Chapter 51
51
Lucy
two years later
“How much longer?”
I stop pacing my small bathroom and pause at the sink to peer down at the timer on my phone. “Forty-seven seconds.”
“Ugh! How long does it freaking take to absorb some pee?!” Nat complains, dramatically burying her face into her hands. She crouches forward with her butt perched on the edge of the bathtub, and her left foot taps up and down.
I chuckle. “Thirty-nine seconds.”
“I blame Hayden,” she deadpans.
“ Riiight ,” I respond sarcastically. “Because you had zero contribution in the conception of this possible baby.”
“Shut up.”
“Geez.” If this is any indication of what Nat would be like pregnant, it’s going to be a long nine months. If this timer goes off any time soon.
Just then, the thrill of a bell goes off on my phone.
“Is it time?”
I nod. We both slowly walk toward the toilet tank where the pregnancy test sits, approaching it like we’re hunting a frightened bunny.
Nat suddenly jolts backward. “I can’t look!”
“Nat!”
“No! Look at it for me!”
“Oh. My. God ,” I groan. “You’re so dramatic.”
“What am I going to tell Hayden?”
“Well, we don’t know, do we? We have to look at the test before we know what to tell him.”
She shakes her head dramatically. “Just look at it for me. I can’t do it.”
I roll my eyes. I feel Nat start a round of jumping jacks behind me to settle her nerves. I take a deep breath, suddenly realizing that I’m nervous too. My sister’s going to have a baby!
I blow out a deep exhale. I have to keep my cool. Especially with Simone Biles doing a double backflip behind me. When I look down at the porcelain tank, I dart my eyes to the teeny-tiny digital screen on the white and blue stick, just in time to catch the word “pregnant” flashing in front of me.
“Oh my god.”
“ What? ! What, what?!” Nat shrieks.
I grip the pregnancy test in my fist, ignoring the fact that my sister peed on it, and swivel on my feet to face Nat. “You’re pregnant!”
“What?!”
I shove the test in her face at the same time she holds my fist in her hands and reads the result. “Oh my god.”
“Nat!”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” she says, panic glazing over her eyes.
“What? Here,” I urge, ushering her back to the toilet .
As she’s about to cower over the seat, we hear the door open from my living room. The opening and closing of the front door is followed by boisterous laughter and loud chitter-chatter. Hayden and Nat came over so the guys could go out for some drinks while Nat stayed home with me to catch up over takeout. About an hour into Nat nibbling on her cheese pizza, she confessed to me that her period had been over a week late. And that caused a domino effect of events. Me excited at the thought of my sister and her husband having a baby, us frantically running to the nearest bodega for a pregnancy test and the pack of Starburst Nat was eyeing at the counter, her yelling at me to give her some privacy while she peed on the stick even though she’s used the bathroom plenty of times with me in it.
“They’re back,” I say. Nat looks up at me, and I swear she’s going to cry. “Nat, he’s not going to be mad.”
“I know,” she responds tearfully.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“This wasn’t planned,” she says just as her eyes start to mist over. “I’m not ready to be a mom.”
“Lucy!” I hear Dexter call from the other side of the door. “Are you guys in there?” A light knock follows his question.
“Come on,” I say gently.
Nat wipes her tears and watches me walk toward the door. Instead of following me, she plops herself on the edge of the tub again. “Can you send him in?”
I take in her tearful state, hoping this sudden burst of emotions has more to do with hormones than an actual fear of telling Hayden they’re going to have a baby. She and I both know Hayden will be ecstatic over the news. Nat might think she’s not ready to be a mom, but I know Hayden’s ready to be a dad. I see it every time we see Carmen and David and Hayden beelines for the newest addition to the Marquez clan, baby Silas .
He doesn’t turn his cheek whenever Silas spits up curdled breast milk over the front of his shirt or when Silas’s poopy diaper demands a change. Instead, he showers him with raspberries to his soft stomach and hours of cuddle time while he naps in Hayden’s arms to give Carmen and David a break. He loves that kid as if he were his own.
I turn toward the door and open it carefully, finding both Dexter and Hayden on the other side looking confused and worried.
“Is Nat in there?” Hayden asks.
I nod. “She wants to talk to you,” I tell him solemnly.
His head jerks back in confusion. “Like, in here?” he asks, pointing his hand toward the door behind me. I nod again, and he looks at Dexter like he might know what’s going on. When Dexter shrugs, he looks back at me. “Is everything okay?”
“Just go in there before she has another freak-out.”
Hayden walks past me, carefully opening the door. I get a peek of Nat sitting at the same spot I left her, and Hayden gently closes the door behind him.
I look at Dexter with a wide smile, and I know the whole shift in my demeanor is confusing. “What’s going on?”
I do a little hop and rub my fists together in front of me. I squeal a little, and Dexter laughs. “I can’t say,” I answer, letting a loud giggle slip.
“What?” he asks with a laugh. “Seriously, what’s going on?”
Just then, we’re interrupted by a roaring “ WHAT?! ” from inside the bathroom. We both glance at the closed door and face each other again.
“Okay, maybe I can tell you now.” I hear both Nat and Hayden laugh, and Dexter’s eyes widen. “I’m going to be an aunt. Well, I mean, again. I’m going to be an aunt again.”
Dexter’s mouth cracks into a smile that matches mine. “No way!”
I nod, and Dexter scoops me up in a tight hug, twirling me until I grow dizzy. We both laugh ourselves silly before Dexter sets me down. Just then, the door to the bathroom clicks open, followed by a proudly beaming Hayden and a timid Nat trailing behind him.
“So I guess you guys already heard the news,” Hayden announces. Dexter rushes to Hayden, the two embracing in a cheesy hug. I can’t help but roll my eyes and smirk. Nat does the same, laughing at her husband and his best friend hopping on their two feet from excitement.
“Are you okay?” I ask, sidling up to Nat.
She nods and rolls her eyes, silently telling me she’s definitely aware of how badly she overreacted five minutes ago.
“We have to celebrate,” Hayden announces. “And I have to call my mom. And your parents too,” he adds, looking at Nat with a wide, blissful grin that hasn’t shifted once since he walked out of the bathroom.
“Should we wait?” Nat asks, tugging at Hayden’s hand. “I mean, isn’t there like a grace period? Or a trimester rule we need to follow?”
“Yeah,” I chime in. “I think Carmen waited until she was ten weeks before she told everyone.”
“What?!” Hayden argues cheerfully, that smile still unwavering. “This isn’t like waiting thirty minutes to swim after we eat. I want to tell everyone!” He reaches down and pulls my sister into a deep, bursting embrace, and I worry a little that Nat is going to pop like a tick from him squeezing her so hard. “I want everyone to know my wife is going to have my baby.”
She smiles at him, and I see her eyes mist over. “We’re having a baby,” I hear her whisper. She giggles, and Hayden follows, crouching down so their foreheads rest against each other.
“Yeah,” he responds, his voice low like hers. “We’re having a baby.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to be an uncle.”
I pull back my side of the comforter in our dimly lit room. It’s long after midnight, and Nat and Hayden left an hour ago after we drank multiple glasses of champagne and orange juice for Nat as we clinked the glass flutes too many times for us to count.
I reach for the hand lotion at my bedside and squirt a small dollop onto my hand. “Well, technically, no.”
Dexter throws me a wounded look. “What are you talking about?”
I grin slyly before explaining. “You aren’t technically an uncle.”
Dexter rolls his eyes. “I think my best friend having a baby falls under ‘uncle’ category.”
“Yeah, but I’ll always one up you in that department,” I say smugly. “Technically.”
He looks up at me, the blanket pulled up to his stomach, where he’s settled in under the sheets. “Oh, really,” he taunts. “So it’s a little competition now.”
“Absolutely.” I dip my feet under the blankets first, and the rest of me follows. Dexter flinches a little when my cold toes touch his legs, but it’s followed by a forceful tug of my waist to him.
“I bet the baby will call me ‘uncle’ before he or she calls you ‘aunty.’”
“That’s a pretty risky wager for someone who isn’t technically an uncle.”
“I guess I’m pretty confident I’ll be a better uncle than you’ll be an aunt.”
My brow shoots up. “Okay, Mr. Cocky,” I answer, my lips pursed together in disapproval. “What are we wagering?”
He hums, putting on a show of thought and pondering. “We gotta make it big. Something worth the stakes.”
“Agreed,” I say, playing along. “How about a lifetime of foot massages?”
He shakes his head in disagreement. “No, something bigger. ”
“What’s bigger than nightly foot massages?” I nudge my slowly warming feet into the groove behind his knee. “For a lifetime.”
He continues this contemplation, ruminating through all of his options, when he snaps his fingers. “I got it.”
I laugh. “What?”
“If this kid calls me ‘uncle’ first, you marry me.”
I laugh harder. “Seriously?”
His face doesn’t change into something lighter or playful. In fact, the seriousness in his eyes grows darker, making me wonder if there’s more to this little wager we’re tossing back and forth. “Yeah.” He says that single syllable, four-letter word like it carries something more than a far-off agreement to spend the rest of our lives together. “Marry me.”
“Like, if you win, right?”
He pauses before answering, his eyes lighting up with something that leans toward hope. “Or sooner.”
“Wait, what?”
He hops off the bed, leaving me equally confused and dumbfounded. After rummaging through his sock drawer, he returns to his soft, squishy spot next to me and unfolds his large palm to reveal a small velvet square box. The wires in my brain start to short-circuit. Is he showing me something? Maybe some sort of antique trinket that needs to be stored in a box that looks like something that may hold a ring? You know, for safekeeping? Maybe he found it on the ground. Yeah, that’s it. He found it outside on the sidewalk and inside is some expensive-looking jewelry, earrings or a broach, and he wants my help to find its owner.
“Dexter, what is this?” My trembling fingers reach for his hand, but I stop, unsure if it’s real. If maybe this is just a figment of my imagination and the thing in Dexter’s hand is nothing but a tube of ChapStick or my little claw clip I left at his bedside table. But even after I blink what feels like a hundred times, it’s still there. The soft, fuzzy box lined with gold trim around the edges is still sitting in the middle of his open hand.
Dexter uses his free hand to pry it open slowly. The soft creaking of the hinges sounds louder than it actually is in our room filled with my messy heap of clothing on a blush-colored armchair and the pictures of our families lined up on our dresser. All pictures I’ve taken that he had printed and framed, filling our home with memories he never had before I moved in with him.
Inside the box is the most beautiful diamond ring I’ve ever seen. It’s round and simple, no big show of a cluster of diamonds or a thick, gaudy band that’ll look too flashy on my bare and unembellished hands. Just one really, really big rock showcasing how perfectly easy our love has been.
“I got this a month ago,” he says softly, watching my wide-eyed look of shock as I finally register what’s in front of me. “I didn’t plan some over-the-top proposal or anything. It didn’t really feel like…us. So I’ve been waiting for the right moment because…I guess being spontaneous with you made more sense.”
My eyes start to water. “Dexter, I…I, um?—”
“Marry me,” he repeats. “Tomorrow, next week, next year, I don’t care when. But be mine forever.”
“Really? I mean, are you sure?”
“Yes,” he answers with a laugh. “Of course I’m sure.”
“Like, you’ve thought this through? Maybe you should think about it some more. A pros and cons list can’t hurt.”
A sweet, shaky sigh slips through his lips that sounds like he’s exhaling a breath of fondness for my flustered state. “Lucy,” he says, tucking a finger under my chin to lift my face toward him. “Remember when you came back to the city? When you came to me in the hospital?”
“Yeah?” I answer with a shaky voice .
“The second I saw you in the hallway running toward me, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”
A single tear trickles down my cheek, and Dexter swipes it away with his thumb. I smile at him, and he smiles back, causing us to sit in silence. I’m going to marry this man. He wants me for the rest of his life. “I guess you are going to be an uncle after all.”
“Is that a yes?” he asks, his eyes lighting up with excitement.
I laugh through my tears. “Yeah.”