Loving a Man Who Forgot Me Novel Chapter 49
Abel and I were always convinced he was building Terminators though he adamantly denied it.
“And how does it feel to be a grandma?” I asked Aunt Sadie.
That was all it took for the conversation to take off and attention to completely transfer from me to baby Amelia.
Unable to help the direction my thoughts went, my eyes shifted to Aunt Jax. She and Uncle Ky were about to join them as grandparents.
Would Abel and Katya have a boy or a girl? I pictured a baby boy with his eyes and smile. I shouldn’t have. It gutted me. Something in my gaze must have given my thoughts away, because Aunt Jax seemed to understand.
Everything I felt was reflected in her eyes as we shared that moment. It was too much. I looked away and plastered a fake smile on my face as I let myself be swept up into conversation. Before long, I was laughing and smiling for real.
It was impossible not to surrounded by these people. My crazy family. It was like a game of musical chairs, people popping in and out of conversations, moving about the room, teasing banter, bad jokes, friendly debates, old stories and new ones filling the room.
“So there I am, spit-up on my shirt that I didn’t even notice, and my hair,” Molly’s cringe was comical, “I hadn’t washed it in days.
Not to mention I was running on no sleep, but of course I wouldn’t just tell Jaime I was having a hard time, because I thought I was supposed to be super-mom and be able to do it all.
Instead, I was a hot, disgusting mess, crying in the diaper aisle with six bottles of wine in my shopping cart, and the stock boy looking at me like he was sure I just escaped from the mental hospital. He just kept staring at me until finally I just lost it.
Like a total psycho, I went off on this kid about life and babies and motherhood.
“God, I must have traumatized him. He had to be about sixteen, seventeen, and there I am, going on about my hormones and the changes in my body and how hard breastfeeding is, and then the kid just hugs me awkwardly and tells me it’s going to be alright.
Of course, I started crying even harder. Real ugly sobbing, and then pretty soon I was laughing at the ridiculousness of it all and the kid started laughing, and then it was just incredibly awkward and embarrassing. I haven’t set foot in that store since.
I just know he told all of his coworkers about the crazy woman, so now I drive an extra four miles to go the one on the other side of town.”
The mothers in the group chuckled through sympathetic and understanding grins, while the rest of us just laughed period. “Probably did that kid a favor. He won’t be knocking up any high school girls anytime soon,” Nash sniggered.
Jaime, who was standing behind Molly’s spot on the couch, bent down and kissed the top of her head. “You’re doing amazing, baby. Amelia and I are lucky to have you.” She tipped her head back and grinned up at him. “Couldn’t do it without you.
Seriously,” she lowered her chin and looked to her mother-in-law. “He’s been so incredible since I confessed my breakdown in the diaper aisle. Taking extra days off, getting up with Amelia, taking her for daddy-daughter-time so I can have a break.
The night before we flew out here, he came home from work with a few bottles of wine, and packed Amelia up just to take her for a drive because he’d arranged for my mom and my best friend to come over and help me out with laundry and dishes and all the things I was behind on.”
“Amelia loves car rides,” Jaime shrugged as if he hadn’t done anything at all, but I was proud of him. We’d all been a little shocked and unsure of what to think when he got engaged at twenty and married at twenty-one, and then moved out to Molly’s hometown in Oregon.
He was a little rebel and trouble-maker, same as the rest of the guys, before he met Molly, but he’d truly settled into the family life over the last couple years, and it looked good on him. I’d never seen him happier. Pangs of jealousy shot through me.
It was supposed to be me. My self-pitying thoughts were swept away as quickly as they came when Aunt Jax announced it was cake time and started ushering everyone into the kitchen.
She had to drag Abel against his protests, and then we all gathered around a decadent looking chocolate masterpiece.
Death by Chocolate it was called. Devil’s food with chocolate mousse filling, chocolate cream frosting, topped with rich chocolate ganache and garnished with chocolate and white chocolate curls. It was Abel’s favorite. In typical fashion, Aunt Jax had counted out twenty-six candles.
They covered the top tier of the cake. Abel tried to snatch the lighter from her hands as she went to light them. She swatted his hand away. “You just shush and stand there until I tell you to blow them out.”
She made it half-way through the lighting when the doorbell chimed and she looked up with a scrunched brow. “Who else are we expecting?” she asked no one in particular, and then hollered, “It’s a party, come in!”