Commission #2
For @nelwynp. Based off a very very old ficverse from wayyyyyyy back in the day called “Freckles” which may or may not be found on LJ. Makoto/Nephrite.
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Long distance relationships are statistically known to suck, and honestly, I wouldn’t have considered myself the rose-coloured glasses type. The real world doesn’t care that you’ve probably, maybe, already gotten your share of crap thrown at you, starting from the death of your parents, and think maybe it should cut you a break. I knew the chances of Nick and myself making it were slim. He would be busy, surrounded by strangers a whole two states away. Sure, we’d known each other since we were kids, and maybe by now, he had become the one constant in my life-- my North Star, perhaps-- that forever friend who’d seen me at my worst and didn’t care in the least. And maybe--- maybe, finally, I’d finally told him those three words that had been nagging at the back of my subconscious for the last year of our acquaintance. He’d said them back, and it was only then that I realized how much I’d needed to hear and say them.
Still, I saw him off on that cloudy morning with dry eyes and homemade eggs Benedict-- that is to say, that I fed him and double-checked to make sure that he had not misplaced anything important. The apartment that he’d been living in was stripped bare, and all of his worldly goods were in the trailer of the U-haul which would take him to his new home. I was plugging his phone into the car charger in the front console when his arms wrapped around me from behind, and turned me to face him.
Nick has always been a good-looking guy, in that sort of rugged, All-American way, with broad shoulders and a great smile, and I’d learned at some point in our long acquaintance that he gave the best hugs-- the type that lifts you slightly off your feet and makes you feel like some type of dainty damsel even when you’re six feet tall in heeled boots. It’s no different now, and maybe I hung on for a moment too long, myself. He’s not much of a cologne guy, but his sweatshirt smells like laundry soap and I’m pretty sure he’d used my shampoo that morning again, because his hair’s super soft-- and the flowery scent is not nearly as girly on him as it is on me.
“Call me when you get there.” I hope to Hell, of course, that the fact that my voice is muffled against his neck disguises the unsteadiness.
“I’ll call you every day.”
I wouldn’t hold him to it, of course, but I didn’t say anything to that effect, and I watched as he drove off, and then headed off to the gym for a punishing three-mile run on the treadmill followed by a full hour of kickboxing to a playlist of angry girl rock, and if I cried in the shower afterwards, no one needed to know that.
He did call that night, though. And the night after. And the night after that. And soon, it had become a routine, and maybe I should have given him more credit the whole time. Before I knew it, two months had passed, and he flew down for a long holiday weekend, and after we’d christened three separate rooms in my apartment, we got caught up in person. I’d heard so much about his new place and the people he’d met at his new school that I probably could’ve picked his favourite and least favourite professors out of a crowd.
This became a thing, and so for two years, we did the long distance thing. He heard about the awful day when the stand mixer went rogue and how I was still picking bits of cake batter out of my hair two hours later. I heard so much about one particularly persnickety city inspector on a project he worked on that I learned to hate the guy as much as Nick did. Our reunions were sporadic, rapturous and never long enough, though half the time we eschewed actual dates in favour of staying in and just being ourselves together-- watching movies, working out, buying groceries and cooking meals, falling asleep so close together that it was hard to tell where one of us ended and the other one began.
We spent that first Thanksgiving at my place-- Friendsgiving, really, cooking a huge meal in a too-small kitchen, inviting all of our old friends. I shooed Nick and James out of my kitchen and chatted with Raye as she snapped a bowl of green beans for me and sounds of the football game filtered in through the living room. She was a ball of nerves-- James would be meeting her very formidable, very rich, very conservative father when he went over to her home for Christmas. Said father would not be amused to find his only daughter not only dating, but actually fully living in sin with a mouthy city boy-- when Nick had moved out, James and Raye had gotten an apartment together. Amy and Zach had arrived a bit later, because he’d had to pick her up from the hospital where her shift had run over. Kevin and Mina, on the other hand, were at her parents’ house out of state. She’d texted me all types of sad face emojis about how the cranberry sauce had come out of a can and the mashed potatoes had come out of a box, but I had no sympathy. She had parents who cooked for her for Thanksgiving, didn’t she? Besides, if she really cared about food over time spent with them and Kevin, she would have told them that she had Ebola and came over to my place instead.
At any rate, against all the odds, we somehow managed to make it work, and two years, three months and six days after that first time that I told him I loved him, he was on his way down to visit again. I’d gone up to see him get his Master’s degree two months ago and he’d taken me out around the town to celebrate with his friends and classmates. Some of them had met me before, but to those who hadn’t, he introduced me as his girlfriend, and from the easy acceptance, I knew that everyone present had some idea of our history. It had been a wonderful weekend, but I was a bit nervous about seeing him again today. Something had come up, very recently, and I wasn’t sure how he would take it.
At first, I had thought nothing of the symptoms. Fatigue and a bit of nausea doesn’t tend to alarm anyone right off the get-go. Everyone knows restaurant hours are brutal, and as an apprentice chef, any task, no matter how mundane or unpleasant, might get assigned to me on any given day. Certainly, I might get to spend one day arranging delicate edible flowers and a compote of ripe berries around and on top of fancy panna cottas, but the very next, I might be doing nothing but washing dishes and running out garbage. The kitchen I work in specializes in a rotating seasonal menu, and at the time, calamari was in season. Certainly it is delicious deep-fried with casino butter and lemon wedges, sprinkled with sea salt and cracked black pepper, but it’s definitely not as appealing raw, slimy and fishy-smelling. It’s enough to make anyone lose their appetite doing prep early in the morning. But then I was late. And not to work, if you know what I mean. One week stretched into two, then three. The nausea didn’t go away, even when my day consisted of making large quantities of bourbon vanilla buttercream frosting for strawberry white chocolate cakes. It was a week ago that I picked up two different pregnancy tests from Walgreen’s. Both results had come back to tell me what I kind of already knew, deep down, and I was honestly terrified down to the bone.
I had always wanted to have that maybe-stereotypical home and family someday-- the cute house with gingerbread trim and the white picket fence and the garden full of old-fashioned flowers, a husband who loved me and our children and went to baseball games and dance recitals with equal enthusiasm. I wanted to be able to be the mom who baked cupcakes for the bake sale and cookies for the big jar on the kitchen counter, and volunteered to chaperone field trips to the science museum. That had been my own mother, from those distant reaches of old memories, and though I’d lost her, I knew that it was in me to keep her legacy alive.
But I had not intended to do so when I had just started my career, unmarried and still living in a tiny college-campus apartment, with a boyfriend who lives two states away, who might not even want kids. God! That was a discussion we’d never even had.
The door swings open, though, before I could think about it any more. Nick has a key to my place, of course, as I do to his. Sometimes he calls, but sometimes he just arrives, like today, a little ahead of schedule. I’m caught up in one of those long, tight hugs, a warm and familiar hand cupping the back of my neck, and maybe he feels a hint of desperation in my kiss. When he pulls back, his eyes are warm, but full of concern. “Everything okay, Freckles?”
“Ugh. Can you not call me that? We’ve talked about that.” Oh, Gods... A baby with his brown hair and my green eyes. His dimples and my freckles. I can almost picture a little girl, toddling on chubby legs, riding on his shoulders, picking dandelions in the yard and blowing the fluff away in the wind. I’d teach her to bake chocolate chip cookies and read her stories where the princess saved herself and buy her pretty dresses for picture day and sturdy jeans for playing outside in. I loved her already, but she wasn’t supposed to even exist.
“Habit. And you scrunch your nose up when you’re mad, and I shouldn’t like it, but I do.” Nick presses another, shorter kiss to my mouth, then tips up my face. “But you seem a bit out of sorts. What’s wrong?”
“How could you tell if I’m out of sorts or not when you literally just walked in two minutes ago?” It’s an evasion, and I’m sure he can and will spot the bullshit and call me out on it.
“Because I’ve known you since we were kids, and you don’t have to say or do anything for me to know when you’re out of sorts.” Nick pulls me gently over to the love seat, and sits me down, keeping one of my hands in his as though he expects me to bolt at any moment. “Everything’s okay, right? You didn’t have anything particularly horrible at work this week that I recall from our conversations.”
No, this week hadn’t been bad. Breaking down chickens is fairly mindless work once you get the hang of it. And the resulting bone broth is wonderful for someone who finds it difficult to keep food down some days. Nick deserves the truth, of course, and maybe the ripping-off-the-bandaid approach is best. I shut my eyes to his all-too-perceptive, all-too-loving gaze, and set my teeth.
“I’m pregnant.”
His hand tightens on mine and his next inhaled breath is sharp, but I plow on. “I know it’s not expected, and I know we were careful, but… it is what it is. You don’t have to worry, though. I’m not some delicate little miss who’s afraid of raising a child. The executive chef at work loves me, as he should, and I’m sure they’ll work with me when the time comes for maternity leave. And in this day and age, it’s not a big deal to be a single mom. I’m keeping this baby and she’s going to get the best life that I can give her, growing up.” I don’t know why I was so certain I was having a little girl. But she already existed, to me, and at that moment in time, she was probably only the size of my pinkie nail. “She will never doubt, for a moment, that she’s loved.”
“Of course not.” Nick finally speaks, and his voice is an awed, slightly choked-up whisper. I sense him moving, then one big, warm hand rests on my still-flat stomach, followed by the press of his lips. “We’re having a baby. Wow. Okay, so I guess I should get on with what I’d already planned to do, even though I’d planned for this to be a lot more romantic.” Belatedly, I realize that not only has he moved, but he is down on his knees in front of me, one hand on my stomach, the other one digging into a pocket, and then he pulls out a small black velvet box, flicks open the catch.
I’m not much of a jewelry type of girl-- I wear the same earrings, every single day, but working in a kitchen greatly limits the practicality of going around with bracelets and rings and do-dabs. Still, stereotypical though it might be, I’d always wanted that classic diamond solitaire engagement ring from my husband-to-be, and now, when it’s staring me in the face-- princess-cut and set in platinum, I find myself speechless.
“Lita Oakley, love of my life, will you marry me?”
Of course he doesn’t mince words. In a lot of ways, I guess we’re past that point. But I draw my hand back a moment before he can slide that ring on.
“I don’t want you to propose to me because I’m pregnant and you feel obligated. You’d end up regretting it, and that would kill me.” We didn’t live together now, but if we did someday, and then it all went south, and I had to walk into an empty house bereft of his presence and his things and even the way he’d always kick his shoes off any which way by the door rather than make sure they’re put up where no one can trip over them, I knew it would break me in a way that hadn’t been possible since my parents’ deaths.
Nick rolls his eyes, though, and huffs out a breath before digging deeper into that little velvet box, all the way underneath the white satin. He takes out a crinkled paper receipt, and unfolds it, and drops it on my lap. “You are so stubborn. Do you know that? Take a look at that receipt, will you? Just… humour me.”
I do. It’s from some jeweler in his state, and the price of the ring of course makes me wince a little. It’s definitely not cheap. But then I read it a little closer, and see the time stamp on the top. It was purchased at 4:26 PM on the sixth of December, two whole years ago. Perhaps six months after he’d moved away.
“I got it as soon as I could afford it, and I’d been saving up for a while. Probably not very well-thought-out of me, when everything was so up in the air. But I’d always known that we’d be here together, someday, and I’d be asking you to marry me. Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with the fact that you’re pregnant and everything to do with the fact that I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember, and there’s no one else in the world for me, and it’s too late to return this ring, anyway.” He pulls it out of the box, and I see something shining, trailing from it. “I know you can’t really wear rings, working in a kitchen. So I also got a necklace that you can wear this on, if you’ll just say yes. Please say yes.”
“How are we going to do this?” I blurt out, as that other infamous symptom of pregnancy-- emotional hormonal tears-- makes its appearance. I blink and try to sniffle them away, but Nick simply puts the ring on my finger, silvery necklace dangling from it, and gets up to his feet, pulls me gently to mine. “You live so freaking far away.”
“Not anymore I don’t.” He tugs me close, and kisses me again. “My lease is up in a month. I figure I can get another U-haul, and con the guys into helping out. I’m pretty sure that the people can put a good word in for me to get hired in somewhere local-- dumb jock notwithstanding, I worked my ass off these last few years and have the credentials and grades to prove it. Since my lease is up in a month anyway, might as well look for a new place to live. Some place that can be baby-proofed, and definitely not a top floor apartment with a janky elevator like here. Can’t have my pregnant fiancee struggling up five flights of stairs every day.”
He makes it seem so simple, really, as he pulls me in for what promised to be an extended cuddle session.
But maybe-- maybe it would be.
