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“You scared me,” she said, her voice shaky and edgy. “You better not try to leave me again. I won’t let you. I love you too much to ever let you go again.”
“I love you, too,” I said, locking eyes with hers. “And I will never put you through anything like this again.”
I pulled her close to me and was almost squashed by her giant belly. It was huge! I couldn’t stop staring at it. And I was speechless. I looked from her belly back up at her and back to her stomach. I looked into her eyes, searching, wanting to ask the question, but too afraid of what the answer might be.
“Is it—” I began.
“Yours?” she finished. “Yes, I am carrying your child.”
I wanted to leap from the bed and do a happy dance. Nadia was going to have my baby. I couldn’t wait to tell our families the news. Then, the realization hit me that we were going to have a baby, and we weren’t married yet. I had to fix that. I slowly inched my way out of bed and got down on my good leg, taking her hand in mine.
“Nadia, I have loved you longer and harder than I have anyone else,” I said. “And now we’re about to start a brand new adventure as parents. I would be honored if you would be my wife. Will you marry me?”
I didn’t have a ring because I wasn’t prepared, but I felt it in my heart to ask anyway.
“Yes,” she said, wrapping her arms around my neck, almost bowling me over onto the floor. I winced in pain as a stabbing sensation pierced through my leg. I groaned. She apologized and quickly stood up.
“I got a new house today,” I told her. “The army set me up with it. So, this is perfect timing. Now, I get to make my house a home for my family, a family I didn’t even know I had.”
She beamed at me, the happiest look on her face that I’d seen in a long time. We kissed tenderly, her soft lips pressing against mine. I had finally found my happy place.Epilogue - NadiaTrying to plan a wedding, being pregnant, and finishing out my time in the military was a lot harder than I thought that it would be. But, I knew that I only had a little bit of time left before I would be discharged from the army. I was more than excited about marrying Joshua, so I just put up with the frustration in the best way that I knew how. A lot of it involved telling Joshua just how frustrated I was and having him tell me that it would all be over soon, landing a kiss on my forehead.
Joshua got a job as a private contractor for a Fortune 500 company. He was excited about starting a new chapter in our lives. We had moved in together the same day that he asked me to marry him. It was safe to say that we were no longer just friends, but we were lovers. My parents had been shocked but happy to hear the news since they knew that the baby would be coming soon. I think that they were just mostly relieved that they wouldn’t have to be the ones driving me to the hospital.
My phone rang. It was the caterer. They were calling to tell me that they had gotten a bad shipment of fish and would not be able to serve fish at any weddings any time soon. I was disappointed because it seemed like some new problem was popping up with the wedding every day.
I threw the phone into my purse and headed out the door to my car. I drove the twenty minutes to Joshua’s job in silence, my mind spinning as I drove. I was lost in thought when I finally pulled up to the firm where he was working and almost hit someone as I pulled into the parking lot.
Pull it together, Nadia, I thought to myself.
I took a sip from the water bottle that I carried around with me, turned the car off, and got out. I got buzzed into the building and went up to the makeshift office that Joshua had been working from.
“Hey, you,” he said when I rounded the corner.
“Hey,” I said, kissing him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I was just finishing up and about to come home to you.”
“I know,” I said, not quite sure why I didn’t wait until he got home. “I just needed to see you and talk to you.”
“About what?” he asked.
“For one thing, the caterer called and said that we can’t have fish at our wedding,” I told him.
“It’s fine,” he said. “We can have chicken, then.”
“It’s just that…” I began hesitantly. “I really don’t think that I want to have a big wedding. And I know that that’s what we talked about, but it’s really starting to stress me out, and I think that I’d just rather elope before the baby comes. We can have our honeymoon and do things completely our own way in our own time. Then, we can come back and be focused on getting everything ready for the baby.”
