It's Really Happening

It must’ve been weird for Jessica to come visit her cousin and be met with two complete strangers in addition to his fiancée. Plus I knew new mothers were always hyper-protective of their babies. But Avery was soooo cute!

I don’t reveal often that I love babies. Before I got my job at the restaurant, I used to work in a nursery.

“Oh my god,” Danny said, sounding almost traumatized.

I was busy entertaining Avery with Peek-a-boo—and thinking to myself that Peek-a-boo only works because infants are psychologically the centre of the universe—and thus not paying attention to him. “What?” Abby asked as I lifted Avery into the air and squealed “Weeeeeeeeee!” in a shrill voice.

“Eris is female!” he exclaimed.

Josh looked up from his iPhone, which he’d probably been using to record me and Abby. “Holy shit, you’re right!”

I rolled my eyes and handed the baby off to Abby. “What gave it away?” I asked sarcastically, grabbing my boobs.

I was sad to see Avery go—my pathetic sad-face and accompanying wave made that obvious—but the absence of small children meant I didn’t have to watch my mouth anymore. Once the door shut, I turned and punched Danny’s arm.

“Ow! What the fuck!” he exclaimed.

“You know I’m a fucking woman, douchenozzle,” I said, flouncing past him.

“For a fact.” I shrieked, flailing, when he poked both sides of my ribs, but refrained from retaliating and instead threw myself into a chair. Danny grinned widely and winked when I glared at him.

Thankfully Abby’s obsession with cupcakes saved his life and distracted me from ending it. While she and the boys made the batter, I watched for a while and then occupied myself with the frosting. I decided in the middle that we should have blue frosting as well as white, just for entertainment purposes.

“Why blue?” Josh asked, peering over my shoulder as I slapped some icing into another small bowl.

“Because I like blue!” I replied.

“And blue is the best flavour!” Abby added happily.

I added a few drops of blue food dye and began mixing when my phone rang in my back pocket. I glanced at my hands, covered in sugar and half-formed frosting. “Uh…” Danny slid my iPhone out and glanced at it before holding it to my ear. “Thanks, Danny. Hello?”

“Hey, Eris,” Zack said.

“Oh, hey you,” I greeted, still mixing. “What’s up?”

“Not much… Danny?”

“Stevens. He came to hang out and we’re making cupcakes.”

“Oh, nice.” Zack paused, and I raised an eyebrow. He sounded… uncomfortable. “Josh sent me a video of you and Abby.”

I glanced over at Josh, who was trying to eat the batter as Abby poured it into the pan. “Oh?”

He chuckled uneasily. “Yeah, of you playing with somebody’s baby?”

There was something in his tone that made me stop stirring, which made Danny stop pretending he wasn’t listening to my side of the conversation. “Yeah, his cousin Jessica’s son Avery,” I said before turning to Josh, “What did you do?!”

Josh laughed. “His caption was, ‘Our girls in their natural habitat. Yikes,’” Zack informed me. I rolled my eyes and began putting the blue frosting in a pastry bag. “Do you, uh... I mean, we've never talked about either of us wanting kids. In the future, I mean. In theory.”

If Danny hadn’t been holding my phone, I would’ve dropped it. As it was, I only dropped the spatula into the bowl of white frosting. “Um.” I wiped my hands off on my jeans and took my phone from Danny’s hand before walking out of the kitchen. “Can we talk about this later?” I asked in a softer voice, closer to his level of what-the-fuck-do-I-do-I’m-so-weirded-out-by-this. I glanced over my shoulder and snorted. “Possibly at a time when I’m not surrounded by people covered in sugar?”

“Yeah. Okay.” He paused. “So… call me before you go to bed?”

“Well, I was thinking more… in person,” I admitted. “It’s… kind of an important conversation, you know?”

“That’s true.”

I bit my lip. Well, this was awkward. “I will call you later though.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll let you get back to making mess.”

I chuckled. “Thanks. Bye, love.”

“Bye, babe.”

I sighed, stuffed my phone back into my pocket, and returned to the kitchen. "Joshua!” I exclaimed, making him jump. “Stop scaring my boyfriend by making him think I want him to impregnate me!"

Abby burst out laughing, Danny looked utterly confused, and Josh said, “Wait, I did what?” I huffed and went back to mixing the frosting, probably more vigorously than necessary.

But my mood did lighten up—it was hard not to laugh around these guys—and the night proceeded with lots of laughter. My conversation with Zack before I went to sleep was a little awkward due to the metaphorical elephant-sized baby in the metaphorical room. We’d work through that, though.

The next day, something occurred to me. “Hey, Abby,” I said suddenly, looking away from the TV, which was confusing me into not-caring with LOST.

“Hey, Eris,” she replied.

“Are you coming back to San Francisco?”

Abby tore her eyes away from the screen, blinked at me, and looked at Josh. He, not having been listening, smiled. “I… think I’m gonna stay here a while. I mean, I do live here. Plus it’s cheaper. So… no, I’m not going back to SF.”

“Oh, okay.” I turned back to being—pun absolutely intended—lost. “That’s convenient, because neither am I.”

“Wait, wait?” Josh interjected. “Aren’t you leaving tomorrow?”

“Where are you going then?” Abby asked.

“Huntington, duh,” I said obviously. “You didn’t think I’d get a week off and not see Zack, did you?”

Josh laughed. “Making babies takes lots of practice, huh Eris?”

My face heated. “Shut up, Withenshaw. I’ll kill you in your sleep.”

“No, you won’t,” Abby commented, already half-absorbed in the show again.

“Fine, I’ll kill your guitar in your sleep.” After a while of staring at the screen and letting my mind wander into plotlines that might actually make sense, I eventually came around to thinking about travelling across country again, which somehow turned into me owing Jimmie a home-cooked meal.

I abandoned Josh and Abby to go into the kitchen and riffled through the cupboards, cabinets, and refrigerator. “What’re you doing?” Abby called.

“How many people do you think we be over if I cooked?” I countered instead of answering while I stuck my head in the freezer. “You two, me, James, David… I guess Daniel. How many’s that? Six?”

“You’re cooking tonight?” Josh asked when I came back into the living room.

“I did promise.” I slipped on my Vans and tugged on a hoodie. “If you can think of anyone else, call me before I get to the store or suffer my very annoyed company if I haven’t made enough.” With that and a wave, I stepped out of the apartment.

An hour later I returned with two paper bags of groceries to an apartment of just the right number of people. “Hello!” I got a chorus of grunts (and a “hey” from Abby) and snickered. “Hopefully you’ll love me more when I’m done making you food.”

“Do you need help with anything?” Jimmie asked.

“Nope, just don’t get in the way.”

“Chefs are so temperamental,” Abby scoffed.

I set the bags on the kitchen counter and tied my hair back. “I only say that because your kitchen’s small and all of you would be royally screwed if you lost any digits,” I observed.

I enjoyed cooking before I started working at the restaurant, but I never really considered it as a viable career option. Mostly because I always screwed something up, but since usually I was the only one eating it, I didn’t give a damn. Cooking made me happy though, which must’ve struck the guys as odd when I started singing as I cut up the pancetta.

“Can I say it smells good or are we not allowed near the kitchen until it’s done?”

I smiled over at Danny. “Since I didn’t bring my barrier to prevent smells from crossing doorways, I guess you can,” I replied, swinging my feet.

“I hear those are hard to pack in a duffle bag,” he mused, leaning against the counter beside where I was sitting. “What’re you making anyway?”

“Bolognese stuffed bell peppers. I found a recipe when I was laid up with strep throat last year.”

“Cool. How are they different from regular stuffed bell peppers?”

“Because they’re from Bologna, genius,” I laughed. The timer on the oven beeped and I hopped off the counter. “Congratulations, you just volunteered to be my bitch.”

Everyone enjoyed the food, though to be honest the guys weren’t too difficult to please, so long as the food was edible and there was alcohol to go with it. So I’ll say that I wasn’t disappointed with it and leave it at that.

I hugged Abby goodbye the next morning, told her to tell Josh I said goodbye, and went down to the cab I’d called. Foolish me, having an 11 AM flight. That meant, however, that Zack picked me up from the airport around noon local time, which just confused my internal clock.

He let me take a nap after the post-surfing shower, which I greatly appreciated. Of course, the nap lasted almost three hours, and when I woke up, everyone else was gone and the movie he was watching was almost over. So we went out to get rice bowls and curled up on his couch to watch “Repo! The Genetic Opera.”

While I was humming along—yeah yeah, I’m a twisted weirdo— Zack was thinking of other things. He didn’t join in my colour commentary about Paris Hilton basically playing herself and he picked at his food with chopsticks. “You know I mean it hypothetically. If you want kids, I mean."

Wide-eyed, I looked over at him as I chewed; he was staring into the depths of his waxed-paper carton. I swallowed and turned back to the movie. “Nice segue.”

“Seriously,” he pressed, sounding, well, serious. “I’m not pressuring you into anything—I mean, we’ve only been going out like a year and we’re both still really young—too young and busy to be thinking about having kids—”

“Zack—”

“But I don’t want to sway your opinion— whatever you want to do is fine with me— it’s just one of those things we should talk about—”

“Zack!”

He looked up from his fascinating rice, meat, vegetables. “What?”

“You’re babbling.” I grinned (even though I was so nervous I thought I was going to throw up). I paused the movie, folded my hands, and spoke very carefully. “I like the idea of having one or two children—in the future. After I do a bunch of other things. Being a mother is not even on my list of things to think about right now.” I smiled and shrugged. “How about you?”

“That sounds perfect to me,” he said relieved and pulled me to him. I took the carton from his hand and placed both of ours on the table without separating from him—because I am magical.

He grinned, but pulled away. “Before I forget, what’re you doing this summer?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Working,” I said flatly. “Why?”

“Do you want to come on tour with me for a few weeks?”

My jaw dropped. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Zack confirmed, sounding excited about the idea. “We’re touring with The Audition and Every Avenue, so you won’t be the only chick once Josh asks Abby.”

“He never mentioned you’re doing a tour together!”

“Well… it’s technically supposed to be a secret, but I thought it’d be better to ask months ahe—mrph!”

I was too excited to let him finish and I already knew where he was going. Besides his time was up for talking.