13. Chapter 13
Aspen
Sleep this last week has evaded me. I’ve tossed and turned, thinking about Rhett more often than not.
What will life be like if he has BMD? Will he let me help him?
The other part of me gets lost in the fantasy of him not having it.
And maybe then he will let me all the way in.
I understand him now. It eases the ache that was put there by his gentle rejections.
My phone rings on my nightstand table. I look and see Ava’s name flash across the screen; the second thing I notice is the time. It’s three o'clock in the morning.
Oh my God.
She’s having the baby. All of my own personal thoughts evaporate into thin air as I answer the phone.
“Is it happening?” I ask, skipping hellos because baby having is serious business.
Her laugh on the other end of the line makes me laugh. “Yes. You are welcome to come down whenever. If you want to wait til the morning, that’s fine too. I’m six centimeters; I just got the epidural. My personal goal is to push her out before sunrise.”
“Honestly, I’m not sleeping anyway, and I don’t have to work tomorrow. Might as well add some excitement,” I say, immediately hopping out of bed.
“Willow is on her way too; Weston has to work cows in the morning so he is staying put,” she adds.
“One last girls’ night,” I joke. “I’m getting dressed now and then I will be on my way.”
“Sounds good. Thank you for wanting to come. It means a lot,” Ava says. Her parents are gone, and she doesn’t have any family. I’ve made it my personal mission to make her feel like the sister we both never had.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I say as I smile into my phone.
The perks of working at the hospital are that I don’t have to stop at the front to make my way in.
And lucky for Willow, I spot her parking at the same time as me, so she doesn’t have to go through the hassle of going through the ER.
Being a small hospital, the front door is locked from six pm to six am, but you can get in through the ER.
Lucky for me, I have the badge that opens all doors.
“You ready to be the welcoming committee?” I ask Willow as we walk through the hospital.
“Oh yeah. We’re going to make sure the music stays on and Maverick doesn’t pass out,” she says like we have any say in the matter.
“How they can pull calves out of their cows, but get queasy with human blood is a mystery,” I say as we step into Labor and Delivery.
“Another reason why girls rule and boys drool,” she sing-songs.
Ava had texted me what room she was in, so I knock twice on door number two and push our way in.
She lays in bed, flipping through channels as Mav snoozes on the couch.
The room lights are dimmed, probably to not disturb sleeping beauty in the corner.
The recliner is piled high with their bags.
As I look at Ava’s bedside table, I see Ava is already making good use of the giant hospital water bottles.
“Hey baby momma, how ya feeling?” I ask as I walk up to her and lean in for a hug, but the positioning of the bed makes it significantly more difficult.
“Bored out of my freaking eyeballs. Kind of wishing I wouldn’t have gotten the epidural so fast because now I'm stuck in this stupid bed.” She slaps her hands down on either side of her and sighs.
“I think if it were me, I’d rather be bored out of my eyeballs than writhing in pain, but hey, that’s just me,” Willow says with a wink.
“Well, I hope you guys brought some cards and hot gossip; we’re going to need to pass the time.” Ava folds her hands over her chest and looks between Willow and me, summoning us for the task.
The only hot gossip I have is me, and it feels a bit insensitive to take away from her moment.
Willow and I nervously glance at each other, having a silent argument of who is going to come up with something to appease our dear, laboring friend.
“Seriously, neither of you have anything. Come on, help a girl out.” She cocks her head to the side with far too much attitude.
Well, I guess now is as good a time as ever to break the news. Maybe it’ll help get her mind off it. My palms start to feel sweaty and I clear my throat. Words don’t often evade me. I’m quickly finding that telling people I’m pregnant is the cure for that.
“Uhm,” I clear my throat one more time for good measure, “I’ve got something if you two can keep a secret.”
Ava’s face splits open into the world's most devilish smile. This is how I imagine TMZ producers look when they get a hot tip of new gossip on an A-list celebrity. “Tell me more.”
My face grimaces, but no one here will judge me, and really, it’s better to practice run this whole thing out on them before I get to telling my parents. “I might be a little bit pregnant.” I hold my hand up in a pinching motion.
No one gasps or has any crazy reaction. My bitch ass brother ruined my news. “Weston told you already, didn’t he?” I look to Willow, who now recycles my pinching motion.
I look at Ava and she rolls her eyes. “I’m the one who brought you the test. When you didn’t send a negative test with an ‘I told you so’ I already knew.”
“This feels really anticlimactic for how nervous I just was.”
“We don’t care that you’re pregnant; we do want to know who the baby daddy is though. That’s the hot gossip. Ava said you didn’t sleep with bar man.”
Ava gasps, cutting off Willow. This is how most of our conversations go when we are all together; no one really gets a whole thought out, we just keep layering new pieces until we forget what the original topic is. “So what is going to happen with him now that you're pregnant?”
“I did not sleep with him; that wasn’t a lie.
I texted him yesterday and told him that I had to cancel our date, and that I am no longer looking for a relationship.
” I consider stopping at that, but with the way Ava’s looking at me, completely engaged and invested, I finish out what actually happened.
“He pushed, and thought we had great chemistry, which we did. I tried to gently let him down, but when he kept pushing, I told him I was having a baby, and as a shock to no one, it has been crickets since.” I look between the two of my very best friends to see if I have satiated their need for information.
“So, he’s not the dad, then who is?” Willow asks.
They are, in fact, not satiated. There is only one option for who my baby daddy is. “Take a wild guess.”
“Rhett,” Maverick pipes in.
“I thought you needed to get some sleep before the big hurrah,” Ava says, using her fingers as quotation marks.
“Trying to sleep in a room with you three discussing such riveting topics is pointless. Plus, it got interesting with the whole bar guy thing.” He sits up, stretching his hands over his head.
“Two points to Mav for pointing out the obvious,” I say as I clap for Mav’s victory over the great mystery.
Ava laughs at the interaction before looking back to me. “Did you tell him yet?” she asks.
I nod.
Willow does a rolling motion with her hands. “And…how did he take it?”
“Better than I did. I had a panic attack and cried so hard I almost threw up.” Now that Mav is awake, I walk over to the couch to sit.
“I know this is really scary, but how great is it that we get to raise our babies together?” She does an excited wiggle while clapping her hands.
To be truthful, that is going to be the best part. Getting to raise the next generation of our family together. “I’m already terrified for their teenage years.”
My brother and the boys were so damn rowdy together. It makes my heart happy that my child will get to have that same childhood.
“Also, I haven’t told my mom and dad yet, so try and keep a secret better than my brother did, will ya? And Weston doesn’t know it’s Rhett, so add that to the vault for now,” I demand, looking around the room.
Mav does a zipper motion and throws away the key. I’ll have to trust them to keep it between us until I get the courage to tell them myself.
Ava looks to Willow. “Got any hot gossip that can top that?”
“No, and babies aren’t on our agenda til next year to answer your follow-up question,” Willow says, sitting on the end of the hospital bed.
There’s a knock at the door before the nurse walks in. “Hey guys, I just need to check her.”
“We will be right outside,” I say, getting up and walking to her bed. I give her hand a quick squeeze. “Thanks for letting us be here.”
“Thanks for giving her a cousin,” she whispers, just for the two of us to hear.
Willow and I leave the room and make our way to the cafeteria. It’s going to be a long night and we need to fuel up on snacks.
At five thirty-two AM, Maverick and Ava’s life changed forever. Really, all of ours did. This is my first niece. In the last couple of weeks, I've had a lot of promotions. First mom, and now aunt.
Gracie Jo made her appearance at six pounds and seven ounces of cuteness. And an exact replica of Ava. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with babies, but that pretty girl got every good piece of her mom.
Weston made his way in before his day started; Rhett, Mabel, and Jack weren’t far behind him.
“Okay, my turn.” I tap my mom on the shoulder, trying to get the baby from her. I knew she was going to be a baby hog, but she’s been holding her for ten minutes.
“Fine.” She sighs heavily before setting the baby in my arms.
I forget how tiny newborns are. So small and delicate. Swaying back and forth, I get lost, thinking about the life she is going to have. And how I didn’t think it was possible to love someone this much.
It feels all too surreal that I am going to have one of my very own in less than six months.
Rhett peeks around my shoulder. “Hey, pretty girl.” I half wonder if he is talking to me until he does something that melts my heart and heals it all at the same time. He gently rubs her forehead; his hand is almost the size of half her body, but he does it with such delicacy.
We have absolutely nothing figured out, but by the looks of it, it doesn’t matter. Our baby has won the lottery with Rhett. I gently lean into him, savoring this moment, and maybe even breaking my own rule of daydreaming.