Page 37 of Secret Desire
“Whichever one of you has a baby first, you need to name it after me.”
“What if it’s a girl?” Sadie asked.
“Then you name her Theodora,” Theo said, his tone clearly conveying that he thought it was a stupid question.
“What if one of us gives one of our kids Theo as a middle name instead?” Ariel suggested. I could tell she was just teasing him though.
My hand went to my belly without conscious thought, hoping that those precious embryos that we’d had implanted last week were doing their thing. Theo’s sharp gaze tracked the movement and he bit back a smile. He’d probably known we were going to the fertility clinic before we were, nosy bastard.
“First kid is named Theo, then at least one from each of y’all has a middle name after me, you hear?”
Theo’s husband came up, grabbing his hand. “How about a dance, handsome?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
The two men headed to the dance floor and Ariel shook her head. “There’s no damned way I’m saddling my future daughter with the name Theodora,” she grumbled.
“We have some time to figure it out,” Sadie said. “You know I want to finish school before we start a family.”
My sister’s gaze swung over to Grace and Nicole. Grace’s wife held up her hands. “I’m still getting my architecture firm off the ground. I need some time.”
“Maeve and I are trying to have a baby,” I blurted out.
Even though we’d agreed to not mention anything until we knew if the procedure was successful, I didn’t want to keep another secret from my sister.
“You just got married today,” Ariel reminded me, nodding at the white dress I’d chosen for the wedding. Maeve had worn one too, although we both went with different styles and different shades of white.
“You can’t be knocked up yet, even though I know very well when you two disappeared earlier you were doing the nasty somewhere.”
“Um, that’s not how it works for us,” I reminded my sister. “But we had our first round of IVF last week.”
“Well, that explains why you were bawling at the wedding. Your hormones are all messed up.” My sister said the like the know-it-all she was.
“A lot of people cry at weddings,” Sadie reminded her. “I cried at ours.”
“That’s because you realized that you’d made a terrible mistake,” Grace joked.
Ariel sent her a fake glare. “You’re just lucky Nicole didn’t climb out the window at your wedding.”
“She couldn’t, it was nailed shut,” Maeve teased. “Theo and I made sure of it.”
It had been a good year. I’d gradually moved in with Maeve, bringing some of my belongings every time I slept over, until I realized that I hadn’t visited my own place in weeks. By that time my lease was up for renewal, so Maeve and I went through the arduous process of combining our households.
We’d boxed up one of everything that was duplicate and donated it to Sadie’s Space, the homeless women’s shelter where Sadie used to stay before she moved in with my sister. The shelter had been renamed after Ariel made a huge donation to the charity trying to convince Sadie to give her another chance after they broke up. My sister-in-law wasn’t so easily impressed though. It took a visit from Theo to make her reconsider.
I thought about the role Theo had in all three of us finding our happily ever after and sent up a prayer of gratitude. My eyes tracked him on the dance floor, wrapped in his husband’s arms, and I knew his matchmaking was about him wanting everyone he cared about to have the same forever love as he did.
“I don’t mind the name Theodora,” I announced. “We can call her Thea for short. Or Teddi. That would be cute.”
Maeve and I exchanged a long look. “Whatever you say, wife. You’re birthing the little guy or girl, so you get to pick the name.”
“We’ll do it the way we do everything,” I said. “Together.”
“How about we say goodbye to our guests and get started on the honeymoon?” Maeve suggested.
“Great idea. Let’s get out of here.”
***
