Screw It

by Nicki DeStasi

  Jed, Zach’s brother and best man, is also wearing a dark gray suit as he guides Krissy, my matron-of-honor wearing the same dress as her daughter, down the aisle.

  “Ready?” Matt asks from my side. He offers me his elbow.

  Knowing that this will be the best decision I’ve ever made, I don’t hesitate to wrap my hand into the crook of Matt’s arm.

  Walking down the aisle is surreal. The eyes of my loved ones are watching me walk to the man who, in Krissy’s words, is made for me. Zach is standing in his own dark gray suit. His ivory vest and tie matches my ensemble. His hair is freshly cut, just long enough for me to have something to hold on to, and his stubble is freshly trimmed. His intense bourbon eyes lock on mine, and my belly dips. I smile huge. His lips part to grin that grin of his that never fails to create a tingle between my legs.

  After Matt gives me away and the priest begins to do his thing, Zach leans into me. “How many times did you consider bolting?”

  Turning my head to face him, I bite my lip to stop myself from laughing. I’m not religious, not even close, and the only reason I agreed to a church wedding was because his family is old-school Italian. When I’d mentioned the possibility of an outside wedding, Zach’s mom had looked like I told her I was actually a man. Since I got my way with the minuscule guest list, I gave in with the church.

  Even so, I’m not sure it’s appropriate to laugh when the priest is sharing the word of God.

  Still, I lean closer to Zach and whisper, “Only once.”

  He presses his lips together to keep himself from laughing. “Glad you made the choice not to bolt.”

  Looking over his soft face, the face I love more than I knew I was capable of, my eyes loosen, and I tip up one side of my mouth. “Me, too.”

  Three Years Later

  “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh—”

  “Sweets, you coming?”

  Hell to the motherfucking no, I’m not coming. I’m not going to his parents’ house for Sunday dinner when I have a white stick with a blinding pink plus sign on it that is so bright that I’m afraid Zach can see it through the door.

  A knock sounds on the bathroom door. “Becca, you coming or what?”

  “Or what.” My voice comes out squeaky.

  There’s a pause, and then the doorknob rattles. It doesn’t turn because I locked it.

  About two years ago, I switched from the IUD to the pill because my body rejected the last IUD. I’d thought it was crazy, but my doc had said it happens. Because I hadn’t wanted to take the chance of trying another one and getting pregnant, I’d decided on the pill. And I would take that sucker religiously at eleven in the morning—not eleven oh one, not ten fifty-nine. It’d be eleven on the dot every single day.

  So, to my extreme surprise, I didn’t get my period last month. I brushed it off because the pill would make my flow super light. But when my period was a no-show again, I picked up a test even though I knew there was no way I could be pregnant because I’d take that little pill like my life depended on it.

  Tears sting my eyes as Zach pounds on the door and repeatedly calls my name.

  Shit, fuck, shit, fuck.

  We’ve had the kid talk more than once, and I know Zach is way ready—beyond ready, chomping-at-the-bit ready—but I’m not. I’ve been using work as an excuse. I just launched truck two about six months ago, and I’ve been micromanaging Scott with the growing catering side of my business and Kelly who runs my second truck. I know I can step back and let them work their magic. They both hold serious food magic. Scott has proven his skills time and time again, and Kelly is straight out of chef school. I pay them well, and they do their jobs like it is their own business. But me and my ways can’t just let them do their thing. I don’t just keep my finger on the pulse. I keep my business workings in a bear hug.

  There’s another pounding on the door. “Becca, open the fucking door.”

  Maybe it is work, but a huge part is fear. I love kids. I love playing with them, and I love tickling them. I enjoy playing video games with Nick, and I can make a killer French braid. In theory, I can’t wait to build a family. But in reality? The thought of carrying and rearing my own child squeezes the breath out of me.

  The door cracks, and my head whips around just as another blow breaks the door open. With a hard face, a seriously pissed off Zach strides through.

  He comes right at me, catching what I assume is my colorless face and wide eyes. His words are clipped when he says, “What the fuck?”

  I don’t say anything, but tears well up in my eyes. His gaze drops to the counter, and his body locks. He freezes so hard that if I touched him, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if my fingers came away frostbitten. Woodenly, he turns his head to lock eyes with me. Through watery eyes, I watch him swallow hard several times. Then, quick as can be, he crushes me in his arms, squeezing the breath out of me.

  “You’re carrying my baby?” he whispers.

  I wheeze.

  He loosens his arms. “You’re carrying our child?”

  New tears threaten to spill, and it’s not out of fear. It’s because the reverence in his voice pierces through my freak-out and goes right to my heart.

  “Yeah.” My voice comes out strangled.

  He tips his head down to look at me, and I tilt my head back.

  “Scared?”

  “Out of my mind.”

  His face softens, and half his mouth tips up. “You’re gonna be a kick-ass mom.”

  Ice slithers through my stomach. “I’m not sure I will.”

  “I am.”

  “How do you know?”

  “’Cause you’re a kick-ass wife, and you’re a kick-ass woman. We both know I’m the shit. No way in hell we won’t make the most kick-ass family whose awesomeness is so awesome that they’ll write books about us.”

  My whole body jolts as what he said flows through me, warming me straight to the bone, before I plant my face in his chest and bust out laughing.

  He lets me ride my wave of hilarity as he kisses the top of my head.

  After I calm down, he says, “Gotta call my folks.”

  My eyes widen, and my heart picks up pace.

  “Gotta tell them we’re not gonna make it tonight.”

  My eyebrows pull together. “We’re not?”

  He grins his naughty grin, and my clit tingles.

  “Fuck no.”

  I tilt my head to the side. “Fuck no?”

  “We gotta celebrate.”

  My pussy throbs. “Celebrate?”

  Without another word, he steps back, takes my hand, and leads me to our bedroom, so we can celebrate me carrying our child.

  But we don’t exactly celebrate. It’s more like we have a blast of epic proportions.

  Four Days Later

  “Twins?” I shriek at the ultrasound tech.

  We just came from seeing the OB-GYN in an exam room. The doctor thought I’d probably conceived when I had a stomach bug a few months ago. Even puking my guts out, I’d swallowed my pill, but it couldn’t exactly work if it wouldn’t stay down. As soon as I had felt better, we’d banged multiple times, giving his little swimmers an in, which they had taken full advantage of. Clearly, they had taken full advantage of it.

  Now in the ultrasound room, the ultrasound tech nods hesitantly and then swings the screen in my direction. “Baby A is right here.” She points with her pink-tipped finger at the screen. “And baby B is right here.”

  I shoot my eyes to Zach. His face is the definition of smug male pride and victory.

  I narrow my eyes. “Do twins run in your family?”

  Arms crossed over his chest, he grins so big that it takes up half his face. “Nope.”

  “Um…”

  My eyes slide to the tech.

  “Twins are generally passed down through the mother,” she says.

  That punches me right in the stomach, but it does something entirely different to my heart. It’s a piece of information about my mama. It
’s small and not much, but I now know she passed the ability to have twins down to me. I know she wasn’t a twin, but maybe somewhere down the line there were twins.

  I blink back tears and gentle my voice. “Do you know the genders?”

  She shakes her head. “You’re about thirteen weeks. You can find out around eighteen, if they cooperate.”

  I take in a deep breath and swing my eyes back to the screen. My two little blobs almost look like ghosts with white little bodies against a black screen. There are two little heads and two sets of arms, but the legs aren’t really discriminative at this angle. My belly flutters and warms as I look at my kids, my children that I created with my husband.

  Glancing at Zach, tears hit my eyes when what my life has become dawns on me. I’m lying on a table, looking at my two little babies. I’ve spent nearly all my life bottled up and scared of loss—loss of those I care about, loss of control, loss of any kind. But when I took the chance to jump all those years ago, crumbled on Zach’s floor with my clothes strewed around me, I leaped into the unknown and let myself live. Right now, right this moment, I make another choice. I’ll never be fearful of living. I’m not stupid, so I’ll make informed decisions, and I know there will be times when things won’t work out.

  But seriously?

  Screw it.

  I’m never going to let fear rule me again.

  Twenty-Five Weeks Later

  Fifteen Years Later

  “But, Mom…” my daughter, Lizzy, with curly red hair and bright green eyes, draws out the word like only a fifteen-year-old can. “Who friggin’ cares about the Battles of Lexington and Concord? That happened forever ago. The redcoats went down, and we won. Who cares about the rest?”

  “Don’t say friggin’,” I say from my spot next to her at the kitchen table.

  I’m supposed to be helping her with her homework, but she’s acting like I’m plucking out her toenails with rusty pliers.

  “Dad says fuck all the time,” Matty, my son and the spitting image of Zach, says from across the table.

  My eyes move to my husband, the father of my children, and the love of my life. “Now, you have your son swearing. Way to go, father of the year.”

  Zach’s lip twitches, and his eyes dance before he drops his gaze to our son. “Do as I say, not as I do. Don’t curse.”

  Matty rolls his eyes. “Who cares? Everyone says fuck. Hell, it’s so not a big deal that curse words are made up all the time—fuckbag, fuckface, fuckersucker—”

  “If you say fuck one more time, you’re not playing basketball this year,” Zach cuts off Matty.

  My stomach lurches from hearing my little man speak like that. I’m not stupid. I know kids swear a lot. But he’s my little guy, my mama’s boy, who brought me dandelions when he was three and declared I was the prettiest girl in the world when he was six. My ears are bleeding from listening to him curse so casually.

  “Dad!”

  “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care if all the kids do it. I don’t care if the Pope is doing it. I don’t care if the new saying becomes, The fickle finger of fate fucked me. In this house, you watch your goddamn mouth. My house, my rules. If you don’t like it, you’ll get the consequences.”

  “Gabe’s dad lets him swear.”

  Zach’s eyebrows fly up. “So?”

  “So?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “If Gabe’s parents let him swear, then why can’t you let me swear?”

  “’Cause I’m your parent, not Gabe’s. Just like you’re Matt, not Gabe. You wanna be a man? Act like it. A man carves a path for himself. A man doesn’t follow everyone else. You wanna be a follower or a trailblazer?”

  Matty looks at the table. My heart squeezes for both our son’s adolescent need to rebel and my husband’s speech to our son.

  Zach puts a hand on Matty’s shoulder. “If you want to be a follower, that’s your choice.”

  Eyes still on the table, Matty says, “I don’t want to be a follower. I want to make my own path like Mom did.”

  My lungs clench tight, forcing the breath out of me. My eyes sting, and it takes everything I have not to burst into tears.

  Fifteen years ago, I made the decision not to be ruled by fear, not to be ruled by the negativity surrounding me since birth. I can’t say I’ve done everything perfectly. Fear is a part of life. I had issues along the way—the anxiety when my kids started kindergarten, the apprehension when my fourth truck opened, doubt when I turned down the offer to be bought out by bigwigs, nerves when my kids started high school, the worry when Zach took us to Italy for our ten-year anniversary and we left the kids at home with his parents. Through all of it, I only had minor internal freak-outs, but I held myself together and allowed myself to live.

  And I’m really living. With every terrifying second of my life on this earth, I’m trying to make the most of every breath I take.

  But never in five billion years would I have suspected that I’d grow into a mom who my son admires.

  “Me, too,” Lizzy adds. “That’s why history is stupid and pointless. How am I going to use this to run my own business?”

  I grit my teeth stop myself from crying, but a lone tear leaks out and cuts a path down my cheek.

  I look at Zach, and his eyes are soft. He knows what I’m feeling. After fifteen years together, we still bicker all the damn time, but we also talk. He knows every crevice of my heart and soul, and he’s given me every piece of him, too. Aside from our kids, his love is the most precious thing I have.

  Fuck me. I’m getting gushy.

  I hold back the rest of my tears with a deep breath. I smile at my husband and turn to my daughter. “History class won’t help you build your own business, but it’s required to get a high school diploma. How are you going to get a loan if you’re a high school failure? School isn’t always fun, but it’s a means to an end.”

  Lizzy’s beautiful green eyes shift to the side. “I guess.”

  “Don’t guess. Know. Finish up the questions, and I’ll let you help with the dinner rush in the food truck tonight.”

  She beams her pretty white smile at me, and I momentarily thank my lucky stars that she’s not allowed to date until she’s sixteen.

  The kids have gone to bed, and I’m cuddling naked with my husband.

  Zach says, “Proud of you, sweets.”

  My brows draw together. “For what?”

  He swipes my cheekbone with his thumb. “For tonight with the kids.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You were you.”

  I curl in closer to him, knowing what he means. For our family to be happy, I don’t need to be anything but me, issues and all.

  I never went back to therapy to work out my insecurities and fear. Although it could have been argued that talking to someone was needed, I didn’t want to. Zach was convinced I had PTSD. Maybe I did—or do, considering I still have nightmares. They don’t happen often, but they happen. I can’t say I’ll never go, but I just don’t feel like I need it.

  Just having someone in my life who I love helps me find myself out of that dark place. That’s not to say that Zach is my crutch. He’s my partner, but he has shown me that living brings joy.

  Life hurts like a motherfucker at times, but it also heals. Sitting at the kitchen table with my kids tonight is a perfect example. Having my son and daughter proclaim that they wanted to be like me put salve on a fear that said I would end up like my mother.

  Life isn’t about control. It’s about the ability to say, Screw it, and to live, love, and experience the beauty life has to offer.

  Saying thank you for me is always difficult. There are so many people who helped make your book what it becomes, then after the release I can’t go back in and say thank you to that one blogger that took a chance, or that one reader that reached out to you to tell you how much your story touched them.

  So I will preface my thank yous by saying, if you’re reading/have read my book, thank
you. You readers, you bloggers help spread the word. For that, I will forever be thankful from the bottom of my heart.

  I must also say thank you to God. Like every person on this planet, I’ve had my own journey and I still have a ways to go (hopefully!) before my excursion of life comes to an end. Thank you God for helping me through my dark times and guiding me into the light to find beauty.

  Thank you to my husband. Your strength, acceptance, support and will of character awes me. I love you more with every breath I take.

  To my kids. Mommy is so thankful for your patience when I have just one more paragraph to write before I can play Legos or Barbie’s and such. I’m doing this for you—proving to you that anyone can make their dreams come true if they’re willing to work for it.

  To my family and friends: Thank you so much for supporting me. I can’t tell you what it means to me when you ask questions, get excited and encourage my writing. Thank you.

  To my betas, whom are truly my family of friends: Judy Ruiz, Jennifer Diaz, Tabitha Wilbanks and my newbies—Theresa Alberts and Jennifer Juers—thank you so much for your feedback. You thoughts, ideas and criticism really helped me tighten and tweak the story line. To my other girls: Thank you for your input, no matter how big or how small, thank you for every comment, every like, and every share. Every bit counts.

  To A.L Zaun: From the bottom of my heart, thank you for doing all you do to help me. You’re a busy woman and there are no words that really convey how much appreciate every critique, every, praise, and every gesture of friendship. Love you, honey.

  To Alison G. Bailey: Thank you sweets, for all you do for me. Your critiques, your help getting the word out, and most importantly, for being my friend. Love you.

  To Ashley Pullo: Thank you, chica, for your help and support with this book. You’re such a fantastic friend to have, and I’m so thankful Alison introduced us. Who better to bounce ideas off of about headless horseman sex (still giggling)? Love you!