Shockingly, the next few months passed by in relative peace.

On the surface, everything appeared fine.

Lydia was healthy and gaining weight. She barely experienced any nausea or morning sickness. The baby was healthy and quickly growing from the size of a small blueberry to that of a plum.

By the end of my sister's first trimester, her bump began to show. I admit, the sight of it made me uncomfortable. I wasn't proud of my own smallmindedness, but the jealousy over Gray continued to linger, and the bitterness I felt about my own barren womb wasn't so easy to ignore. I was no saint, after all. I was human.

And, even though I kept trying to move on, I still thought of him far too often.

✦

Lydia and I were celebrating our twelfth birthday.

Mom let us invite a few friends over for pizza and ice cream. Lydia invited her friends, Jacob Espinosa, Manuel Galvez, Cooper Taylor, Thalia Roberts, and Bridgette Le. I invited Gray and my only other friend, Elle Chang.

With a mischievous smirk, my sister had suggested for all of us to play spin-the-bottle.

When it was Gray's turn, my heart started pounding like crazy. He gave the bottle a hard spin, and the glass container whirled and whirled until it finally slowed to a standstill.

My face turned as red as a tomato once I saw where the bottle had landed.

It was pointing directly at me.

When I finally found the nerve to glance up at Gray, I saw that he was already staring at me intently. A shy, lopsided smile was resting on his face.

We kissed that day. I was Gray's first kiss, and he was mine.

✦

Later—much, much later in our relationship, Gray once confessed to me, "Didn't you know, Gracie? I liked you even back then. I had been hoping and praying for that damn bottle to land on you."

Now—spinning bottles were only a memory. A memory that would soon be replaced by baby bottles.

Lydia and our parents were still upset with each other, but they were, at least, on speaking terms again. Mom and Dad even agreed to fly out to Arizona two weeks before Lydia's due date. They planned to stay for one month afterwards to help out with the baby. This relieved me to no end.

I started saving up all my PTO for the baby's arrival. After my vacation days and Lydia's maternity leave ran out, my sister was planning to put the baby in daycare on days when I couldn't work from home. I guess one of the perks of being an accountant was that a lot of my shit could be done remotely. Luckily, my boss had always been pretty lenient about letting me telecommute once or twice a week as long as I didn't miss meetings or shirk any duties that needed to be addressed in office.

Lydia and I set up for the baby in both her apartment and mine, buying cribs, changing tables, diapers, onesies, and so on, and so forth... My sister wished to keep the baby's gender under wraps until it was born, so we decorated in neutrals like grays, yellows, and teals. I adored this part of the preparation. Although, the sheer amount of stuff that such a tiny human needed was quite shocking to me.

Everything was going as well as I could have hoped.

So, naturally, that was when Murphy's Law decided to intervene.

My phone chimed early one Saturday morning while I was still half-asleep. Feeling groggy and grumpy, I groaned as I rolled over in bed to reach for my phone.

I checked the notification. My eyes popped. The message jolted me awake as though I had been doused in ice water.

Hey Gracie. How have you been?

It was a text from Gray.