Beautiful Mistakes

But she just liked having little, "This is our baby" reminders around, and so did Aaron. Honestly, he was more into the pregnancy than she was, and she was the one that spent her nights lying in bed feeling a little foot jab at her insides.

It was lovely.

The weight she was gaining—not so lovely. But Aaron yelled at her when she got self-conscious, because he was baby-crazy and he wasn't the one who was going to have to establish a new diet and exercise routine in addition to balancing, school, work and a new infant.

However, the reality of the situation was that as long as she and Aaron were together, she only got to do it once, so she was damn well going to make sure she enjoyed it the one time it happened—even if it was much earlier than she had intended.

And that meant hanging up ultrasound pictures even if she was just going to have to repack it in a week's time.

Aaron was spending much of his time between the restaurants, and with her pregnancy, he wasn't letting Julie work as much as she used to.

Considering everything with Leigh was still rather touchy, he tried to keep Julie away from the café as often as possible, but on the Saturday morning when a breakfast table of 25 was reserved, Julie and Leigh were forced to work together.

Well, okay, that wasn't entirely true. Aaron told Julie about the table and how he wanted to put someone else on to help out at least then, but he didn't want to make someone come in for only an hour or two, and Julie told him she would do it.

Since Leigh was working that morning, he had intended on taking care of it without Julie, but Julie argued with him and rationalized that it made the most sense if she went in—she would have no problem not working an actual shift, just being there to help out.

He seemed a little reluctant, but he ended up agreeing.

Regardless of how it happened, Julie walked into the café to see Leigh placing coffee cups around the large table.

Strangely, Julie felt a little tug of remorse, and she remembered how much she genuinely liked Leigh. Seeing her pony tail fall over her shoulder and the absence of her usual, bubbly smile—and knowing her presence at the café was probably to blame—Julie actually felt the vague urge to cry.

Of course, her hormones were probably at least partially to blame for that.

She did want Leigh's friendship back though. After all, it wasn't like she had stolen Aaron from Leigh or anything; he had never really been hers. Maybe they could figure some way to work it out. Aaron and Leigh could still be friends—maybe not as close of friends, but still friends, nonetheless.

As soon as Leigh caught sight of the quite pregnant Julie walking in with a big smile, her face paled noticeably and she forced the fakest, most unenthusiastic smile that Julie had ever seen.

"Hey," Julie said, her mood slipping a bit.

"Hi," Leigh said cordially.

"I haven't seen you in forever; how have you been?" Julie asking, hoping that Leigh would suddenly start telling her about the wonderful, perfect man she just somehow met and fell madly in love with.

"Fine," Leigh said, avoiding Julie’s gaze. Flicking a glance at Julie's stomach, it looked like she was debating asking the polite round of baby questions, but she must not have been up to it, because she closed her mouth and turned to walk away from the table.

Sighing a little to herself, Julie said, "Is there something I can do?"

Shrugging, Leigh said, "You can roll up some sets of silverware if you want; I think Pedro just got done with a load of dishes from the first breakfast crowd."

Nodding, Julie made her way back to grab some napkins and then go back to get the silverware.

Obviously Leigh wasn't going to be as open to rekindling their friendship, Julie surmised.

Still, Julie wanted to try. The question was, would it be best to just acknowledge the elephant in the room and then move past it, or try to act like it had never happened?

Once she finished rolling up the silverware she put the utensil tray back in the kitchen area and walked back out to wait for Leigh to finish refilling the coffee for her customer.

"Aaron said you were going to serve the table of 25?" Leigh asked in passing as she put the coffee pot back down on the warmer.

"If that's okay with you," Julie said agreeably. "You're the boss today. I just figured that way you and Debbie don't have to worry about it."

Nodding, Leigh said, "No, that makes sense. That's fine with me. If we get too busy I might give you one more table if you can handle it, but right now we're fine the way we are. You know how Saturday mornings can be though."

"Sure, absolutely, whatever you need," Julie said.

Glancing down, Leigh said, "Aaron doesn't want you to work for long though, so once that table leaves you're free to go."