“What has become of me?” I cried. “I’m pregnant and in love before thirty. This is not what I wanted from my life. I was meant to be the eccentric, wealthy aunt to all of your brood, buying them booze and sleeping with their friends.” I stared at the cocktails in front of them. “And I can’t even drink!”
I was truly spiraling now.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do the drinking for you,” Stella quickly offered.
I smiled but flipped her off.
“Babe, this is going to be okay,” Yasmin said, reaching to squeeze my hand. “You are going to do motherhood unlike anyone else. You’ll go to Burning Man with the kid strapped to your chest. You can make your own rules. You’ll be wonderful. I promise.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, but the words sank in, and I relaxed a bit. “Yeah,” I agreed. “Yeah, I’ll be wonderful.”
“To Wren and her spawn,” Zoe toasted cheerfully.
They all clinked their drinks while I sat their scowling. Until I thought of what I could do. What Karson and I could do as a family. What we could create. Then I started to feel hopeful. Happy. Absolutely clueless about what awaited me.
Karson, of course, had to come to my first doctor’s appointment. Even though, at six weeks, there was pretty much nothing to see, and all the doctor was going to do was get up in my vag and tell me not to pound cocktails.
Karson, unsurprisingly, didn’t listen to any of this. He’d just said, “I’m drivin’.”
Like now that I was pregnant, I couldn’t drive. Then again, he did not get in the car with me behind the wheel before this either. He kept muttering things about not having a ‘death wish’, even though I reminded him that I had my heavy vehicle license and had driven a rusty old pickup truck through the Atlas Mountains without a scratch.
I didn’t try to argue with him about the driving or the doctor thing. I was much too tired. That was my main and most annoying symptom. I did get morning sickness, but only at night, and a huge bowl of Karson’s mashed potatoes had set me right thus far.
The tiredness, though… That was killing me. I took naps at three in the afternoon. I’d fallen asleep in a very important and serious board meeting for one of my charities. And I was dead asleep the second Karson and I were done having sex. Like dead asleep. Sometimes before he even pulled out of me. He found that very amusing.
I was only six weeks, so there wasn’t much to see, but they did an ultrasound anyway. Karson held my hand as we stared at a tiny little peanut. As we watched the flicker of its heartbeat.
My own heart fluttered seeing it there. A living thing already.
Ours.
Karson had stared at it with intensity, hand tight in mine. I’d never seen him look so … captivated. By a little flickering peanut on the screen.
Once we were done with that, we sat down with my doctor.
“Okay, let’s go through the basics,” the doctor said, putting her chart down. “You can have coffee. I’d stick to one cup a day, though. Also lunchmeats are safe as long as you heat them up. No sushi, though.”
“Of course,” I replied, nodding solemnly.
I felt Karson’s glare. “You had sushi for lunch yesterday,” he accused.
I snapped my head to him. “Snitch.”
The doctor smiled good naturedly at us. “Don’t worry too much, Dad. Women are designed for this.” She glanced back at the chart. “We’ll see you back here for your twelve-week appointment.”
I didn’t hear much of what she was saying. I was focused on what she’d called Karson.
Dad.
The title should not fit this man. The one with the muscles, the jawline, the air of menace.
But it did. Nothing had suited him more.
She left us alone in the room for me to get dressed again.
Karson watched me, and I paused, putting my shoes on.
“Wren?” he asked, hyperaware of me and all of my subtleties.