Roast and Chiffon Cake

Her Sunshine

"You have to let me plan the baby shower."

    Thea was sitting in her little chair, quietly sipping her water. "What?"

    Bunny turned away, calling to the husbands settled around the table playing a round of cards out in the backyard. "Jack! You'll let me plan the shower, won't you?"

    They're laughing, but it only seems to hurt her. Head pounding and belly aching, the cold water is doing nothing to help.

"Of course, Bunny."

    She squealed. "Perfect! It'll be so much fun."

Ash fell down from her cigar when she snuffed it out in the tray, keeping close to the open window in case the smoke managed to travel to Thea's sensitive stomach. Not that it did much, her skin already losing most of its color.

"Oh, somebody's getting sick."

Jack's turning their way, frowning when he saw the dull look in his wife's eyes. The morning sickness came and went, luckily staying further and further away the closer they got to her second trimester. "Come here, Sweetie."

Thea doesn't want to move, she doesn't even want to open her eyes. She wants to stay in her chair in the corner and she wants everybody else to disappear when she looks again because they're all too much.

But he's getting impatient, fingers tapping against his scotch glass, so she slowly gets up and waddles over, settling on his lap and resting her pounding head on his chest. All the men snuff out their cigars, blowing the last of their smoke away from the soon-to-be-mother.

She doesn't get how he thinks this will help her, but he always needed her in his lap when she got like this. "Only another hour, promise."

She knows that it's probably not true, but she nods anyway because she's starting to fall asleep and maybe if she's sneaky enough he won't notice. The wives are busy planning the first baby shower in years, it's not like they need her to stay busy.

So she decides to catch up on some of the sleep she's been robbed of in the late hours of the night, a mixture of emotions making her stomach flutter the second she lays her head down on the pillow.

She refuses to acknowledge the fact that it might be the movements of her unborn child; in fact, she usually does her best to ignore the bump that's slowly getting bigger and bigger by either not looking at it or convincing herself that she's just a little bloated today.

"You still there, Sweetheart?"

Her cheek hurts, throats a little raw and there's a few tears hanging off her lashes for reasons she isn't sure of, but overall she could say that she was still there. She doesn't though, just groans and shifts slightly to see if she can get him to carry her to bed tonight.

And it works, he leaves the table with her pressed against his chest and she can hear their coos but she just doesn't care enough to complain, to speak up and pout about the demeaning tone they took with her.

She lets him change her into a shirt of his own and lets him struggle through brushing her teeth and everything else she usually does before bed, only complying when he's pulling back the covers and lowering her onto the cold mattress.

He's already gotten her a maternity pillow, enough complaints about the way her back ached early in the morning pushing him to buy it during the last shopping trip. She clings to it, melting when he presses a kiss to her face.

She wants to hate him, wants to loathe him for all that he'd done to her, but she doesn't know what good that will do for her. She's already here, she's already in too deep, she might as well have somebody to love through it all.