Wish Come True (The Blogger Diaries Trilogy Book 3)

by KD Robichaux

  “Oh. I hadn’t even thought that far ahead,” I say quietly. I’ve been military my whole life. All I’ve ever had to do is walk into Womack Army Medical Center, and no matter what my ailment, they’d just send me to whoever I needed to see within the same hospital. There was no having to seek out my own doctor.

  Mom reaches over and pats my leg. “No need to worry about all that. I’ll teach you everything you need to know.” Then she turns to the nurse with a serious look on her face. “Just out of curiosity, what is the difference between the pregnancy tests y’all give, the ones at a true doctor’s office, and the over-the-counter ones like she got from the dollar store?”

  “Honestly, nothing. In fact, I worked at a doctor’s office before I moved here, and when we ran out of pregnancy tests, they sent me to the dollar store to load up on some until our shipment of the exact same ones was due to come in the next day. All it is, is a little strip that will be activated to change color if the hormone HCG is found in the urine. So whether you pay a dollar for it there, or thirty dollars for the fancy ones, they’re all the same. One is no more accurate than another,” she replies, standing once more. “Do y’all have any more questions?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say, and with a nod, she opens the door for us, and then I hear her go into another room as we walk out into the waiting room and then through the front door. We drive around until we see the large brick building that houses the Medicaid office.

  The next hour is spent filling out a ton of paperwork, but then we discover I have to have a valid Texas ID in order to get Medicaid, because each state has their own program. We take a number in line in order to ask the person in the window some questions, and when it’s our turn, Mom doesn’t hesitate in asking anything and everything she can think of, including her last question, which I’ve heard her ask different people before. “All right, I’ve asked everything I can think of. Is there anything else I should have asked that you can tell me?” Such a smart lady.

  “It’ll take approximately three weeks for her to get on Medicaid once she turns in all her paperwork with her valid Texas ID.” He turns to me. “If I were you, I’d go ahead and get your Texas driver’s license while you’re here. That way you can go ahead and start the process, instead of waiting until you actually move here.”

  My heart gives a tremendous thud thinking about all this. It’s all happening so fast. I just found out I’m pregnant two days ago. And now, in what seems to be a blink of an eye, there’s all this talk about moving to Texas as soon as possible. I mean, yes, awesome, super happy I’ll be with my Jason. But holy shitballs. I haven’t even told my mom I’m pregnant yet! I can’t just go planning this huge change in my life, uprooting Josalyn and myself and leaving my mom and Granny, when I was just supposed to come to Texas on one of our normal visits, where we’d fly back home and wait until the next time we’d go for a visit, doing it all over again, always going back home. This would be different. Next time I went home, from the way things were sounding, it would be to pack up our stuff and move here.

  I thank the man who answered all of our questions and start heading toward the door, needing some fresh air. When Mom catches up to me, she tells me I look pale and asks if I’m okay.

  “Just a little overwhelmed. And I think I need to eat something. I’m getting that weird, off-balance feeling again,” I reply, and when we get into her Highlander, she takes me to Saltgrass Steakhouse and makes me eat a big house salad with Ranch dressing, plus a six-ounce sirloin steak to make sure I have a good amount of iron in my system. When we leave, I feel ten times better, and we head home.

  Kayla’s Chick Rant & Book Blog

  March 24, 2009

  Finding out I’m pregnant threw a little wrench in my New Year's plans to go out dancing with Jason and get white-girl wasted. Instead, we ended up going back to Beaumont for his Aunt Melissa’s surprise birthday party her kids were throwing her at the boat docks. They had tables and chairs set up all over the pier, a table of food off to the side that I took full advantage of, realizing how different this pregnancy already is from Josalyn’s, and even had fireworks set off.

  There were tubs of beer and bottles of wine next to the table of food, and I was happily impressed with Jason when his cousin, Lisa, offered him a beer and he told her, “Sure, but just the one.” His cousin, however, was flabbergasted.

  “Just the one? First, your girlfriend here turns down a glass of wine, and now you’re only going to have one beer…on New Year's? If it’s the drive home you’re worried about, don’t. You can always stay with us,” she told him.

  And that’s when it seemed to dawn on her. I could almost see the little light bulb go on over her pretty blonde head. “Oh, my God. You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

  I’m the most horrible liar on the planet. Even if the lie were to come out of my mouth, you’d never believe me, because I have absolutely no control over what my face does when I react to something. I felt my eyes bug out of my head as I turned to look up at Jason, who had a shit-eating grin on his face.

  Lisa’s smile lit up her whole face and she gave us both a big hug. We told her I just found out the night we came to Beaumont the weekend before and that no one knew except Jason’s parents. “Well, better you than me, girl. I don’t think I want any more kids, at least not right now. Two little girls is enough.”

  As I type this, I’m laughing my ass off, because little did she know a few weeks later, not only is she pregnant, but Jason’s other cousin, Dianna, who was also at the party, is as well!

  When I got off the plane in Fayetteville with Josalyn, I didn’t even have a chance to say hardly one word to my mom before I shoved Josalyn’s stroller at her and ran into the bathroom, my hand clamped firmly over my mouth. As I puked my brains out, I heard Mom come in behind me and coo at Josalyn, “So, guess who’s going to be a big sister? Youuu are!” And between heaves, I had to wonder how the hell my mom could possibly know. I mean, I could just be nauseous from the flight. How did she guess I was pregnant?

  When I swayed out of my stall after catching my breath, I looked at my mom with a questioning look. “I had my suspicions before you left. This just confirmed it,” she told me with a smirk. “I think you should name him Jensen. Jensen is a fine name.”

  She’s convinced it’s a boy. She was dead-on with Josalyn, knowing super early it was a girl, but I have no idea. That was the first time I’d gotten even a little bit nauseous during this pregnancy, when I could barely keep down water with Josalyn’s for the first trimester. Maybe it is a boy, and that’s why this time feels so different.

  We told Granny when we got home, and then I let them know what Jason, his family, and I had been discussing while I was there. They weren’t happy Josalyn and I would be moving away, but they understood there were many more opportunities in Houston than in little Fayetteville. The Robichauxs offered for me to move in with them until Jason and I could get a place of our own.

  During this same conversation, I told them the whole story of how I found out I was pregnant, from the initial feeling of just not feeling right, all the way to the part when Steve gave me the big hug that put my mind at ease. Mom stopped me when I told her about how I was so scared Josalyn would think I’m trying to replace her, and that I wouldn’t love this baby as much as her. She asked me, “KD, do you think I love Tony any less than I do Mark?” I shook my head adamantly. “Do you think I love Jay any less than I love your other two brothers?” I shook my head again, tears filling my eyes. “And do you think I love you any less than I love the three of them?” This one made me snort.

  “Of course not. They’re always picking on me, saying I’m your princess and the favorite, and I came last,” I replied.

  She wrapped me up in her arms, where I sat next to her on the couch with Josalyn on my knees, who was reaching up and putting clips in my hair. “You don’t have to worry about any of that, baby doll. Josalyn will have a sibling to play with and grow up having her best friend live wit
h her. And as for you, you don’t run out of love. Your heart just grows.” As if that line wasn’t enough, she hit me with some truth. “Plus, this is Jason’s baby. Do you really think you wouldn’t love the child you created with the man of your dreams?”

  I can be a real turd sometimes.

  This is why I’m a momma’s girl. After that, I had no fear.

  Jason got a job at Friendswood Roofing a couple of weeks ago, the work perfect for his mathematical brain. He gets up on people’s roofs, measures them, comes up with all the square footage and whatnot, and then prices them out for the customer. With so many homes still damaged from Hurricane Ike last year, there is plenty of work to be done. I offered to get a job as well, but Jason told me no, to focus on my schoolwork. He wasn’t going to allow anything to get in my way of finishing my degree I was so close to completing. This would be my last full year of school if I kept going the pace I was at, and I could graduate at the end of the winter semester.

  We went the rest of January and half of February without seeing each other, and Jason had basically been insane not being able to be around us. To the point that he bought a plane ticket and decided he was coming to see us for a four-day weekend for Valentine’s Day. He got here super early the morning of the fourteenth.

  And I don’t know what it is about Jason coming to visit turning into a traditional trip to Myrtle Beach, but that’s what happened. Before he booked his ticket to come, Mom and I had booked ourselves a hotel room down at the beach because she had ‘a hankerin’ to go see Brookgreen Gardens’ as she put it. Finding out Jason would be visiting, she offered to cancel, but he told her to do no such thing, that he would love to see the beautiful sculpture garden and wildlife preserve. So, he found out what hotel we were staying at and reserved us another room.

  The trip was a ton of fun. The first thing we did after checking into our hotel was go straight to the gardens and spent a few hours taking pictures and admiring all the giant sculptures, topiaries, and the maze you could walk through. There weren’t a lot of flowers blooming because of the time of year, but it was still beautiful. Josalyn liked the huge fountain and threw every coin all three of us owned into the water, until we finally had to tell her we didn’t have any more.

  When we left, we went to Calabash Seafood Buffet, which had all-you-can-eat snow crab legs. Boy, I bet they didn’t know what hit them when we walked in the door. Between us three adults, no lie, we probably put away about fifteen pounds of those suckers. Even little Josalyn ate a couple, Jason cracking them open and dipping them in a little butter before handing them to her. Even as full as we were from the crab legs, we still managed to try just about everything on the dessert buffet before we hobbled our fat asses out of there.

  For Mom’s birthday on March 6th, Jenna and I took her to Paddy’s Irish Pub. I don’t think my mom had ever even been in a bar before, but she thought Paddy and Bill were hilarious and loved watching them perform all the songs on the guitar and electric violin. I told Paddy it was her birthday, and after flirting with her from the stage and having everyone in the bar sing her Happy Birthday, he asked her if there was anything she’d like them to play. I had been telling her how awesome they were when they sang “Take On Me” for almost two years now, so she chose that, dancing in her seat. Paddy couldn’t get her to come up on the platform, so he handed her the tambourine to play from our table, which was right up next to the stage. I had called and reserved it for us when I had the idea to bring her.

  By this time, Jason was done. He could not take being away from us any longer, especially knowing I had his child growing inside me. There had been rough days, talking to him on the phone, him being in a pretty low mood. At one point, he even confessed that his buddies at work were getting to him, when they were joking around and saying there’s no way this kid could be his. He told me he knows in his heart it is and that I’d never cheat on him. And the guys haven’t fucked with him ever since, seeing how Jason had flipped over his desk and left work for the rest of the day without a backward glance. They must have confessed it was their fault, because he said the next day the boss didn’t mention it, and everyone else acted like it never happened.

  And on that same day, official plans were made to move Josalyn and me to Texas. Jason and my sister-in-law Renee would fly from Texas to North Carolina, and while Jason drove the moving truck with all our stuff in it, Renee would help me with the drive back to Texas in my car. This all happens in about two weeks, so I need to get packing as soon as I have a spare minute.

  Jenna’s birthday is on Saint Patrick’s Day, which was last Tuesday, so Paddy’s had their big shindig on Saturday the 21st. I told Jenna we had to leave at 11:30 p.m., one: because my pregnant ass didn’t want to be out at a bar too late, even though I was just out celebrating my friend’s birthday with her, being her DD and sipping on my Shirley Temples. I didn’t want Jason to worry. And two: I had to be at Wal-Mart a couple minutes before midnight. I was bound and determined to be the first person to get my grubby little mitts on a DVD of Twilight!

  I pulled her out of the bar at 11:35 p.m., after having to argue with her to get her ass in the car or I’d leave her there.

  “Why are we going to Wal-Mart this late at night again?” she huffed.

  “We’re going on a fucking adventure!” I squealed, and reminded her I wanted the DVD of the book-turned-movie the very moment it released.

  “I don’t get you and these vampire romances. I mean, you know I love reading as much as you do. I’ve read practically every romance they have at Edward McKay’s. But vampires? Really? I don’t get it.”

  “I’ve been trying to get you to read one for years. Just try one, and then you will see what the hell all my fuss is about! I mean, you loved Buffy. You saw the romance between her and Angel, and then her with Spike. Now put it in book form and give the heroine a happily ever after, and bam! Those are my paranormal romances.” I grinned like a loon over at her in my passenger seat.

  In the end, I watched them open the cardboard box and hand me the very first copy. Yes, it was the first copy sold at that Wal-Mart out of the gajillions of stores selling it, but in my head, I had just been the first person on the planet besides Stephenie Meyer herself to hold Twilight on DVD in my hands.

  Kayla’s Chick Rant & Book Blog

  August 14, 2009

  Holy crap, has it really been five months since I posted anything on my blog? Epic fail, Kayla. Jeez. Are any of y’all still around? I’m still alive, I promise! God, where do I even begin to update everyone? Okay, let me think. Last post, I was about to move to Texas, so let me start there.

  April:

  Jason and Nay flew into Fayetteville, we went and got the moving truck from the rental place, and then we started loading it up. There was a little bit of my crap in an old storage unit I had with Aiden, and at first I almost decided to just say fuck it and leave it, but I remembered it had a bunch of my old pageant trophies and my big pretty dresser in there. I didn’t have a key to the lock, so (awkwaaaaaaard!) we met Aiden there and grabbed everything we needed, Jason mumbling what a piece of shit he was the whole time, since he’d made the effort to see Josalyn only a handful of times since our divorce over a year ago. I was able to shush him and keep him from making a scene, whispering he’d ‘upset the baby’ in his ear while pushing my little bump into his abs through my oversized hoodie. Aiden didn’t know I was pregnant. I didn’t feel it was any of his business. He wasn’t fighting me in any way about the move. I mean, he really wouldn’t have a leg to stand on anyway, considering how he never came to see her while living fifteen minutes away, so why would he care if she lived across the country? But I didn’t want to say or do anything that might change that.

  That night, after all the work of packing everything into the van, Jason and I treated Renee to a night out at Paddy’s. She had never been before, and I wanted to go one last time to hear them sing my songs.

  The next morning, Jenna came over for the big farewell. Josaly
n and I hugged and kissed her, Mom, Granny, and Dad, me bawling my eyes out as I got in my car and began backing out of the driveway. Jason had Riley in the front of the moving truck with him as his ‘companion’, but Mom wouldn’t let me take Jade. She said I could have visitation rights to the cat whenever I came home to visit.

  We stopped frequently, between me having to pee, changing Josalyn’s diaper, having to gas up, me having to pee again, letting the dog pee, and stopping for food. We stopped in Alabama overnight, and then finished the rest of the drive the next day, meeting my brother Jay in Baytown late that night so he could take Renee home to Kingwood.

  A couple of weeks later, we had Josalyn’s birthday, my brothers and their families coming for the event, filling up the Robichauxs’ entire huge backyard, which I had decorated and scattered water toys, from sprinklers and water guns to slip-and-slides. We got an awesome picture of all three of my siblings and me, my little bump protruding proudly like the baby wanted to be in the photo too.

  Okay, y’all. I’m going to try something out. I have to write a short, true story for my creative writing class, so I’m gonna tell you what happened to me after Josalyn’s party and then turn it in as my assignment. My professor is a really cool, artsy-fartsy poetic type, and thankfully, she doesn’t mind the use of adult language in our writing. Let me know in the comments what you think!

  Being Texas, the mosquitoes were horrible, but I made sure to cover Josalyn’s body, clad only in a swim diaper, in bug spray, but one managed to bite her right on her eyelid, obviously the one place you can’t protect from the little fuckers. It swelled up, making her look like she’d went a round in a boxing ring, so Jason called her his ‘Little Boxer’ for the rest of the day.

  The next day, on the way to the grocery store, I looked in the rear-view mirror to find her scratching at it. Turning around in the driver’s seat to pull her hand away from her eye, since she wouldn’t stop just from me telling her to, I wasn’t paying attention and went right past a stop sign that wasn’t there when I used to drive to come visit Jason every day. Random stop sign, completely useless, making you stop for seemingly no reason—and lo and behold, I happened to look up at that exact moment, and of fucking course there was a cop sitting a few car-lengths back on the street.