“Hey. I just wanted to tell you that I love you and whatever you figure out, I’m here for you.” She melted into me, hugging me back.
“Thanks. I knew you wouldn’t care, but that was still really scary.” I could tell; she was still shaking a little.
“Well, this changes my dating advice,” I said, pulling her so we could sit on the bed together.
“Little bit,” she said, laughing.
“Okay, so, what kind of girls do you like?”
Hunter came to find us nearly an hour later. We were on my phone, searching through pictures of girls so we could make a list of who Tawny found attractive so she could figure out what kind of girl to go after.
“She’s hot,” he said, leaning over my shoulder and pointing to a picture of Natalie Dormer.
“Obviously,” I said. Tawny grabbed my phone and hid the screen.
“Mind your own business, Zaccadelli,” she snapped, shoving my phone at me and leaving the room.
“Whoa, what was that?” Hunter said, sitting next to me.
“Sister thing,” I told him. This was Tawny’s secret and I would die before revealing it to someone if she didn’t want me to.
“Uh huh,” Hunter said, giving me a look that said he didn’t believe me.
“Gimme a sec,” I said, leaving the room to find Tawny. What I found was her sitting our parents down in the living room.
“Mom. Dad.” Was she doing this now?
Hunter stood beside me.
“What’s going on?” he whispered and I shushed him.
“What is it? Did you lose your job? Cancer? Is it cancer?” Mom said, clasping her hands together and gasping.
“Let’s just hear her out before hitting the panic button,” Dad said.
“No, I didn’t lose my job and no, it isn’t cancer. Although I do seem to have caught a bad case of the gay.” I covered my mouth to muffle a snort.
“You caught what?” Mom said in confusion.
“Did she say ‘caught the gay’?” Hunter asked as I tried not to burst out laughing. There was one thing Tawny wasn’t, and that was subtle.
“You’re gay. Is that what you’re telling us?” Dad asked. Tawny nodded.
“Oh, thank God,” Mom said, clutching her heart and then getting up to hug Tawny. “I thought there was something really wrong! Don’t do that to me, ever again, Tawny Nicole!” I lost it, bending over and laughing until tears were streaming down my face.
Dad also gave her a hug and Hunter went over as well.
“Well, now we have another thing in common,” Hunter said, giving her a hug and then a fist bump.
I think she assumed it was going to be a bigger deal than it turned out to be. My parents were pretty whatever about anything except for bad grades and poor romantic decisions.
“You know, I always wondered a little,” Mom said later as we sat on the couch.
“You did? Why didn’t you say anything?” Tawny said, throwing up her hands. “You might have saved me so many years of confusion.”
“I didn’t know for sure so I didn’t say anything!”
All in all, Christmas that year was anything but boring.
“I hate that all of you get to go nuts and I have to sit here with my stupid apple cider crap,” I said, staring into my glass of “pregnant champagne” as everyone was calling it.
It was New Year’s and I had a cute dress on and the girls had done my hair, but I was still a little bummed about my lack of alcohol.
“Aw, it’s still going to be a good year,” Hunter said, kissing my cheek. In solidarity, he was also not drinking. I told him he didn’t have to, but he said he loved me and didn’t want me to throw this back in his face when we argued. He did have a point, so I gave up fighting.
“I have to push two humans out of my body this year, but sure,” I said and he scowled at me.
“It’s gonna be great.” It was. As soon as the snow melted and it warmed up outside, we were starting on the addition to the house. After his meeting with the contractor Hunter decided to expand all three floors, so we were adding two more bedrooms and expanding the kitchen on the first floor, as well as the living room. One side was going to turn into my dream library, and the guys were going to expand their gaming area, which was definitely a good idea because they were usually all over each other as it was.
My super-secret plan was also moving full steam ahead and I had a trip planned with Hope just after my second ultrasound. I’d finally let Darah and Renee in on the secret and they were all thrilled to be part of the master planning. Plus, it was easier to get things done because we just called it “girl time” and let Hunter go hang out with Mase, Dusty and Paul. We were both trying to get in as much friend time as we could before July.
Not that our lives would suddenly be over.
Just different.
Tawny called me just before midnight and told me that she was at a bar and looking for a girl to kiss. Guess she had embraced her sexuality completely. I just laughed and told her to make sure whoever she kissed wasn’t straight and/or in a relationship.
“Thanks, Kid,” she yelled into the phone before she hung up.
We all counted down to the new year and kissed when the ball dropped in Times Square.
“Happy New Year, Missy. Happy New Year, Spawns,” Hunter said, rubbing my belly.
“Happy New Year, father-to-be.”
I spent the rest of my winter break sleeping and working extra hours at the clinic. Mel had found a lot of jobs that allowed me to get off my feet, for which I was grateful.
“My stupid ankles are already starting to swell,” I said, holding my feet out one night and pouting.
“Oh, I’ve been there. People say that pregnancy is beautiful, but so much about it just isn’t.” We both laughed and she asked me if I was ready to have some more hours on the phone. I shook my head.
“No, I wish. I’m extra emotional and I don’t think that would be good for anyone.” She said she understood, but I still felt guilty.
I hadn’t told anyone, but I was starting reevaluate my desire to work in a crisis center like this one. I’d wanted to do it for so long, but I just wasn’t sure I was ready to handle that kind of stress and responsibility. I didn’t know if I could come home from work and leave it behind to focus on my family.
I had a little freak-out the next Wednesday and sat down to talk to Mel again. I’d just been washing some of the donated clothes when it came over me. My heart constricted, I couldn’t take a full breath and I thought I was going to die. I’d had to sit right down on the floor and tell myself that I was fine and needed to just calm down. I wasn’t sure what brought it on. Maybe it was thinking about all the laundry in my future.
“Oh, I remember having an anxiety attack at the end of my junior year, Taylor. I think everyone questions all their life decisions at that point.” I nodded.
“Something I might suggest is to make an appointment with your academic advisor.” That was something I hadn’t even thought of. “They might have some better advice. But for what it’s worth, Taylor, I think you can do this. I think you have the passion and the drive to be really good. But if you decide it’s not for you, it’s better to figure that out sooner rather than later.” It all made sense, so I emailed my advisor and asked for a meeting when the next semester started. I also needed to talk about reworking my schedule and pushing back my graduation date.
I tried not to be down about it, but sometimes I got a little blue. Good thing my friends were always there to remind me that this part of my life was only temporary and a few years down the road, none of this was even going to matter.
They had good points, as always.
I had the tables turn on me when Hunter told me he was going to drop the Steiners. Suddenly I was the one talking sense into someone else. I had to sit him down and tell him I didn’t want him to do that.
“You love singing with them and you’re good at it. I don’t want you giving stuff up because you think I want you to.” H
e tried to convince me that he should, but I put my foot down.
“The only reason you should quit is if it doesn’t make you happy. We both know it does. I see you light up when you’re on stage. So shut up and rub my feet.” He rolled his eyes, but caved. That was one of the good things about being pregnant. I could pretty much get away with anything. Not that I used that to my advantage. Much.
I had my second appointment with Dr. Howard, this time without an ultrasound. Just a quick check to make sure everything was going well. We wouldn’t get to know what we were having until 20 weeks, which was about a month away.
“You didn’t find another one in there?” I asked Dr. Howard.
“I don’t think so, but you never know.” She listened with what was called a Doppler and then told me that there were just two heartbeats.
Yellowfield House was already taking bets on what we were having and it was getting pretty heated. Darah even made a chart on a special whiteboard she’d bought and drawn little babies on it. It was terribly cute. So far Darah, Dusty, Paul and Hunter were rooting for one boy and one girl. Renee, Jos and I were rooting for two girls. Mase was the lone holdout for two boys. They were also voting on: my due date, the weight of each baby and their length. We had quite the little betting ring going for the Spawns, but everyone was having so much fun with it, I couldn’t rain on their parade.
We all started our second semesters at the end of January and Hunter was ready to graduate, as well as Mase, Darah, Paul and Renee. They liked to rub it in that they were going to be done before me, but then I reminded them that they all wanted to get advanced degrees so they weren’t leaving school anytime soon.
“What a bunch of nerds we are,” Hunter said.
“Nerds make more money,” Mase pointed out.
It was true.
Poor Jos and Dusty had at least two more years of their undergrad and got grumpy anytime someone else talked about graduation.
It was going to be weird because we were headed toward an ending. It wasn’t realistic to think that everyone was going to stay in Yellowfield House next fall. UMO just didn’t have graduate programs for everyone, so there was going to be a split of sorts.
I tried not to think about it, but I caught Darah and Mase talking very intently in the kitchen when they didn’t know I was home.
“Whoa, what did I just walk in on?” I asked.
“Nothing,” they both said in completely unconvincing tones.
“Okay, I’m not even going to pretend that I believed you. What’s up?” I sat down and they gave each other one of those looks that couples who have been together a while can have where they communicate without words.
“I got into law school. In Portland.” I knew he’d applied. He was getting his undergrad in International Relations with the ultimate plan of being a lawyer specializing in immigration.
“Congratulations!” I said, even though my heart was sinking.
“If I could stay here, I would.” I waved him off.
“Mase. I’m not going to make you give up law school so you can stay home and babysit for me. That’s ridiculous. And what are you going to do, my dear?” I asked Darah.
“Got into USM for my master’s in accounting,” she said with a shrug. As if it was no big deal.
“Dare! That’s awesome! And totally perfect because you can move to Portland. I’m a little jealous.” I really was happy for them. I could see them both heave a sigh of relief.
“We’re not going to head out until after the babies come, don’t worry,” Darah said with a smile.
“I know. And I am thrilled. We all have to grow up sometime.” They both hugged me and I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. They made an announcement at dinner and Renee cried. Of course. But then she announced that she’d gotten into the master’s program at UMO. Paul was going to be getting a master’s there as well, so they were staying. Thank God. Not everyone was leaving the nest yet.
Valentine’s Day came and with it the first ultrasound with the potential to see the sex of the babies. I was twenty weeks along and dying to know.
“I know I made a bet, but I really don’t care,” Hunter said. “And hey, we might end up with two genderfluid kids, so who knows?” He did have a point there.
Dr. Howard did the drill with the gel.
“Are you ready to find out?” Hunter had his phone, ready to send a group text the minute we knew. Everyone who lost the bet had to take the winners out to dinner.
“Okay, now if Baby A could stop moving for a second…” The babies had been very active lately. The first moment I’d felt them move had been absolutely surreal. I’d screamed at Hunter and he’d run over to put both hands on my belly. He’d cried when he’d finally felt that little flutter for the first time, and of course that had made me cry. We were a wreck. Since then, everyone had wanted to put their hands on my belly, especially Renee and I wanted to wear a sign that said “do not touch.”
“Do you want to know the sex?” We both nodded.
“Looks like Baby A is a girl.” A little shriek escaped my mouth and Hunter pumped his fist in the air.
“We’ve got a least one!” Dr. Howard laughed as she pointed out the little girl bits and then moved to Baby B.
“I don’t know who was betting on what, but Baby B is a boy.” Hunter jumped out of his chair and did a Rocky victory run around the room before I told him to stop gloating.
“One of each,” I said. Now we could pick out names and really start putting their room together. I didn’t want to go super heavy on boy = blue and girl = pink because that was just stupid. Hunter and I had decided on a storybook theme and a friend of Summer’s agreed to do a mural for us for free if we bought the paint.
Hunter texted the gang and his phone started blowing up while Dr. Howard wiped the gel off my belly.
“So, one of each,” I said, giving Hunter a kiss. “So then we’ll be even.”
“That’s what you think. I’m going to get them both on my side and then you’ll be mean Mom who’s no fun,” he said as we left. I laughed.
“That’s what you think, but I’m the one who can put the fear of God in them with one look. I’ve been practicing.” It was a variation of Resting Bitch Face, I was pretty sure.
Hunter pretended to cower.
“Oohhhh, terrifying. Now tell me you’re going to send me to my room without supper.” I just narrowed my eyes slowly.
“Now that is terrifying.”
“So, you are vetoing the name Hunter II,” I said as Taylor and I lay in bed that night. Now that we knew the genders, we were officially talking about names. I’d gotten several books and Taylor had a few sites up on her laptop.
Naming your kids is not easy. We’d already begun to take each name and make sure we could minimize the ways other kids could make it into something dirty or gross.
“We are not using our son to feed your ego,” she said, crossing it off the list I was making.
“But then we name the other one Taylor II, see?” She shook her head.
“Then we couldn’t call them by their first names and we’d have to call them by their middle names and that’s just stupid.” I was only joking about the names. I just hadn’t seen any that I was really excited about.
“What do you think about waiting until they’re born? I always think it’s a shame that people stick their kid with a name before they even meet them. The name might not even fit.” Taylor chewed on her pen and thought about that.
“You’re right. So maybe we should make final lists of names and then when they’re born we can match the baby with the name.” Excellent.
“Oh, and middle names yes or no?” She nodded.
“Middle names definitely yes. Because then you can make them scared when you use their first and middle name when you yell at them.” I pointed my pen at her.
“Good point. We need to take any advantage we can get.”
We stayed up for hours, looking through lists and lists of names.
&
nbsp; “We should probably look up the meanings too. We don’t want to name our kid something that really means asshole in Swedish or something,” Taylor said.
“Yes, we definitely don’t want to name our kid Asshole.” I wrote that down and then crossed it off. She chucked her pen at me and then we were rolling around on the baby books and taking our clothes off and forgetting about any names other than our own for a while.
Taylor was a little self-conscious about her body, but I did whatever I could to reassure her that she was still so, so beautiful. The bigger she got, the more fascinated I was about her body and its ability to sustain not only her life, but that of Spawns, who we were now calling Boy Spawn and Girl Spawn.
I could spend hours just staring at her belly and pressing my fingers in to feel them moving.
“It’s really creepy if you think about it. They’re like parasites. Sweet parasites that we love and protect,” she’d said. “But if anyone tried to harm them, I don’t even know what I would do. I’ve never felt that way about anything. Except maybe for you.”
I agreed with her totally. On the nights when I still woke up from the start of a nightmare, I would imagine them to bring myself back. My little girl, with Taylor’s sass and my little boy, who was a bundle of energy and into everything. Or maybe our boy would have the sass and the girl would have the energy. Either way.
Spring was always chaos, but this was a whole other level. Between my very pregnant fiancée, studying, supervising an addition on the house, Steiners and sleep, I was going non-stop.
Taylor had to keep reminding me to slow down and chill every now and then. One night when I had been grinding on my homework for hours, she came over with cold beer and handed it to me without a word.
“Oh, how did you know I needed this?” She sat down next to me, her hand on her belly. She did it so often now, sometimes rubbing in little circles, as if soothing our babies.
“Because I’m psychic,” she said, tapping her forehead. “I think you should go with Mase and Paul and Dusty and have a boy’s weekend.” I opened my mouth to tell her all the ways that was a terrible idea, but she put her hand up.