Thursday: February 14, 2013 4:17 P.M.
Al and I were playing with dolls at the house. Randy had left a little while ago to go take care of some errands, which left me to spend time with Al until he was back.
"So when is the baby gonna get here?" Al asks me.
"Not until July. It'll still be a little while." I tell her.
"Is the baby gonna be born on my birthday? I don't want to share a birthday with him."
I laugh. "No, he should be born before your birthday. Your dad thinks the baby might share a birthday with me though."
"That would be weird."
"I know. Very weird."
Al starts putting dolls away. "I'm done playing for now."
I give a small laugh. "Okay.
"What's the baby's room look like?"
"You know what, I don't really know. It's not done quite yet. Your dad hasn't shown me."
"Can we go look?"
"Uh, I don't know if your dad would want us to do that."
"He isn't here though, and you're a grown-up."
"Your dad might get mad if he comes home and we're looking in there without him."
"He can't be very mad at either of us for long."
I sigh. "Fair enough. You're turning into a little troublemaker."
"It's Dad's fault."
I laugh. "Okay. Let's go look."
I take Al with me upstairs and into the baby's room. As soon as we enter, I stop and look around the room.
Al looks around. "It's so cute. There's no bed though."
I smile. "That's because your dad and I haven't bought a crib yet."
"Oh."
"You're right though. It's so cute." My eyes start to water.
"Are you crying?"
I shake my head. "No."
"What are you two doing?" Randy says as he finds us.
"Daddy!" Al says before hugging him. "I wanted to see the baby's room."
"Oh, I see. Go pack your bag. You're going to spend the night with Grandma and Grandpa. Daddy needs to talk to Rissa alone, okay?"
"Okay!" Al heads to her bedroom.
Randy closes the door before wrapping his arms around me. "It's not finished yet."
I lean against him. "I know, but I already love it."
"Is that why you're crying?"
"A little bit. It just seems to be hitting me so hard this week that we're actually doing this. Sorry about coming in here without you, but Al really wanted to see."
Randy kisses my forehead. "I get it. Even though I didn't want you to see it until I was done."
"You can still show it off when you're done. It looks great."
"Thanks. I'm trying my best."
"This is great. Why is Al spending the night with your parents?"
"Because I asked them to watch her while I took you to Valentine's day dinner tonight, and they told me that they would take her for the night. They wanted us to have the night to ourselves."
"Oh, I see. I didn't even know that we were going to dinner tonight."
"It's a surprise. You can get dressed up while I take Al to my parents' house."
"Oh. Okay."
I looked at Randy as we sat alone in the back room of the restaurant we were in. "Why do you spoil me so much?"
Randy smiles. "Because I love you so much. I may have spent a decent chunk of money to get us by ourselves away from everyone else though."
"That's okay. I appreciate it and am glad no one can bother us."
"You and me both. This is random, but I think I could've proposed to you better."
I raise an eyebrow. "Really?"
"Yeah, I did it twice and still think I could've done better. I did it the first time once we had moved you in. The second time was just us together on the tour bus. I could've done better."
"I liked your proposals to me. The first one was so unexpected, and I was happy that we were alone for both. We've been married for almost two years now. The proposal is the last thing I'm thinking about these days. No offense, I'm just worried about us now. That's what we need to keep our concerns with."
"I couldn't argue with that if I wanted to."
"You really couldn't."
"So…when do you want to do gifts?"
"I mean we're already eating. We could do them now."
Randy grins. "Okay, I got you two by the way."
"Two? I only got one for you. I thought we agreed to one."
"Well, the second one may not necessarily be just for you. It was a bit of an impulse buy."
"Like your Bentley being an impulse buy?"
"No…this was way less expensive. I'll give you the originally intended gift first though."
I watched as Randy got a wrapped gift out and handed it to me. I started unwrapping the gift. It was a set of lotions that I had been going back and forth on for ages that was supposed to help with stress.
I smiled. "Man, you really do pay attention."
"I always do. Do you want me to open mine before you open the second one?" Randy asks.
"Yeah. Do that. Actually, just in case someone comes back here, just look in the bag and don't pull it out."
"Okay." Randy replies in a confused manner.
Randy looks in the bag and laughs before looking back at me. "That is not PG."
I shrug. "In my defense, I was under the impression that we would be at home."
"That's fair. I do love it though."
"I appreciate hearing that. I thought you would."
Randy passes me a small box. "Here. Like I said though, it's not necessarily just for you, Rissa."
"Okay." I open the box. "You didn't."
"I did."
"Randal Keith…this is adorable." I pull out the pair of baby shoes that Randy had put in the box.
"Valentine's day is supposed to be about love. Saw those and thought I'd include a gift for the product of our love."
I look at him with tears in my eyes. "I love it. I love you so much."
"I love you too, sweetheart."
I woke up to a phone ringing. I looked over at the alarm clock to see it was a little after one in the morning. I looked around to find mine or Randy's cell phone, whichever one was ringing because I wasn't sure whose phone it was.
"It's mine." Randy mumbled before rolling over and answering the cell phone. "Hello?"
I got out of bed and went downstairs and into the kitchen to grab myself a glass of water.
I was a bit concerned as to why Randy was getting some sort of phone call at one a.m., but I didn't stress about it because I knew I'd likely hear about it as soon as Randy got off the phone.
Randy walked downstairs and into the kitchen, looking the most upset he'd been in years. I watched him as he got his own glass of water.
"Uh…" Randy starts to say to me. "We need to talk. It's not good news."
I raise an eyebrow. "Okay. Who called?"
"It was Josh."
"What happened?"
"Way to be direct, Rissa."
"The man who is engaged to the mother of your daughter called you at one a.m., and you're upset. Clearly something happened. What is it?"
"Um…I don't want to explain in detail what Josh exactly said because it would trigger some really bad memories for you and that would not be good for anyone. Uh…essentially, what happened to your old man back in 2003 happened."
I look at Randy with wide eyes. "Is she?"
Randy looked at the ceiling and nodded. "She is."
"I need to sit down."
Randy grabbed me and walked me to sit down in the living room. "I don't know what to say."
I sat down on the couch. "Me either. This is awful. What are we going to say to Al?"
Randy shook his head. "I'll figure something out."
"We're going to need to figure a lot out."
"I know."
