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His closet is still as organized as the day we moved in, where mine has several piles ranging from “clean”, “kind of clean”, and “dirty”. The system works for me, and hey, closets have doors for a reason.
I wash my face and brush my teeth but hold out on doing my makeup, since Eliza is going to want to do it. Curling my hair with magic, I go down the back stairs and find Eliza overseeing everyone in the kitchen.
“Finally,” Eliza huffs when she sees me, and I smile, happy to have someone be a little snappy with me again. Everyone’s walked on eggshells the last few weeks, it’s been tiring. I’m not fragile, and I don’t like to be treated differently because I’m pregnant. If anything, Elena makes me stronger. “I thought you were going to blow up the balloons.”
“I will,” I tell her. “I slept in.”
“Yeah, until nearly noon!”
“I was a little busy keeping the gates of Hell from opening so I deserve to sleep in,” I say and one of the caterers looks at me funny. She thinks it’s a figure of speech—hah. “And I’ll get on it. Where’s Lucas?”
“The office, and that’s where he’s going to stay until it’s time for you to open your gifts. Men don’t come to baby showers.”
“Do I have to open them in front of people?” I wrinkle my nose and go around a caterer to get the cranberry juice from the fridge. “It’s awkward opening things in front of people.”
“Why? I love getting gifts.” Eliza flips her blonde hair over her shoulder. She’s wearing a pretty sage-colored dress today. It’s longer in the back than in the front, with thin straps and little flowers embroidered around the neckline. The color looks good on her, though to be fair, any color would look good on her.
“I don’t know, it’s just…weird. I don’t like being the center of attention.”
“Really, Miss Queen of Hell?”
“That’s different,” I say, aware the caterers are looking at us again. I pour myself a glass of juice, take the packs of balloons from the counter, and find Lucas in his office. He’s leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk, watching some sort of comedy movie.
“Can I be banished in here too?” I ask, shutting the large door behind me. “She’s a tyrant.”
Lucas chuckles. “She means well. And you can only be banished in here if you take your clothes off.”
“Then shouldn’t you take yours off too?”
“I like the way you think,” he says with a smile. “Why do you have balloons?”
“Eliza wants me to blow them up.”
“I’ll help,” he offers and takes a package of hot pink balloons from me.
“Can you blow up a balloon?” I ask, sitting in the window seat.
Lucas looks at me funny. “I know how to blow up a balloon.”
“No, I mean, can you. You don’t breathe.”
He stares at me for a few seconds, making sure I’m serious. “I can still suck in air and blow it out.”
I shake my head, hair falling around my face. “That was a question I never thought I’d ask, and now I feel like I have a nugget of invaluable information: vampires can blow up balloons.” Laughing, I open another package and start blowing up the balloons. Lucas is much faster than me, no surprise there, and we get the balloons all blown up and moved into the foyer just in time to see Eliza hanging pink tulle garland on the balcony railing.
“Oh wow,” I tell her. “It looks great.”
“It will if it’s done on time,” Eliza says with a dramatic sigh.
“What’s left to do?” Lucas asks, looking around the foyer. “It’s a baby shower, not a Christmas party.”
Eliza shoots him a pointed look. “I have to put together the dessert table for the humans, and finish decorating the living room.”
“How can we help?” I ask, ignoring Lucas’s annoyed look.
“Put the tulle skirt on the table in the kitchen,” she says, and I have no idea what that means.
“Okay,” I say anyway, and Lucas and I go into the kitchen. Whatever the caterers are making smells amazing, and the table Eliza wanted us to put a skirt on is moved over in front of the windows in the kitchen. Pink flowers decorate the windows above the table with the words “Oh Baby” cut out in cardboard and painted a sparkling gold hanging above. The table is decorated—save the skirt—and a photo from Elena’s ultrasound is part of the decor, stuck inside a pretty pink frame. There’s another photo of Lucas and me on our wedding day in another pink frame right next to it, and dammit, seeing it is making me emotional.
Eliza might have outdone herself here.
“How do you put a skirt on a table?” I ask Lucas, who shakes his head.
“It’s that thing,” one of the caterers tells us. “I’ve seen it done at a few parties.”
