Fighting For Family: Summer and Jordan

Chapter Five

Summer

“She seems to be taking to you quite well.” Ray smiled over at me, “I knew you would be a natural at this.” She ripped up some of the pancakes for Eliana and got her some milk. “I was thinking about everything last night while listening to Jordan complain about the kids, to well, the kids.” She laughed.

“Oh, you heard that too? I thought it was just me.” I laughed, “I thought I heard him groan because this one over here was throwing up everywhere and little miss sunshine has diarrhea all up her back.” Jo just bursted into laughter, making both of us jump.

“That is amazing. I wish I could have seen his face with all that going on.” She laughed, “It has happened to me before and it’s terrible but hearing about someone else going through that makes it all worth it.”

“Oh, I so cannot wait until you have kids one day Jo. Payback is going to be a royal bitch.” I smirked.

“Little ears.” Ray said sternly, “We need to be even more careful. She can somewhat try to copy us.” Crap, I forgot about that.

“I think she called me mama earlier.” I said softly as I gave her another piece of bacon. I watched her eyes go wide and have the biggest smile on her face and damn she looked cute.

“What did you do?” Jo asked, “I think I would have freaked out.”

“There was really nothing I could do.” I shrugged, “She’s a year and a half, she doesn’t understand. She just wants her mother and I was there. I’m trying not to think too much about it.”

“So, Summer, we need to make sure we talk to Jordan soon about what I talked to you about last night.” Ray said, quickly changing the subject. Her face fell and she put her fork down and shook her head, “And I was wondering if you needed help as well.”

“Help?” I looked at her, confused, “Why would you want to help me? I think I’m okay. I don’t need any help.” I said in more of a defensive tone than I intended. The last time someone asked if I needed help, I ended up going to therapy because of what happened.

“Yeah, help with the event planning. I’m gonna need to do something and it looks like something I could be interested in.” She shrugged. Oh, that’s what she was talking about.

“Yeah, I can always call bossman and get you in.” I shrugged.

“What’s going on? You quit teaching?” Jo asked, confused. Ray gave me a confused look and c****d her eyebrow at me like I was crazy.

“You didn’t tell her…did you.” I gave her a confused look, “About what we talked about last night?” She rolled her eyes as me and I just did an ‘oh’ face. I forgot we didn’t tell her Jo what happened, hell, I forgot I knew what happened. Ray let out a frustrated sigh and went to get her laptop from the living room. After a moment, she brought it to us and opened her computer to her and Dylan’s bank information.

“Why are we looking at your bank information? We know you both have money, I mean, yeah…you know what I mean.” Jo said quickly, “I’m sorry, it’s just, I know that you guys are well, for the lack of a better word, rich, and I just stumbled into this life.”

“Don’t feel too bad. They may have money, but they don’t throw it around like some people. Ray actually doesn’t like to use her inheritance which is why she works…”

“Anyways, we had a meeting with the superintendent yesterday…”

“I don’t like him. He’s so old school and obnoxious. Did you know he came to our last volleyball game before school was over and told us to enjoy it while we can and laughed? He said that sports isn’t the way to live life. What does he know? And who laughs at teens who are trying to use sports to get into school. Like, totally ruined our confidence and we lost the game because some of the girls thought, what’s the point of trying our best if our own administration doesn’t support us.” She rolled her eyes and I looked right at Ray, confused. What did she just say?

“What do you mean he said sports isn’t the way to live life?” I asked.

“I don’t know what he means. But from what I heard is that in the previous district he worked at three years ago, he cut their sports program due to a budgetary crisis the school was going through. He eliminated all sports and ruined the chance of scholarships for dozens of kids. He tried cutting other programs. His overall plan was to make it just about the book education stuff. He wanted to add in more honors and advanced classes and have kids focus on the education portion of school.”

“And where did you find that out? Because that doesn’t sound right at all.” Ray questioned.

“I heard some of the teachers talking about it at the end of the school year after he made the appearance at the volleyball game. I guess he also did it to some other teams as well, but not football because of the crap that happened with Frank.”

“Thank god he didn’t go to that state game. Dylan, Tristian and Jordan would have flipped the hell out and who know what else they would have done.” I mentioned. Ray was still pulling up something on the computer. I looked over and she was searching for past information on the super, information that Jo just told us about.

“You should have seen Dylan at the meeting.” She said, still concentrating on the computer, “I thought he was going to lose his s**t. I mean, on top of cutting sports and arts, we were told about the layoffs and I mean, he was right when Dyl told me, last ones in first ones out. Us three would have been gone either way.” She groaned, “Now, I don’t know what to do.”

“What are you even looking for?” I asked. I got up off the chair after giving Ellie some fruit and more juice to keep her occupied so I can see what she was looking at.

“Jo, do you remember the name of the school district he worked at before?” Ray questioned.

“No. I just heard some teachers at school talking about it. But it was all rumors.”

“Maybe they are just rumors. Why would he wait three years to take away the programs at the school? Why not do it sooner?” I asked. It all didn’t make sense. Everything was just…too much right now.

“Do you know what’s funny? I can’t even find him online.” She furrowed her brows as she kept typing on the computer, “Anyways, Jo, since you are out of the loop and well, we eventually will tell Jordan when he comes back down, the school will end up being out about thirty two…”

“Thousand? That’s not bad.” She shrugged, “Why get all worked up over that. I’m sure they can get the money somewhere.”

“You are just as bad at this one.” She pointed to me as I held my hands up in defense.

“Hey, you can’t blame us for assuming thousand. Be glad I didn’t assume just thirty two dollars. Not my fault I didn’t grow up with rich parents.”

“Whatever. Anyways, the school will be out about thirty two million and well, Dylan had the bright idea to donate the money needed with the stipulation that it goes to the school renovations, the teachers keeping their jobs and keeping the sports programs as well as the art and music programs going.” She turned her laptop around to show us what she pulled up, “This is something I have never shown anyone besides obviously Dylan. I totally support him with this by the way, so please, don’t look at me with pity.”

“Ray…” I sighed out and gave a look that some would mistake as pity and maybe a part of it was pity but also admiration because if I did give her the look of pity, she would hurt me and I needed to avoid that as much as possible, “You know you don’t have to do this. There are other ways to go about this.”

I was looking at her bank information that she was showing us. With Dylan donating the needed thirty two million, they would go down to maybe twenty five thousand dollars between the both of them in the checking and savings. I know that seems like a lot to people and it is, it really is, but with both of them not working, the bills they pay monthly to keep their credit up on top of taking care of the kids, possibly a third, court costs from when they were going against Bronson and Shelly still there, and everything else, if they don’t find jobs soonish then who knows what will happen.

“You don’t understand. They wanted to raise taxes which we all already pay so much in and still lay teachers off and cut programs. This way, everything is saved, but now I am not entirely sure if we should because of what Jo said.” Ray’s face fell.

“Okay, so this is what we do. You temporarily take a job with me and we can use our off time to look into this superintendent and see if can find any information on him and what not. If it comes down to what Jo said was true…” I turned to her, “Which I’m not saying you’re lying, it’s just I don’t like to believe in hearsay.”

“Oh, I get it. I hope I’m wrong but the way he spoke to us was just evil. And I want to help and I’m sure Archer will too because it’s affecting baseball and he was looking at schools to further his potential career. We have time before schools starts anyways.”

“If what you said is true Jo, then this is a bigger issue. We might be able to figure something out and fight this to where you three can keep your jobs.” I sighed and ran my fingers through my messy ponytail, “We have some work to do, don’t we?”

“Unfortunately, but first, we need to go to the clinic and get the DNA tests done.” Just then, the boys came walking down the stairs, three out of four of them arguing. Archer was sporting the biggest grin on his face and we all turned to face them, confused, wondering what the hell they could be arguing about.

“Dude, why didn’t you say s**t to me?” Jordan yelled.

“I wasn’t aware I was supposed to tell you all the freaken girls I slept with!” Dylan yelled.

“It would have been nice to fuckin’ know!” Finn yelled even louder.

“Don’t you dare say s**t about this! I didn’t even know you then. What was I supposed to do? ‘Hi, my name is Jordan and I know we just met the day of your twenty-first birthday, but here is a list of all the girls I had s*x with in the past three years. Do we have any matches? Are we best buddies who f**k the same girl?’ Yeah, that would have gone real fuckin’ well.”

“This is ridiculous, how did this even happen?” Dylan groaned, “It doesn’t make sense!”

“Of course it does dumbass. It happened when we were at my place for break and we were in our party phase!”

“Can you guys just stop, please? This isn’t helping the situation.” Archer tried to intervene.

“You stay out of this. You’re off the fuckin’ hook. Lucky bastard.” Dylan glared at his brother.

“I told you we should have waited to do this in front of the girls but nooooo, you both are impatient assholes and now look, we’re fuckin fighting over some girl none of us even want or really know!” Finn snapped at them.

“Woah, can you guys tell us what’s going on?” I asked calmly standing up to all of them, “Plus, cool it with the language. Little ears are present and one can kind of talk.” I looked over at Ray and winked at her, using her own words she used against me on them.

“Sorry…” All three of them said and their faces fell.

“Now, can someone tell us what’s going on?” Jo asked, “And why does Archer look like he just won the lottery?”

Archer walked right over to Jo, grabbed her waist and pulled her to his body and slammed his lips against hers as she wrapped her arms around his neck, bringing them closer. The sight was sickening as they made out in front of all of us. Barf.

“As much as I love to watch my baby brother make out with his girlfriend, can you please not do that here in front of the kids? Damn, have some respect.” Dylan rolled his eyes. Archer pulled away from Jo with the biggest grin on his face.

“Let’s just say, I’m NOT the father.”

“Wh-wh-what? How do you know?” Jo stuttered out. I looked at her a bit closely and I can see she was slightly disappointed and slightly relieved. Interesting.

“This.” Dylan hold in his hand the papers that came with Ellie last night, “This is how we know Archer isn’t the father.”

Ray reaches out and took the paperwork from him and took it to the table. We all followed her and sat around. I’m not gonna lie, I was feeling a tad bit nervous. What were we looking at exactly?

“Who the hell is Scarlett Huxley?” I asked, “And why are you three glaring and yelling at each other of her?”

“Dylan…Finn…Jordan…you didn’t…” Ray groaned, “Was it around the same time?”

“Unfortunately, all in the same freaken night.” Finn rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.

I looked over at the kids, who were completely covered in a mess of sticky food. All over their hair, arms, head, clothes, feet, anywhere you think could be food, there was. Eliana was throwing food at Trey who was laughing and giggling, trying to throw it back to her. Watching them two, you can see that Eliana has the stronger arm, surprisingly. Ellie was just playing with the food on her tray and looked up at me.

Those blue eyes pierced my soul for a moment. I can see a sense of calmness in her face as a smile grew as I walked closer to her. Eliana and Trey were perfectly fine occupying themselves but Ellie wanted some extra attention. She held her hands up to me, wanting to be picked up.

“Hey there princess.” I whispered as I unbuckled her from the highchair and sat her on my lap, “Look at the mess you made.”

“What are you doing?” Dylan called from the living room where everyone was, “We have things we need to talk about and you being with the kids isn’t helping.”

“Someone needs to watch them.”

“You do know we can see them from where we are, right? It’s an open concept living space.” I snapped my head as he rolled his eyes.

“Roll your eyes at me again Nicholson and this fork will be aimed at your eyeball. Don’t tempt me.” I glared.

“Dylan, calm down. This is not the time or place to be snapping at her. She didn’t do anything wrong, you three disgusting creatures did and I so cannot wait to hear the story of how this happened.” Ray said, walking over to Trey. “Please, at least tell us it wasn’t at the same time. Because I don’t think we can handle that.” She took out some baby wipes and started to clean his face off while he was fighting her when a strong odor filled the room.

“f**k no!” Jordan yelled and Finn just glared while Dylan rolled his eyes, not believing she just asked that.

“Good.” She deadpanned. “Dylan, get your daughter. She pooped herself again.”

“Why do I have to change her?” He groaned. He is such a man child.

“Well, one, she inherited your bowel so you get the pleasure of dealing with that, which, I don’t understand how someone so cute and little can have a man’s bowel. Gross. And two, I had my stomach cut open, was on bed rest in the hospital for almost 2 weeks after carrying the twins and delt with that whole ordeal so at least you can do for me is change her poopy diaper.” Go Ray. Tell him who’s boss. His face went a little white and his eyes went wide as he nodded.

He walked over to Eliana and picked her up, “Holy crap.” He turned his head away from her, “You really did inherit my poop-shoot. Damn girl, lets get you change.”

As Ray and Dylan took care of the twins, I got Ellie cleaned up the best I could and took her in my arms and started my way upstairs. Jordan was hot on my heels and I think he was calling me, but I paid no attention.

“Soon, you and I are going to go on a girly date. I’m gonna spoil you and get you some new toys and some cute clothes.” I tickled her belly, making her giggle.

“Mama…” she said again, leaning her head on my shoulder, making me pause my step. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked over and seen Jordan with a small smile on his face.

“So, are you putting her down for a nap?”

“Yeah. The food made her tumtum full and I’m sure she is ready for a small nap.”

“I’ll be right back; I’m going to get her a sippy.”

“No. I don’t want to get her in the habit of having a sippy while she is napping. I think I heard somewhere that could potentially ruin her teeth and I don’t want that. Just a stuffed animal she can cuddle with should be fine.”

“Ok love. When you get done putting her down, I need you to come downstairs…we all have a lot to talk about.” He kissed my forehead and I smiled up at him.

You have no idea how much we all need to talk, because now, it just seems like we’re back in the circus we just left. At least this time, no one is trying to kidnap someone or hurt them, so that’s a bonus. Just throw a baby in the mix of our crazy lives and we’re good to go.