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I wanted her in my life. I didn’t want her to disappear once the babies were born, for us to go back to being acquaintances, mostly connected through my sister.
I wanted her in my life, and in the lives of our children.She most definitely was no longer an acquaintance.
She pulled back from the kiss and there was an expression on her face that gave me pause.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Ava,” she said. “We have to talk to Ava if we want to pursue anything further.”
“I agree.”
“I can do it,” she said.
“No, we’ll do it together. I think it’s best if we both talk to her, let her know that we’re not going anywhere. She had a lot of fears of abandonment thanks to our childhood. I think she’s going to need some reassurance from both of us.”
Bella nodded, but there was something else.
“What does this mean for, well, you know,” she let out a low laugh as she placed a hand on her giant belly.
“Well… what do you want?”
Her eyes sparkled as she mulled over the question. “Honestly? I would love for us to be a family, a true family.”
A tendril of hair fell across her face, and I tucked it behind her ear, stroking her soft skin as I admired her beauty once more.
“I want that too, Bella. More than anything.”
* * *
Ava staredat us from across the table. She looked at me, then at Bella, then back at me. “Alright, is someone going to tell me what’s going on here?”
We had asked her to meet us for dinner that evening. With the end of her semester coming up, it was harder to run into her around the house, so we specifically asked her to meet up with us, which seemed to arouse suspicions in my sister.
“Is it the babies? Is everything okay with them?” she asked.
“The babies are fine,” Bella replied.
“Okay,” Ava turned to me, her voice lowering. “Is it Dad?”
“No, no news about Dad yet,” I said.
“Okay… so the whole thing with your family, Bella. Is it about that?”
“I do have some news about that, but it’s not why we asked to talk to you tonight,” Bella said, making eye contact with my sister briefly before glancing over at me, as if for reassurance that I was still on board.
I nodded and cleared my throat. “Bella and I have developed feelings for each other, Ava.”
Ava’s face went through a series of emotions before she managed to speak. “Excuse me? What does that even mean? Are you saying you two want to be together?”
Both Bella and I nodded and said, “Yes,” at the same time.
I reached over and gave her hand a squeeze under the table.
“Wow,” Ava said, leaning back against the chair. “Just wow. I thought we had talked about this, and that everything would remain professional.”
“That was the goal,” I said. “But life had other plans.”
“This was never intentional, Ava,” Bella said, her voice soft and gentle. “It just happened.”
