I stare after her as she wanders off across the venue, weaving through the crowd. The last time I saw my mom drunk was at my own wedding reception. There must be something about her sons getting hitched that turns her into a champagne-guzzling maniac.
“Geez,” I say, turning back to Eden. She’s already sat back down at the table and she reaches for my wrist, pulling me down into the chair next to her. A new desperation is flashing in her eyes as she glances around.
“Drink these,” she hisses. “Now.” I feel her hand brushing mine under the table, her skin warm and soft, and she forces a glass of champagne into my hand.
I stare down at the drink for a second, perplexed, then look back up at her. Her eyes are growing wider by the second, pleading with me to drink the damn thing, but my brain must be sluggish from work because I don’t understand what’s going on. But then I spot the two other full glasses in front of her that have obviously been piling up in the time that I’ve been missing, and it suddenly clicks. Ohhhhh.
“Hurry,” she whispers, her hand on my thigh.
I steal a quick look at Rachael – she’s the only one still at our table – but she’s busy shoving a handful of nuts into her mouth, so I lean in close behind Eden’s shoulder and tip the glass of champagne down my throat in one gulp. Eden forces the second glass into my hand next, and I consume it as fast and discreetly as possible. Then the third.
“Sorry,” she apologizes when I’m done, her expression rueful.
I set the final empty glass back down on the table in front of her, licking my lips to wipe away the sweet taste of the champagne. I don’t even like champagne.
“If I’m going to be drinking both mine and your drinks today, then please don’t yell if I throw up in the kitchen later,” I joke, reaching for her hand and interlocking our fingers. Her mouth transforms into the most perfect smile and I’m so drawn in by her that I haven’t even asked the most obvious question. “Where’s Jaxson?”
“Behind you,” Eden says, nodding over my shoulder.
I crane my neck to look, and I see my mother and stepfather, Dave, navigating the room as they make their way back toward our table. My son is on Dave’s shoulders, his chubby little hands waving around with excitement when he spots me.
“Daddy here!” his precious voice squeals, and I grin so hard it feels like my face may just break.
I let go of Eden’s hand and jump up, joining my mom and Dave as they arrive at the table, and I scoop Jaxson straight off Dave’s shoulders and pull him into my arms. He’s pretty solid for a two-year-old, with chunky little legs and the most adorable toothy smile that I love to come home to every day. “You had fun with Grandpa, huh?”
Jaxson puts his sticky hands on my cheeks and nods fast. He has a head of thick jet-black hair just like me, though he has Eden’s hazel eyes. “Uh-huh. Fishies,” he says.
I shoot Dave a questioning look, my eyebrow raised, and he chuckles. “I was showing him the huge fish tank this place has. I’m sorry, but I think you may have to invest in a pet goldfish for him,” he says, scratching at his grayish hair as he pulls out a chair at the table.
Sometimes when Dave is running around our backyard shooting water guns with Jaxson, I totally forget that he once kicked my ass when I was a kid for dating his daughter. And now he adores the child that his daughter and I have together. It’s laughable – and we do laugh about it. It has become a running joke in the family now, that time when Dave would have gladly murdered me.
I press my forehead to Jaxson’s and hold him close. “Oh, is that right, buddy? You liked the fish?”
“Yeah!” he says, scratching at my stubble. If I had it my way, he’d be saying “Si,” but Eden won’t let me pull out the Spanish lessons until he turns three. We’re already working on the whole speech thing as best we can, and Eden believes throwing two different languages at our son at once will only confuse him. But one day . . . One day Jaxson will be babbling in fluent, easy Spanish.
My thoughts are interrupted when, suddenly, I spot Eden out of the corner of my eye scrambling to her feet and racing away from the table without saying a word to anyone. She dashes across the bar, dodging all of Chase’s friends, and disappears into the restrooms.
“Is she okay?” Mom asks, brows furrowed with concern.
“Take Jaxson,” I say quickly, handing my son off to her. He loves his grandparents, though he has never met my father – and he never will. I may have a civil relationship with my dad these days, but I still keep him at arm’s length, and I’ll be damned if I let him anywhere near my kid. But Jaxson gets enough love as it is from mine and Eden’s moms, and Dave too, of course.
Mom wraps Jaxson up in her arms and watches me closely as I take off after Eden. I head for the restrooms and carefully push open the door to the women’s an inch, hovering outside.
“Eden?”
“In here,” she calls back in a breathy, raspy voice.
“Alright, coming in.” I push open the door and head inside. Luckily, there are no other women in here. Only Eden.
She’s inside a bathroom stall, sat on the floor and with her head bent over the toilet bowl. She’s torn her shoes off, a pair of heels are sitting next to her, and she looks at me through weary, damp eyes.
“They have so figured it out,” she groans, then turns back to the toilet and promptly throws up.
I kneel down next to her and gather up her hair in one hand, keeping it out of the way, and then rub her back with my other. These restrooms smell of strawberry hand lotion or something, because it’s even making me nauseous, and I can hear the muffled pumping of music from the bar. “Rachael has just eaten an entire platter of nuts, your dad has been staring into fish tanks, and my mom is drunk,” I tell her. “Trust me, baby, no one has noticed.”
Eden wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, flushes the toilet, then collapses back against the wall. She looks exhausted as she stares across the cramped bathroom stall at me, pressing her lips together into a bold line. “Please stop smiling, Tyler. I threw up this morning already. I can’t cope.”
“Apparently,” I say, “excessive sickness means we’re having a girl.”
Eden
This bathroom stall is so small, Tyler and I are practically on top of one another, our legs entwined. My feet are in his lap and he’s gently massaging them, a giddy smile still on his face.
“It’s so hard keeping this a secret,” I admit, clamping my mouth shut again in fear of another wave of nausea.
I’m only nine weeks pregnant, and we’re waiting until week twelve before we share this exciting news with anyone. We’re planning to announce Baby Bruce number two at Tyler’s thirtieth birthday celebrations next month when we’re surrounded by our family and friends. In the meantime, it’s becoming increasingly hard to be subtle about my pregnancy. I’m pretty certain Rachael and Ella’s eyebrows were raised when I refused to touch the champagne.
“Just think about how happy everyone will be. Remember when we told them about Jaxson?” Tyler asks, cocking his head to one side. He gently reaches for my hand and goes quiet, silently staring at the rings on my finger. He touches my engagement ring, and then twists my wedding ring. He glances up. “I can’t believe how lucky we are.”
“We really are,” I say softly, a smile lighting up my face as I hold the gaze of the man I love.
The path of our relationship has been anything but conventional. I still, to this day, cannot believe that we are together. And not only together, but married, with a gorgeous son and another new baby on its way.
I still remember the thrill of being nineteen and running off to Portland to really make things work with Tyler, despite the fact that my father was so hostile, and the odds were stacked against us. I so badly wanted our relationship to work in the real world. We lived together in Tyler’s apartment for years while he ran his youth center and while I got my Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Portland State. We flew home to Santa Monica every once in a while, and ou
r parents visited us in Portland a couple times, but it took a long time for my father to accept that Tyler and I wanted to be together. Somehow we won him over though, and I like to believe he relented when he saw how happy we made one another and that we were truly living our best lives. Our commitment was such that Tyler even supported me when I returned to Portland State for another two years to study for my Master’s degree in Social Work, before he whisked me off to New York as my graduation gift.
It was during that trip that he proposed on the home plate of a baseball field in the middle of Central Park. I’m still embarrassed by how readily I slid that diamond engagement ring onto my finger. I didn’t even give it a second thought.
We moved back home a few months later. It wasn’t the easiest decision, but we knew it made sense for us. There were more job opportunities for me in LA and even for Tyler too – his father’s firm was expanding and there was a position waiting for Tyler right here in Santa Monica. He misses the youth work sometimes, I can tell, but he knew it was time to settle down into a career that paid. We were both sure that we wanted kids soon and both Tyler’s parents and mine live here. The thought of having grandparents as babysitters definitely swayed our decision.
We got married on the beach. It was an intimate ceremony with only our closest family and friends, and immediately after we flew off to St. Lucia for our honeymoon. It was more perfect than I could ever have dreamed.
When we got back, sun-kissed and blissful, we started our new life as a married couple. Tyler continued working for his dad, and I threw myself into my role as a social worker for juvenile offenders at a nearby detention center, which is so hard but so rewarding, and then I fell pregnant with Jaxson two years later. It was no surprise – we’d been trying for months, and we both wept with joy in our kitchen the evening we found out.
It was the same story five weeks ago when we discovered I was pregnant again. Tyler has been on a total high ever since and every time this sickness hits me, he can’t wipe the silly grin from his face. It makes me want to kill him, but that could be the hormones talking.
“I’ve got an idea,” Tyler says, still touching my rings. “We survive the next couple hours. If anyone gives you more champagne, slide it straight to me and I’ll take care of it. Then we’ll get out of here and we’ll take Jaxson over to the pier. What are you craving right now?”
I think about it for a second, then blush. “Ice cream. Loads of it.”
“Alright, then we’ll get loads of ice cream.” Tyler stands from the floor, taking both my hands in his and pulling me gently up to my feet. We are chest-to-chest as I reluctantly step back into my heels. “Oh, and here,” Tyler says. “You’ll want this.” He pulls out a pack of gum from his pants and slides it into the palm of my hand.
I roll my eyes, but I’m grateful. I reach up and kiss Tyler’s jaw and he cups my face with his hand, brushing the pad of his thumb over my cheek. His smile is so pure and his green eyes sparkle the same intoxicating way they did when we were just kids and madly in love. Over the past decade, they have never changed. He presses his lips to my forehead, then takes my hand and guides me out of the restrooms and back into the bar.
When we reach our table again, Rachael flashes me a playful wink and asks, “What were you two sneaking off to the restrooms for?” Her tone is teasing, suggestive.
My dad clears his throat and looks the other way, pretending not to have heard, and Ella is too preoccupied keeping her eyes on Jaxson, who’s doing his toddler dancing to the music. Jamie is sat at the table now too, silently swigging a beer with a dismal expression, like family functions are too much of a chore for him.
“Just ate something funky earlier, I guess,” I lie as Tyler pulls a chair out for me. We sit down together, and I instantly place my hand on his thigh out of habit because I like the reassurance that he’s near.
“Momma,” Jaxson says, tottering over and tugging at my dress. He squeezes his hands together and reaches up for me. I lift him into my arms. and he snuggles in close to my chest, worn out from the excitement of the party, and I rest my chin atop his thick hair.
I close my eyes for a second, inhaling the scent of my sweet boy, basking in his warmth as I hold him close. When I open my eyes again, my gaze meets Tyler’s. He’s watching me closely, admiringly, and it feels so good. He’s unable to fight the smile on his lips and the pride in his eyes.
My gorgeous boys, I think. And my heart swells with so much love.
Also by Estelle Maskame
THE DIMILY SERIES
Did I Mention I Love You?
Did I Mention I Need You?
Did I Mention I Miss You?
Just Don’t Mention It
STANDALONE NOVELS
Dare to Fall
The Wrong Side of Kai
As a Young Adult imprint, Ink Road is passionate about publishing fiction with a contemporary and forward-looking focus. We love working with authors who share our commitment to bold and brilliant stories – and we’re always on the lookout for fresh new voices and the readers who will enjoy them.
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Did I Mention It's 10 Years Later Page 2