Page 81 of Six Wishes

“Chloe,” Hunter pulls on my arm. “What does your sign mean? You guys are getting a minivan? Won’t that be weird to drive in the city?”

I glance at the screen where the picture is now split into three. First slide shows me smiling like a lunatic. The middle one shows my sign that has a large picture of a minivan on it, followed by the words coming soon. That’s followed by vroom, vroom. The third slide shows Van who is still standing in front of me, hand on the heart and goofy grin on his face.

“Well, folks,” the announcer booms over the speakers, “it looks like Chloe and Van are getting a… minivan… soon?” The confusion is clear in his voice, but the crowd gets it. There’s lots of screaming from fans of the female variety, and lots of clapping and whistling from the male side.

Van hits his stick on the glass again, then motions for me to meet him in the back. I roll my sign up and put the rubber band back on, then grab Hunter and off we go.

When we finally make it to the family room where I usually wait for Van after the games, he is already there. With his skates on, he looks even more massive than the usual. I shove the sign into Hunter’s unsuspecting arms, then take off in a run to get to him.

“Baby,” he picks me up like I weigh nothing, his nose buried in my hair. “What the fuck took so long?” he mumbles in my ear.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ve been fucking you like a maniac for how long now? Every month I wait for you to tell me we’re pregnant. And nothing.”

“I’m three months along,” I laugh. “So it must’ve happened right around the time you shoved this ring on my finger.” I lift my left hand and shove it in his face.

“Do we need a paper?” he repeats to me the words from that night.

“Not yet…” I grin and repeat what I told him then.

“But you’ll be mine forever, correct?”

The laughter bubbles out of me now. “We’ll both be yours forever, Van.”

“Both of you,” he tastes the words on his lips. “I love that. The minivan project has been deployed.”

Deployed indeed.

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