by Amy Brent
It was the first time I could remember spending Thanksgiving anywhere other than our family home, back in the house that I’d grown up in. But I guessed Mom took one look at me the last time the three of us had had a video-chat and had decided that I was in no damn shape to be getting on a plane and flying across the country to see them, even if Nate had offered up the use of his private jet to get me there; I was enormous and felt like every time I moved the ground shuddered beneath me, so I wasn’t even sure that an aircraft with me in it would get off the ground long enough to deposit me down at their place. After much back and forth and attempts by me to convince them that I could manage the train without too much trouble, I eventually reneged on my stance and let them come down to visit for the holidays. And now that I had, I was glad that I gave in, because the thought of having to travel when every part of me felt as though it was either going to fall off or explode was hideous.
I had to admit, though, that it was weird to have my Mom bustling around inside my kitchen. Sure, I’d only lived in this place a couple of months, but it was still my home and it was odd to have someone else in there, to lose some of my dominion over the place.
I had moved out of that little apartment of mine reluctantly, because even though I knew it was in no way, shape, or form equipped for raising a baby in, it was still my place, the first and only place I had lived by myself and the first place that Nate and I had ever really made a home for the two of us. He had sold his apartment, basically telling me that he didn’t need use of his bachelor pad for a moment longer, and I had been giddy with excitement when he had moved a couple of suitcases worth of belongings to my place. But, as the baby stuff started to add up, we had to concede that we needed somewhere bigger and closer to his work so he didn’t have to spend all his time on the commute every day. And we found it, the perfect place for the two of us. I had fantasised about a place like this since I was little, but had never truly believed that someone like me would ever be able to come up with the money for it. It was an old-fashioned townhouse, strikingly beautiful from the outside with the black metalwork and white exterior, and inside it had this wonderfully retro feel that was belied by the modern accoutrements that Nate and I had gone out of our way to make sure were part of the place. Sure, it might have rather undercut the twentieth-century feel of the place to have a microwave, but I sure as hell wasn’t spending hours slaving over a hot stove cooking every single one of his meals from scratch and he would just have to find a way to get used to that.
As I sat in our gorgeous living room, feet up on the puff that sat in front of my chair, I could still remember vividly the first time the two of us had laid eyes on the place. He had wrapped his arms around my waist, laying his hands on my stomach as he often did, as though he was reminding himself just what we were doing this for.
“I think this is the place,” I murmured to him, and a smile a mile wide cracked over his face; we had been looking for weeks and nothing had felt quite right, but as soon as I walked through the door into this house I knew it was the place for us. It just had that feel to it already. I could see our kid running between rooms, trying to catch my attention or his, to show us something they had drawn or written or invented.
“I think it is too,” he agreed, and I closed my eyes and leaned up against him. Part of it was relief, because I had been worried that my pregnancy hormones would have rendered even the most perfect place irritatingly flawed in my eyes, but it was more than that. Being here with him, in this house that we were going to raise our child, maybe our children, in…it overwhelmed me, threatening to knock me straight back off my feet. I was glad he was there to catch me. He always was. He always would be.
And so we purchased the place – I insisted on putting what little savings I had towards it, though I was under no illusions about the fact that Nate was the one really paying for it. I still wasn’t bringing in much in the way of income, but honestly I was so grateful that I had the choice to stay off my feet while I was pregnant. The thought of working while I was in this state – no, no way, no chance. I could barely stand up for more than a few minutes at a time as things went on longer and got more intense, and I certainly couldn’t have managed to be polite and kindly to customers on top of all of that.
But I hadn’t wanted to sit around on my ass all this time doing nothing at all, so I had finally, after much chiding from both him and my family, taken Nate up on the offer to go back to school and get my masters degree. I still couldn’t quite believe it was happening, but here I was, a stack of books on my bedside table as I studied for my new qualification in business management. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it once I had it but I knew it was going to be something amazing. Maybe starting a charity? Nate had made it clear that his enormous fortune was pretty much at my disposal, and with everything knew I was picking up through my studies I knew I was doing to be able to do something great with it. The degree course lasted a couple of years, which was perfect as it meant I could study from home and hang out with our newborn while I was still too attached to it to so much as leave the house without having it by my side.
I already knew I was going to be one of those mothers who could only talk about their kid in the first couple of years of it’s life – hell, being pregnant I was finding it to think about anything but the baby, the baby, the baby, with occasional brief pauses to complain about the fact that there were no decent public bathrooms in the immediate vicinity. I knew it drove my friends kind of insane, but they were all being so supportive of me and the choice that I’d made to go ahead and have this little thing. Patricia, especially, had been visiting every week, helping soothe the little freak-outs that still came around once in a while and making sure that I knew she was first in line if we needed a Godmother.
“I still can’t believe this is happening,” she had remarked after I took her on the tour of the new house. “It just…none of it feels real, you know?”
“Try being me,” I eased myself into a chair with a small grunt of relief. “It gets pretty real then.”
“No, but you know what I mean,” she waved her hand, pacing around the living room, checking the place out for the dozenth time since she arrived. “Only a year ago you were out pounding shots with me at the university bar, and now…”
“Yeah, now I’m pretty much an old married lady,” I shook my head. “You want me to tell you all about my matching crockery sets? Because I can get right in and around that if you want.”
“Yeah, I think I’m okay,” she held her hands up as though pleading for mercy. But then she smiled at me, a slow grin spreading across her face like something had just occurred to her.
“What is it?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at her pointedly. She shrugged.
“I’m just happy for you,” she shook her head. “And I can’t believe that my best friend is going to be married with a kid in just a few months.”
I rolled my eyes at her playfully. She had been winding be up about this shit ever since Nate and I had moved in together. She was certain that he was always on the brink of proposing to me, and no matter how many times I told her that I seriously didn’t give a shit whether or not he wanted to marry me, that I trusted that he was in this for the long haul anyway, she kept jibing me about it. I wondered if she knew something I didn’t; I knew that her and Nate had exchanged phone numbers, and had started to think that maybe he was leaning towards getting her help on buying me a ring or something. It would explain her constant teasing.
“Yeah, well, me neither, and it’s actually happening to me,” I shot back lightly. “And just so you know, when you have a baby, I’m going to spend the whole time demanding to know when you’re going to marry the daddy.”
“Oh, I’ll be married already,” she nodded seriously. “I’m not going to get knocked up by my boss out of wedlock.”
“You watch your mouth in my house, young lady,” I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Or I might just get you kicked out of here.”
“Pl
ease, no,” She protested. “Tell me about your matching crockery sets. I’ll do anything.”
I grinned. I was so glad to have her in my life – I knew that this was a big change for me, for her, for both of us, but she had made it clear that she wasn’t going anywhere and I was so happy that she was going to be a part of my baby’s life.
And then, of course, there came the question of my father. I didn’t hear from him for a long time after we told him about the pregnancy, even when Mom came down to visit and helped me start picking out things for the nursery (we decided not to find out the gender of the kid so we couldn’t get anything that was specifically for a boy or a girl, which drove Mom up the wall, but she had the good sense to keep her moaning to a few snarky comments here and there). Nate didn’t hear from him either, and conducted most of the business that the two of them shared through third parties. I guessed the contract was already signed and he was already committed to it, and if there was one thing my father believed in it was following through on what you had committed to. It was almost a little funny, the almost petulant way that he stuck to what he had agreed to with Nate without ever once actually speaking to his face or talking about anything that was going on between Nate and me. I knew it must have been driving him straight up the damn wall, the constant reminder of what was going on between his daughter and a man he didn’t seem to approve of too strongly.
But Mom invited the two of us down to visit over the summer, while Nate was taking a little time off work and before I had to go back to college to start my course. I wasn’t sure if she actually told him that we were coming down to visit – judging by the look on his face when we walked through the door, I would wager not – but he was still a gentleman at heart and wasn’t going to be outright rude to guests in his home. He did his best to just ignore Nate and the pregnancy and everything that came with it, but he began to open up, slowly but surely, and before I knew it he was asking when I was due and where we were going to live and if he could buy us the cot or at least help put it together when it arrived. It was like he’d been holding himself back on all this stuff and it all came rushing out at once, as though this was what he’d wanted to share with us from the start. He was still a little suspicious of Nate, but that was always going to come with the territory of any guy I brought home to him, especially one with the history that we shared together.
Just like Mom had said, it took time, but he came around eventually. And it was his idea to come up to visit for Thanksgiving – though, that said, Nate and him had gone outside to take a look at something a good ten minutes ago and still hadn’t returned yet. What the heck were they up to out there? I thought about getting to my feet to go out and check, but I was far too exhausted and comfortable right now. The smell of the turkey cooking in the oven was wafting through the house, making it feel more like a home than it ever had before.
I let my head sink back into the seat and closed my eyes; I could have just fallen asleep here right now if I wanted. But before I could get too comfortable, the door opened once more and Dad and Nate stepped over the threshold, both of them with big-kid grins on their faces that made me smile just to see them. They were smattered with little white flecks and I sat up straight at once.
“Is it snowing?” I asked, as Nate made his way towards me; he leaned down and planted a kiss on my forehead, and nodded.
“Yep,” he announced happily.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen it snow in the city,” I remarked, and Nate helped me up to get me to a window so I could see the flurry of white swirling down from the sky above us. This couldn’t have been more perfect if I’d written it.
I turned to Nate to express my excitement, but found him with an odd expression on his face, one that I couldn’t really give a name too. I cocked my head at him, trying to figure out what was going through his mind right now. There was this half-smile, like he knew that something big was about to happen. That couldn’t just be about the snow, could it?
“What’s up with you…?” I asked, and then shot a look over at Dad, who had the exact same expression on his face. What had the two of them been up to out there? Did I really want to know? I was overwhelmed with curiosity now and Nate glanced over his shoulder at Dad and raised his eyebrows at him.
“You think I should…?”
“Put her out of her misery,” Dad waved his hand with a big-ass conspiratorial grin on his face.
“What the heck are you two going on about?” I demanded, and then Mom emerged from the kitchen and I found that she had that same look on her face as well. I needed to know what this was about. Though, now that they were all here, I had a feeling I might have been able to put my finger on it – the snow, those smiles, how long Dad and Nate had spent out there just the two of them…
But before I could give it any more thought, Nate turned to me. His expression was serious, and he reached out to take my hand; even now, after holding his hand more times than I could count, I still felt this little jolt of excitement when our skin connected again.
“Nia,” he began, and he slipped down to one knee in front of me. My jaw dropped. I had had my suspicions, but nothing could have prepared me for that moment. Blood racing through my veins, I stared down at him, waiting for him to continue.
“I love you more than anything in the world,” he went on, speaking slowly, like he was trying to remember everything that he’d had laid out in his head for this proposal. “And I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you, and raise our child together, and-”
He brought himself to a halt and shook his head, laughing.
“I promise I had this all planned out,” He assured me. “I just get a little distracted when you’ve got that look on your face.”
“Give her the ring!” Mom exclaimed, as though she couldn’t wait a moment longer, and I glanced over at her, wondering if she’d helped pick it out. She certainly seemed excited for me to see it. Nate reached into his pocket and produced a small velvet box; he popped it open and held it out to me. Inside, nestled amongst the fabric, there was this tiny but utterly beautiful diamond ring, that glimmered softly in the bright light of sun reflecting off the snow outside the window.
I stared down at the ring, at him, my brain racing to try and take all of it in. After everything we’d been through – from Matt cheating on me, to Nate dealing with his failed marriage, to this fling to this pregnancy to this love that sometimes felt so enormous that it was going to overwhelm me – after everything we’d been through, now we were here, in this perfect moment, surrounded by my family as the snow began to fall outside.
“Nia,” he began, his voice a little choked, as though the emotion had gotten to him too. “Will you marry me?”
“Of course I will,” I blurted out at once, and he got to his feet and slid the ring on to my finger. It fit perfectly, the diamond sparkling as I stared down at it and tried to make sense of what had just happened. I looked up into his eyes, slowly, and he leaned down to kiss me; just a soft kiss, a gentle one, enough to let me know that as soon as my parents were gone we would celebrate this in style. When he pulled back, the look on his face was everything; hope, happiness, love, promise for what the future would hold. I closed my eyes and leaned in to his chest, my bump nestled against him. If there was a more perfect moment in the world than this one, I had yet to find it.
*** The End***
Copyright © 2018 Amy Brent – All Rights Reserved
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on life experiences and conclusions drawn from research, all names, characters, places
and specific instances are products of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. No actual reference to any real person, living or dead, is intended or inferred.