Haley Scott reached up as far as she could but she still couldn't get it. There was no way she could get the star on top of their Christmas tree. It was her son's first Christmas, and he was about to wake up from his nap and she wanted to surprise him with the tree being all decorated. She couldn't wait to see the look on his face when he saw his first tree. His blue eyes would glow with excitement and she could just see his pudgy little hands reaching out to grab the ornaments.
She nearly screamed when she felt a pair of hands wrap around her waist, and she fell down off her tiptoes, defeated. Turning around, she whacked her husband in his rock hard abs. "Nathan! You scared me half to death!"
Nathan chuckled at the way his wife looked. She seemed a little angry, but he could understand that, considering he had just yanked her down from reaching to put the star up. Her dark hair, which she had recently colored, was flying every which way and she looked completely flustered. "Sorry," he apologized, a sheepish grin on his face.
"God," she huffed, pulling down her t-shirt that had ridden up. "What are you doing here anyway? Practice doesn't get out for another half hour."
He shrugged. "Coach let us out early, said it was his Christmas gift to us."
"Ah." She nodded, smiling. "That was nice of him. You boys deserve a break."
"Whatever," he muttered. "The only reason he did it was because his wife was making him. They were driving to his mother-in-law's tonight and she wanted to get on the road early. Poor guy…totally whipped."
"You know," Haley began, wrapping her arms around his neck, "the same could be said for you."
"Never," he replied, his arms winding around her waist and pulling her closer to him. Upon seeing the look of disbelief on her face, he retracted that statement. "Okay, okay, I'm whipped."
"Mm hmm," she mumbled, pulling his face down to meet hers in a soft kiss. "You like it like that."
"I don't have much of a choice." He gently released her and smoothed her hair down. "Tough day?"
"Not really," she replied, turning back to her work on the tree. "I've just been trying to get this done before your son wakes up from his nap. I can't wait to see the look on his face!" she squealed, making Nathan laugh. She was like a child on Christmas. In fact, she was probably more excited about this than Jamie would be, but Nathan wouldn't tell her that. No sense in crushing her hopes.
Nathan opened his mouth to respond but a soft cry filled the air before any words came out of his mouth. "Uh oh." Haley smiled at him. "You want to go get him Daddy?" He nodded eagerly and took off down the small hallway into their son's room before she could say another word.
Nathan smiled to himself as he entered their son's room. He would never get tired of being a father. He enjoyed every minute of it. He even enjoyed changing the diapers and cleaning up after him, but he would never tell Haley that. If he did, he would be stuck doing those jobs all the time.
Haley, however, didn't mind the way things were. She thought Nathan was doing a great job and she was proud of the way he was such a wonderful father. It was a complete change from the father he had grown up with, and he was glad as well. For months leading up to the birth of Jamie, Nathan had been terrified he would be like his father. He was afraid he would put too much pressure on his son or ignore him completely. Of course, with Jamie only being six months old, he still had a while to go before they knew if he would be completely like Dan, but with the way things were going, he wasn't at all.
Their son was getting a little bigger each day, and it kind of made Nathan sad. One day he would be all grown up and he wouldn't need Nathan for anything. Of course, he enjoyed being a father so much that he fully intended on telling Haley that when Jamie turned two, he wanted more kids. He didn't think she would object to that but then again she was home with Jamie more than he was.
"Jimmy Jam!" Nathan cheered when he saw his little boy. Jamie smiled widely in response and held up his arms for Nathan to lift him out of the crib. "Hey there," he greeted, his nose wrinkling in disgust when he smelled the odor coming from his son. "Diaper change!" he decided immediately, laying him down on the changing table.
Haley walked in when Nathan was nearly finished, her hands on her hips. She frowned when she saw Nathan. "Hey," he said, eyeing her carefully as he picked Jamie up and hoisted him onto his hip. "You alright?"
"No, I am not alright!" She blew out a frustrated breath. "I didn't get the damn star on top of the damn tree so now it doesn't look right and Jamie isn't going to get the full effect when you bring him out there!"
"Little ears in the room, Hales!" Nathan warned, laughing on the inside. Normally, Haley freaked out if people even said the word 'hell' in front of their son, but today was obviously an exception. She was too flustered by putting that star on the tree that she had forgotten her rules. He couldn't talk yet, but she had this fear of him repeating the bad language one day.
Her eyes grew wide and she clapped a hand over her mouth. "Oops!" She moved over to them, rubbing her hand over Jamie's curly blonde hair. "Mommy's sorry, baby. She meant to say darn! We don't say that other 'd' word! No way!"
"I think you're safe," Nathan voiced in her ear. "He can't even talk yet, Hales. I don't think he's going to be cursing at you anytime soon."
She rolled her eyes at him. "Will you go put the s-t-a-r on top of the tree and then yell at me when you're done? I'll bring Jamie out for his surprise then." She directed her attention to Jamie. "Hear that, Jamie? Mommy and Daddy have a little surprise out there for you! I think you're going to like it!" He cooed at her and she kissed him on the head.
"Yeah," he answered, passing Jamie over to his wife. "But why did you spell it out? He's not going to - "
"Nathan," she cut him off, aggravated. "I think you should just go please put the s-t-a-r on the tree!"
Nodding, he left the room to find the star sitting on the coffee table. He picked it up and with almost no effort, set it on top of the tree. He didn't know why Haley had tried to do this without a chair or anything. She was way too short to reach the top of it. She was like 5'4", he was 6'3", and the tree was like 6'5". He shook his head thinking about it. Women.
"Hales!" he called out after he inspected the tree. It seemed sufficient enough for him. "Surprise is all ready!"
He could hear her excited voice telling Jamie all about it as they left his bedroom. "Jamie…look what Mommy did for you today!" She pointed at the tree and he laughed in response. "You think that's silly?" She tickled his stomach. "Daddy even helped me!" she pointed out. "See that star? Your daddy put that star on top of the tree! Yes he did!"
"I did, Jamie," Nathan interjected, taking hold of his son and lifting him up a little higher than Haley could to see the top of the tree. "Mommy tried, but she is way too short to reach the top of the tree. I hope you're taller than she is when you grow up. Otherwise, we're going to have some problems," he teased both his wife and son.
"Don't listen to him, Jamie," she told their son as she smoothed down his little blonde curls. "He's just being mean because he doesn't like being a giant all the time." Jamie laughed and grabbed at a strand of Haley's hair. "Ow!" she cried out, removing his chubby little fingers from it. "No Jamie! That hurts Mommy!"
"Yeah, son." Nathan pulled Jamie away from Haley a little bit and tried to get his attention focused back on the tree Haley had worked so hard on. He figured she must have done it all during his nap, and he didn't take very long naps anymore. She probably had an hour and a half at the most and she must have found the box of decorations during that time. They were probably hard to find too. Nathan didn't have the slightest clue where they would be. "Mommy's hair is too pretty to be pulled on like that. The only person who can do that is Daddy. And that's only an accident when we're - "
"Nathan!" Haley swatted him for what was the second time that day. And he hadn't even been home an hour yet.
"Oh, it's fine. He doesn't even know what we're talking about. Look. He's looking at the ornament."
Haley fixed her eyes on their little miracle and grinned. He was looking at an ornament. In fact, he was reaching out to grab the shiny green ornament. Of course. Jamie and shiny things. He was addicted. "Do you like the pretty ornament?" Jamie cooed and stuck his fingers in his mouth. "It's nice, isn't it? We're going to get you an ornament with your name on it!" she announced excitedly. "Mommy already ordered it and when we get it, you can hang it on the tree. Would you like that?! Huh?" She tickled him again.
Nathan set Jamie in his playpen about twenty minutes later when the excitement of the new tree had died down. He smiled as his son grabbed for his plush toy basketball that his Uncle Lucas had given him the day he came home from the hospital. No one could say his son didn't have good taste.
"Was it everything you wanted it to be?" Nathan asked Haley as he joined her at the kitchen table where she was thumbing through a magazine. He grinned when he saw the kind of magazine it was - a toy magazine. She was determined to spoil their son for Christmas, but he didn't blame her. Their perfect baby deserved the world, and even more than that.
"He was happy and that makes me happy," she informed him, closing the magazine.
"And you guys are happy and that's all that matters to me," he replied. "I'm happy because of that too."
She nodded, taking a deep breath. She didn't know if it was the right time to tell him her news. She didn't know if it was good or not, and she wasn't sure how he was going to take it. He could be pretty volatile when things spun out of orbit. Nathan liked things in a planned routine. He didn't like having his life thrown out of whack, and she feared she was about to do just that.
He seemed to notice her change in attitude and watched her face carefully. "You okay?"
"Actually, Nathan, I see how happy you are right now, and I have something to tell you and I don't want to mess up how happy you are with my news."
"You aren't sick or anything right?" he questioned, an immediate fear growing in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't stand Haley being sick. He would rather die than have her be sick.
"No!" she denied immediately, taking hold of his hand. "I'm fine. Promise."
"Than what?" he asked softly. "Whatever it is, we can handle it. We've handled everything else that's been thrown our way," he reminded her.
"I know, but we're in college now, Nathan, and we have a lot more responsibility than we used to," she pointed out. "You're already extremely stressed with basketball and we have Jamie now and studying and - "
"Hales!" He put a finger to her lips, quieting her. "We can figure out all the details or whatever when you tell me what the problem is. I don't want to say I'm going to be stressed when I don't know what it is I'll be stressed over."
"You're right…look, I don't think this is the right time for us to be doing this…but it's here and we have to deal with it. We don't really have a choice."
"My God, Haley, I don't know what you're talking about!" he bit out. This game was getting old. She was freaking him out by not telling him what was going on. "Please, baby," he lowered his voice, "please just tell me what's going on. I won't be mad, I won't leave. I promise you."
"Okay." She took one more deep breath. She felt like she had been taking them all day ever since she had gotten her news. "We're going to have another baby." She tried to gauge his reaction, and all she could see was the shock forming across his face.
Nathan nearly fell backwards out of the chair. "We're…what?"
"A baby, Nathan," she repeated. "I'm pregnant. Again." She bit her lip after about thirty seconds because he still hadn't said anything. He just sat there staring at her with a look of surprise on his face.
It wasn't like Haley had planned this. She hadn't wanted another baby for years. She wanted to wait until they were both out of college with jobs and financially stable. Now was just not a good time for a baby. As much as she knew she would love it, she knew it wasn't a good time. However, there was no going back now, so Haley was insistent on going forward. She was going to love this baby as much as she would have loved a planned baby. She just knew now wasn't a great time to be pregnant again.
She was shocked when the news had come. She was getting a bottle for Jamie when the phone had rung, and she nearly dropped it in the sink full of water when the doctor had come on and told her she was pregnant. She had gone for a check up two days before just because she hadn't had one in a while. She didn't expect to get news like that.
"Again?" He blinked a few times, trying to contemplate what it all meant. "You're pregnant again?"
"Yes, again! That means that I have been pregnant once before, and now I'm pregnant once again." She couldn't help but talk back to him that way. He was acting like he had never heard of a pregnancy before. He acted like he was completely stupid, and it was pissing her off.
"But….how?"
"How? Well, Nathan" -she folded her hands on top of the table- "when two people - "
"Don't even act like that!" he interrupted her. "I mean, we use protection, you know?"
"Yeah, I'm the one who takes it!"
"Okay, okay." He held up his hands in surrender. He didn't want to fight with her. Plus, she was right. This was here and they needed to deal with it. "I'm sorry. I just…I didn't expect this at all. I mean, Jamie's not even a year old yet!"
"Do you think I don't know that?!" She stood up, pushing the chair back against the wall and moved to lean against the counter, crossing her arms over her still flat stomach. "I didn't expect to have Jamie back then either in case you forgot that detail!"
"I remember that, Haley! I remember all of it! Don't you act like I don't!" He was up on his feet now, his face red from anger. "That was probably the most important time of my life!"
She nodded then, her aggravation slowly fading away. She knew he was just in shock and that it was going to take some time to get used to this. "It was a really special time," she recalled, smiling when she thought of how Jamie was born the day of their high school graduation. "Nathan…I'm sorry," she said, walking over to where he was standing with his hands on his hips. She wound her arms around his waist and laid her head against his chest. "I know this isn't in the plans for us. But I know I'll love this baby as much as I love Jamie, and as much as I'd love any baby we could have planned."
"It's not that I won't love it, Haley. Of course I'll love it. I'd love anything that came from me and you. It's just….a shock, you know? I was planning on waiting until Jamie was like two before we had more kids."
She raised her head, her eyebrows automatically lifting up. "You wanted to start again that early?"
"Well…yeah," he admitted, a sheepish smile on his face. He gently brushed some hair back from her face and spoke again. "I love being a dad, Hales, I really do. It's the best thing I've ever done with my life."
She didn't doubt that at all. When Jamie was born, Nathan was the proudest she had ever seen him. Since that day, he had been owning up to all his responsibilities and he was doing his best never to let her down. Being a dad had changed him, and it was definitely for the better.
"I know it is," she answered him. "But come on…when Jamie is two?!"
He chuckled at the expression on her face. "Okay," he gave in, "maybe three."
"Oh, that's so much better." She rolled her eyes. "I'm sorry this is happening now. I really am. I want more kids, but now is not when I want them…but since it's happening, we're just going to have to roll with it."
"I know," he agreed. "And I'll be here for you, Hales, through everything. I promise you I'll be the best dad I can be, and I'll help make Jamie the best big brother he can be," he swore to her, his passion for his kids swirling in his deep blue eyes.
She kissed him softly then. "Thank you, Nathan. I know this is really hard right now but just…thank you for not getting angrier than you already did."
"I'm sorry I reacted that way," he said to her.
"It's okay." She sighed and reveled in the feeling of his arms wrapped around her tiny body. "Well, merry early Christmas!" She giggled as he kissed her again.
Nathan smiled down at her when he pulled back. He couldn't wait for his early Christmas present to arrive.