Unlucky in Love

“What’re you thinking?”

I looked up at Dominic. It was too early in the morning to be pestered with questions. “I want a cat.”

“God no.” he said simply, going back to his books.

“Come on!” I whined. “Wouldn’t it be fun to have a little orange cat and name him Oliver or Toulouse?” I asked.

“Disney?”

“Maybe.”

Dominic scoffed. “Where did that come from?”

I shrugged. “I woke up at, like, three this morning and started watching The Aristocats on YouTube, and then I watched Oliver and Company.” He just shook his head. “And I also kinda want to go back to Paris.”

“You remember the last time we went?” he snapped.

I sighed. Of course he would bring that up. “What does that have to do with anything? He could be back in London for all we know.”

“Gage doesn’t have anything to do with us,” he said quickly, as if trying to throw that out there. “And besides, there’s too much going on right now for us to just up and leave. Also, I’m pretty sure Emma would have to come with us.”

“I’m not objecting to that.” I told him. If we were to go back, I’d want Emma to be with us. “I was just saying how I missed it and wanted to go back. It’s not a crime to be nostalgic, Dominic.” I told him.

Dominic kissed me lightly. “Is that what you wished for last night?”

I shook my head. “No. I didn’t get my wish though.”

“How do you know?”

I brushed my hand over my eyes and sighed. “Because I started my period this morning. I’ve been late for a week and last night I wished that I could have another baby, but that didn’t happen.”

He stared at me, clearly not knowing what to say. “Why do you want another baby?”

“I just wanted one, but I guess this is God’s way of saying we’re not meant to have another yet.” I spoke in a rush, trying to explain myself before he cut me off.

“Ember, we can’t have another one now,” he said clearly, as if explaining something to an uncooperative five-year-old.

“I know.” I sighed. “I just had a feeling that it was going to happen. It seemed right. With Emma, it was completely rushed and we barely knew each other. Now we’ve been married for almost two years, we have stability, I’m almost out of school…it just seemed like it was going to happen.”

Dominic let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “Well, like you said, this is probably just God’s way of saying it’s not the time to have another baby.”

* * *

“Have you talked to Sean yet?” I asked Autumn. Dominic had left for an afternoon class, so I invited her over for lunch.

Autumn sighed and took a bite of her pasta. “No, and I don’t intend to. God, I even posted pictures of Alice on my Facebook, and he commented that she was pretty with all things considering.”

My jaw literally dropped. “Oh, my God! He’s such an asshole sometimes.”

Autumn nodded in agreement and then Alice started crying from her carrier. “She never shuts up.” She said acidly.

“She will—she’s only a little over a week old, Autumn. Emma cried well into her fourth month.”

“And then what happened?”

I shrugged simply. “I started ignoring her.” I told her, and she raised an eyebrow. “Sometimes babies cry just because they want attention.” I elaborated. “I’m not telling you to do that now, but when she’s older and you can tell the difference between her fake cry and her real cry, you can decide to leave her be.”

“Isn’t that kind of cruel?”

“In a way,” I agreed. “But they have to learn that they can’t depend on you for everything. When they’re newborns, no problem. They depend on you for absolutely everything. But at Emma’s age, I usually just don’t pay attention when she starts to get pouty.”

“That’s so exhausting, though.”

I laughed. “Dude, you don’t know exhausting. Exhausting is getting up every three hours to breastfeed and change diapers and rock back and forth until they finally fall asleep—and then the cycle continues.” I sighed. “That’s exhausting.”

Autumn stared at me thoughtfully for a moment. “You know,” she started. “If you had asked me three years ago if I thought you were going to get married and have a baby, I would’ve called bullshit.”

I nodded. “But it happened—and not even a year later.”

“Yeah, and senior year was so much fun!” she said brightly. Alice had settled down again, so we stayed at the table. “You and Chase were the nauseatingly perfect couple. We fantasized about Taylor Lautner. You got engaged. You had your first hangover. I slept with someone other than Sean, which he still doesn’t know about. You lost your virginity—finally.”

I laughed at her exaggerated last word. Being an eighteen-year-old virgin was something that I had taken pride in. “No, I was married before I lost my virginity, so you can’t say it like that.”

“Whatever.” She said lightly. “You wanna hear something weird?”

“What?”

“I was jealous of you.”

I gawked at her, trying to process her words. Since we had became friends in middle school, I’d always been envious of her. She started her period first. She got her boobs before any other girl in our grade. She was the first to lose her V-card…

Autumn just had this confidence that made her seem invincible.

And now she was a lonely, single mother with no friends and bad hygiene.

“Bailey?” I asked, and she looked up at me. “Everything’s gonna be okay. You just need to be with Alice and away from little miss skank-ho.”

“Yeah, right,” she replied glumly. “She’s like a disease; we’re never getting rid of Leah Ambrose.”