I don't own these characters. They are the sole property of Stephenie Meyer. I only borrow them. No humans are permanently harmed through my actions, though I do confess to harassing, annoying, torturing, and exasperating them – just because it's fun. I make no money from my little stories, sad day. I only play in the sandbox, I didn't build it.
#50 An Independent Woman
Abby didn't let much make her nervous. But she fully admitted that she was nervous. The pregnancy test had confirmed what she had suspected for about ten days now.
She was officially knocked up with the sex god's big, beautiful baby.
She was thrilled about that fact, incredibly and undeniably excited. She was also so terrified that it felt like the room was spinning and she was about to hurl. Of course, that could be the pregnancy, she conceded. The symptoms seemed to be pretty much the same.
So...how to break the news?
Five months ago, they had stopped using condoms – at Seth's suggestion. Apparently, they had been a little premature in that decision, even if Abby had been supposedly "covered" in the area of birth control. Now...well, there was a good chance that Seth wouldn't believe she hadn't gotten pregnant on purpose. Abby, however, was as confused as Seth was inevitably going to be about exactly how that had come about. It seemed as if those 1-2 percent failure rates were the God's honest truth – and they just happened to fall into that miniscule category. Lucky them! Maybe, Abby thought, she should be a lottery ticket since she seemed to be beating the odds lately.
Now she was unexpectedly pregnant with the baby of a man she loved and who loved her. But sometimes love wasn't enough. Sometimes a person panicked. And they ran. So what was he going to say when he got the news that they had a child on the way?
As she had done most of her life, Abby was doing things out of order. Following a rigid plan had never been high on her list of things to do with her day. Her mother said that somewhere along the way, Abby had developed an aversion for doing what she was supposed to do when she was supposed to do it. Apparently, she got it from her father. At least, that's what her mother always said.
Abby smiled at the thought of her mother. As soon as she gave Seth the news, she was going to call her mother. No matter how the circumstances ended up, her mother was going to be absolutely thrilled. Depending on how things went tonight, Abby was going to need her mother's help a little or a lot. Abby sincerely hoped it was just a little.
Even though she was twenty-nine years old, and an independent woman damn it, she really hoped she wasn't going to raise this baby on her own. She had a pretty good idea that Seth would want to be an involved father, but then again, people could always surprise you. It wasn't like she was expecting him to fall to one knee and ask her to marry him, but no yelling or screaming would be nice.
The truth was that this event hadn't been in the game plan. And it was a hell of a game changer.
For the rest of the afternoon, she fussed and fidgeted, cleaning the house one and half times (she didn't vacuum the house on the second round so didn't count it fully), changing her menu three times, and waffled over an outfit for an uncustomary thirty minutes. She had changed twice.
By the time Seth was due to arrive, Abby felt her nerves fluttering around in her stomach. This time she was pretty sure it was nerves and not the baby since the kid was only the size of a lima bean or something.
The doorbell rang and she ran to the door. She had planned to tell Seth in a very calm, composed manner after they had eaten the spectacular dinner she had prepared. Instead, the moment she saw him standing at her door, she burst into tears and wrapped around him like a spider monkey.
To say he was surprised might have been an understatement.
Seth pulled her away from him enough to get a look at her face and Abby was pretty sure she felt snot dripping down her upper lip. So she wiped it and then did the unthinkable and got rid of the evidence – on his shirt. It was half his fault she was an emotional wreck anyway. She had never been one of those graceful criers. Her nose got red and runny, her eyes got swollen, and her face got blotchy. It was one of the joys of being a red head.
"Abby, baby girl," Seth whispered, using his super secret, no-on-can-ever-know-this-shit name for her. "What's wrong? Are you sick? Did something happen to your mom?"
Abby gulped in some air, ready to lay it all out for him in lurid detail but found she couldn't form the words. Her usually agile brain had checked out for the day and didn't that just figure?
Seth wrapped her around him more securely (and how special did it make a woman feel to be carried by her man?) and walked them toward the couch with Abby still doing her spider monkey routine.
He sat down and then cradled her in his long, lean arms, his beautiful hands just running soothing patterns up and down her arms and legs, occasionally brushing over her hair, wiping away a fresh tear or two. He didn't press her to explain or keep asking her what was wrong. Instead, he simply held her.
It was exactly the thing she needed and she hadn't even known it.
Finally, the sobs dwindled down to pitiful sniffles and she buried her face in his chest, inconspicuously wiping her nose on him one more time for good measure. If a woman had to give a man news like this, she deserved to do it booger free, even if his shirt had to pay the price.
"Ready to talk?" Seth asked after a few moments. He cradled her face in his hands, his thumbs wiping at the path of her tears, concern evident in his beautiful brown eyes. "You're scaring me, Abs."
"I'm scared too," she admitted.
His brows drew into a straight line and she rubbed at the crease between them. "Talk to me...please...before I lose my ever loving mind."
"I'm afraid you'll be mad at me," she admitted in a soft voice. She wanted to hide her face in his chest again but he urged her chin up and placed a soft kiss on her lips.
"Why would I be mad at you?" He smiled then, that slow sweet smile that he had given her the first night they'd gone to bed together. It was the smile that always had her tossing her panties over her shoulder and wrapping her legs around his waist.
"Because," she whispered. "Something's happened."
"Something bad?" he asked.
Abby shook her head and wondered where her usual brass balls had gone. Perhaps pregnant women were required to turn them in upon conception or something, because she certainly couldn't seem to find hers at the moment.
"Something good?" Seth asked with a little quirk of his lips.
"I think so, but I'm not sure you will," Abby finally said. She paused. "Unexpected, but good," she finally decided.
"Well, if you think it's good then I'm sure I will too," Seth told her.
"Before I tell you, I want you to know I didn't plan it this way," Abby said.
"Okay," Seth replied agreeably. "So tell me."
She was tempted to look away but she wasn't the look away kind of girl. "My period is ten days late." Seth's eyes got wide but at least he didn't jump up and dump her off his lap in his hurry to run out the door. "So today I took a test." She grimaced. "Actually, I took three tests." Seth seemed like he wanted to smile but Abby knew she must be delusional now. "And it was positive – all three were positive." She took a deep breath. "So...I'm pregnant."
Seth stared at her for a long moment and then shook his head. "No, I'm afraid you've got that wrong, Abby."
Her heart sank somewhere into the vicinity of her toes but then Seth's lips were against hers and it came zooming right back up to lodge in her throat.
"I read the tests myself, Seth. Even I could tell that the word positive meant, 'Hey lady, you're knocked up!'"
He smiled and shook his head again, kissing the corner of her mouth. "No, you're not knocked up or pregnant."
Maybe the delusions were contagious, Abby thought. Poor baby, he had caught the crazy.
"Abby?"
"Yes?" She was distracted, wondering is she should be trying to contact a neurologist for Seth. Or maybe a psychiatrist. She'd make sure he got the best of care because he was her baby's daddy and she loved him.
"Abby, you're not pregnant," he said again. Then he pulled her close and breathed in deep. "We're pregnant, baby girl."
And that only started the tears again and this time she wasn't even subtle when she wiped her nose on his shirt. It was his own damned fault for being so perfect. Finally, he leaned back and put his hand in his pocket and then pulled it back out again.
"I was kind of nervous myself on my way over here," Seth said. Abby was confused again and wondered if she would spend the next eight months that way. "See, I had come to kind of a big decision over the last few weeks and I was finally going to put it into action."
"You were?"
Seth nodded. "And then when you told me about...our little surprise package..." His long fingers settled over her belly and a look of awe settled over his handsome face. "Well, I remembered something Pops said once about destiny and how sometimes we just had to go with it instead of trying to plan everything out." He looked at her. "He told me that usually the best things in life aren't the things we plan. They just find us." He held up his free hand. "See, tonight, I was going to give you this...if you'd have it, that is."
Abby took the little box and opened it up. The ring inside was perfectly perfect for Abby and she knew it. "So, I'm going to ask you to marry me just like I planned, and I don't want to hear any nonsense about only doing this because we're having a baby. Understood?" He settled a stern frown on her and she laughed, riding up the emotional roller coaster again.
She wriggled her fingers, asking him to put the ring there already. He plucked the ring from the box and touched it to the tip of her left ring finger. "Abby Harrison, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to make little red headed babies with you." They grinned at each other. "I want to grow old with you. So basically, I'm asking you for your forever. What do you say?"
She could only nod because her throat was still full of her heart and her heart was damned near bursting.
He slid the ring on and it fit, as she had suspected it would. Seth kissed her. "Now that is how it's done, baby girl. You and me, we're efficient." He snapped his fingers and winked at her. "We covered the engagement and first kid all in one night. Damn...we're good."
She laughed and threw her arms around his neck and became the spider monkey again. And Seth was the tree she was intent on climbing.
Seth didn't seem to mind. At all.
They were getting married. They were having a baby. And all of that sounded just perfect.
