Turkey Baster 25

The four of us were seated around a table at a trendy downtown restaurant surrounded by antique brick and exposed ductwork. I was wearing a blue jersey wrap-dress Edward had bought me for the occasion. Edward wore relaxed jeans, a black shirt and a dark blue jacket.

We'd asked Alice and Jasper out to dinner so they could meet Edward, and we could share the news of our upcoming marriage. Alice was still hyperventilating over my ring. Jasper and Edward were talking about Edward's time in the majors.

It wasn't like I'd heard these memories before. But during Edward's story, something about A-ball, B-ball, etc., Alice squeezed my hand. "He's adorable," she whispered to me.

I looked at him. He was adorable, though not broken-in like Jasper, so he would find that description funny.

At that point in Edward's diatribe, I told him Rose had said he was one of the ten most eligible bachelors in the world. He laughed when he heard that. It was just in one city, he said, like that was nothing. And then it was in a financial magazine that was trying to create a female readership, he said laughing.

I winked at him, trying to let him know it was time to be Santa Claus. He took a quick drink of his beer and cleared his throat. "What we wanted to ask is…Bella and I were hoping you would come with us on our honeymoon to Spain. Our treat," he added, as if I'd ever have the funds to take anyone to Spain.

"What the…?" Jasper said.

"When?" Alice asked bolting upright like electricity was running through her chair.

Edward and I had talked, and we didn't want a big wedding. For my part, I wanted Alice and Jasper period. I wanted Angela to marry us simply in the parlor at church. The jury was still out on Rose. I wanted her to attend, and I didn't. But since Edward wanted Emmett, she would be there regardless.

I had never dreamed of a big wedding, or a wedding at all. If I hadn't of met Edward, I could not conceive of marrying another. He was it.

Quick and painless and on a plane to Spain. That was the plan.

So we talked for another hour about Spain. Two years ago I thought I was going to lose my sister. Months of tension after that. Then months of daring to hope. And now more hope. To think she and Jasper might go with us to Spain. I couldn't think of a better way for our marriage to begin. Or theirs.

The evening went well, and the men hit it off. "My sis and Jasper approve of you," I told Edward on the way to my apartment.

"The bribe probably helped," he laughed. His hand stayed on my leg, his fingers gripping me high on my thigh, and eagerly.

"Bribe," I scoffed. "Like you'd need it. It all seems like a fairy tale. Thank you for inviting them," yes, it had been his idea. "Alice's face. Thank you." When I had told him more about her battle with cancer, he said it was a no-brainer to ask them along. "But I've got to tell you…I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop."

"Why do you say that? Do you still not realize how I feel about you?"

"Edward, there's another woman out there…having your baby."

"You think I forget about that?"

"You don't talk about it. You've got like a double header going here."

He smiled and kissed my knuckles.

"Stop it. Stop being…charismatic and charming. You're way too…good looking to work your voo-doo when I'm pouring out my heart, here."

"You think I'm playing you? Not playing. I've been an asshole many times in my life, whole years even, but I'm not being an asshole now."

"Maybe you are. You're a little bit of an asshole. You've got two babies coming. Asshole."

"Whoa!" he laughed but he was taken aback.

I was surprised at how angry I felt. "You don't talk about it."

"What can I say? It comes with me, Bella."

"It's a child, not a suitcase."

"I know that. Baby…come on."

I looked out the window.

He turned then, and pulled off in a rest area and parked.

"Bella, you be just as upset as you need to be. That's only fair. But I thought when you said you'd marry me that you understood I can't take this one back. It isn't fair to this kid that I'd want to. He or she…it's my kid."

"I don't have to be happy about the way it's happening, even as I realize it's not the child's fault," I said.

"I understand that. I understand you can't be all joyful about this."

"What if I'm never happy about it?"

"Bella…if we're going to marry we have to be willing to help each other. I need you to help me with this. Like it or not, this is my child. My attorney has proven paternity. That means once you say, "I do," this child is your step-child. You and my baby are a package, me and this other baby are a package. When we come together, this is our family."

"Is that why you want me to marry you? Did you just look at Tanya and me and take the least annoying?"

"Who says you're the least annoying?"

"Edward!"

"Oh, come on. I thought we understood what this was between us."

"I don't know. It's eating at me more than I knew. I want to give you a child. But hers will be first. It's like…it hurts. And already we're fucked up more than just how fucked up we are as people."

We sat quiet for a minute. He looked out his window. I think he wanted to be turned from me.

I grabbed for his hand. "I think I just had to say it. I just had to blurt it out. I know it sounded bad. But I had to say it."

"I told you, you have a right to be upset."

"Tell me about her…how it was with you two."

"Now? Here?"

"Yes. I'm ready." I hoped I was.

"Well," he cleared his throat. "She…Tanya is an interior designer. I met her on a job a couple of years ago. My mother sent her to look at a penthouse I was staging in a hotel I'd bought. Mom has her own design firm. That's also what brought Tanya to my bar the day you brought my boots to me. She had found the panels for behind the bar. They'd been in a turn of the century barber shop. I had already approved the purchase before we broke up." He pulled my hand to him and spread my fingers over his stomach, pressing my hand against his shirt.

"Just being honest here, okay? I pretty much fell into the relationship. I was drifting, tired of trying to date random women from random places. Really not able to have a relationship with the amount of traveling I was doing. So, at first, here was this woman…who was also connected to home."

"Okay. Details," I said. I wanted to know everything.

He sighed and rubbed up and down my arm. "She would often meet me on jobs. I'm telling you this because I need to get it out. So I drifted into a relationship with her without really…taking responsibility. She was available. Remember I told you I always know what I want? I knew right away there was no future. Right away."

"How did you know?"

"There were signs in her character. The obvious stuff, always late, never at fault for anything, self absorbed. Then there were the things I looked for to prove my points even further. She had vanity license plates with her name. She called herself Tanie on the plates and took two years off her age so she could sit tight at twenty-five."

"Seriously? That was your criteria?"

"It's never failed me."

I guffawed.

He went on, "I'd already suspected narcissism, and that confirmed it. I also dropped in on her unannounced and her place was a pigsty."

"Did you judge me that way?"

"I didn't have to. Okay, but there's more to it than you realize. She liked a good time. She liked the travel. I liked a good time, but more and more our definitions of that were different. I felt myself wanting more, wanting a home. I hadn't had one except for the few years I lived with my adopted parents. Everything I'd done up until then entailed travel—baseball, minors, majors, and now my career. I got really tired. I found myself wanting a person I could count on in a place I could come home to. I found myself entertaining the idea of a family someday…like longing for it, and planning a house…putting some work into my own place rather than all of these other beautiful buildings I had to let go of.

"I had enough money to live comfortably, and realized there was enough work in a two hundred mile area all around me to keep me busy for the rest of my career life. So I started to change my demographic.

"Tanya didn't like it. Honestly, it didn't include her and she knew it. I quit investing myself in the relationship. She had to make most, if not all of the effort. We fought. I was honest. And I was…rude. We kept working together, she persisted. I broke it off, I drifted back toward her cause Mom had asked her to our family holidays, not realizing…and I'd been so busy I didn't take care of my personal life, I didn't have one. Then I broke it off with her again. Still not paying attention to my life, but working like a maniac and she's still showing up, I get sucked into a project and bam here we go again, and now we're back and she's begging/insisting, and I'm expecting a rabbit to be boiling on my stove.

"I'm resenting her and completely indifferent. Somewhere in there she got pregnant because yeah, I'm an asshole. She admitted to me that she thought the old cliché that maybe if she got pregnant I'd…be interested again. She could feel me pulling away, blah, blah. By the time I got my shit together and ended it for good, she was pregnant but I didn't find out until…after I met you.

"That's what she came to tell me when she saw you. She wasn't supposed to be in the bar or be there at all. She had some bogus excuse on needing better measurements for the panels she'd found. That's how it always started. That day you came to the bar and I went after you she went home furious, but realized I meant it. So she called me from home and dropped the bomb on me. Because she never quits. She was on birth control. Always. She made an independent decision to stop it to get pregnant. What can I do?

"Ouch," I say. "I'm just…I feel so stupid."

"I'm not condemning you, I'm telling you about her. I knew I was in love with you. No question. What I didn't know…we don't need to go over it again. But when I thought you'd betrayed me too, I went ballistic. I'd already been played. It was like what happened to you. Her playing me was bad, you playing me was unthinkable. In the end I can only blame myself because…I deserved it."

"I wasn't trying to trap you," I said, "Not that I'm any better."

"She doesn't want my child," he said. "Had it been an actual unplanned pregnancy, I truly think she would have aborted it and I'd be none the wiser. Now that she's made an issue and I've established paternity, she's stuck. She feels rejected, and she's furious. She's playing hardball. Emmett always called it. It's the money. We'll argue a while and I'll try to settle. Hopefully she'll give up custody."

"Wait a minute. She's your child's mother."

"I'll see how she handles the law suit. If she really wants to be a mother, she's going to have to fight for it. If she fights, I'll back down and work out a shared agreement. But if I even get a hint that I'm right and it's all money, I won't stop until I have sole custody."

"Could she just let go like that? Pregnancy can really change a woman. I never wanted to be a mother. After Renee…I admit I'm scared to death. But once I heard the heartbeat it all changed. You don't know about her. Maybe the same thing is happening with her."

"I'll know it if she fights for the child and not just to rip me apart. Right now she's screaming threats, going for full custody just to drive the knife in because her plan didn't work."

We sat in silence.

"Bella, talk to me."

"There's nothing I can say here that doesn't make me a bitch. I understand you want your child, and I agree full custody would be best if she doesn't really care, but I would never want to take a child from its mother. On the other hand, I'm already scared to death to have a baby, and…I'll have two." I was threading my fingers together.

"We'll have two," he pried my nervous hands apart and grabbed one in his. "I plan to be there, too. I've been working a new game-plan for the last year. The bar will sell, and the restaurant will be my next long term project. We can make it work. If you want to go back to work you can, and I'll step in. If you want to stay home, I'll be more hands on at work, but I'll be home, too."

I nodded, but there was no denying how over-whelmed I felt.

"Edward…I just want to say here…no matter how upset I am over the way we've both…screwed things up…I'll never take it out on the child. Never. I promise you that. I may be disappointed, and really pissed off…depending on the type of day I'm having…and to be honest, I still haven't really made peace with it all, but I will work everyday of my life to treat your child with Tanya as my own. I want you to know that. I'd never marry you if I couldn't say that. I'll keep working on myself no matter how long it takes to get this as right as I can. But I need you to promise me something, too."

He fell toward me then, and put his arms around me. "Anything."

"However this falls out…I won't live in a warzone. If you don't get what you want, however disappointed, I don't want it to be the big thing. I don't want to live with this woman swirling our existence around her need to be in your life. Whatever happens, we make the best of it, we focus on what we have…what we get to have…and we roll. No war."

He nodded. "Alright."

"This is going to take real effort," I said.

He nodded again.

"Do you promise? This is what you are saying when we take those vows. You are promising me this. I am not going to enter your war with her. We are not going to center around her. We are not going to discuss her in a negative way. She is who she is. She doesn't get to be the elephant in our marriage."

He nodded again. "I promise you. I swear."

"Alright. Then…maybe we have a chance?"

He kissed me. "Yeah. I like you. I like the way you think. You're…wise."

I laughed. "I haven't been. You know this. But I plan to grow and I want someone who will grow with me."

"Count me in," he said.