RIVER (An Eminem FanFiction)

Chapter 6

October 14th 2023
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Sophia's POV

I made Ava her favourite pancakes for breakfast, we opened presents and for the past few minutes she's been looking at her little memory board whilst I cleaned away some of the wrapping paper.

"Mommy." I hear spoken softly behind me.

"Yeah, Ave. What's up baby?" I slowly turn to see her holding a photo of her dad. I didn't think I'd put that on there, I must have left it out by accident.

"Do you think he hates me?"

"Who could ever hate you?" I say as I crouch down to her height.

"But all my friends have daddy's, why don't I?" She knows she shouldn't hate Marshall, as I promised him in that letter, I made sure she liked him. She just sometimes doesn't understand why he's not around.

"You have a daddy, he's just not around. That's in no way your fault though baby, you know that right?" She nods her head in response. "Besides I love you enough for two parents anyway."

I hear the doorbell ring and open it to see Will and Erin with a bag of presents and beaming smiles.

"Hey, you guys alright?" I say as I step aside and let them in.

"All good, hope you two are. Where's my little birthday niece?" Will says as he starts to look around for her.

"Ava, get in here, there is someone who wants to see you." We hear he little steps get closer and as she rounds the corner she begins to run as she see's the two of them.

"Auntie Erin." She shouts as she runs into Erin's arms.

"Happy Birthday baby." Erin says as she lifts her.

"I'll keep the presents to myself then shall I?" Will says as he puts on a fake offended tone.

Ava only giggles before reaching out for him.

I don't know what I'd do with these guys. They've done everything for me in the past five years.

After Ava sits and opens the selection of clothes and toys they've bought for her, she takes Will into the other room to see all her new things, leaving myself and Erin to talk.

"You know, I thought her dad would have made an appearance by now. It's been five years." Erin says with a sigh. Will and Erin were the only friends Marshall would allow me to tell about us being together, he didn't trust anyone else. "What a piece of shit, that's his own kid in there."

"I don't understand how I can hate him as much as I do but still hold some love for him."

"He gave you Ava, try as you might to get rid of it that little love will always remain."

"You're right."

"You know, I don't get it. I'll be honest, when you first told us five years ago what went down I could kind of sympathise with him. I hated him, don't get me wrong. I really hated him for what he did to you and Avey but I kind of got why he was mad." She takes a sip of her drink before she continues. "But after I found out that myself and Will couldn't naturally have children of our own, that sympathy vanished. How could he give his child up? There's people out there, like the two of us, who would give anything to have a baby and he just threw you both away like you were nothing to him. I think that's why we became so close with Ave because we couldn't have our own."

"It hurts, the pain never leaves and I feel so selfish to complain when I'm fortunate enough to have a child but you know, it's just hard. Did you guys ever look any furthur into adoption?"

"We're looking at that and I kind of want to try IVF but I'm just scared it won't work."

"You'll get you're family, I know you will. If not you can take Ava in about eight years because I'm dreading her being a teenager." I say, causing us both to laugh.

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Over the course of the day, my family and my employees from the garage all come to see Ava.

We've finally got the house to ourselves and Ava's watching Tangled whilst I order some parts for a project that I'm working on at the garage.

Once again I hear the doorbell ring, except this time I know there's nobody left to visit...

A/N - I've decided to try and do a chapter a day from now on.

As always, any feedback or suggestions are welcome.

~ Im 💕