Sequel to Girl in a Hoodie. After becoming pregnant with James's child, both Riley and James have to overcome the responsibility of being parents along with the bumps that appear along the way. But they'll get through it, no problem. Right...?
"What about this?" I ask James, picking up a snow globe. He rolls his eyes playfully and shakes his head at me.
"She's five, Riles. And Christmas was literally two months ago. Why would she need that?" he retorts.
"No... You can get it personalised," I say, reading the back of the box. "It says here, hand this to a member of staff at the front desk by the Christmas stall and get your globe personalised in just three easy steps. Pick a photo from your gallery on your device. Get them to print it out and send it through to the factory for them to get it sealed in just minutes. Then enjoy your personalised snow-filled globe of fun, looking back on a perfect memory!" I recite.
He furrows his brows, clearly thinking it through but then I feel a slight cramp in the pit of my stomach. I've learnt not to clutch it when that happens since it only makes the pain feel tighter, so instead, I place my hand over the top and rub my bump soothingly.
"You okay?" he asks me, growing concerned but I smile and nod, leading him back to his usual laid-back attitude. "Okay sure, let's do it. As long as it doesn't take too long-"
"It says 'in just minutes', James. Quit worrying," I smirk.
God, it feels nice to say those words to him for once. He chuckles before I put the packaging in the basket I was carrying which was also filled with future presents for the rest of his siblings. They're all born in the first four months of the year, well all of them except for James whose birthday is in June. So we thought it would be good to just buy all of their presents now. We've put in an order for a make-up pallet for Laci whose birthday is in March, we've decided on getting Piper a bunch of magazines and boy-crazy fangirl items for whatever boy band is top of the charts at the moment, although we're going to buy those later on since her birthday is end of February. And for Jasper, we've selected on getting him a load of 'men' products since he's just about to hit puberty and is getting into those sort of things now since he claims he's 'not a little boy anymore' but his birthday isn't until April.
We go to the stall where we find a slightly over-weight but kind-looking lady leaning over the counter of a stall which must have been used as Santa's Grotto for Christmas, except they've cleared it out and turned it into a sales shop, mainly filled with souvenirs and photo frames or any last minute gifts. She seems to have been filling out an order for the customer who had a baby carrier held in her hand with the small child covered in a light blue blanket, sleeping.
As James begins to speak to the member of staff, the lady with the baby must have noticed me looking at her imperceptibly as she looks up, moving her dark brown hair out of the way of her face and smiles at me. I smile back at her before realising that I was still subtly moving my hand over the top of my stomach and biting my lip in self-consciousness which isn't hard at all for her to perceive. She, unlike me however, seemed to be in her mid-20s. An age I still had a few years before reaching but am yearning to be at this very moment.
She begins to walk past me, not pealing the smile off her face but as she does, she places her hand over the top of my arm and says the words, "It's okay," before looking at me once more, smiling, and then walking away.
Just those two words can mean so much. Just hearing those two words right now is like a reminder to say that I'm not alone. The only people I've listened to these past few months were James, his family, my sister, and our friends but I found it hard to believe them because people that you know and are close with tend to say things to make you feel better. They sometimes don't say the truth, and even when they are being meaningful, you can never tell because they tend to lie about certain things to the point where you don't know what's true and what's false or what's right, what's wrong. And so just being able to hear something from an outside perspective, even if it's only one or two words, it can be so much more reassuring than the average paragraphs I hear on the daily from people I love and who love me. Sometimes, it's better to talk to other people you've never met before and listen to what they have to say because you know it'll be real and the people that say the truth are more than likely the ones who can relate. Straight away, I assumed she was in her mid-20s but maybe she isn't. I don't know her at all and that's what makes what she just told me a thousand times more believable.
"Ri?" I hear my fiancé's voice call. I pull myself out of my thoughts as I walk towards James to lean over the other side of the counter, opposite the lady who had a badge on her shirt with the name Lisa on. As soon as I'm in contact with James again from where I had been over-thinking things, he smiles and wraps his right arm around my waist, pulling me all the more closer to him. The stalls clerk smiles at the two of us. "Which photo do you want us to use for the globe?" James asks me.
Remembering one we took a couple of months ago, I pull my phone out of my coat pocket and then click onto my photo gallery. Scrolling through, I find a picture that we took in May of the three of us together at her school play where she was the lead.
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I show it to James and then he smiles at the photo before nodding in approval. So then I hand my phone over to the lady who studies the photo.
"Oh my, is that really you? Your hair looks much different now," she states, citing my dirty-blonde hair which had now grown past my shoulders. I chuckle a bit and then she softens the look on her face. "Right, well I'm thinking that it would be best if I cut out the background, change it to a more Christmassy, maybe snowy theme, and then out-largen the photo?" she suggests. I look at James who looks at me concurrently before we both nod, turning to face her once again. "Amazing. It should take around thirty minutes to an hour before you can collect it," she says.
I look at the time on my watch and see that it was now 1:30 in the afternoon and the kids finish school at 3, well Rose finishes at 2:45. If we're lucky, we should be just about in time to pick them up. James didn't end up having his meeting at one, and so it's been rescheduled for seven-thirty where we should hopefully be back home in time.
"Okay, sweet," James responds.
"And that would be a total of £30.00.". I look to James who takes out his credit card scanning it over the card reader. I don't know how he has so much money in there but every time we're asked to pay, all he ever does is whip his card out. I suppose he does have a much more bountiful and fairly generous family than I do though. She smiles at us before taking out a receipt from the top which must have had the order we had placed in since she takes it with her instead of handing it back to us.
"Okay, where do you want to go now, Riles?" he asks me as we walk away and out of the shop.
"I was thinking we could browse around the baby store for a bit? Not to buy anything just yet, but you know, just look around?" I say quickly, not wanting to seem eager. He chuckles.
"Okay, sure. But if you do see something, we can get it, you know? You don't have to wait until later. Besides, it's probably best to buy it now anyway since we're going to be super busy with wedding plannings very soon and baby's due in only a few month's time," he tells me. I bite my lip, feeling slightly overwhelmed by that fact. He has no trouble coming to the realisation of this as he takes my hand in his and brings it to his lips, kissing the back of my palm in benignant and somehow calming me down.
"Sorry, I'm just fretting over everything," I say once he moves my hand away, stepping in front of me and grabbing hold of my other one so that our linked hands were the only thing in the middle of us.
"It's okay to worry about things, Ri," he says. As I look down, I hadn't even noticed I was squeezing his hand so tightly until his skin begins to redden. I lightly stop crushing his knuckles, bringing my eyes back to meet his. "Just don't begin to over-think things, because if you do, you'll start believing things that aren't true," he tells me.
