Unlucky in Love

Emma helped me with the last of our decorations, and she stared in awe at the pretty colors. She was clutching the Vixen ornament in her little hands, and I took it easily and hung it near Prancer. A strawberry candy cane was between the two.

"Good job, kiddo," I told her, and she reached for a little light. I pulled her away. The last thing I needed was for her to get burned.

I went outside where Dominic was setting the boxes of decorations for me to do tomorrow. He had to work, and that was just fine with me. Mr. Moose was up for the first time and was standing next to the front door.

"Thanks for doing all of this," I said unnecessarily, leaning against the side of the house.

He kissed my temple softly. "Anything to make your life easier, Em."

I snorted. "I appreciate the sentiment, but you don't have to make my life easier. I'm pregnant, not crippled."

"I just worry. I know that you feel like shit because of what happened at your parents' place...I don't want you to dwell on that."

I smiled and rested my head on his shoulder and breathed in his comforting scent. "I'm not dwelling. I have everything I need."

"But do you have everything you want?" he questioned.

I sighed and adjusted Emma in my arms. "If I could have everything I wanted, I would still have Andrea. If you could go back in time and stop her from committing suicide, then I'd be perfectly, one-hundred percent happy. Until that happens, I'm as happy as anyone could ever be."

* * *

"This is your other grandmother, Andrea. You never got to meet her, Emma." I told her, setting down Emma so I could kneel on the ground next to the perfectly maintained grave. I set the bouquet of Casablanca Lilies with the other flowers around the plot.

Emma crawled back into the circle of my arms, and I held her on my lap and let her play with the long strands of my hair while I tried to think of something to say, as if Andrea could actually hear me.

"I miss you," I whispered, softly touching the grass beneath me. "Sometimes I wish you were still here, but I hope you are someplace nice. You wouldn't want to be here, Mom." I told the grave. Emma sat quietly, like she was waiting for me to get it all out. "You wouldn't want to see your house. You wouldn't want to see Dad or his new wife and their new soon-to-be daughter. You wouldn't want to see what Isabel is like now. Everything changed." My voice cracked.

Emma put her little hand on my collarbone. "Momma?" she said, and I sniffled and kissed her cheek and the tip of her nose. She curled up against me, and I held her closer.

I was quiet for a few minutes, letting the cool breeze sweep over me to calm my frazzled nerves. "I remember when you were scared of me," I told Emma. "You hated when I held you. You hated when I talked or sang to you...you just wanted Daddy." her even breathing informed me that she was asleep, and I sighed quietly.

I swallowed back another wave of tears. "Why would you want to give this up? Was I not as important to you as Emma is to me?" I asked aloud, not even caring that I was talking to a grave. "Will I become like you when I have the new baby?" I continued. "I can't imagine wanting to be away from my family, but I guess that's the difference between you and me. I actually know what I want."

"She knew what she wanted, Ember."

I jumped at the voice and turned in time to see Camille come sit next to me, placing her own bouquet of flowers next to mine.

"I was starting to wonder if I'd see you around here again." she mused.

I sighed. "I haven't felt like coming. I came today to vent."

"You think it's easier to have a conversation with Andrea when she's dead than if she were alive?"

I nodded once. "I do. This way she can't butt in. She just has to listen." I sniffled again. "So what did she want, Gran? Humor me."

Camille laughed softly. "She wanted a family. She loved you more than anyone, even more than Ashton. Things didn't start getting bad until she found out your father was fooling around with other women. Hell, they were practically still girls."

"No," I objected. "Things started getting bad when I was eleven and they were informing me that I would no longer be an only child."

"That's when he started cheating." she stated calmly. "First, it was some intern of his named Avery, who was nineteen and a business major. He missed Isabel's first sonogram because he was helping her. The second woman was the sister of some woman in Andrea's yoga class. She was a little tart if I may say so,"

I couldn't help but laugh. Here she was, talking to me about my own father cheating on my mother repeatedly, and I could only see the humor in the situation.

We were quiet for a while, each of us lost in our own thoughts. "Have you met Margeaux?" I asked after a few minutes.

"Unfortunately," she sighed. "It's very apparent that he's trying to replace my daughter. Sometimes I wish she would come back from the dead and beat them both for trying to take her place. Isabel pretended that she didn't even know me. She said that Margeaux was her mother."

"Yeah, I know. I've never felt so ashamed of someone before. I at least had a reason to hate her, but Isabel doesn't have any excuse."

"She's just hurt. She'll realize it all when she's older. Now she's still a little girl."

I scoffed. "She's not a little girl," I argued. "When I was her age, I'd already had the sex talk. I'd already had my first kiss. I'd started my period...I wasn't pretending that someone else was my mom. I didn't hate the world."

"She's Andrea and you're...Ember." Camille said lamely. "You're so different, Ember. Your mother loved that about you. After all of your arguments, she would tell me that you were right about everything. I do believe that the only reason she kept pushing divorce was because she didn't want you to follow through with her and Ashton's mistake. She was desperate, and that was why she seemed so cold to you during the engagement. She wanted you to think that you had no choice so you'd rebel and she wouldn't be the one to reneg."

"That's ridiculous." I stated.

"Is it?"

* * *

"She couldn't have been serious," I harped again. Dominic sighed and rested his head in the crook of my neck.

"What happened to not talking?" he asked sharply.

"Sorry," I murmured. My breathing got heavier when he started again. He moved us into a sitting postition, and I took advantage and straddled him.

With my hands on his shoulders, I was able to manuever myself against him so perfectly. By this point, I had pretty much lit the first match in the dry forest.

Distantly, I heard the phone ringing. With an unspoken agreement, we let the machine get it.

"Dominic, please call me back. We need to go over the reports that were due on Friday that you still have neglected to return to me..."

Dominic had pushed me back to grab the phone. I protested, but he put his hand over my mouth and answered his dad's phone call.

"Yeah, I'm finished with them. I'm bringing them to work tomorrow...Yes, I know...No, I promise they're done. I'm looking over them as we speak."

I supressed a laugh. The only thing he was looking over at that moment was my body.

"I'll be there at seven-thirty tomorrow...I don't know. I'll ask her and let you know...Yeah, bye." he hung up and put the phone back in its' cradle.

Dominic came back down on me and I resisted, despite the incessant throbbing in the lower half of my body. "Ask who what?" I asked, moving up so he slipped out of me, which did not make my overactive sex receptors happy.

He sighed. "My parents wanted to invite Ashton and Margeaux and Isabel to dinner, but my mom wanted to run it by you first."

"So we'd be going to this dinner?" I asked, and he nodded.

"She wants any chance to see Emma." he told me, as if that explained everything.

"Sooner or later, we have to get our own lives." I stated calmly. "We need to have a whole bunch of kids and get a TLC show or some shit." I got up and got into my underwear and a T-shirt, and Dominic put his boxers back on.

Dominic lay back on the bed and put his arms behind his head, like he was lounging by the pool. "We could be the next Gosselin family." he mused.

I chuckled and lay next to him. "I was thinking more along the lines of the Duggar family, although...No, I wouldn't want to know what my vagina would like like after nineteen babies." I said. "But they're still married. I like Kate, though. I could see myself being like Kate Gosselin."

"If you want a divorce, just come out and say it." he said semi-sarcastically. I kissed his cheek and rested my head on his shoulder, ready to fall asleep.