99) Leggo My Preggo Part Three

Leggo My Preggo Part Three

I was hurt and annoyed.

I hadn’t called my mom asking for money. I hadn’t called asking for furniture or appliances, which were routinely purchased for the other sibling/cousin. I know, because they WANTED me to know. I didn’t care and I didn’t want THAT from them. I never wanted it to be about that. I hated that they always made it like that.

I didn’t call them when I didn’t have propane. I waited to get paid. I hadn’t asked to be bailed out a single time in the nearly a year since I’d left home, and they couldn’t see it. I was just going to have to try harder.

Whatever. It hurt, but it wasn’t unexpected, just further confirmation of the situation.

Otherwise, I had a really lovely little life. I had my own space with my own music and heat sometimes. (I had an electric oven and a heater on the waterbed, but getting out of the shower was brutal!)

It didn’t really take me any time to adjust to the idea of being pregnant. It felt like that was what I was made for.

I worked almost every day of the week back then between CNA classes during the day and laundry night shifts. It was only a couple days before Elway came back.

I don’t know how I was able to get any work done whatsoever, between daydreaming about my baby and blushing about my crushing. It was so hard to contain myself.

I wouldn’t see the CNA’s for the first hour or so, but then once breaks started, and linens were ready to rotate, we’d start interacting.

I took an empty bin to go swap out for their loaded bin, and as I was swapping it out D2 brought another load of linens out of a room. She said hi and we joked for a moment.

Elway popped out of the room across the hall, and said hi, I looked up, and D2 immediately knew we were being naughty.

There are so many human interactions that are involuntary. Blushing. Averted gazes. Predatory smiles like a sly fox about to get down on some chicken.

It was one of those tangible moments.

D2 had as many microexpressions. Suspicion. Confirmation. Curiosity. Judgement. I doubt that she was actually surprised. There was a sense of admonition, a warning.

We were coworkers- there was a strong anti-nepotism policy unless you were the administrator’s daughter then you had a job in the kitchen and a place in my CNA class. Elway was married. I was pregnant. Elway had kids that were significantly older.

And there was GROWN STUFF. I’m sure you know what grown stuff is. It’s whatever somebody older than you decides you don’t deserve to know because of your age and it’s inevitable idiocy. Adults always acted like that, but more so in this situation.

It was all pretty entertaining honestly. We didn’t divulge anything and did our very best to behave, which meant talking about the pregnancy to keep the heat off of us. Now, I knew why Elway told her. Got it.

We worked our shift with D2 running naughty patrol, doing her best to make sure we weren’t alone together. She was right though. We did need to exercise caution.

It was nice to have a chance to unpack the call with my mom. They both told me I had to keep trying-

BECAUSE THAT’S YOUR MOM

I had usually walked home from work. It was only a 9 minute walk, and I loved that except when the deer were in rut. Elway offered me a ride home (wink, wink), and D2 put her sus face on. She started asking questions, and mentioning obligations, all with eyebrow raised. She couldn’t get Elway to say that she was just dropping me off, because she wasn’t.

She looked Elway right in the eye, and she was like, “I wanna come,” and Elway was like, “That sounds like a great time.”

What?!?!

Nobody ever came over to my house, and now both of my friends from the other side of the county were just headed to my place after work. Of course, I had suspected that Elway had naughty afterwork plans, and hadn’t been prepared for this plot twist.

It was weird, and I loved it.

We actually all lay on my bed and just talked. Elway put on her very best “just chillin,” vibe. I did the same. We were so non-sus. D2 was chill, but attentive, in that inspecting every twitch of our eye muscles for hidden meaning, andanalyzing every smile sort of way.

We hung out like that for better than an hour, when D2 suddenly said, “You two better knock it off!”

Of course, Elway was like “knock what off?”

I braced myself. D2 told us she knew what we were up to, and that there was a lot on the line here. She told us to think of the consequences. Elway seemed to take it as a personal challenge. What a turn on.

I didn’t want this to end. Elway’s husband was horrible, and absent. I was pulled to her like a tractor beam sucks a cow up into a UFO. The cow never stood a chance, and neither did I.

The feeling was electric when we were in the same room, even before we had crossed the line. Others fed on that electricity. It transformed people. I could see it.

D2 knew that, and she wasn’t actually disapproving of us, just trying to stop us from crashing our car into the side of a mountain. That morning was an incredibly brave act of friendship. She didn’t withdraw her friendship. She didn’t talk behind our backs. She loved us enough to tell us to our faces what she was worried about. She was so busy having our backs.

She had to go, and couldn’t just outwait us, and stay until Elway left, so before she could go she felt she had to tell us.