Page 45 of Enemy Ex's Secret Baby

Harley takes the dress and disappears into the back to find the consultant again, leaving Dana and I alone. Quiet.

“I wish you wouldn’t have done that,” Dana says.

I roll my eyes. “Why?”

“Because it’s her wedding. It’s bad enough she just want us to get it over with at the courthouse, but now you’re saying she can wear black?”

“Dana, since when did you have a problem with her getting married at the courthouse?”

My older sister huffs and crosses to a rack of dresses we’ve perused many times and determined were too glittery for Harley’s taste. She rifles through them like someone opening the fridge ten minutes after checking it the first time. “It’s just supposed to be the best day of her life, you know?”

“You sound like Mom.”

Dana stops and glares at me.

“Not in a bad way!”

She goes back to shuffling through the dresses. “Someone has to sound like Mom around here.”

I smile sadly. “Is that what this is about? Making sure you’re like Mom?”

It’s a complicated balance to strike when you have a mother who betrayed you. Mom walked out on us a little over ten years ago. Sure, she reared her head back into our lives last year, but it wasn’t genuine. It wasn’t real. We all have to nurse that wound, carry the chips on our shoulders.

But she was also our mom. And we have so many fond memories of her. Not a day goes by where I don’t hear her remind me of something in the back of my head.

Dana, the first born, has definitely been cursed to carry the heaviest of this burden.

“Hey, talk to me,” I say softly and sidle up to her. I can see tears forming in her eyes.

“Someone has to make sure there are no regrets, you know? This is Harley’s big day. It’s–it’s our first big day. And I don’t want her to look back and regret not doing the big wedding or wearing the white dress or –“

“Not doing it her way?”

Dana zips her lips together and looks down. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“Listen, Dana, we’re not here to keep her in check. We’re just here to make her day special.”

“I’m trying to.” A tear slips down her face. “It’s a lot of pressure to be–”

Fill in the blank. The eldest? The mom? “I know, Dana. But all Harley needs from you being here is you being here. Not who you think you’re supposed to be.”

Dana hums thoughtfully. “Wow, you should think about going into therapy or something, because that was pretty darn good, Gillian.”

I giggle. “Only where my sisters are concerned.” Because when it comes to my own life, I definitely don’t know how to follow my own advice.

I give Dana a hug and she sighs. “Thank you.”

“Any time.”

“It’s a little weird too that it’s Harley first, don’t you think?” Dana whispers. “I mean, just of all five of us, the rebel is getting hitched first?”

I try not to think about it, but yeah, it sits funny on my mind a lot. Especially because Harley and I had similar trajectories at least for a moment. Clandestine affairs, accidental babies…she just got the man too.

I try to be happy for her. I am happy for her. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not hard or that I don’t think about an alternate timeline where I got up the courage to tell Axel the truth and that he embraced me and our baby wholeheartedly. Now, who knows what our lives would look like?

“You guys! This is it!”

Dana and I both turn to find Harley ascending the pedestal in a tea-length, black dress with a deep V in the front. So utterly simple and yet…

---