Change of Heart (Fostering Love 2)

After another pull of the water, I set it down and lay back on my pillow. My pain was significantly better than when I’d first gotten home from the hospital, but I was still pretty sore. I wanted to give myself a few minutes before I tried walking around the house.

My eyes were just starting to grow heavy again when my foster brother Alex’s voice came from my phone somewhere near my pillow.

“Pick up the damn phone, Ani. Pick up the damn phone, Ani. Pick up the damn phone, Ani.” Jesus, I should have deleted the app that let people record their own ringtones.

“What do you want?” I answered when I finally found my phone inside a pillowcase.

“A stripper. Blond hair, blue eyes, and massive—”

“You called the wrong number…again,” I replied drily.

“Wait, are you sure?”

“Why exactly are you calling me at nine a.m. on a Saturday?”

“How you feeling?” Alex asked.

“Like I lost my ladybits,” I said, sighing as I relaxed back into the blankets.

“Oh, shit. You had the sex change at the same time? Your dick better not be bigger than mine or we can’t be friends anymore.”

“Do they even make dicks as small as yours anymore?” I smiled as Alex started laughing.

“You wish you had a dick as big as mine,” he guffawed.

“Nah, my balls are bigger.”

“Yeah, they are,” Alex said, his tone completely serious. “How are you, really? Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” I reassured him. “Less sore today than I was yesterday.”

“What about, you know, emotionally?” he asked uncomfortably.

“Are you joking?” I snickered.

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” he replied.

We talked for another twenty minutes about everything and nothing before finally hanging up. I loved that guy.

When I’d finally decided to have the surgery, Alex was the first person I’d called. I’m sure that would be weird for most people, but it had made sense to me. I’d needed a friend who could look at the situation unemotionally, and I knew that Kate and Liz wouldn’t. They’d see it from a woman’s perspective. They would have known how hard it was for me to relinquish the right to ever carry a baby, to lose that part of myself.

I’d needed a friend who would tell me that it was okay without bursting into tears or smothering me with questions. Alex had been that friend.

I rolled out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, stopping dead as I noticed a familiar flat cardboard box sitting on the middle of the counter. I moved closer and found the top had been written on by what looked like a black marker.

Didn’t know what kind you liked.

I pulled the lid off the box and found a variety of donuts stuffed inside. Maple bars and chocolate bars and bear claws and glazed donuts and every other kind that the donut shop down the street carried.

I was twenty-nine years old, and a box of donuts may have been the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me.

I glanced around the kitchen trying to spot anything else out of place as I picked up a maple bar and absently took a bite. God, that was good. Groaning, I took another bite as I started a cup of coffee.

I didn’t have anything to do since it was Saturday, but I could feel the nervous energy pumping through my veins. After spending almost a week in bed, the thought of crawling back in there to watch another movie sounded like complete crap. I was used to being busy, either working at the office or working on my house. I didn’t ever have downtime—I liked it that way—and the forced inactivity was beginning to wear thin.

I finished my donut and grabbed my cup of coffee, leaving my work-in-progress kitchen to head into my work-in-progress living room. After six months of working on my place, it didn’t seem like I was any closer to finishing it. Yes, the ugly shag carpeting was gone, and I now had a refrigerator and stove in the kitchen, but the old hardwood floors were still unfinished, and my countertops belonged in a ’70s porno complete with bow-chicka-wow-wow music.

I loved my house. It fit me, and I liked the fact that it was built so long ago. It had a history. Coming from foster care, I didn’t have much that had survived intact from childhood. Moving so much and living with different kids with all different problems meant that a lot of things were lost. Stolen. Broken. Forgotten.

I’d managed to keep ahold of two things. A backpack that I’d carried from home to home, and a pillowcase that I’d needed to sleep with when I was little. That was it. That was the extent of my family heirlooms. Walking around a house that had survived family after family for almost a hundred years was comforting. It wasn’t a cookie cutter in a new development. It was unique and built to last.