ever ate."

"Paula? That's Savannah's mom?" Tracy asked.

"Huh? No, Savannah's mom is Sam," Ted said and finished his mug of coffee. "Now, you said y'all got something tell me?"

He actually fainted when they told him they were both pregnant.

"What do we do?" Tracy screamed as she knelt next to Ted's prone body.

"Get a wet cloth," Emily screamed, running for the bathroom.

Ted came to, looking into their two worried faces.

"Pregnant?" he asked.

"Yeah," Tracy agreed.

"We're both probably about four, five weeks gone," Emily confirmed.

"Puts us at about July," Tracy said.

They both helped him to a sitting position. Emily righted his kitchen chair.

"So what do we do?" Ted asked as he slowly sat in the chair again.

"I'm keeping it," Emily said immediately.

"Me too," Tracy concurred.

"No, no, I mean, what do we do about..." Ted stammered, then grew determined. "Listen, I grew up, no dad. Whoever knocked my Mom up, they split. No kid of mine's going through that."

"Okay, Ted, so what do we do?" Tracy smiled, linking her left hand with his right hand.

"Yeah, Calvin, what do we do?" Emily said, linking her fingers with his other hand.

The girls reached across the table and linked their other hands with each other.

"Well, I guess we'll stay together," Ted said.

The two girls looked at each other, smiled and nodded. Then they looked up at Ted.

"Okay," they agreed.

July 4th.

At two thirty nine, Tracy groaned.

The air conditioning was set to sixty eight degrees; Ted actually wore flannel pajamas, he was so cold, but she was covered in a sheen of sweat.

Emily was hot too, but she was able to sleep in on of Ted's the shirts, bunched up above her swollen belly.

"God. I am burning up," she whined in the darkness.

"Really? I am freezing my balls off," Ted mumbled.

"Damn it; I got to pee," Tracy complained.

Ted pulled her out of the bed and lovingly helped her to the bathroom.

"Oh, Holy fucking shit!" she cried out in a sudden spasm of pain.

"Okay, come on," Ted said to Emily, scurrying into the bedroom. "We having us a baby."

"Not until the eleventh," Emily said.

"Tell that to Calvin," Tracy called out.

"We are not naming him Calvin," Ted yelled as he grabbed maternity shorts and a loose tee shirt.

Emily wiggled into her own shorts, and with a sigh, slipped a bra on before pulling her tee shirt back on.

The maternity ward nurses took good care of the slightly frightened, slightly excited mommy and wheeled her into a room. Ted and Emily scrubbed up and donned the garb one maternity nurse held out for them.

At three fifty one that morning, Emily, who was sponging the sweaty face of Tracy, suddenly gasped and opened her eyes wide.

"Uh huh," Tracy giggled. "Not until the thirteenth, huh?"

"Tell that to Calvin," Emily giggled, despite her panic.

"Y'all, we are not naming..." Ted demanded as a nurse quickly helped Emily into a wheelchair.

"No, no, can't y'all just put another bed in here?" Emily begged. "I don't want to be away from them!"

At eleven twelve that morning, Emily gave one last scream and sobbed as she delivered Yvonne Mae Klein.

At two forty two that afternoon, Tracy howled as she pushed Edward David Klein, Jr. into the world.

The End

**Author's Note: I write these stories for my pleasure; I post them here for your enjoyment.

I do thank you for reading my stories. thank you for taking the time to rate them, taking the time to leave your comments.

Have a super sparkly day.