Choosing Forever

by Mary B. Moore

  Huffing again, he muttered about chocolatey covered goodness cookies as he shoveled a fork full of the noodles and sauce into his mouth.

  We were all eating in silence and thinking over the day we’d had when Gram made a noise and we all looked up. She had dropped sauce on her chest, and was muttering about thankfully not dropping it on the white shirt that she was wearing. Getting her finger, she swiped it up, put it in her mouth and continued eating. Looking over at Gramps, I saw the look on his face as he watched all of this and licked his lips.

  Warily, I picked up my fork knowing I should look away from the old crusties in front of me, but it was like a freak show – you just couldn’t look away. A quick glance at the rest of the room showed that I wasn’t the only one with the problem.

  Almost like it was planned, a noodle then fell off her fork and onto the same spot that the sauce had.

  Just as she moved to pick it up and eat it, Gramps made a noise again.

  “Jesus,” he groaned. “It’s like the most amazing porn ever. I’m getting all excited here.”

  There was a mass exodus as we all tried to get out. Tom was gagging and limping, but Cole had just opened the window and was bent out of it throwing up into the plants outside.

  “You deal with them,” Mom snapped at Dad as he tried to push past her. “They’re yours, so you stay with them, you freaky bastard.”

  “But, I don’t want them!” Dad whined and pushed harder.

  Giving him a shove back, we closed the door and Ren and I held onto the handle so that he couldn’t open it.

  Dad started yelling through the door at the same time as he tried to frantically get out. “No, stop! Oh God, stop. You’re too old for that.”

  I’d almost started to feel sorry for the guy and was loosening my grip on the handle, when we heard a voice that we’d forgotten was in there.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Cole gagged. “I can’t…stop it,” he shrieked. There was a thud and a couple of seconds later someone started to hammer at the front door frantically.

  Opening it slowly, Cole walked in with a couple of leaves in his hair and mud and crap all over his jeans.

  “You’re all dead,” he growled as he launched himself at us.

  Somehow, after the horror of the night before, I slept without having any nightmares. After spending another hour apologizing to Sabine for my family, but hugely grateful that this one didn’t involve shit for once, she put my mind at ease and promptly passed out. The pregnancy was taking its toll and she could pretty much sleep constantly now.

  The morning was puke free too, well from Sabine. Cole on the other hand was still suffering from morning sickness, the pussy. Call me a cynic, but come the fuck on - men don’t get that shit. He was just being a drama queen. Listening to him barf in the bathroom was a great wakeup call and killed my morning wood better than sticking it in iced water would have.

  Rolling over, I watched as Sabine woke up, grinning at the cute little noises she made as she scrunched her nose up and stretched at the same time. The movement tightened her top across her stomach and I saw the little bump that was our baby. Putting my hand on it, it hit me that I really had no idea what the fuck happened during a pregnancy apart from the baby growing.

  “When will it kick?” I asked as I rubbed the bump. I wasn’t blind to the fact that her tits had grown too, a lot, and that the top was tight across them, but Jesus I was trying to be a gentleman here.

  “Well, I’m at sixteen-weeks now,” she replied and reached for the What to Expect When You’re Expecting book beside her. “Uh,” she flipped through the pages. “Ah, here. Normally, at around twenty-weeks you can just feel it kicking, but most typically don’t feel it until around twenty-four weeks.”

  “Oh,” I was disappointed. I hadn’t been there for a scan or for any of the appointments and I wanted to be part of it. I wanted to see the baby moving or hear its heart beating. I wanted to be a part of everything.

  “I have an appointment this afternoon,” she said quietly, like she was unsure. “Would you like to come?”

  My head snapped up and I jumped out of bed. “What time? We have to get ready!” Running out of the room, I hammered on the door where Cole was still bringing his sphincter out of his mouth. “Hurry up!” I yelled, before running back into the room. “Okay, what do I have to do?”

  Sabine was still in bed laughing her ass off at me. “Nothing,” she snorted. “It’s not until twelve-thirty. We have three hours.”

  “Three hours?” I could wait that long couldn’t I?

  Turns out I was wrong. After getting Cole out of the bathroom, I jumped in and got ready before pulling Sabine in and putting her under the shower. By the time she was dressed, I was fit to be tied.

  “We have to leave. We only have,” I looked at my watch, “holy shit, an hour and a half. Let’s go!”

  I got her out of the door and in the car alone, which had involved getting Coleman to bring the car around and then locking my family in the house as we left. There was no way they were joining us on this.

  Looking at the window where they were all standing glaring out at us, I gave them a smug smile and a wave as we pulled away.

  Coleman’s men were under strict orders not to let any of them know where we were going, too. This was our time with our baby and no way was I going to let them ruin it.

  Hearing the baby’s heartbeat was the most amazing thing that I’d ever experienced in my life, until I saw my baby on the screen during the scan that was.

  There was this perfect little human being growing inside Sabine. I could see their heart beating, their fingers, their legs and…” Oh Jesus, they have a nose!” I croaked. You could see its nose.

  The sonographer burst out laughing and replied, “Yes, there’s a nose. In fact, there are all of the body parts.” Picking up the file beside her, she scanned through some of the papers and frowned. “Huh, it says here that you should be sixteen plus three,” looking back at her measurements on the screen she shook her head. “I’m measuring eighteen plus four?”

  What the hell were all these numbers and pluses? “What the shit does that mean?” I asked looking back at the screen in a panic. “Is that bad? Should they be a minus?”

  She started laughing again with Sabine joining her this time, getting a glare from me in return. I’d never been faced with this shit in my life so I had no clue what they were talking about.

  “No, this is good. It just means that the gestation date is further along than we thought.”

  “The what?” I looked between the women confused. It sounded like some sort of alien type shit to me.

  “Gestation,” Sabine said slowly. “That’s how long the baby has been growing for,” she explained and then turned back to the sonographer. “Could it be that the baby is just big? Look at its father!” She gestured back to me and I couldn’t stop myself from standing up straight and puffing out my chest with pride. Yeah, I was a big guy!

  “Yes, it could be that too,” she nodded. “But the overall development of your baby puts it at eighteen plus four. That would mean that your due date is,” she played with a wheel beside her. “October thirty-first.”

  “Oh shit,” I took a step back and grabbed a handful of hair with each hand. “Does this mean that our kids going to be like Damian in that movie?” I made a stabbing motion with one of my hands. I knew what I meant, and fucking hell, having a baby at Halloween could only mean that, right?

  Both women gave me a look like I was the one with issues, and then turned back to the screen.

  “Would you like me to move onto 3D scanning?” She asked, almost bouncing in her seat. “That means we could get a close up of baby’s,” she pointed at her crotch and gave Sabine a pleading look. “I know some people don’t want to know, but I love finding out and telling parents-to-be.”

  Looking at her closely, it dawned on me that she looked quite young, younger in fact than I’d initially thought.

  “How old are you?” I
asked suspiciously. I mean, she was close to my baby and my woman. What if she slipped with the scanning wand thingy?

  “Twenty-three,” she replied as she switched to 3D after getting the nod from Sabine.

  “Are we finding out?” I asked her. I hadn’t expected this. I wasn’t prepared. Would she find devil horns? It’s amazing how irrational a sane man can become when he was faced with shit that he knew nothing about. This was Cole’s department, not mine!

  “I really want to,” She murmured looking up at me. “Can we please?”

  A seat hit the back of my knees and I realized that the sonographer had seen how pale I’d gotten and had pulled the one from the other side of the room over for me. I was grateful for it because at that exact moment, both of my legs gave out at once and I plonked down onto it.

  Waiting for my answer, which was a weak nod, she walked back around the bed and began the scan. It was the strangest thing seeing an orange-yellow screen with this little Gremlin alien looking thing. At first, I thought she’d gotten it totally wrong and was looking at a kidney or something, but then I started to make out eyes, a nose, a tiny little lip… Feeling that I was crying, I tried as discretely as I could to wipe my eyes.

  The sonographer went over everything and pointed out different things to us just as the baby made a waving movement with its hand.

  “It’s waving at me,” even I could hear the wonder in my voice, and I’m sure I looked like a dribbling window licker, but I didn’t care. “Our baby is advanced,” I stated proudly, looking down at Sabine. All of the love that I knew I felt for her already just came rushing forward and I leaned down and gave her a kiss.

  It was brief, it was nothing that Hollywood would produce movies based on in years to come, but it conveyed all the feelings that I had. I knew that was true when I pulled back and looked down at her again and saw her staring up at me with tears in her eyes.

  “Okay, folks,” the sonographer broke the moment. “Are we definitely finding out?” She turned and looked at us with a huge grin. We both nodded back at her making her grin even wider. “Here goes, my lovelies!” There was some clicking and we saw more of our baby as she moved the wand lower. I don’t know how she made it out, but obviously what she was looking at made sense to her, because she squealed and filled us in. “Well, we have a boy. That is definitely a little peeny weeny!”

  “Can you give us a minute?” I asked her. I had a sudden feeling of urgency, I had to have this moment with her right now.

  I caught the Sonographer’s eye and moved my hand so she could see what I had and why I was asking her to leave so abruptly.

  “Oh yes,” she nodded and moved the wand so that the baby’s face was now on the screen. Picking up Sabine’s right hand, she told her, “Hold this right here so you can see baby while I’m outside. Shout me when you’re done.” And with that she hurried out of the room leaving a confused Sabine with a sweating me.

  “Luke, what’s going on?” She sounded worried and I wanted to kick myself. She was safe though, that was the priority.

  “Sabine,” I started and then walked around the bed to get closer to the screen with my son, holy shit my son, on it. “I’m sorry, so fucking sorry I can’t put it into words. But you’re safe, and from now on I’ll keep you safer than safe. Nothing will ever get to you.” I grabbed her left hand, pulling it across her body to me. “I love you more than I can say. In fact, I’ve loved you since the second I met you. The last three months have been hell and I’ve missed you so much; hell, I even slept with your pillow!” She looked at me like I’d grown a second head when I said that, but I just shrugged because I wasn’t ashamed of my feelings. “I can’t imagine spending any more of my life without you and I don’t want to even spend a minute without you,” I continued rambling. I knew what I wanted to get to, it was just finding the words to fucking get there. “What I’m saying is, and badly,” I cringed. “Will you marry me?”

  She lay there absorbing everything I’d said until she got to the actual proposal and her eyes widened in shock. They almost popped out of her head when I lifted my hand and held the ring up. I knew she had her grandmother’s wedding ring and loved it, but she’d never wear it because it was in gold and Sabine didn’t wear that. I’d found a white gold version of it in an antique shop in London, it hadn’t even been hard to find so I’d taken it as a sign.

  Well, at least I had taken it as a sign. The longer she stared at it, the more I sweated and started to doubt my choice as I waited for an answer.

  “Yes,” the word finally came out so quietly that I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right.

  “Yes?”

  Nodding her head rapidly, she held her hand out and made a noise of impatience. Slipping the ring on her finger and seeing that it fit her perfectly, all of the tension left me and a feeling of everything being right replaced it. The relief almost had me collapsing at the side of the table.

  Her hand moved quickly after it as she grabbed the neckline of my shirt and pulled me so that we were face to face. “But, if you ever, ever, throw me away again, ever keep me out of the loop again, I will cut your balls off and paint them into Christmas decorations. Comprendre?”

  I tried to hold the groan back when she spoke that single French word, I really did, but I failed miserably causing her to glare at me.

  “Yes, I promise,” I nodded, giving her an innocent grin in return.

  There was a timid knock at the door and the young sonographer poked her head around it with a grin. “I might be getting into a tidge bit of trouble if I let this go on any longer. Are we all done?”

  Looking back down at Sabine and seeing her grinning over at the girl and holding her hand up, I looked back at the screen at my son and said the first thing that came to mind.

  “Ren’s gonna have a shit fit when he finds out.”

  Her excited nod showed exactly why we got along so well. She was looking forward to rubbing it in his face too.

  Nine

  SABINE

  We were in the car with Coleman driving us home when it occurred to me to ask about the stranger from the first day that they’d arrived. Some might find it strange that it hadn’t hit me before now, but so much had happened since that it had completely skipped my mind.

  “Coleman, who was the man that was at my house when you all arrived?”

  I met his eyes in the rearview mirror briefly as he just muttered, “Wrong place, wrong time.”

  It made sense, we had a lot of tourists in Appledore so he must have been out for a walk. “So, a boy eh?” He grinned as he congratulated us. “Well done, Brett.” Brett’s chest puffed out again with pride. “Your brother is gonna have a shit when he finds out too!” It seemed that we were all happy about that. Poor Ren.

  “Hey, we should stop and get a blue hat or something,” Brett suggested and brought out his phone.

  “Look for a Mothercare,” I suggested giving the name of the only baby shop that I knew of. “I think there’s one in Exeter which is about twenty-minutes away from where we are now.”

  Nodding, he found it and gave the details to Coleman who put it into the Satnav, and off we went for our first baby shopping adventure.

  “Cole would go nuts doing this,” he laughed as we pulled up in front of the huge baby store. “Let’s go!”

  An hour later…

  “I think it’s time to go,” I yawned standing beside Brett who was holding up the millionth outfit. I was drained and my patience had run out half-an-hour ago.

  “I just think it wouldn’t hurt for us to get some things now,” he repeated for the millionth time.

  “It’s still quite early,” I rubbed my tiny bump. Really, it looked like I’d just eaten a couple McDonald’s, but hey a bump was a bump. “Let’s just get what we came for and go home.” I yawned again. This baby was exhausting me.

  At the checkout, Brett told anyone who would listen that we were having a boy. He placed the four blankets, six baby-grows and nine, yes nine, hats on the
counter and then paid for them, still grinning proudly like he’d conquered the world.

  I couldn’t stop laughing as he strutted back towards the car like a cockerel, even Coleman had to hold back the laugh that was making his lips twitch.

  Once we were in the car and heading home, Coleman asked the next question that I hadn’t even thought about yet. Today had been such a big day all round.

  “So, when are y’all getting married?”

  Brett stopped digging in the bag of baby clothes and looked over at me. “Do you have a Vegas here?”