Cupcake Love

by Diana Currie

  “Is something wrong?” he whispered.

  “You’re all about foreplay tonight,” I replied teasingly.

  He chuckled. “I’m making up for lost time,” he corrected.

  Aiden proceeded to make love to me slowly. I felt connected to him in a new way, like our bodies were speaking to one another. I slept in Aiden’s arms that night, with no desire to be anywhere else but by his side.

  ~*~

  I woke the next morning at 8:30 and hardly had time to shower and make Aiden breakfast before I was running out the door. I’d wanted to spend more time with him, ten hours hardly being enough to satiate my needs. Aiden offered to come to the hospital to see Ally but I thought it would be better if he wasn’t there. She already had a large group of guests coming and I knew Shane would feel awkward. I told him he should come to Pittsgrove the following week on his way back to campus. That way he could visit with Lenny, meet baby Adam, and we could enjoy the ride to UD together. He was happy enough with that plan so I kissed him goodbye and was on my way home.

  I met the others at Rachel’s house as planned and we took Shane’s car over to the hospital. We navigated the halls of the maternity ward in silence, not wanting to disturb any of the new moms or babies. A nurse outside Ally’s room said only four visitors could enter at a time and since Elise and Jack were already inside only Shane and Casey could go in. Shane looked at me before turning the handle on the door.

  “Go on. Go meet your nephew,” I said, encouraging him with a pat on the shoulder.

  He smiled at me and went inside with Casey following close behind. A few minutes later Elise and Jack came out into the hall.

  “Ally says she wants to see some new faces,” Elise laughed. “You three go on in. I won’t tell the nurses if you don’t.”

  “Thanks, Elise,” Rachel said.

  Ethan and I followed her into the room before any of the staff could count heads. Ally was sitting up in a big bed with guard rails and Casey was perched on a chair next to her. Across the room was a comfy looking rocking chair where Shane sat cradling the baby in his arms. He looked a little uncomfortable holding the newborn; trying not to jostle him around as he slept. Rachel and I tiptoed over to get a closer look and Shane glanced up at us grinning like a fool. I could tell Adam was going to have Uncle Shane wrapped around his little finger in no time.

  “He’s beautiful, Ally!” I whispered.

  “I can already see he looks like you,” Rachel commented.

  Ally smiled. She looked tired but was glowing with pride. She filled us in about the birth and her first night with the baby. “Jack and I didn’t want to send him to the nursery all night so he stayed with us in here. He wakes up every hour or so to eat. Every time I do manage to sleep the nurse wakes me up checking my blood pressure!”

  “Why do they do that, Ally?” Casey asked.

  “They just need to make sure it’s holding steady before I go home. They check Adam’s heart rate and help me feed and diaper him correctly too.”

  I knelt down beside Shane and touched Adam’s hair. It was so soft and a little curly.

  “How does it feel to be an uncle?” I asked Shane.

  “Surreal. It’s hard to believe I now have another biological relative. All my life it’s been just me and Ally,” he said.

  I placed my hand on Shane’s knee and smiled at him. I hadn’t realized how significant adding a member to the Decker family tree would be for him and Ally. Adam was related to Jack and Rachel and all the Hender’s, which meant now Ally and Shane were linked to them too. It must be an overwhelming feeling to suddenly have so much more family. I was so happy for him.

  Without thinking about what I was doing my hand began rubbing back and forth across Shane’s knee. It finally caught my attention when he shifted in the chair, adjusting himself. I blushed and removed my hand. I didn’t like knowing that I had to pay more attention to how I behaved around him. I remembered all the times since high school that Shane had touched me in ways he thought were innocent and friendly, but actually sent my heart racing. It was hard to believe that those roles were now reversed.

  “Do you want to hold him?” Shane asked me. I nodded and he carefully put the baby in my arms letting me take the chair. Adam was so small and perfect. He had big dark eyes and a tiny little baby nose. His hands were clenched in fists the way all infants’ were. I leaned my face over him and smelled his head. Ah, baby smell.

  “Ah, gross Hanny. Don’t you know where that head’s just been?” Ethan asked teasingly.

  “Shut up, E. You’re ruining the moment,” I said in a soothing voice so as not to upset Adam.

  Rachel slapped her boyfriend and Ally looked slightly embarrassed.

  “Adam, this is your Aunt Hannah,” Shane said to the baby.

  “Really?” I asked looking to Ally. “You want him to call me Aunt Hannah?”

  “Of course you’re Aunt Hannah, silly!” Ally insisted.

  I held him a few more minutes and then let Rachel take her turn. Ethan declined holding the baby until he was a little less breakable. When Jack came back in the room Ethan punched his arm a few times to congratulate his becoming a father.

  “Geez, man. Lay off the steroids would ya?” Jack said sarcastically, rubbing his arm.

  “I can’t believe we all have to leave next week,” Rachel whined. “He’s going to look so different by Thanksgiving.” She cooed and made faces at the infant.

  “You’ll just have to come back and visit us before then,” Ally replied.

  “Okay, Rach, hand over the tiny human before you get a bad case of baby fever,” Ethan said.

  Jack smiled and took Adam from his sister. Rachel didn’t complain which made me think perhaps she knew Ethan wasn’t too far off the mark with his joke. I watched Jack interact with his son and I felt a warm sensation all over too. It was heartwarming seeing him hold his newborn son. Ally must feel a thousand times this emotional when she looked at them together.

  We stayed a little while longer and then left to give Ally some privacy to nurse. Ethan made a joke about cows and utters. Shane slapped the back of his head as we exited the room and made our way out into the parking lot. I needed the fresh air as much as Rachel did. I was starting to picture little olive skinned babies with Aiden’s smile. I shook the idea from my head and my imaginary family changed to ivory skinned toddler girls with blue eyes playing the piano. Both visions seemed equally wonderful and frightfully appealing to me.

  CHAPTER 26: AIDEN’S NEWS

  Mid October felt colder than usual. I was bundled up in my winter coat with gloves and a scarf, sitting on cold as ice bleachers once again. This time it was for a fundraiser that benefited all the University’s teams. As Ethan and his team took on the schools rivals on the field, Rachel was handing out raffle tickets and I was in charge of selling hot cocoa on the sidelines.

  I’d been more than happy to offer my help when Ethan asked in late September. Life had been going great back then. Aiden and I were getting along after he returned from his internship in California. He came to Pittsgrove and spent two days with my dad and me before we went back to school together. On the second night of Aiden’s stay the three of us watched a Phillies game together and I cooked up the fish Lenny and Colin caught on their last fishing trip. We visited Ally, Jack, and the baby at the Decker’s house and Aiden got to meet Elise and Colin. After returning to campus Aiden and I were practically inseparable again. We studied together, swam at the rec center, ate dinner together, and most nights Aiden stayed with me at the house. It was a little lonesome for me without Ally there but having privacy on the second floor again was a plus.

  The day everything started to go wrong occurred two days after I turned 21. Shane and Rachel were the only other legal drinking age friends I had and they insisted we go out to celebrate my milestone. I chose a restaurant/bar where Aiden and Ethan could join us. Rachel kept giving me different mixed drinks to try and I had to admit I was enjoying them. At some point in the
evening Shane exceeded his tolerance for alcohol intake and began flirting with me. It was mostly in the form of harmless frat boy type remarks. He told me how good my boobs looked in my top, asked me if I wanted to try Sex on the Beach, stuff like that. I was a little too drunk to tell him to knock it off and I secretly liked the attention. Unfortunately, Aiden being completely sober didn’t care for it much at all. He called Shane an asshole and made me leave the bar. He was a little angry with me but understood Rachel had been pouring drinks down my throat all night. He forgave me before we even reached the house because I performed oral sex on him in his car on the way there. Alcohol isn’t the only thing that can make you forget things!

  The real crisis happened about a week later when Shane decided he needed to apologize to Aiden for his behavior at the bar. I would have thanked Shane for being so humble and trying to make things right with Aiden if he hadn’t inadvertently let it slip that he had feelings for me. We were all watching TV at the house and Shane took Aiden aside at some point to make his amends.

  “What are you talking about?” I heard Aiden ask.

  “I’m saying I promised Hannah I wasn’t going to let my feelings for her hinder our friendship or get in the way of your relationship with her,” I heard Shane explain. “I respect her decision.”

  “When exactly did you start having feelings for my girlfriend?” Aiden yelled.

  “I’m just trying to do the right thing and apologize to you. There’s no need to be rude,” Shane snapped.

  “You had your chance to be with Hannah. You were too stupid to see it and now you need to step away and let her be happy.”

  “All I want is for her to be happy, but I’m not backing away. You’re going to have to deal with that.”

  It got even uglier and Ethan had to jump in between them to break it up. Aiden was furious at me for not telling him that Shane’s feelings towards me had recently changed. He said he couldn’t trust me; that the only reassurance he had about my nagging feelings toward Shane was knowing that they were unrequited. He didn’t know where he fit into this mess any longer. He barely spoke to me in the following two weeks. I was so upset and afraid he was going to break up with me. He wouldn’t take my calls and I was forced to resort to texting him what I wanted to say.

  Finally, after eleven days Aiden showed up on my doorstep. We talked for a long time about how we felt about each other. I promised to never lie to him again. Aiden said he cared about me too much to give up and I swore that he was the person I wanted to be with. We had another chink in our armor but I was determined to get us back to where we had been at the start of the semester.

  So there I sat in the freezing cold thinking of ways to prove to Aiden that he could trust me again. He said he wasn’t upset any longer but I could feel the tension between us. Unlike our last fight, there was no makeup sex this time. Neither of us felt like being intimate. We were off balance again and I didn’t know how to fix it. The only way to earn someone’s trust is with time.

  Aiden wasn’t at the game that day. He had work to do with a classmate for a project that was due soon. Keith was there though and I waved every time he ran past my cocoa stand. Keith was volunteering as the mascot for the game. It had something to do with losing a bet with Ron but I didn’t ask. They were both still kind of pissed at me for hurting Aiden. I couldn’t blame them.

  It hadn’t been an intentional deception on my part to not tell Aiden about Shane’s change of heart. I knew that it would have made our already delicate relationship that much more complicated. I felt that as long as my loyalty was to Aiden it wasn’t any of his business how Shane felt. I had been wrong and was now paying the price. I couldn’t seek the comfort of my best friend because he was the reason for my troubles. I couldn’t ask my other best friend because she had a newborn to tend to and didn’t know about Shane and me. I did go to Rachel the night of the big confrontation. Her only advice was to quote, ‘ditch the pound puppy and make sweet love to that perfect male specimen you’ve been drooling over for five years’. Not a lot of help from Rachel.

  The next few weeks passed the same as the previous few. Aiden and I hung out every other day but something was missing. He still hadn’t tried to initiate any kind of sexual intimacy with me and I was beginning to worry. How much longer would I be punished for my lie of omission?

  *~*

  I was surprised in early December when Aiden asked me to go to dinner with him. We hadn’t been out anywhere special in over a month. I wore a dressy top and tight jeans over a sheer black panty set just in case it turned into an occasion for sexy underwear. Aiden picked me up at seven o’clock and drove us to a little local restaurant we’d eaten at once or twice before.

  “Hannah, I have some news,” he began after the waitress had taken our drink orders.

  He wasn’t wasting any time, was he? I immediately froze in place feeling my chest tighten and my heart race. He’d obviously put a lot of thought into this evening and I had no idea what he was thinking.

  “You know how the spring of junior year is when everyone in my program does a semester in the field? Half our time is focused on learning in the classroom and the other half is out in the parks.”

  He’d lost me already. “You said you’d been assigned to Brandywine Creek State Park; that everyone from UD does their field work there.”

  “Yes, well, in the spirit of being honest with each other, I need to tell you that I’ve been considering applying to a few out of state programs. I was thinking about it over the summer since my time at Big Sandy was so rewarding. I forgot all about it the second I had you back in my arms until… until our big fight happened. I was so angry and hurt that I mailed off three applications just wanting any excuse to get away from here. I never dreamed that I’d be accepted,” he explained his voice dropping off at the end.

  Not again. I couldn’t go through this again, not with us being on such shaky ground. “Where?” I asked impatiently. He looked afraid to tell me. “Where?” I repeated.

  He cleared his throat and looked at me through thick dark lashes. “Shawnee National Forest.”

  “Where the hell is that?”

  “Southern Illinois.” He put his hand up to stop me from responding. He was about to say something when the waitress came back with our drinks.

  “Are you ready to order?” she said in a chipper voice. I wasn’t in the mood for chipper. My boyfriend was telling me he planned to abandon me again for another four month excursion in the woods.

  We gave the waitress our orders and as soon as she was gone Aiden said, “I think I’m going to take it. The internship. It’s so much more important an opportunity than what I did over the summer. That was just bonus experience for my resume. A semester in the Ozark for my in-field training will really stand out when I go to look for a job.”

  “I understand how important that is,” I agreed.

  I felt like Aiden was only telling me half of what was on his mind. We ate our meal as he explained to me the significance of being chosen for this program in Illinois while I waited for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t fall until we were on our way home. Less witnesses I assumed.

  “A month ago I would have told myself that more time apart would totally suck, and be difficult for both of us, but that we could get through it. We’d have spring break together, and the opportunity to work on our webcam and phone sex techniques,” he joked, giving me a little smile. “But after everything that’s happened between us lately, I think I’ll go crazy if I’m away in Illinois while you’re here hanging out with Shane for a whole semester.”

  “So are you saying I’m preventing you from taking this opportunity because you still don’t trust me?” I asked confused.

  He sighed. “I love you, Hannah. But you’ve never really said you loved me back. Once, months ago, I got you to admit that you thought you were in love but you haven’t said it again since. I’ve been waiting all semester for you to say it again on your own and you haven’t. Meanwhile, ev
ery time we fight about Shane you remind me how you’ll always love him and how you can’t help it. You’re so sure you love him but still can’t say that you love me and that is some pretty messed up shit.”

  “So you’re going to Illinois. And you’re breaking up with me?” I asked angry now. I was frustrated that Aiden wasn’t being more direct, and also that somehow it seemed I was back in the exact place I was the last time Aiden dumped me. He knew what he was getting himself into and he’d said he didn’t care. I was furious that I was getting burned again for having trusted him.

  “The truth is, Hannah, I don’t want to pass up this opportunity for a girl who’s told me flat out I can only have half her heart,” he said softly. “I know you warned me about that when we got back together and I told you it didn’t matter, but that was before Decker decided he loves you back.”

  “He never told me he loved me,” I refuted.

  “Hannah, you cannot be that naïve. Of course he loves you. And you love him so now I’m just asking to get royally screwed over. I don’t understand why you haven’t left me already,” he said incredulously.

  “Aiden, don’t you realize that I’ve known how Shane feels about me for months and I still chose you?”

  “I’m not a fool. I never thought I would win at this fucked up game, I was just hoping there was a chance. I think I should go to Illinois next semester and you and I should-“

  “Break up?” I interrupted.

  “Trial separation,” he corrected. “Let’s take this time to think and see other people if we want. If nothing’s changed for either of us by May then we can start over. But I really don’t think I’ll come back to find you single, honey. I care about you so much, but I know I’m fighting fate here.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. “Can we talk while you’re gone?” I asked, trying to hold back my emotions. I was already starting to miss him; knowing that after tonight I might not see him again for a long time.