In a Perfect World

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

The rest of the summer went by pretty quickly and before I knew it, it was time for my senior year of high school to start. I spent almost every day up until the wedding with Callie, helping her with wedding plans, and with her sister, Annette. Annette and I got along like we were born sisters and we threw Callie the best bachelorette party, that I couldn’t actually attend because I wasn’t twenty-one yet, much less eighteen. Austin and Callie's wedding was a great success. Callie walked down the aisle wearing an exquisite wedding dress and when I saw Austin's face, as she finally walked down the aisle; he looked as if he had won the lottery. I was so happy to finally see them get married even though they already acted as if they were married.

The ceremony flowed beautifully into the reception in Callie's parents' backyard. Her family owned two acres of land in Malibu and almost a hundred people attended the affair. Since Callie and Austin had met in college, they invited their college friends, most of who were still single, and created quite a ruckus. Even though they all went to support Callie and Austin, I knew they were just excited for the open bar during both the rehearsal dinner and reception. And at one point, one of their friends had got so drunk that he passed out somewhere on the property and we had to send a few people out to find him. And when Austin's best man was a bit buzzed, he started making passes at Jessica and at first she resisted, but he was a pretty good looking blonde-haired-surfer-type and I found them making out in the house halfway through the reception. But other than the drunken mishaps, the wedding was perfect.

A week after Damien and I got back from our romantic week away, we talked to my parents about moving into Damien's place and as I predicted, they were extremely against the idea. They said that they didn't want to give us a situation where I could get pregnant again, but it didn't stop me from staying over at Damien's almost every night. At first they were pretty angry that Hayley and I were staying with Damien, but they soon realized that it didn't matter what they said, I was going to keep taking Hayley to stay with him. They understood that we wanted to be a family, so after Callie and Austin's wedding and a lot of begging, reasoning, and pleading, they officially agreed to let Hayley and me to move into Damien's house.

Damien was the most devoted parent. He spent every second he could with Hayley, but as school was inching closer, he had to begin training again. Hayley and I began spending whole days at the club watching Damien train or attending mommy and me classes, where we spent hours playing with other babies and musical instruments. We knew that our time together was numbered and when Damien wasn't training, we enjoyed every second we could be together as a family. On a romantic evening on the beach, Hayley took her first three steps from Damien to me and then she continued on to develop rather quickly, running around everywhere and getting into everything. And then, one by one, Hayley began growing in a few teeth; never had I ever been so excited to see my baby crying.  From learning to walk, to growing in teeth, I was completely overwhelmed when she also began to say "mamma" and "dada" with less and less difficulty and then continued on to say her first word, "flower." She grew so much it scared me and without Damien, I don't know what I would have done. My life had changed so much in the past year; I couldn't remember what life was like before Hayley.

My relationship with Damien's parents became less strained as I spent almost every day with them and soon they treated me just like their own daughter. I knew my parents missed me, but I would be moving back in with them soon. As the summer drew to a close, I began yearning for more time. I had the best summer of my life, spending it with Damien and Hayley, but I was beginning to miss my romantic relationship with Damien, and it wasn’t until two weeks before Damien was going to be leaving for college that we finally got the chance to have a night to ourselves, something we weren’t too familiar with.