Page 14 of A Stag Family Christmas

It felt like a knife to my guts when Juniper found out she’s pregnant, too. As soon as he got over the shock, Ty has been happy as shit about the baby and telling everyone he encounters that his wife is carrying his offspring in her womb. Of course I’m happy for my brother, but his obvious joy about the pregnancy is hard to swallow when my girl is struggling so hard with our news.

I wanted to do something nice for my brother and Juniper, so I made them a nightlight. I remember Tim and Alice were up all the time with Petey when he was young. Babies don’t know night from day. I want Ty and Juniper to have a soft glow so they don’t trip and fall over Ty’s big shoes or something stupid like that. Especially while they’re carrying the little Stag. Seeing me work that glass, hearing me explain it to her, Emma told me she had a vision of me as a father, and that made her feel happy. Safe. Hopeful.

So now Emma is finally feeling brave enough to considerustaking this journey. She’s taking this risk with me, for us. A baby. A small Emma-plus-Thatcher. I feel a knot in my throat and work to swallow it as I look over at her sleeping beside me in the darkness of early morning. We are supposed to go holiday shopping with my family today. Alice has a whole plan about hitting up the Christmas market and then going ice skating…I don’t even know if it’s safe to take pregnant ladies ice skating.

We eventually get up and head to meet my brothers, adding on extra layers since we will be outside for a few hours. Emma looks cute as hell in double leggings, since she says she can’t get her jeans on anymore. I love watching her pore over the trinkets at each of the booths in the market, listening to the Christmas music piped in over the loudspeaker. I see a bunch of kids in line to visit Santa, and I can’t help but grin. Here I am with my family. My future.

Emma drags me over to look at some homemade yard signs. The craftsman at the booth explains he can etch any last name into his templates. “We’ve got ‘Santa Stops for Smiths,’ or maybe ‘Johnsons On The Nice List.” I try not to roll my eyes at the cheesy snowman and reindeer images, but Emma is into it, tracing over the sample signs lovingly. She walks away abruptly, and I frown again, remembering that there is still some outstanding legal business with me and Emma.

I’m hit by an overwhelming desire to make Emma somehow MORE mine. Right now. I want her to feel like we can buy a Stag Family yard sign. Like she deserves the tattoo Juniper and Alice got. All morning, I feel restless.

We find Tim and Alice and Ty and Juniper somewhere around the wooden ornament booth. The weather is gorgeous. The sun has that bright white hue only a crisp winter morning can bring, and I love looking at Emma’s red hair flowing out from her white knit hat. She and Alice decide they want hot cocoa, and we walk away from Ty right in the middle of his outrageous story about some sort of rabid raccoons in his neighborhood.

“Dude!” he shouts after me as Emma and I duck into line at the cocoa stand. “I wasn’t done telling you about the crazy woman whose cat got caught in the raccoon trap!”

Tim is of course interested from a legal standpoint and starts asking all about who is taking responsibility for the traps and any potential damage inflicted by the theoretical rabid raccoons.

Emma takes a sip of her cocoa as I fish some bills out of my wallet and I grin seeing the whipped cream mustache left behind after her first gulp. I lean in to lick it off her lip as my brothers groan and tell us to get a room. All of this—my brother telling some ridiculous story, my other brother wanting to know the legal ramifications—this all feels so right.

Even them teasing us about public display of affection. Except something about the way they say it makes me upset again. I don’t need to get a room with Emma. We live together. I built a loft for her. For us. But I’m not married to this woman, and for whatever reason, that starts mattering to me a whole lot.

“Hey,” I say as we all walk toward a stand selling hand crafted spoons.

“No,” Emma says. “You cannot have a sip of my cocoa. Get your own.”

“Very funny, Chezz. I was going to say…well, I was going to say I want to be your in case of emergency person. Did you update your papers yet?”

She sighs. “Not yet, Thatcher.” I’m not sure why I’m pressing on this, but for some reason, as I look at all the couples around me in love, shopping for gifts together for their families, I just can’t stand it that Emma isn’t myofficialfamily. She’s growing my damn baby, and I’m not allowed to ask her doctor stuff about it if something happens to her. All the recent worry catches up to me all at once and I feel manic. I glance up at the clock above Santa’s cottage and remember that we are downtown on a Friday morning. It’s just after 9am.

“Come with me,” I say, grabbing her arm and hanging a sharp left from the Christmas market. I start stalking toward the courthouse.

“What the hell, Thatcher,” Emma hisses, clomping along behind me in her clogs. My brothers bought bags of warm nuts and follow along, curious, munching and teasing me, but I have tunnel vision. A singular plan. We enter the lobby of the courthouse and a quick look around shows me what I’ve been looking for: the service window for marriage licenses.

“Emma Cheswick,” I say, not pausing, not stopping, heading right toward the window. “I want to marry you. Right now. I need to be your husband.”

She raises an eyebrow at me. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”

I hear Ty and Tim laughing in the background, and I don’t care. I feel like the whole world is off kilter. “If I’m your husband, they have to tell me what’s going on if you’re unconscious,” I whisper-yell. The couple in front of us skips away with their paperwork.

“Thatcher.” Emma yanks her arm loose and puts her hands on her hips. Juniper and Ty are cramming nuts in their mouths, watching us like we’re in a movie or some shit. I shake my head and lean over into the window. The clerk looks at me with wide eyes.

“I need a marriage license,” I say. “How long does that take?”

“Thatcher Stag, I do not agree to marry you,” Emma protests. “Not this way. Not like this. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You want me to get on one knee?” I ask, forgetting for a minute that my family thinks we’ve been actually engaged for years. The clerk slides me a piece of paper and I kneel, the cold marble sinking through the thin material of my jeans and making me shiver a bit. “Emma Cheswick, I’d like you to marry me. Right now. Please.”

“This is unbelievable,” Emma says, yanking the piece of paper out of my hands. She drops it in the trash can and storms out of the building, Alice and Juniper trotting after her.Shit,I think as the icy realization of my mistake settles into my bones. I get up and walk over to a bench and scrub a hand through my beard.

“Do you think she’ll be back,” I ask my brothers, who are still standing in the lobby staring at me.

Ty laughs and sits next to me, the wooden bench groaning a bit under our combined weight. “I do not think that, dude,” he says. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Tim puts his hands on his hips and frowns, then exhales slowly through his nose. “I know what you need here,” he says, plucking the marriage license paper from the top of the trash. “Other than a notary, I mean.”

“I’m listening…”

“You need agesturenow, Thatcher. Because, brother, that was really fucking painful to watch.” Ty laughs and butts in that he thought it was hilarious. I punch him in the shoulder and that shuts him up. Tim folds the license and puts it in his coat pocket. He claps a hand on my back and says, “You need Mom’s ring.”

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