Carter chuckles and tightens his hold on me.  I wrapped my arms around his neck and rest my chin on his shoulder.

“If that’s the case, we’ll just have to make sure we have plenty of Cheetos on hand at all times and some Grateful Dead music to play in the nursery,” he states.

I sigh and turn my head so I can rest my cheek on his shoulder and burrow into the side of his neck.

“It’s going to be fine.  I promise you.  I love you and I’m not going anywhere.  This is the best news you could have ever given me.  Nothing could make me happier right now.”

Gavin suddenly comes bursting through the doorway.

“Dad, woke up dis morning, got myself a gun’ is on!” he says excitedly.  “And my wiener feels funny again.  It won’t stop being tall.”

“Oh my God.  I take that back.  THIS is the happiest moment of my life.  My son just got a boner for Sopranos,” Carter whispers.

“Like father like son,” I deadpan.

Carter pulls me up from the floor of the bathroom and tells me to leave the mess and that he’d clean it up later.  He tells me I'm not allowed to do anything else for the rest of the day but lie on the couch and let him wait on me.  He always knows exactly what to say to make me feel better, and he takes such good care of me.  I'm an idiot for being disappointed that he doesn’t immediately ask me to marry him.  He loves me and he's happy we're going to have a baby.  I can’t help but wonder though why he hadn’t asked.  He obviously isn’t in shock like I am so there has to be another reason.  As I curl up on the couch with my head on Carter’s lap, I try to ignore the pain in my heart at the thought that maybe he doesn’t think I was marriage material.

20.  Did Not Finish

Three months later

“So what you’re telling me is you wanted him to drop down on one knee and ask you to marry him in the bathroom?” my mother asks.

I roll my eyes and reached for another balloon to blow up.  My mother has offered to help me set everything up for Gavin’s fifth birthday party the next day.  We are having it at the shop after hours.  I let Gavin invite a few of his friends from preschool and think having a party in a candy store will be fun for them.  As soon as my mother walks in the door of the shop she can tell I'm not myself.  I blame my mood swings and crying jags the last few months on pregnancy hormones, but she knows better.  The number of times we've talked on the phone, I gloss over what's wrong.  Now that she can see me in person, I can’t hide anything from her.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, chickadee.  I’m just trying to make sure I understand this correctly,” she says as she hangs a “Happy Birthday” banner on the wall.  “You thought it would be romantic and beautiful if, once he found out you were pregnant, proposed immediately.  So you wanted him to propose out of guilt and obligation for knocking you up instead of out of love.”

Well when you say it that way…

“No!  I mean…I don’t know.  I just would have liked for the effort to have been made.  Maybe even a comment about us getting married or getting engaged at some point in the future.  The fact that he hasn’t said one word about it in three months just sucks,” I tell her.  “Every day I keep waiting for him to bring it up and every day that goes by and he doesn’t, I get more upset.  What if he doesn’t think I would make a good wife?  I know he loves me, but maybe he’s not IN love with me.  The kind of love that makes you want to do everything in your power to ensure you spend the rest of your life with that one special person.  Maybe I’m not that special person for him.”

Jesus.  Talk about depressing.  How does anyone even stand to be around me lately?  I’m a disgusting, emotional, needy chick.  No wonder Carter doesn’t want me.

“It makes sense I guess.  Look at all the years I spent hating the idea of marriage.  I thought it was pointless and could only end in disaster.  Karma is biting me in the ass.”

My mom walks over to me and pulls me into her arms, my growing stomach acting as a stopper to keep us from getting too close.

“Baby, any fool can see that Carter is IN love with you.  Have you ever paid attention to that boy when you walk into a room?  His whole face lights up.  And he’s constantly touching you in some way.  A brush of his hand on your cheek, wrapping his arms around your waist, kissing your shoulder...he does whatever he can to be close and connected to you,” she says, pulling away so she can look at me.  “And don’t give me that bullshit story about you hating the idea of marriage.”

I give her a pointed look and laughed.

“Are you kidding me?  You and Dad were married five times total.  FIVE TIMES!  When you know your parents crashed and burned so many times, it’s kind of obvious that you’re going to have the same luck,” I tell her.

“Oh, sweetie, you are a jackass.  I love you, but you are dumber than a one legged duck in an ass kicking contest when pigs fly,” she tells me.

“Am I supposed to know what the fuck that means?  You either told me this was impossible or called me a pig.”

My mom reaches up and wipes a tear off of my cheek I don't even know is there.

“Marriage was never for me.  I knew that early on but I chose to ignore it.  I never dreamed of having a family or a house with a white picket fence and being a soccer mom.  But then I had you and I knew I needed to try.  It just didn’t work for me.  But your father?  He is definitely a marrying man, and he is a wonderful husband.  The problem was never him.  It was the losers he married,” she says with a smile.  “You may have always been afraid to try because of how you grew up and what you believed, but that doesn’t mean it’s who you are.  You have more of your father in you than you know.  You are already a better mother than I ever was, and I guarantee that when Carter does pop the question, you will be an amazing wife.”

For the first time in my twenty-five years, my mother actually says something that made sense and gave me pause.  And not the “What the fuck is she saying?” pause.

I had put up a wall all my life to protect myself.  If I pretended like I didn’t really want the American dream of a husband and kids, then eventually I would believe it and no one would be able to hurt me.  Until Liz and Jim’s wedding, I didn’t realize just how much I wanted that wall to crack.  Now that it had though, I was right where I never wanted to be - scared, confused and upset.  I knew I needed to get my emotions under control and stop acting like a crazy person.  I needed to man up and talk to Carter.  I could feel the distance between us growing every day that I continued to lie to him and explained away my detachment and rocky emotions by saying they were all just because of the pregnancy.  I had acted like a big baby all these months when all of it might have been fixed by one little conversation.

After Gavin’s party, I will make sure that we sat down and talked.

“What about Carter’s family?  Are his parents still trying to recover from ceiling fan baseball?” my mom asks with a laugh, changing the subject to something a little less depressing.

“They’ve been okay.  His mom actually sent me a big box of brand new baby clothes and a few blankets.  His grandmother is the one I’m most surprised about.  She really should want to kill me but she sent me something too, and I found out she actually has a sense of humor.”

“Oh?  What was it?” my mom asks.

“A onesie that said ‘Too cute to play with your ugly ass kid’.”

~

“Why the hell are those bitches over there giving me a dirty look?” Liz asks as she stares down five mothers who have accompanied their sons to Gavin’s party.