Still Waters

Chapter 40

AUTHOR'S NOTE: THE SONG LYRICS USED IN THIS CHAPTER ARE IN NO WAY AN ATTEMPT ON COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. THEY ARE JUST REALLY GREAT LYRICS.

**SONG LYRICS WERE NOT INCLUDED IN ORIGINAL COPYRIGHT OF THIS BOOK**

A few weeks later, Shayna and Drama came to visit. I hadn't seen them since playing Disappearing Acts on their wedding day. To make matters worse, I was actually supposed to be in the wedding but, of course, Collin's ass had pulled crazy the day of and I just...couldn't. Not with the fat lip that he handed me right before storming out of the apartment. I called Shayna right after he left and made up some half-ass excuse about Collin having a family emergency, but she knew the truth. She could hear it all through my voice. "Whatever," was all she'd said before slamming the phone down loudly in my ear. We talked a few weeks after they got back from their honeymoon, but she kept cutting me off every time I tried to re-explain my lie. By the time they came to visit Kenney, though, I figured that enough time had passed for her to cool down and accept my apology.

As soon as they walked through the door, I just blurted it out. "I'm sorry."

They all put the mini class reunion on hold just long enough to stare at me like I was announcing that my new thing was Clown College, and that I was starting in the fall. The silence would have gone on forever, I'm sure, if Shayna hadn't grabbed my belly with both hands and rubbed it vigorously. The baby loved it.

"Anyway mommy! Look at this tummy!"

Drama, always the one to wait and see how Shayna would react to something before he reacted, went straight back into his conversation with Kenney about how Marcel was the next one to "bite the dust" and that Kenney was about to get left behind if he didn't hop on that marriage train, "leaving without him - woot woot! - in T minus 5..."

They were such clowns when they got together. Kenney, only slightly annoyed, went into the fact that he didn't do leashes and "couldn't even button his collar all the way up."

Shayna and I decided to leave them to their man thing and went into the kitchen to talk about what a complete and total pain in the ass – literally, since the hemorrhoids had kicked in - pregnancy was. Shayna laughed until tears streamed down her face when I told her about Kenney and his reaction to my...sitting problem. He would just watch me, like he wanted to say something but didn't know how to approach the subject, until I finally had to break down and ask him to drive me to the drug store. He literally fell out on the floor when I told him that I had hemorrhoids. Then, after a stretch that lasted way too long of playing faint from laughter, he grabbed my belly and spoke into the "microphone" - which is what he had dubbed my belly button. "Dag baby. You didn't have to do mommy like that. So wrong," he wiped a tear, "so wrong..."

After leaving Collin and all of the things that came with him behind, I had to rely on Kenney way more than I wanted to. And the more pregnant I got, the more I needed him, which I hated. But at the same time I was forever grateful. I never could have done it without him. And I told Shayna that, too.

She just read between the lines and shook her head, like she had always done when I talked about my random crushes on Kenney and said "Tash, you gotta tell him." Then she nodded her head as if pulling an invisible string that she thought would make me nod in agreement with her. "You have to."

It worked. I nodded. But she and I both knew that if anything at all went wrong in the Natasha loves Kenney scenario, the results would be...devastating. With that in mind, I also decided to tell her about Collin and how I had spoken to him on the phone a few times, each time making it harder for me not to at least feel something. And because of that, I didn't want to lead Kenney on by telling him how I felt about him. Just in case...