by Amy Pine
She stood and threw open the pizza box closest to her, inhaling the familiar aroma of Chicago’s best deep dish. “Let’s eat.”
* * *
Two hours later, Gabi was throwing together an overnight bag while Ethan joined everyone else in the kitchen claiming and packing up leftovers. Well, everyone except Becca, Jeff, and the twins.
“Alexa,” she heard from over her shoulder. “Play ‘Twist and Shout.’”
Gabi’s Echo Dot responded. “Playing ‘Twist and Shout’ by the Beatles from—”
“Alexa, stop,” Gabi interrupted. Then she added, “Please.” Because even though she knew Alexa had no concept of whether or not Gabi was acting polite or rude, on the off chance that one day artificial intelligence might rise and take over the world, Gabi wanted the robots to remember that she was kind.
She turned to see her mom standing in the doorway. Gone was her dress and the apron she’d forgotten to remove all throughout dinner, and in its place was her gray SAVE FERRIS T-shirt and black yoga pants. In one hand, she had a spatula poised and ready to be used as a microphone. In the other, a large wooden spoon that she held out as an offering to Gabi.
“Mom. Not now. Everyone’s going to hear us!” she whisper-shouted.
“Oh, we’re going to sing,” Alissa said. “But first…” She strode toward her daughter and wrapped her into her arms. “I was supposed to do this hours ago.” She squeezed her daughter into the mama-bear hug Gabi had missed for two long months.
She hugged her mom right back and let out a long, slow exhale.
“I missed my girl,” Alissa said, still holding Gabi tight.
“I missed my mom,” Gabi echoed, not letting go either.
Finally, the two parted, but Alissa kept her hands—one still holding a spatula and the other a wooden spoon—on her daughter’s shoulders.
“When did you grow up?” she asked.
“When you blinked,” Gabi teased.
“It goes by so fast,” they said at the same time, Gabi parroting her mom’s oft-spoken phrase.
“Stop teasing me,” Alissa said with a dramatic pout.
“Stop making it so easy.”
Alissa sighed. “When do I get to see the photos? Please tell me you made it to the Spanish Steps.”
Gabi bit her lip, grinning guiltily. “We sort of maybe kind of ate gelato on the steps. I had a tourist take our picture.”
Alissa’s jaw dropped. “I can’t believe you kept your movie-worthy romance a secret until today. From me.” She was pointing at Gabi now with the wooden spoon.
Gabi groaned. “I know. I’m the worst but—but I was afraid to jinx it, you know? I was afraid to admit it was real, and if I told you, it would have been so real, and once it’s real, anything can happen, good or bad.”
Her mother’s shoulders fell. “Oh, honey. Sometimes I worry that you’ve learned the wrong lessons from me and your dad. Your life is your life. Not ours. But—if you are going to marry that beautiful boy out there, he should know about the spatula and the spoon.”
“Mom. Shh!”
The other woman crossed her arms, making the spoon and spatula look like a poor excuse for nunchucks.
“Do you mean to tell me that the man you are going to marry—the man with whom you will be sharing a bed tonight over your father’s dead body…Nice one, by the way.”
“Seriously, Mom…” Gabi said.
“The man who wants to spend the rest of his life with you needs to know,” Alissa said. “If not now, when?”
Gabi rolled her eyes. “Are you quoting an ancient Jewish sage in order to get me to sing Ferris Bueller karaoke in front of my fiancé?”
Her mother nodded. “Yes. Yes I am.” She once again extended the hand with the wooden spoon. “Or if you prefer the spatula…”
Gabi blew out a breath. “You’re not going to leave until we do this, are you?”
This time her mom shook her head.
“Even with a head wound?” Gabi asked.
“I’m fine.”
“And the fainting?”
“I’m fine,” Alissa insisted. “In fact, if you’re so worried about how I feel, you should really be worrying about my heart and how empty it’s been these past two months without you and your karaoke ways.”
Gabi finally relented, grabbing the wooden spoon with a groan. “You really need to start dating again.”
Her mom snorted. “Yeah, right. Like anyone would want to date—” But she cut herself off and instead turned her attention to the silent Bluetooth speaker. “Alexa, play ‘Twist and Shout.’”
“Now playing ‘Twist and Shout’ by the Beatles from the album Please Please Me.”
As soon as the music started, Gabi’s mother twisted her way over the door’s threshold and into the room, knocking hips with the daughter who was not yet dancing because she was still rethinking the situation.
Ethan didn’t know everything about her yet. Was it really time for him to learn about the spatula and the spoon?
But her mom kept twisting and hip-bumping, and Gabi’s need to belt out their favorite song was starting to outweigh any of her inhibitions.
“Oh screw it,” she finally said when John Lennon’s voice blared through the speaker. And she began to twist—and shout.
Neither Gabi nor her mother could carry a tune to save their lives. So not only was Gabi letting the cat out of the bag that she and her mom were house, car, shower—you name it—karaoke junkies, but she was also letting Ethan know that she was downright awful at it.
Sure enough, by one verse in, they had an audience.
Ethan and Gabi’s dad arrived together. Ethan’s blue eyes—those gorgeous blue eyes that had looked at her for two months as if she alone made the world go round—now stared wide and disbelieving.
All she could do was shrug and laugh because there was plenty of singing and twisting to be done. There was no going back now.
So when Gabi’s dad elbowed Ethan and then handed him a turkey baster, producing a pie cutter for himself, she wasn’t prepared for her heart to leap or the butterflies flitting around in her belly to make her love Ethan even more.
Because when he and her father joined in—harmonizing as if they’d been in a band together for years—she realized that as unconventional and sometimes nonsensical her family was, it was her family. And Ethan had finally been given a proper welcome—and accepted it unconditionally.
Chapter Seven
Matthew,” Becca whisper-shouted. “Matthew is the father, and you haven’t told Gabi?”
Becca looked at Alissa with wide blue eyes. Because of course Bex got the gorgeous eyes. If Alissa didn’t love her so much she’d hate her. But it wasn’t her sister’s fault that she hit the jackpot of the gene pool, career, and life in general. At least, that’s how their mother saw it.
Now here Alissa was—single, pregnant with her ex’s baby, almost forty, and planning a wedding for a daughter she couldn’t believe wasn’t a baby anymore. Whatever lottery she was playing had an ironic sense of humor.
“Surprise?” Alissa said. “And I never had a moment alone with her.” It was the truth. Sure, she didn’t have to institute a karaoke dance party. But it had been so long since she and Gabi had acted like idiots for the sake of a little mother/daughter bonding. And Alissa had missed that bonding. “Plus, Matt and I barely talked about it. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m injured and prone to fainting spells. He left when I took Gabi and Ethan to the train station. It would have looked odd if he’d stayed behind at my house.”
“Ladies…” their yoga instructor, Susan, warned in a soothing tone.
Becca leaned forward into a perfect Warrior Two Pose, but Alissa wasn’t feeling it. She used to love Saturday-morning yoga with her sister, but the past few weeks she’d been off her game. Now she understood why.
“Sorry!” Alissa whispered to Susan, then turned her attention back to her sister. “I’m going to head next door for a juice. Meet me when you’re done?�
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Becca rolled her eyes. “A juice or a coffee milkshake?”
Alissa rolled up her yoga mat and zipped it into its bag, then shrugged. “I’m allowed a little caffeine, right?”
Becca narrowed her eyes. “Get the kale, apple, and ginger blend. The ginger’s good for morning sickness.”
Alissa stuck her tongue out at her sister. “You’re no fun. Kale is no fun.” A wave of nausea rolled over her, and she threw her hand over her mouth. But it passed as quickly as it came.
Becca raised a brow.
“Fine,” Alissa said. “I’ll get your stupid ginger drink. But I don’t have to like it.”
Her sister grinned, triumphant, and Alissa tiptoed out of the studio, glad her morning sickness hadn’t caused a more unfortunate disturbance to the class.
Once again, the sun was unfettered by even a trace of clouds, but at only eighty degrees at eight forty-five in the morning—how the hell Becca had gotten her out of bed in the first place after the night she’d had was a mystery in and of itself—the vitamin D felt refreshing rather than oppressive. So Alissa parked herself on the bench outside Rise and Shine, the combination coffee shop and juice bar, and soaked in a few rays while she waited for Bex to finish class.
Everything was going according to plan until Alissa felt that offness again. At first she thought it was nausea. After all, it was morning. Not that morning sickness cared about time. It hit at all hours of the day. And right now, there was a certain flutter in her belly. But instead of traveling up, it sort of, kind of went south.
She squirmed on the bench. Then gasped. “Oh my God. I’m horny!”
“Mama, what’s horny?” a young girl asked as she and her mother pushed through Rise and Shine’s door.
“Sorry!” Alissa said. “I’m an external processor. I think out loud, and this is quite a breakthrough for me.”
The other woman gripped her daughter’s hand and shook her head at Alissa. “Congratulations. But maybe run that processing through a filter when preschoolers are around?”
She didn’t wait for Alissa to respond as she let the door swing shut behind them. “Drink your kale, sweetie. She said corny. Because she really likes corn.”
Alissa snorted, then remembered when Gabi was about the same age as that little girl. She’d crawled onto Alissa’s lap, snuggled her head into her mother’s shoulder, and sweetly asked, “Mommy, what is an orgasm?”
Alissa, who’d promised herself she’d never lie to her daughter or teach her euphemisms rather than the real thing, had launched into a lecture about pleasure and feeling good and how sometimes a man and a woman—or two other consenting grown-ups because while she was fine talking about pleasure, it felt slightly early to delve into self-pleasure—helped each other to feel good, and that when it was really good, it was called an orgasm.
“Oh,” Gabi had said. “Because at school, Miss Katie said it was a plant, animal, or…or…or single-celled life-form.” She’d grinned. “And I just wanted to see if you knew. But Miss Katie didn’t tell us the part about feeling good. Should I tell my class tomorrow?”
“What?” Alissa had asked. “Wait, did you mean organism?”
Gabi had beamed. “Yes! Orgasmism!”
And that was how a four-year-old almost talked about pleasure in the preschool classroom.
When Becca finally emerged from the studio, Alissa was waiting with two kale juices. If Alissa had to suffer, she wasn’t doing it alone.
“Ooh! Thank you!” Becca took a long, slow sip through her straw and then sighed with a smile. “So good.”
Alissa snort-laughed. “If you say so. Wanna take a walk?”
“Sure. I can stalk Lululemon until it opens. They have my favorite style in the black-and-white space dye. We could have breakfast and maybe a little shopping spree?”
Alissa raised a brow. “First of all, this?” She gestured to her own yoga attire. “Is Old Navy. Also, it’s probably not the best idea for me to be buying anything new that doesn’t have maximum stretch along with the ability to return to its normal size after said stretching.”
They started walking down the brick sidewalk. Alissa took her first sip from the perspiring cup of green in her hand.
“Not the worst,” she admitted. “But I still wish it was a coffee milkshake instead.”
Becca laughed, then gave her a sisterly nudge with her shoulder.
“So, does this mean you and Matthew have decided to keep the baby?”
They strolled toward the small brick plaza separating one shop from another and took a seat at one of the many vacant wrought-iron tables.
Alissa blew out a breath. “I barely had a chance to tell him. It was right when Gabi and Ethan showed up. I thought he was going to freak out. But, Bex…his eyes lit up. ‘We’re having a baby.’ That’s what he said.”
Becca winced. “I hate to be the downer, Liss, but wasn’t he excited the first time around?”
“Ouch,” Alissa said. “It’s fine for me to say or think things like that because it’s my history with Matthew. But when you do it makes me feel kind of pathetic.” Because what if this time really was different? Was it so bad for Alissa to entertain the idea that maybe, possibly, she could trust that he was here to stay?
“I’m sorry, but if you’re going to get all starry-eyed about Matthew as a new father again, I’m going to play devil’s advocate.”
“Starry-eyed?” Alissa scoffed. “Please. I trust that man about as far as I can throw him, and we both know what I was like when Mom signed us up for that Little League Softball team.”
“Hey. What you lacked in playing outfield, you made up for in running those bases.”
Alissa laughed. “I did love sliding into home.”
“Ahem…Like you did with Matthew Bloom. Again?” Becca stood and bowed. “Thanks, folks. I’ll be here all week.”
Alissa crumpled up her juice bar napkin and pegged it at her sister’s face as she sat back down. Bull’s-eye. At least she was good at close range.
“Touché,” Alissa admitted. “But I’m not letting my nostalgia get the best of me.” She pressed a hand to her belly. “Okay, fine. Maybe I let it get the best of me for one night. One stupid wine-and-memory-filled night. But that was it.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Becca said, straw in her mouth again. “Are you going to tell me about that night? Because if you’re in the first six to eight weeks and my math is right—and we both know it is—we’re talking right around the time of Gabi’s graduation.”
Alissa’s mouth fell open. Becca was good. Too good at what she did sometimes.
Her sister set her drink on the table, leaned back in her chair, and crossed her arms.
“Don’t you have to get back to Jeff and the kids?” Alissa asked.
Becca shook her head, her smile faltering for a brief moment before she put it back in place. “He felt bad about how impatient he was with the kids last night so he told me to take some time for myself today while he took them to gymnastics and then the park district pool. I said I’d meet them there after lunch.”
Alissa had a quick glimpse of a future she knew didn’t exist—her and Matt at one of those park district water parks, both of them sitting in the zero-depth part of the pool as a little boy or girl toddled back and forth between them.
But that wasn’t how Alissa’s life worked. Becca was the one with everything mapped out, her entire life going according to one grand, universal plan.
Alissa, though…She saw the universe more like an episode of the old MTV show Punk’d. Alissa made plans, like going to college and marrying her high school sweetheart. In that order. But the universe said, Surprise! You’re on Punk’d, and gave her a baby at seventeen. Sure, she still got to marry her high school sweetheart, but she also got to divorce him. The college part got put on hold until Gabi was older and Alissa could swing culinary school at night while working days and relying on her parents for years until she could finally afford her own place.
Now she had h
er whole life ahead of her—her own bakery, a brilliant college graduate of a daughter who turned out to be an amazing human despite every bump in the road, an upcoming fortieth birthday.
Universe: Ahem, Alissa? Guess what? Punk’d again.
“Liss? You still there?”
Becca was waving a hand in front of Alissa’s face.
“Huh? Yeah. Sorry,” she said. “Got all tangled up in my head for a second.”
Becca grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Hey. You know I’ve got your back no matter what, right?”
Alissa’s phone buzzed against the metal table with an incoming call. She jumped when she saw MOM on the screen.
“She knows,” both sisters said in unison.
“I mean obviously she knows,” Alissa added. “But I haven’t had to talk to her about it yet. Should I answer?”
“Do you want to?”
Alissa shook her head. “It doesn’t feel right that everyone else knows but Gabi. I have to sit down with Matt. Alone. And figure out a game plan first.” She hit the red button to send the call to voicemail, then squirmed in her chair much as she had on the bench not too long before now.
“What’s wrong?” Becca noticed her movement. “Are you going to throw up?”
Using discretion, this time Alissa leaned forward to whisper her realization to her sister.
“I’m—horny. Like, in a supercharged way. Is that normal? Can pregnancy do that?” Because the first time around, all it had done was make her sick or faint, sometimes both in rapid succession. But this was new.
Becca snorted. “Yes. Totally normal. Your hormones are all over the place.” She nodded toward Alissa’s drink. “Why don’t you finish that in the car? I’ll take you home so you can, um, take care of that side effect. Do you have something? A nice showerhead? Something with AA batteries?”
Alissa backhanded her sister on the shoulder but then burst out laughing.
She had both. And she figured it was probably wise to let one or the other do its job before calling Matt. Before one stupid night turned into two.