“We’ve been working on a friendship this whole time. I thought it might have been more, but I get it now.”
“No! Clearly, you don’t get it – at all!”
“But…”
“But what?”
“We don’t have sex,” she admitted.
“No, we don’t. This is why we don’t.” I explained my way of thinking to her, or thought that was enough for her to get my meaning. I realized it wasn’t when she just stared at me with a confused look on her face. “When you tried to come on to me, or touch me, before what did I tell you each time?”
“That the time wasn’t right,” she stated grudgingly.
“Anna we’re still building trust here along with our friendship. I haven’t been with anyone else. I don’t want anyone else. I’m fucking desperate to get my hands on you again and seeing you growing rounder with our child isn’t helping matters any. You’re beyond fucking gorgeous. But we’re not there yet, as much as it pains me to admit that. This conversation proves that. How long have you been wondering if I was sleeping around on you?” She didn’t answer, but the guilty expression she wore spoke volumes. “The fact that you couldn’t just ask me tells me I was right to wait. Anna, I fucked up enough already where you’re concerned. I won’t do it again.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered through her tears.
“Don’t be sorry, beautiful. This was my own doing. Just know that it’s only you. Well, thoughts of you and my hand, until you’re ready. Until we’re both ready, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed softly.
“I love you, Anna.”
“I never stopped loving you,” she admitted. “Even when you were a horrible person who I disliked immensely; I never could tell my heart to stop beating for you.”
“Shit! You’re killing me, here, beautiful.”
“I hope not,” she teased while trying to dry her eyes with the neckline of her oversized t-shirt. “This baby needs a daddy.”
“I know it. Now, bring my belly to me,” I commanded while thrusting my grabby hands out to her, making her giggle.
Chapter 17
I handed our last customer her package of photos before she walked out the door, all smiles. It actually lifted my spirits to work here for that reason. Making people happy was a joy of mine, and seeing them leave the studio with looking pleased as punch always brightened my days. Not that my days weren’t already bright. Evan and I had spent the past week watching movies, cooking together, and simply existing in one another’s space with no pressure or expectations and it had been divine. I’d also supervised when he started putting together the crib, changing table, and had a glider rocker put in the spare room. The bed in there was now pushed as far up against the wall, beside the door to get into the room, as it could go.
Evan talked about just putting a twin size bed in there and taking the full-size one out so there was more room, but I didn’t think he’d fit well enough on a twin considering his size. I had nearly invited him to just come sleep in the master bedroom’s king-size be with me, but I didn’t think I could handle the rejection if he told me no. I knew his reasoning, but my heart wouldn’t hear reason. It would simply hear the no, so I had kept my mouth shut. The tinkling of the bell as my customer made her way out the door and to her car pulled me back to the task at hand. I started going through appointments to see what we would have to handle tomorrow and, just as I was about to let Beth know we didn’t have anything on the books until after noon tomorrow, a white-hot pain shot through my back and wrapped around my hips, before dipping low into my belly as if I’d been whipped from the inside out and back to front.
“Ouch,” I murmured as I leaned forward on the counter and tried to catch my breath. I had just managed to get myself under control when Beth stuck her head out of the back room where she took a lot of her in-studio photos.
“We don’t have anyone else in the book for today, do we?” She asked.
“No, we don’t and Candace just left. She was thrilled with her photos.”
“Good! I’m so happy to hear that. I don’t suppose you’d like to come back and sit for some pregnancy photos, would you?”
“Really?” Excitement coursed through me at the prospect. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of doing any maternity photos before, especially considering where I worked, but now I wanted to jump for joy at the prospect. “I’d love to!”
“Great! Flip the sign to closed, lock the door, and waddle your butt back here then.”
“I’m not a penguin!” I shouted at her as I turned the sign and locked the front door.
“Could have fooled me,” she shouted.
I did exactly as she asked and waddled my ever-growing behind into the back studio space where she already had a pretty little garden scene drawn down. I stood in front of it and allowed her to position me just so before she moved back behind her camera. “Say fuzzy pickles!”
I scrunched my nose up at the thought of fuzzy pickles just as Beth clicked. She giggled. “Okay, well that one works with the kids. I’ll have to remember the adult reaction is to be grossed out.”
“Where in the world did you even come up with that?” Beth just shrugged. “And what in the world is a fuzzy pickle? I just thought about a moldy dog turd and now I’m kind of glad I haven’t felt like eating lunch yet.”
Beth laughed as she changed some setting or other on her camera. I doubled over a little, again feeling that pain wrap around my mid-section from back to front. Beth thought I was just pretending to be sick. I didn’t correct her, though I was beginning to worry a bit. Something didn’t feel right.
“Okay, here’s a stool, I want you to just sit on it and frame your hands on your belly like this,” Beth moved my hands so that my fingers were forming a little heart over my belly.
“Aw, that’s sweet,” I told her as I also noticed the heart background she had queued up for this shot.
“Isn’t it?” She snapped a couple shots and then asked me to stand.
“Okay for this one, I want to get a picture of you facing out into the next scene and…”
“You’re taking a picture of my giant rear end?” I asked aghast at my friend and employer for suggesting such a thing.
“It’ll probably get cropped from the waist up with you looking back at me over your shoulder,” she suggested. “It’s just something I’ve been wanting to test out.”
“Fine, but if I see you using my butt as target practice in here one day I’m not going to be happy.” Beth laughed at that because before I started working here, she and Gretchen used to print out a picture of their worst clients and use them for target practice on a dart board.
“Okay, stand just like that while I raise the heart backdrop. The one I want to use is underneath of it,” Beth was saying as she clicked a button and the motor started whirring as the backdrop began to roll back up. Beth had moved to a camera that was located off to the side of me, which was weird.
“I thought you were testing a shot from the back, there’s no…” I stopped mid-sentence as a pair of jeans came into view, along with a singular motorcycle boot. Singular because these particular denim-clad legs were on bended knee in front of me. “Oh my word,” I whispered through my hands that had automatically gone to my face to hide my surprise. As the backdrop continued up, the rest of Evan came into view. He was grinning up at me from where he had bent a knee and held a small, white jewelry box out. His hazel-green eyes glittered like jewels in the lighting Beth had set up, and his smile both asked the question for him and left him looking sheepish all at once. He wasn’t sure how I would react to what he was doing, that was for sure.
“What are you doing?” I asked stupidly.
“Asking you to marry me.” His answer was so simple, and yet it was wildly unexpected.
“We’re already married.”
“Nah, we signed a contract. Right now, I’m trying to put a ring on your finger, and asking you to be mine forever because I’m so in love with you,
beautiful. I don’t want to spend another day without you. You may already be my wife legally, but I want you to be my wife in all the other ways too.”
“Evan,” I managed to puff out on another whisper. There was no way this whole scene was real. I was about to ask if he was serious when another pain ripped through my abdomen and had me bending in two to catch my breath. I barely managed to bite back the yelp of pain that threatened to let loose, but the whimper that came after made its way out to the ears of the people in the room anyway.
“Anna, are you okay?” He started to get to his feet, but I put out my arm to touch his shoulders and hold him in place. “I’m fine. I don’t think a ring will fit on my puffy fingers right now though.”
“Is that a yes?” He asked while grinning up at me.
“Yes, Evan.”
He jumped up and pulled me into his body, placing a sweet kiss on my lips as he moved my hair out of the way and clasped a necklace around my neck. I glanced down to see a gorgeous ring attached to the white gold chain. “Once you’ve gone through all the post-partum stuff we’ll have it sized for you,” he told me as his hands slid from my neck to my shoulders, and down my arms before they found a resting place on my belly. Then he got down on his knees once more and proudly told my belly, “She said yes!”
He received a swift kick as his response, just before the white-hot pain ripped through my body again.
“Anna!” He yelled. Then he was barking orders to Beth as I doubled over again. Within minutes, an ambulance was taking me to the hospital. Evan was sitting to my side out of the way of the paramedic lady who was hooking my body up to a bunch of monitors.
“It’s still too early,” I cried.
“You will be fine,” he tried to assure me.
“The baby!” I cried some more.
“Both of my girls are going to be just fine.” I was going to ignore that he just let the gender slip since he was worried about us.
“Ma’am, when was the last time you felt the baby move?” That came from the paramedic woman who had been attaching everything.
“Just now. The baby just kicked me.”
“That’s good. Don’t worry, we’re going to get you taken care of,” she insisted.
Two days later, I was finally being released from the hospital with orders to be on bed rest at home. The doctors had hooked me up to an IV with a drip of Magnesium to help stop the labor, and I was given a series of things to continue doing or stop doing while at home to increase the chances that I could carry the baby to a healthier date.
Evan stayed by my side the entire time I was in the hospital. He refused to leave, even when visiting hours were over. It was sweet to see how protective he was over the baby and me, especially when he practically threw one of the nurses out of the room when she couldn’t get the IV started properly. After the third unsuccessful stick, he told her if she tried to get near me with anything sharp again, she’d find that IV stuck somewhere she’d have a hard time retrieving it from without surgical intervention. Needless to say, someone else had managed to get the IV started after that without any problem.
You would think that lying around in a bed for nearly 48 hours straight would mean you’d have plenty of energy when you finally managed to get up, but just the walk to the truck tuckered me out, and I ended up nodding off on the way home.
“Anna,” I heard him whisper before he gently touched my arm. “We’re home, beautiful.”
“Okay,” I managed to get out, even though my voice was slightly muffled by the sleepiness still trying to hold me under its spell. He helped me out of the truck and then stayed by my side the whole way into the house. The moment we walked through the door, I noticed what he had done. The silver of the frame glinted from the sun coming in through the door drawing my focus. There, just above the mantel, was a larger version of the picture frame I’d purchased all those years ago to use for my wedding photos. Instead of it only holding two 5x7 images, this one held two 8x10 images and in the middle there was an engraving inside a silver heart that simply stated, Family First, Love Always.
The picture to the left of the engraving was a picture of Evan proposing to me. Beth must have been clicking away during the whole surprise engagement. The picture to the right was of Evan on his knees in front of me when he kissed my belly and then announced to the baby, “She said yes.”
I sniffled back the emotion I was feeling seeing those two pictures, knowing he understood the significance they would hold. He was trying to give me memories that I should have had from the beginning, and I loved him all the more for it.
“I think I want to stay out here on the couch instead of the bed,” I told him as I continued staring at the images on our living room wall.
“As happy as I am that you enjoy my present that much, I think you better stay in the bedroom. You’ll be more comfortable. I can move that into the bedroom for you, if you’d like.”
“No. It stays,” I pouted, and then reluctantly moved toward the bedroom leaving the images behind.
Chapter 18
I had never been so scared as the day I proposed to Anna. I was on edge already, worried she would say no. Sure, we were already married, but me asking her, and actually going through with it without either of us feeling forced or obligated was something I had been thinking about for a long time. There was a bit of ulterior motive too. Anna had shit memories of our first wedding, she didn’t have any engagement memories. I wanted to start flooding her with the things she wanted to remember in order to help her move past the shit we both wished wasn’t still in our heads sometimes when we closed our eyes at night.
Then she said yes, and I was elated until she doubled over for the second time, unable to disguise the pain she was in that time. It was too early for our daughter to be born. Not that she knew we were having a girl, but I did. It was just too damn early. Thankfully, the doctor got her labor stopped and bed rest has kept our baby inside of her these past six weeks. Though, it’s probably a good thing that Anna wasn’t going to be on bed rest much longer, because she was starting to get pretty fucking cranky.
“I hate this fudging bed!” She screamed from the bedroom when I opened the door to see who had been knocking.
“I’d ask how things are going, but I’m guessing it’s been a lot of that,” Deck laughed as he pointed toward the small hallway that led to the bedrooms.
“Yeah, so you remember when your wife wanted to take her to live with you guys a few months ago? I’m thinking you should…”
“I can hear you!” Anna called out. “You better shut your darn pie hole. You aren’t the one stuck in the same room all the friggin’ time.”
“Your vocabulary has become worrisome, little Miss Anna,” Deck teased.
“Shut the front door, Deck!”
We both turned to look at the already closed front door before realizing what she had meant. “I do not envy you. I hope Ever isn’t like that when I knock her up.”
“You planning on having a baby soon?” I asked, almost relieved that I’d have a friend my age going through the same shit.
“Fuck no! We’re going to have some fun first. Ever’s had a tough enough time over the past few years. We’re trying to enjoy time together, getting her established as an artist, and all that good shit. The kids can wait until later.”
The disappointment must have shown on my face because he laughed at me. The bastard stood there and laughed in my face some more because I most definitely wasn’t getting any of the fun times and adjustment times he spoke of. I was growing bored with my own hand, and that was when Anna’s jerkoff radar didn’t have her yelling out demands for more shit she wasn’t able to get up and fetch for herself. Even her own mom – the saint that Lucy was – took a break to get away from her demanding daughter. We couldn’t even watch movies together or play games because she either got too emotional or ended up falling asleep on me.
“You wouldn’t change a thing,” Deck announced after watching my thoughts play
out on my features. I just shook my head.
“No, I wouldn’t. Have you seen her? She has this cute beachball belly going on, and she’s always glowing even when she’s being demanding as shit.”
“Jesus, you’re fucked.”
“In the best way,” I admitted as we moved back to the room so I could bring Anna the water she had requested before I heard the knock on the door.
“Hey, Anna Banana!” Deck teased her as he entered the room. “How are you feeling today?”
“I’m…”Anna stopped speaking so abruptly my full attention turned back to her. “Um, not so good, actually. I think I just peed.”
“You just what?” I pulled the cover down off of her legs and sure enough there was a huge wet spot on her nightgown and soaking through the sheets around her. Thank fuck I had listened to her nurse at the last check up and put a mattress protector on the bed. Anna winced, drawing my attention back up to her face and then I glanced at the cute little beach ball belly I’d been talking about. It looked tight as fuck.
“Anna,” I huffed out. “I don’t think you peed. I’m pretty sure your water broke.”
“I’ll call everyone,” Deck managed to say before he backed out of the room looking almost as white as the sheets did before my wife wet them.
“I have your bag, babe. You think you can walk?”
“I can do it,” she insisted.
“Okay, but if you can’t, Deck can grab the bag and I can carry you.”
“You can’t carry me!” Her voice was a shrill, squeaky thing. “I look like a whole herd of buffalo right now. You’ll break your back and we’ll both be broken and in bed.” She sighed and the tears fell. “Then our baby won’t love us because we’ll be puddles of goo on the sheets.”
“What?” I asked as I stared in horror at the woman I love. She just nodded her head as if I had been agreeing with her. “It’s true,” she said before she had to stop shuffling along because a contraction hit her with force this time. She was trying to be a champ and breathe through it, while I was ready to punch something for making my woman hurt. Myself. I would have to punch myself for this since I was the one who knocked her up in the first place.
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