Read Next to You (Life) Online
Authors: Claudia Y. Burgoa
Next to You (Life) (20 page)
Chapter 36
“
T
hey are going
fast,” Becca says, as we make our way from what will be the kitchen to the family room. The house in Napa Valley is part of a one hundred and fifty acre vineyard Buddy and I bought. We decided to venture into the world of wine. Moving to California fueled my brother with new ideas, one that included being our next door neighbor. “I thought we agreed you’d only use one crew. I won’t complain, this is for the best.”
“No, you agreed to it,” I correct her. “Bex, at this pace they’ll be done around summer. One crew would’ve taken six to eight months. You usually take your time choosing the décor and… let’s just walk through and see if you have any changes. Shall we?”
The crews are working hard to have this built within the next four months… unless I add another crew. That crew is almost done with the indoor gym, but for now I don’t mention it to Becca, I don’t want her to freak out. She loves the location, the house plans and likes the idea that someday Buddy will build his own house and become our neighbor. At the beginning Tyler tried to convince her—us—to live closer to him, in San Francisco. Thankfully Becca loves the peacefulness of Napa and the slower lifestyle. According to her, if she wants the fast pace of the city, it will only take her about an hour drive to enjoy it and at night, she can come back home. Our offices in San Jose aren’t far away from here and as I previously established, since I’m the boss, I get to set my own schedule or work from home.
“Are those the stables?” Becca asks, when we reach the master suite. The view toward the stables and the vineyard are breathtaking. We’re going to have great sunsets. I nod. “Do you think they’ll finish it soon? Because I miss Gemma and Dustin—our horses—are you going to hire—”
“Everything is set for them to arrive early next month, Bex.” I rub her back. Each time we visit the house, she hyperventilates with the most ridiculous details. Like last Saturday, she asked several times about the number of bedrooms—four is plenty for now. We need two guest rooms. She brought up the children… because we’re having three, maybe four. As I explained to her, there’s a blueprint to expand the house, once she’s pregnant. It won’t take more than a month to convert the spacious office inside the master bedroom into a nursery and add the necessary space to the house. Today it is all about the horses… I worry about next week’s freak out. “Are you trying to micromanage again, Princess?”
“No, I mean, I have valid points and questions, Dan. Children, horses… you name it.” She tilts her head. “I worry that they aren’t going to like Rusty or vice versa. I mean, Rusty loves to visit Ophie and Rich, play around the farm, but Gemma and—”
“What is it?” I ask and she shakes her head. My head spins each time her mood swings hit me with all they have. One moment she laughs at the saddest things in the universe and then she cries because we ran out of ice cream. “Love, I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me.”
“Nothing…I’m—”
“It’ll be perfect,” I tell her, pulling her petite figure against mine. “We’ll make sure to fill it with everything, but the most important thing is love, baby. This isn’t our first rodeo. How many houses do we own? You made all of them part of us, they have the Becca touch and they all feel like home. Our family house won’t be the exception, actually you’ll make it better.”
“You’re right, I’m just…
hormonal
,” she says and smiles. “Do you have time? I need to go to the doctor. He wants to talk to me about the results. I don’t want to do it alone.”
Becca’s health worries me more than I let her know. On a daily basis she complains of headaches, her stomach is upset and furthermore her face is pale.
“Of course, I’ll go with you, Bex. We’ll go to the doctor who will confirm you’re healthy, Princess,” I reassure her, because she looks nervous. I act confident but I prepare for the worst. Why can’t the nurse call and say everything is normal or that they need to do a certain procedure. Unless… I don’t want to think about it. “Drew said it was nothing to worry about, only to swing by the doctor’s office for a checkup since your last was almost two years ago.”
*
“Everything is going to be fine,” I tell Becca even though I want to call Drew and ask him to come and explain to me exactly what’s wrong with Becca. I don’t trust this doctor. “After this we’ll go for lunch and forget about the visit.”
“You’re a terrible liar, Brightmore.” She smiles. “You’re freaking out. Can you hand me my bottle of water, I’m nauseous again. I think it’s the smell of hospital stench.”
“Princess, lately everything makes you want to puke,” I remind her. “Thankfully it hasn’t happened—yet.”
This is just fucked up, my mind is running every possible scenario and how we can fix it. It all began when the nurse walked us to the sonogram room, where they told her to undress from the waist down because they had to do a trans-vaginal ultrasound to check her uterus. What the fuck can be wrong with her uterus?
The doctor arrives, introducing the technician who’ll perform the sonogram.
“Are you ready Miss Trent?” the doctor asks and she nods excitedly. That’s the spirit, I want to say. I should beam as they tell us the bad news, shouldn’t I? “Have you told him yet?”
“No, it’s a surprise,” she says and avoids my eyes.
The technician explains to Becca that she’ll be inserting a probe and that there’s a slight possibility of some spotting, but nothing to worry about—unless the bleeding turns heavy. Becca flies on cloud nine and nods; as I control myself and wait for the doctor to speak.
“There,” he points to the grainy gray screen where a tadpole like head appears with tiny arms and…
holly shit.
“Is that?” I ask Becca who nods and smiles at me, taking her gaze back to the screen. I place my hand on her belly and close my eyes for a second. “Our baby,” I breathe the words out, as I tell myself that her health isn’t at risk, we’re pregnant.
“According to the measurements, she’s nine weeks pregnant,” the technician says.
As the technician moves the wand, I notice another flash of white among the dark grainy. “Go back,” the doctor says at the same time I do.
“Twins,” the technician and the doctor say.
The technician switches from one wand to the other and she squeezes some gel on top of Becca’s belly.
“That’s why the blood work came back the way it did, you’re segregating a large amount of hormones,” the doctor says. “Your last period must have been some spotting, it says here it was five weeks ago.”
“Ten weeks,” the technicians says while continuing with measurements of baby A and baby B.
I make a few calculations in my head and four weeks ago Becca had that hormonal melt down where she believed a baby might not happen for us. When in fact she already carried inside not one, but two.
As I’m able to unglue my eyes from my children to Becca, I realize she’s staring at them while crying. There are moments in life that define who we are, who we’ll become from that moment forward and right now in a blink of an eye we become parents, blessed with two babies.
“I love you.” I finally pay attention to my girl, the one that’s carrying our precious family. “That’s why you were trying to tell me earlier to add the rooms now, isn’t it?” She nods and sighs.
“And you mentioned last week I was a terrible actress.” She is, but I refuse to burst her bubble today. “Congratulations, Mr. Brightmore, you’re a dad.”
I’m a father, and just like that I bend to kiss her. Tomorrow I’ll contact the architect, to add the second section to the house. It will add another three to four weeks of construction, because we need at least two more bedrooms, a bigger nursery, an extra room for the downstairs area and a second family room. No matter what we decide is our magic number we can add more rooms.
“Are you happy?” I question, only to confirm we’re on the same page. She nods. “Thank you, for trusting me with your heart, for taking care of mine, and for giving me a family.”
“Happy tears?” she questions. I nod, as I bury my head in the crook of her neck because we’re both weeping some. “Would you be upset if I propose?”
“Yes,” I whisper in her ear. “You must remember we’re leaving for New York this weekend and you better hold your tongue. This time I’m doing it right.”
My window of opportunity is about to close, since they’ll be shutting the Rockefeller Center Ice-Skating rink by the end of the month. I rented it for Friday at midnight. I hope there’s a shooting star or a plane to wish upon. The new ring is ready, a two carat pink round cut diamond—smaller than the original—embraced with pink and clear diamonds. The old ring is now a pendant, a present I’ll give her later.
The doctor and technician left us earlier to let Becca get dressed. We head toward the doctor’s office where he gives us a guide on multiple gestation pregnancy, he sends a prescription for vitamins and other supplements and gives us his private number at my request.
“You know,” I tell her as we leave the office, “having you is everything, Becca.” My last words smother on her lips when I pull her into my arms. She buries her hands in my hair and begins to massage my skull sending shivers through my spine. Reluctantly we part, mainly a move from my part. PDA is better kept at the minimum. The last thing I want is the newspapers talking about my girl. “My babies are the cherry on top.”
“Thank you, Danny, for not giving up on me, even when I did.”
Epilogue
“
A
yd’s bassinet is
empty, Dan.” Becca twists her mouth, she’s holding Theia and stares at my arms. After she finished feeding Ayden, I sat with him in the rocking chair. He sleeps soothingly on top of my chest with a smile on his face as I rock him.
“Don’t put Theia in her crib, Baby,” I whisper while I accommodate Ayd on the right side of my chest. “Give her to me.”
“You spoil them too much, Dan.” She walks toward me.
“No, I’m bonding. The same way you do when you think I don’t notice,” I say and blow a kiss in her direction, as she settles Theia on the left side of my chest. At four weeks, they are still below their height and weight, but recovering. We brought them home a week ago. During their stay at the hospital, not once did we leave their side. One of us always remained with them when the other had to do deal with work. “Have you heard from the Sanders, Bex?”
“No.” Ashley went into labor earlier today, Zoe, their third baby will join these two soon. “I’m sad that we couldn’t take Angie and Mattie, but I can’t risk bringing germs into the house; not yet. The doctor said that we should keep them inside for the next four weeks and avoid visitations as much as possible.”
“They understand, Princess.” She turns on the iPod dock I installed and the ‘Mozart for babies’ music starts. As Theia snuggles the same way her mother does when I hug her, my chest swells. I adore these babies. We got lucky, after all the shit we both were thrown at and into, as Becca likes to say, we finally have our HEA. After a short engagement—two weeks—we married here, in the Vineyard. The garden was the perfect setting for an evening wedding where we invited family only—Buddy, Raj, Drew, The Swansons and the Sanders. Becca’s idea—she organized the event. A few weeks later we threw a party for the rest of the world to announce our marriage, though only some associates, our friends and a few colleagues attended the affair. By then the house was ready for us to move in; of course I added another crew and they worked around the clock to finish right when we came back from our honey moon. “We should make another set of tiny Brightmores.”
“Will you be carrying them for thirty three weeks?” she asks while tiding up the nursery. “Because I think my insides haven’t recovered yet, and
if
we have more, we only make one at a time, Mr. Brightmore” It’s not a complaint, or some bitter comment, more like a fact that she’s sharing and when she stares at us and her eyes crinkle; that tells me number three will happen later, when she’s ready. Becca pulls out her phone and as usual snaps a shot of the babies. “Let’s enjoy them.” She walks toward us and kisses the tops of their heads and brushes my lips with hers. “I never thought you could love someone so much, I mean, I adore you but… they are…”
“I know,” I tell her. I adore my wife, but the love I have for these two is different, stronger and unique for each one. The moment we learned they existed we loved them. As I first held them I fell in love even more and every day that love increases, and I think it’s the same for Becca. After having them, it’s harder for me to understand the people Becca and I grew up with. “You know I’m going to keep her inside the house until she turns fifty, right?”
“You know she’ll do whatever she wants with you; she has you wrapped around that tiny pinky of hers.” Becca touches Thiea’s small hand. “You always look good, all handsome and hot; but when you’re snuggling with them, you take my breath away.”
I kiss my babies, making sure I don’t startle them, I raise from the rocking chair and head to the bassinet. Becca reaches us and helps me settle them in their bassinets. As the music keeps playing in the background I grab her by the waist and begin dancing with her.
“I love you Mrs. Brightmore,” I murmur. “You stole my breath so long ago, Princess, that I need you close to me in order to breathe.”
“You’re a charmer,” she stops, stands up on her tiptoes and brushes her lips against mine, “and I’m the luckiest girl in the world for having you, for having them.”
“No, we’re both lucky, my queen.” I kiss her cheeks and then kiss those delicious lips thoroughly. “I love you, Rebecca Brightmore, forever.”
About the author
Born on the mystical day of October 30th in the not so mystical lands of Mexico City, Claudia grew up with a childhood that resembled a caffeine-injected soap opera. Seventeen years ago she ventured to the lands of her techie husband—a.k.a. the U.S.—with their offspring to start a new adventure.
She now lives in Colorado working as a CFO for a small IT company, managing her household filled with three confused dogs, said nerd husband, two daughters wrought with fandoms and a son who thinks he’s the boss of the house. To survive she works continually to find purpose for the voices flitting through her head, plus she consumes high quantities of chocolate to keep the last threads of sanity intact.
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