Chapter 44
AVA
I’m officially into my second trimester, and I still haven’t told anyone, aside from Anderson, about the pregnancy. I’m not showing yet, but I know the changes to my body are going to become more noticeable.
After hitting fourteen weeks, my boobs are bigger, and my clothes are tighter, and, honestly, I just don’t want to keep this a secret anymore.
Work has finally started to slow down now that the baristas I hired back in March are fully trained and comfortable working shifts without me and Emerson.
Rumi had her last shift a few weeks ago since she’s transitioning to writing full-time now.
She’s working on publishing her second children’s book and preparing to start her third and fourth.
I’ve been able to line up my hours, so I can take Georgie to school each morning and pick her up, and I try to have my off days be the same as Anderson’s.
I don’t slow down to think about it often, but when I do, it is alarmingly seamless—the way our lives have blended together so quickly.
We lived in the same home for almost two months before the adoption was finalized, and I told him I was pregnant. Now, May is already half over, and it’s hard to picture what life looked like before this.
Before us.
“So what are you guys doing tonight?” Georgie asks from the front seat of my car. The windows are down, the sunshine and warm air pouring in as we head home.
I picked her up a little later from school today. She wanted to stay after for a student council meeting, since she’s thinking about joining next year when she’s in eighth grade.
“We’re going to Lenny’s with Emerson, Rumi, and Jack, the bar next door to Hey Honey’s,” I tell her as we pull up to a red light. “We won’t be out too late.”
Georgie shrugs her shoulders, her freckled skin on display in her short-sleeved shirt. “Are you and Anderson taking me to Rumi and Jack’s, or is Sadie coming over with Evee?” she asks, and something in my chest tightens, emotion flooding me.
The way she so simply asks the question is what gets me. I could blame the pregnancy for getting all emotional about something so small, but I know it’s more than that.
Me, Anderson, Rumi and Jack, Sadie, Evee—Emerson too—the people who have become so important to Georgie, a family that goes beyond blood, beyond last names.
The support system that has always been here for me, but I didn’t realize it until these last few months. I thought I was the one who held everything together—the only one who could.
But being with Anderson has shown me that there’s no need.
I know I can handle everything on my own, take care of myself, but I don’t have to.
I clear my throat. “We’ll drop you off over there.”
“And you’ll pick me up after?”
Raising a brow at her before turning back to the road, the light turning green.
“Of course. Why?” My little sister hasn’t been too keen on sleepovers these last few weeks when she’s been invited by the girls on her soccer team, but she seemed to do just fine when we were in Vegas.
I know she likes spending time with Sadie and feels comfortable at Rumi and Jack’s.
“No reason,” she answers quickly. Too quickly.
“Okay,” I say, drawing out the word, but my gut has me pushing this a little more.
“Are you planning on staying the night at Jordan’s tomorrow night?
” The girls have back-to-back games tomorrow, and one of the girls invited the team to her birthday sleepover party afterwards.
It’s not that I want her to go—I know I’ll sleep better when she’s home, and I’m not a fan of sleepovers in the first place—but I can’t fight the feeling that there’s something she’s not telling me.
I see Georgie shake her head in my peripheral vision as we turn into our neighborhood. She doesn’t say anything else as I park in the driveway and shut off the car. She reaches for her backpack between her feet, but then stops.
“I’ve been having nightmares.” Her gaze is on her hands in her lap, her voice small.
My stomach drops. “Oh no, kiddo. I’m sorry.” I reach for her, grabbing her hand in mine. “Hey, George. Look at me.”
She slowly brings her gaze to mine, her lips turned down.
“I’m glad you told me. How have you been sleeping?
” I ask, trying to ignore the guilt building.
Ever since I got pregnant, I’ve been sleeping hard, exhausted down to my bones.
And now that I’m in the second trimester, some of that fatigue has settled, but sleeping in the same bed as Anderson—his arms wrapped around me, safe and secure—I sleep even harder.
“I know it can be scary to go to sleep when you know a nightmare might come.”
I speak from experience, having had many years in my childhood and teenage years where my stress and anxiety would manifest as recurring nightmares that I wouldn’t even be able to remember when I woke up—just the intense residual feelings that would make it hard to fall back asleep.
“It’s been a few nights since I had one,” she explains. “It’s actually been since the night before the adoption.”
That settles some of my worries and has my heart clenching at the same time. “Good. I’m glad,” I say, my voice cracking, but I try to pretend I don’t notice so that Georgie doesn’t either.
My therapist has always said that nightmares come from our nervous system not feeling safe—over the years, I’ve been religious with my night routine just to be able to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep—and that thought hits me hard as Georgie continues.
“Anderson has been staying up with me.”
“Anderson?” I ask.
There’s a knee-jerk reaction to be upset, frustrated that he didn’t tell me about this, but that quickly subsides when Georgie explains, “He found me one night when I was in the living room, trying to stay awake. He sat with me on the couch until I fell asleep, and then he must have carried me to my room because that’s where I woke up. ”
I feel tears in my eyes at the thoughtfulness, those feelings of frustration fading completely.
“Then it became what we did. We would meet in the living room after you fell asleep. We would just talk until I got tired, and then he’d let me put my head on his shoulder when I got tired.”
I didn’t think it was possible to love this man anymore, but his love for my sister—the love I’ve watched foster and grow—is proof that there is always more room to love. “What about the nights he was at work?”
“He’d let me FaceTime him,” Georgie answers. “He would tell me all about his shift, and he always said that if he got a call while we were talking, he’d call me after and tell me all about it, but I always fell asleep before he got one.”
My eyes water, and I don’t even bother blinking them away.
Georgie’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I told Anderson not to tell you either. I just didn’t want you to worry.” I let go of her hand to wipe a tear falling from my cheek. “Are you upset with me?”
I shake my head, grabbing her hand again. “These are happy tears.” I squeeze her fingers in mine. “Thank you for telling me.” I sniffle as I inhale before blowing out a breath. “You said it’s been since the adoption since you’ve had one, though?”
Georgie nods. “I’ve been able to fall asleep on my own. Anderson offered to come check on me when he’s home, but I told him he doesn’t have to. I just don’t think I’m ready to not sleep at home, though.”
Home.
She called it her home.
Because that’s what it is.
“You’ve been crying a lot lately,” Georgie says, in that judgemental voice she’s mastered as an almost-fourteen-year-old.
I snort. “Apparently, that’s what happens when you’re pregnant.”
Georgie’s eyes widen as her jaw drops. “What the hell! When were you going to tell me that?” she exclaims, and I can’t help but laugh.
“Consider us even,” I reply, reaching across my center console to pull her into a hug.
“I’m assuming it’s Anderson’s?” she says, muffled against my chest.
“Georgie! First, you cuss at me, and now you’re accusing me of stepping out on my husband?” I lean back, pressing a dramatic hand to my chest.
“Who says ‘stepping out’ anymore? What are you, a hundred?”
“You make me feel like it sometimes.” I laugh, and Georgie joins me.
“Wait,” she says, just as we both open our car doors to head inside. “Does this make me an aunt or a big sister?”
Shutting the car door behind me and heading inside, Georgie right behind me, I let her question sink in. We haven’t really talked about the logistics like this when it comes to the adoption.
We are in a unique position since Georgie has a mom and a dad, and I’m her sister who is now her guardian. And then there’s Anderson, who is becoming more of a father figure than a brother-in-law.
“What do you want to be?” I ask.
She closes the door behind her, stepping out of her sneakers and hanging up her backpack on her hook by the door before she walks into the kitchen.
I slide off my own sneakers, lining them up in their designated spot before fixing Georgie’s, putting them neatly next to mine.
“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a big sister,” she voices.
“But you’re my sister, not my mom, right?
Even though you’re technically my parent now.
” She strings the sentences together like she’s trying to make sense of it all.
“So that would technically make the baby my niece or nephew.”
“I don’t think there are any rules when it comes to this, George. It’s whatever you want.”
We both plop down on the living room couch, the afternoon sun peeking in through the opened blinds.
“Well, I definitely still want to call you Ava. Even though Mom isn’t my mom anymore. You are.”
My eyes immediately begin to water again.
Fucking pregnancy hormones.
“And Dad is my dad, but I kind of feel like Anderson is, too. But I still want to call him Anderson.”
“That’s fine,” I tell her, resisting the urge to grab her and pull her to me again; she’d probably tell me I’m being weird and to let go.
“But since you guys are technically my mom and dad, I think I should be the baby’s big sister.” She smiles, pleased with herself, before reaching to grab the remote from the coffee table in front of us, the conversation done in her teenage mind—no need to dwell or talk it to death.
I nod my head as she turns on the TV.
“Then that’s what you’ll be.”