Insecure {AUGUST ALSINA}

66

1 YEAR LATER
~~~~ August~~~~~

Life usually never works out the way we're all expecting it to. Especially not when you've got the worse track record and Karma waiting at your door. Bad people who do bad things spend their whole lives waiting for those bad things to catch up with them, I know I did. I waited and waited and nothing ever came; It got so bad to the point where I started to get pissed off that nothing well deserved came to teach me a lesson. Obviously, I eventually stopped waiting for it and began to live my life normally. Life got so good that I'm still a little paranoid that this may be the high before the fall. Karna had nothing to take from me before, maybe that's why she never wasted her time, but now I have something to lose.

"I have to stay late at work today, you'll be okay right?" Lily asks as she meets me on the other side of the counter in the kitchen.

"It depends on what you mean by okay." I laugh.

"I mean like not set the house on fire or kill Alyssa, okay."

"Well then yeah.. I think I'm okay." I reassure her.

I can tell she's hesitant to leave because she can't stop turning around to look at Alyssa in the den who can't sit up longer than two seconds before falling on her face. The entire room is covered with fluffy, cushion blankets because Alyssa is a roller, a jumper, and a faller. Despite her ditziness, I wouldn't have it any other way.

"Are you sure?" Lily sighs and makes her way to the front room.

It's her first week back at work and she's not properly adjusting to being away from us for so many hours. Her procrastination to make it out of the door is the reason she's always late and has to pick up extra hours to make up for the ones she's lost earlier in the day. The only thing she does while she's here though is drill me about my capability of keeping the house standing and everyone in it alive: which I keep proving to be perfectly able to do, but she keeps asking.

"I don't want to leave her." She frowns and hands Alyssa over to me.

I grin as I reach for my baby. "Say bye to my mommy."

"No." Lily frowns, touching her heart and taking a deep sigh.

"She's saying bye bye." I raise her chubby arm to wave it in a bye motion.

Alyssa laughs, her fat cheeks squishing up to her big brown eyes.

When Lily got pregnant I thought that was my karma. I thought for sure that it was the universe's way of punishing me, but it turned out to be it's way of saving me. I thought that all I needed was someone else to keep me company, but what I needed was much more, and I don't know how I swindled my way into getting it. I remember the beginning of her pregnancy: she was just as freaked out as I was, she kept saying that she liked kids but didn't want to actually be a mother, nor did she want to put herself through having an abortion. Thankfully, our fear didn't get the best of us because Alyssa is the best thing that could've ever happened to me.

I hear the front door close and I smile even after she's gone away from me. I turn around to Alyssa and nod my head. She has curly black hair like Lily, she has my face, but undoubtedly, those are her mother's eyes.

"We're going to be okay, right." I coo as I rock her back and forth gently in my arms.

In response, all she does is lean her whole body forward and grab my face with her tiny hand, making me laugh and she does the same. I didn't think I'd ever get to be happy, let alone find the true love that I feel now.

~~~~CATALINA~~~~

"Good morning." Liliana walks past me with a smile and lightly tips her head as she greets me.