Bethany
“You look like a fairy princess in your dress. Dante is going to lose it. I wonder if he’ll cry.” Alicia sighs.
“Smart going for an empire waist. Monique Lhuillier is the absolute best at designing for a plus-size woman’s body. What’s she like?” Lydia asks as she adjusts my veil.
“So nice and sweet. Dante embarrassed the hell out of me, calling her and upping the price over and over until she gave in. When I met her I thought she might still be mad, she thought it was hilarious. She explained she worried her people wouldn’t have enough time to complete the dress. But with more money it enabled her to pay them for the overtime it would take. It is hard to believe it went from fabric to a dress in five weeks. Don’t tell Dante, but I’m glad he didn’t let me pick one of the dresses off the rack I didn’t really love.”
“This is what I needed today. It will get me through the ridiculous wedding tomorrow.” Alicia says as she spreads out the train.
“Enzo is really going through with it?” Lydia sighs—she knows the answer. “The gossip running around the city about Sheila is insane. She’s pissing off a lot of people. Is Enzo paying attention at all?”
“Enzo isn’t paying attention to anything or anyone. He’s also been out of town more days than he’s been in it for the last month to settle business for him to take the two weeks off for their honeymoon. Cesare and Dante discussed, again, whether or not they should talk to him, but they don’t want to make things worse. Right now things between Enzo and Cesare are really tense.” Alicia shakes her head as she rubs her temples.
“Yeah, Dante is afraid if they say anything more it will push Enzo away from all of us. He’s trying to focus on the plus that there’s an airtight prenup, and let the rest come what will.”
Lydia’s eye brows go up in question. “You never said, is Dante asking you to sign a prenup?”
I blush as I remember when I asked him if he wanted me to. I was more than willing. “No, he said the better to make sure if I tried to divorce him it will drag on forever, until he can figure out how to fix what he fucked up.”
“He’s so cute. I signed one for Decker because I wanted to shut his father up. Then the day after we got married Decker shredded it and sent it to his father. Men are weird sometimes.”
“Very, Dante has bought half a dozen baby girl dresses. When I told him I’m convinced it’s a boy, he asked if it would be a bad thing to put a dress on him if it is a boy, because it’s not like he’ll remember it since he’s a baby.” Alicia and Lydia laugh. “Okay, laugh now, but he is serious. He keeps buying dresses; I don’t think there’s any way all of them would get worn before the baby grew out of them even if it were a girl.”
“So you’re letting Dante buy stuff now? You guys talking names yet?” Lydia’s eyes are soft, concerned.
“Yeah, once I passed the twelve-week mark last week the fear is fading. It hasn’t gone away completely, I swear that book shouldn’t be called What to Expect; it should be called All the Ways Your pregnancy Can Become a Nightmare.” We all shudder at the memory. “For now, though, we’re going to wait to do the whole decorating the nursery thing until after the ultrasound when we’ll find out the sex. Dante is more relaxed with the whole planning and everything, which is nice to take things day by day.”
Alicia’s arms go around me. “He’s the sweetest thing. He calls me almost every day to ask if there’s something he should be doing and what you might need.”
“He admitted it the other night when I wondered aloud how he always managed to do the right thing. I was a little annoyed at you for not telling me, but I don’t really care. I’m lucky he cares enough to do it.”
There’s a knock at the door. “Need any help?”
Oops. “No, thank you. I’ll be right out. We have been in here for a little while. Help me out of this. I’m craving some cheese sticks.”
***
Dante
I hear the front door open, followed by Bethany greeting our menagerie of pets, which now includes another kitten, this one a ginger named Ginny, and a six-year-old goofball Great Pyrenees named Mac who loves the kittens, maybe a little too much. After a few too many swipes of Mac’s nose, I had to put up perches along the walls for the cats to climb up to get some peace from the dog.
Looking around the room, I wonder if I maybe went overboard. The gasp from the doorway says I did. “Oh my god. How did you do this so fast? I’ve been gone for four hours.”
With a shrug I try to gauge if she’s mad. “I wanted to see if the store had any cute boy clothes, then a sales assistant got ahold of me...” I’m not a hundred percent sure how I agreed to all of this. Everything looked so cute.
She goes over to the crib, running a hand along the rail. “This is something I thought we would pick out together. And I hate that stroller, it’s ugly. We agreed to wait until after we came back from our trip.”
Our honeymoon will happen aboard the new yacht I bought after our wedding on it. Because of the heat we’ll be sailing around the North Sea, England, Ireland, along the coasts of the Netherlands, Germany and up to Denmark. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll send it back tomorrow. We’ll wait until we come back and go shopping together.” Shaking my head, I did go overboard. “I really am sorry. I’ll get this right eventually.”
Bethany giggles as she comes toward me. I pull her into my arms and she snuggles close. “Maybe by the time we get to our third.”
Relief floods through me; it’s not something we’ve talked about. “Our third? How many are we going to have?”
“I’m thinking three, any more sounds like too many. I also would like to go back to work before I’m in my fifties.”
“You want to stay home?” I was wondering, unsure how to broach the subject.
“Well, I don’t want my kids coming home to an empty house or worse, to a babysitter. I’m not going to say I’m not already conflicted. I worked hard to get my degree. To barely use it before I give it up to raise a family, when I thought I wouldn’t have kids for another five or six years, was a little hard to reconcile.”