“It’s been forever since we did a pj party—I mean just us.” She grins and dives in under the covers with me; then she disappears and I hear her voice near my stomach. “And you? Didn’t you get the memo? You’re a fighter! Son of Riptide and Brooke! Show your mom and dad what you’re made of!”
I smile when she comes back up, and I close my eyes, feeling hopeful that our little baby is listening.
TEN
FAMILY VISIT
I wake up and smell something that, for once, does not make me nauseous. It’s sweet and fragrant and it invites me to take a good long whiff. I look around, and Melanie is going in and out of the room. Riptide red is splattered everywhere. Riptide-red roses are bursting open inside my room.
“Good morning, Juliet. Your Romeo sent these. They’re still unloading the rest off the truck. And I’m calling in to the gym that I already put in my hour workout.”
I smile and try to stand, but Melanie says, “Tut-tut! No standing. What do you need?”
“To pee! And to smell these, be still my fucking heart! Is this a note?” I pull open a note that’s nestled among the roses on my nightstand and my eyes well up when I see a song name. Melanie gathers a couple more notes and brings them over, and I open one to discover another song name. I haven’t heard these songs, but I’m already excited.
I give myself permission, because I’m pregnant and so fucking stressed, to have a little cry. Everyone knows if you hold it in, you get sick, and I don’t want to be sick. I want to be healthy—I want to give Remy a baby and a family. Something he has never had. So I cry. Then I text him, I miss your eyes. Your hands. Your face. Your dimples!
Then I take a picture of my room, so full of roses so that I can barely see my window, and send it.
That’s what I see now from my bed.
I then kiss my phone.
“You’re a dope!” Mel says as she brings the rest.
“So what, who cares?” I saucily return as I set my phone aside, because I know he won’t be checking it when he’s training, and he’ll probably train extra hard, so I go rub progesterone on myself again. I read that I can get a headache if I overdo it, but Melanie and I were on some forums last night reading that the cream stopped tons of women from miscarrying, and I want to put my name on that list.
I grab some books, set my laptop on the bed, and basically set up a mini office so that I don’t have to stand. I feel like my ovaries ache, but they’re not cramping, and I’m starting to wonder if this cream is really working.
I hear Mel finish with the florist and decide to skip my shower, merely because I don’t want to be standing up all that time, so I just find fresh clothes and change with caution.
Nora is supposed to visit during the day so Melanie can go to work, but instead of Nora appearing after Mel brings some fruit and cottage cheese for us to breakfast on, I get to hear Melanie call me from outside my bedroom, saying, “Brookey! Your parents are here!”
Melanie goes to let them in, so I edge out of bed, very attentive to how I’m feeling. I don’t feel any cramps, so I walk to the living room and immediately take a couch, and there they are, wide-eyed and shocked at me, standing and staring.
“Brooke.”
The way my mother utters my name fills me with dread.
And the moment I see both my parents, coupled with the way they say my name, I know they know. Grief settles over me when I absorb their normally bright expressions and realize they seem to have aged an entire decade. How can news of a beautiful baby age them like this?
“We would have expected it from Nora, but from you?” my mother says, and ohmigod, they do know. How come they know?
She sits down across the coffee table from me, and my father drops down at her side, arms crossed, glaring the glare he uses to intimidate his PE students.
They don’t speak for about three minutes. Which feels, under the circumstances, like an entire lifetime, and I’m so uncomfortable I don’t even know how to sit.
I love my parents. I don’t like hurting them. I’d wanted to tell them the good news, face-to-face, that I’m in love and that Remington and I are having a baby. The last thing I want is to make them feel let down, to treat this as the tragedy that they seem to be taking it as.
“Hello, Mom and Dad,” I say first.
I shift and shift until I plant my elbow on the couch arm, put my head in my hand, and curl my legs under me, but even when I’m finally comfortable, the tension in the air could be cut with an axe.
“Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Dumas,” Melanie says. “I’ll let you have your family reunion and check in with my job.” She looks at me and makes the sign of the cross to ward off vampires, then she tells me, “I’m back at seven. Nora texted that she’s on her way.”
I nod, and then there’s an awkward silence in the room.
“Brooke! We don’t even know what to say.”
For a moment, I really don’t know what to say either, except “I really want this baby.”
They both give me that look of disappointment parents have been giving their children for eons.