Absence Makes the Heart Grow fonder

The Baby Shower

A Jeff Buckley tape was playing in my car as I waited for Francis and Olive outside their apartment. It was his cover of I Know It's Over, a song that I used to be obsessed with when the original came out. As I was listening, I didn't think too much of it, but as it went on a sense of nostalgia and loneliness prickled at the back of my neck and the words rang through my mind, resonating strongly just like it used to despite it being ten years later. I saw the vision of me lying in my lonely bed, cold, and wishing for someone to hold me, wishing for love and warmth;
If you're so funny,
Why are you on your own tonight?
And if you're so clever,
Why are you on your own tonight?
These words specifically made me feel queasy, sick to my stomach with the feeling that I felt all those years ago after leaving Hampden, so I turned it off and took it out of the cassette player. Taking a deep breath, I chucked it into the glovebox and turned the radio on. Something more popish was playing and I relaxed into my seat, trying to stay positive and calm.

Then I looked over and saw Richard and Olive coming out the door. Olive was having a little tantrum and Richard had to drag her over to the car by her arm. However, even through her petulant tears, she looked adorable - she wore a light blue dress that looked like it would've been worn by a little Victorian child, and she had cute little Mary-Jane's and frilly socks. To go with the outfit, she had white ribbons in her hair, woven through a thick braid, which surprised me because I didn't expect Richard to be so good at that stuff. He opened the back door, lifted her up, and put her in. "Hey," I said, "what's the matter?"
"She wanted some candy." He shut the door and got in the passenger seat, "and I said no."
"Oh, don't worry Olive. There will be candy at the baby shower," I said in a calming voice. Olive just crossed her arms and looked out the window. I couldn't help but laugh and Richard rolled his eyes.

We were about halfway to their house when Olive fell asleep, head pressed to the window, "well, that's for the best," Richard said, puffing the air out of his cheeks,
"How come?" I asked,
"She'll be more awake for the baby shower and less cranky. That's why I didn't let her have the candy," he said with a laugh, looking out the window. I noticed that he was tapping his foot,
"Are you nervous?" I asked. He hesitated, but eventually answered, "yeah, I guess I am. It's so crazy knowing you again, I can't imagine how weird it will be to see Henry and Camilla."
"Mh, I can't imagine," I sympathised, "them having kids must make it even weirder."
"Yep, I still know them as the college students we were ten years ago," he confessed with a chuckle, "I mean those two were quite responsible, not party animals by any means, but still. Henry even interacting with a child is so foreign to me," he added, "they seem like the type of couple to never have kids because they're messy."
"You know, I never really noticed that, maybe because I've known them the whole time, but yeah I guess it is kinda crazy to see how they've changed," I told him, nodding slowly, "but it's the same with you. They were both shocked when I told them you had a kid, and so was I when I found out."

To be honest, it still hadn't fully hit me that Richard had a child, but most of all that Judy Poovey was ever pregnant. What were those nine months like? Was it awkward? The way I imagined it in my mind was - I didn't know what Plano, California looked like but I imagined it to be quite and empty and soulless town. Maybe they stayed with Judy's parents, I imagined she has a big house, or maybe they were so disappointed in her that the two of them were forced to live in Richard's tiny childhood home, huddled up in his old bedroom in a twin bed. Did they cuddle? I bet Judy was miserable. I bet she was throwing up all the time, I bet she cried cause her feet got bigger or something. Part of me wanted to ask Richard why they kept the baby, but that would've been a step too far, and anyways it didn't matter. They made it through those nine awkward months and had a healthy baby girl. For some reason I imagined the birth and Judy's leaving in a very theatrical manner; I imagined the baby came out without fuss, and that as soon as the midwives, Richard, and maybe his parents had all turned their backs, Judy just got up and ran out of the delivery room, her dark curls bouncing down the hall. Of course that's not at all what really happened, but either way Judy was frozen in time for me, still with the big eighties hair and the neon clothes and those fake red nails and the awful fake tan. I almost laughed at the memory of her, but then I realised that I was being pretentious and unnecessarily mean. I'm sure Judy had some love in her heart for Olive and that it was hard for her to leave. She hadn't been bad to me in college and so I shouldn't think bad of her now. I wondered how Richard felt about her.