AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!

111

Carol stood leaning against her spot at the counter, nursing a hot cup of decaf coffee, while Andrea stood at her spot and did the same. Their planning for the reveal party had come to a screeching halt as floodwaters threatened to wash it out. Carol reached for the nearest box of tissues—Daryl had scattered them all throughout the house so that one was never very far away—and she passed it to Andrea.

"Thanks," Andrea said, her nose sounding stuffed from the onslaught of dragon tears rolling down her cheeks. "I'm sorry…I'm just…"

"Pregnant," Carol offered. "I'm the last person you have to explain it to." She laughed to herself. "I cry so much that I have to be sure to drink an extra two or three glasses of water just to be sure I'm rehydrating myself." Carol straightened herself up and put her mug down on the counter next to the open notebook where she'd been scratching ideas while they talked. "And you're—emotional. Very emotional. Because this is important, and I knew that's why it couldn't wait any longer."

Andrea's frown returned from where she'd started to get it under control, and she nodded.

"I just…can't help it, and I hate it."

Carol laughed quietly.

"You want to know what I think?" She asked. Andrea half-shrugged and half-nodded. It was a silent way of saying "whatever you want is fine." Carol decided to take her up on that. She crossed the small space of the kitchen and held her arms out to Andrea as an invitation. A handful of tissues in hand, Andrea gratefully sunk into the hug she was offered. "You are—my best friend. And you have been my number one cheerleader since the moment that I met you." Andrea squeezed her and tried to protest. "No—no—I'm serious. You have never once wanted anything except what was best for me. What made me happy. And you're—so much sunshine, for everyone else, but you swallow all of your hurt down. Pack it away, and now…Peanut needs room and says there's just no room for all this hurt and sadness you've saved for so many years, so Peanut's just pushing it all out."

Andrea hugged Carol and nuzzled her neck, leaving damp tears there. Carol squeezed her back and held her a few minutes, enjoying the hug, herself, every bit as much as she could imagine that Andrea might be enjoying it.

Carol let Andrea be the one to end the embrace, and she accepted some of the tissues to wipe at her own face when Andrea offered her the box.

"We're a mess," Andrea said with a laugh.

"We are," Carol agreed. "But—I want you to listen to me, OK? I don't want you to keep going with this train of thought, OK? I don't like it."

"It's true, though," Andrea said, returning back to the conversation that had stirred up the tears in the first place. Having cried some of them out, though, she seemed to be feeling better, and she seemed able to get through some of it without dissolving entirely again. "I don't want to steal your thunder. I don't want you to feel like I'm just—walking behind you and copying everything you do."

Carol laughed quietly and shook her head.

"Andrea—it's not stealing my thunder," she said. "In fact—I'm really more than a little pissed off at you." Andrea looked shocked. She looked more like she'd been slapped than like she might cry again. "I am. I thought you were my best friend…"

"I am!" Andrea cut her off.

"But then I find out that you and Merle didn't send out a single announcement, or do any kind of announcement…announcement…thing, because Daryl and I did. I thought you didn't do the things you said you wanted to do because you changed your mind on doing them."

"We just didn't think about it at first," Andrea said.

"And when we did, and you liked it, you should have made announcements. You should have—done pictures. You should have ordered cakes and eaten them. You shouldn't have said you might do it, and then made me think that you changed your mind when, really, you weren't doing it because you were afraid I might get mad that you copied me on something that thousands of women do. Andrea…you skipped having people at your wedding. You've refused to have any pictures taken that you said you wanted to do. You didn't do any kind of announcements or celebrations for Peanut…not even a cake, even though you really liked our cake. And it was all because—you didn't want to copy me or steal my ideas?"

Andrea's chin quivered.

"We're building the house," she offered.

"And we're thrilled about that!" Carol responded. She grabbed Andrea's arms and pulled her against her in a loose hug so that she could simply stand close to her and share a little affection. "We're going to be neighbors. Next-door neighbors. And Sprout and Peanut are going to grow up playing together every single day. Andrea—I never imagined that I'd be here. That this would be my life, and I know that you didn't, either. Now we're married to brothers. We have babies on the way—both of them with clean bills of health. They're going to be cousins and, probably, best friends. I want you to have all the good things. I want wonderful, happy, things for my best friend. All the exciting things, in case you don't ever do this again. All the silly things…and the fun things. I want you to take the pictures, and…have a cake! Please! Because I don't want to enjoy these things if I think it means that my best friend can't enjoy them."

"I'm always a step behind," Andrea said, shrugging her shoulders. "It always feels like—if I did it, I'd just be copying you. Like everything I'm doing is copying you."

Carol laughed.

"And everything I'm doing is copying things Daryl finds on the internet or we see in his movies or—my favorite books," Carol said. "You say you're one step behind me, so you copy me. I say—you've always been one step behind me because you've been so damned determined to always have my back." Andrea's face lit up with a sincere smile, and Carol's throat tightened. She massaged the muscles of Andrea's arms in her hands and rocked her body from side to side. "Look," she said, looking down between them where their bodies brushed against each other. "Sprout and Peanut are already hanging out together."

Andrea smiled despite the slightly visible tremor in her lips.

"I think Peanut likes it. He's kicking."

Carol's pulse picked up a notch, and her breathing caught nearly inexplicably, but she recovered quickly.

"Sprout's kicking, too," she said. "So—I think he agrees."

Andrea smiled warmly at her, and Carol dropped her hands from holding Andrea's arms for a moment to touch her face. She brushed a few tears away from her cheeks.

"Now—will you stop fighting me and help me plan this reveal?" Carol asked.

"You're sure you don't want to do it by yourself?" Andrea asked. Carol only had to make a face at her, this time, to answer that question. Andrea laughed in response. "Maybe the problem is that…I'm just not that creative. It's only once you say it or do it that I think, hey, that's a really good idea."

"Then, the next time you think that," Carol said, "do it for yourself. OK? Now—looking at some of the ideas that I got from the glorious land of the worldwide web, I was thinking we could do one of these." She brought her phone over and flipped through it, showing Andrea a few of the possibilities she'd saved.

Daryl had signed off on liking all the possibilities, but they hadn't really decided what they wanted. They'd slept on it one night, and Andrea's appointment had been the day after Carol's. Carol knew, now, that Dr. Martin had saved the sonogram for this week so that the reveal might be something wonderful for Carol's eighteenth week. Andrea had agreed to have her appointments shifted slightly so that she wouldn't have her sonogram earlier and make Carol concerned about the change.

Carol knew that Andrea was only one step behind, this time, because she'd volunteered to stay back so that Carol could be first.

Merle had called Daryl because Andrea—having heard that Carol and Daryl were planning to do a reveal on Saturday—had told Merle that she didn't really think they needed to do anything official. They might as well just find out what Peanut was by opening the envelope. Then, they could just tell people as they asked or as it arose in conversation. He let it out, then, that Andrea had been systematically refusing nearly everything he wanted them to do because "she didn't want to copy" Carol, or she didn't want to "steal Carol's thunder."

Carol was glad that Daryl had immediately told her what was going on, and that he'd signed off on she and Andrea deciding what they wanted the reveal to be with his blessing. He would be happy with any of the fun little cliché things they'd googled, and he thought the ladies might benefit from some baby bonding together.

In fact, to give them time after work to do that—both Carol and Andrea taking off a little early for the day, he and Merle had left them planning the big reveal while the two of them went to do errands surrounding, Carol assumed, the building of their future homes. On the weekend, after the reveal, they were also going to help Andrea and Merle move back into Andrea's old house so that they could fully clear the lot and begin with building their house.

Andrea looked through Carol's collected pictures.

"I really like that one," Andrea said.

"Yeah?" Carol responded. Andrea smiled and nodded. "I like that one, too," Carol agreed. "And you get your cake. It doesn't make up for the ones you could have had, but it's cake."

Andrea laughed in response.

"But how do we do this?" Andrea asked.

"If you're sure you want to do that one, then we'll take our envelopes down to the bakery and explain what we want," Carol said. "They'll still be open if we leave soon. We'll tell them we want to pick the cakes up on Friday evening. We'll recruit the Glory Gals to help set up for a fun little party, and we'll decorate for the reveal."

"Here?" Andrea asked.

"We can do it here," Carol said. "Unless—you'd rather do it somewhere else?"

"No," Andrea said quickly. "Here is fine. How will we know the difference in the cakes?"

"I have an idea," Carol said. "And if you hate it, you tell me, but…I was thinking that we'll have them do my cake with blue icing and in pink letters they can put Sprout. And your cake they can do with pink icing, and in blue letters…"

"Peanut," Andrea said with a smile.

Carol nodded.

"We could switch the icing colors, if you'd rather do it the other way. That doesn't really matter. That way, though, we'll know which cake is which. Then, if we do what this suggests, the inside icing color, between the layers, will tell us what the baby really is when we slice the cake."

Andrea was so excited over the idea that she actually hopped before grabbing Carol in a hard and sincere hug. Carol hugged her back. She reminded herself of what she already knew, and what had made her absolutely certain that they needed to have this party together and to have the conversation they'd just had—this pregnancy was important to Carol for many reasons, but Andrea's was just as important to her. She was, after all, a first-time mommy, and she deserved all the fun little things that she could have—even if she'd skipped quite a few as a bride and mommy already.

"You're sure you—don't mind?" Andrea asked. "If we're both at the party, that means that everyone's attention will be at least a little bit divided. I don't want to steal that from you…"

"Will I be stealing it from you?" Carol asked. Andrea frowned, not liking her question redirected back to her. "We'll work it out, OK? We won't go at the same time. We'll go one at a time with lots of time in between for—cheering and congratulations."

"You're sure?"

"If you ask me that again, I'm going to…I don't know what, but don't make me decide, OK? I can't wait to share this with you. To share everything with you. Let's take our envelopes down to the bakery and put our order in so that we can be sure to get what we want, and to get it on time. Let's—text Michonne, Jacqui, Alice, and Sadie, and let's give them time to start some planning. And then, on the way back, let's stop by and pick up some craft supplies. I've got an idea for a banner, and you can help me make it."