Unlucky in Love

By the time we pulled into the driveway of the familiar house, it was about seven in the morning. Granted, we would've been here in the middle of the night had it not been for Craig holding Dominic back an extra three hours. And by that time, I was starving and refused to get in the car until we had gotten something to eat.

So now the beautiful Northern California sun was rising, and I squinted as I got out of the car. I stretched and then got the bags out. Dominic brought them inside, and the last thing was the car seat with a sleeping Emma.

Poppy was going crazy and barking like she'd never stop. I grabbed her collar with my free hand as a warning, and she stopped abruptly. We still had neighbors.

"Please tell me we don't have to go anywhere today," I begged as I got inside with the baby and the white gold mutt.

"The store." he said, and then took pity on me and kissed my forehead. "But I can go if you want to get some sleep."

I sighed. "No. Just let me get a couple of hours in, and we'll go around eleven or so. Okay?" I asked, and he nodded and took Emma from me. I dragged myself up the stairs into our old room and I dropped to the newly made bed. I was out within seconds.

* * *

Emma and I were checking out the massive amounts of candy left over from Halloween, and I slipped a few bags of Reese's into the cart. I moved away from temptation before it got the best of me and ended up colliding with Dominic in the ice cream aisle.

"Seriously?" I asked acidly. "You get on my ass for eating frozen yogurt from Costco, and you're here buying ten things of Ben and Jerry's?"

He threw another one into the cart to piss me off. "First off, you were driving and trying to eat. Second, these are on sale and I know you too well."

Well, since he said it that way...

"Fine. Whatever." I muttered, and then swung the cart around and went into the frozen food aisle. I got a bunch of frozen CPK pizzas just because they were on sale. I went down another aisle and threw bags of chips in because they were on sale.

I knew I was going overboard, but I had a point to make, damn it!

"Ember," Dominic was trying not to laugh and kept putting stuff back. I grabbed something off the shelf whenever he put something back. "Ember, stop," he said, snickering while trying to keep his composure.

"Stop what?" I asked innocently. A bag of Doritos went back; a package of Oreos went in. "What? They're on sale!" I laughed as he grabbed me around my waist and pulled me away from the shelf, succeeding in lifting me off my feet. I was laughing so hard when he started to tickle my waist and I slumped over, defeated, and still laughing like an idiot. "Dominic!" I squealed, trying to get out of his arms. He released me after a moment and I swatted at his arm. "That wasn't nice." I said, crossing my arms across my chest like a bratty four-year-old.

He kissed me quickly, melting my icy exterior. "Are you done, sweetheart?" he asked patronizingly.

I scoffed. "Don't call me sweetheart." I shot back, remembering the scene at my eighteenth birthday, when he had called me "babe" and I didn't like it. "No sweetheart, or honey, or baby, or sexy—don’t call me any of those. Or wife." I shuddered dramatically at the word wife.

Of course, back then I was just his unwilling fiancée.

Needless to say a lot can change in two years.

"Come on, hottie." he replied, and I grinned. He remembered too. I leaned up on my toes to kiss his lips softly.

"I'm done now." I said, gesturing to the two full shopping carts of food. We pushed the carts to the check-out line, and we stood behind some tall auburn-haired woman, who was chatting away on her Blackberry. I couldn't see the front of her, but I could tell she was a bitch just by her oddly familiar voice.

Dominic started putting stuff from the carts onto the conveyor belt. He put the bags of candy onto a nearby rack, and I huffed. "But they were on sale!" I hissed, and he just shook his head.

"I can get rid of the ice cream, Ember." he threatened, and I pouted.

"But I want the ice cream."

He laughed at my expression and kissed me again. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw the side of the woman in front of us.

"Margeaux?" I called, and she turned her head in my direction. Indeed, it was my mother's replacement.

She narrowed her eyes for a fraction of a second, trying to figure out who I was. "Oh! Emily, it's nice to see you!"

"Ember, and nice to see you, too." I said, over-pronouncing my name. Emily?

My eyes traveled down, taking in her appearance. They stopped dead on a defined bump in her abdomen. She must have noticed my expression, because her left hand moved to the bump. There was a giant rock on her left ring finger.

While I was trying to think of words to say, I heard Ashton's voice. He was on his phone as usual and was coming towards the line, not noticing either me or Dominic. "I'm going to have to call you back." he said into the Bluetooth. He pressed the button on my earpiece and sighed when he saw Margeaux's total.

"So is she now Margeaux Devereux?" I asked, my voice dripping with acid.

Ashton's eyes widened when he saw me and Dominic and the toddler in the cart. "When did you get back?" he asked Dominic, completely ignoring me.

"This morning," Dominic replied, not wanting to be rude. "We're going to be here for a while."

Ashton nodded while swiping his Am Ex. "Well, we should get together for dinner. You can come over tomorrow night at seven, or I can make a reservation somewhere."

Again, it was Dominic who answered the son of a bitch. "Tomorrow at seven would be good."

"Excellent." he said, making Margeaux put the bags in the cart while he was messing around with his business Blackberry. "See you then."

They left, and I exhaled dramatically. "Home for a few hours, and there's already drama."

"There's no drama, Ember." Dominic reassured me. "We don't have to let it get to that point."

"Okay!" I said, my voice perky. "We'll see how it goes."