Lovely Madness // h.s. au

9. Mom

"Hi! Welcome to Maternity Plus, when did you find out?" The girl's happy voice shook me out of my head and I looked at her confused for a second. 

"I'm sorry what?" 

 "You must have just found out that you're pregnant, or you're just really small. Congratulations by the way," she smiled. 

I looked up at Harry and he just nodded slightly. Lord, I had had enough of going along with fake scenarios. Harry had us do that on a regular basis back in the day. I turned off my brain for a minute so I could focus on the task at hand. 

"Oh thank you. And yeah, I just found out about two weeks ago," I plastered the best fake smile I could. 

Her eyes fell over to Harry and she stuck her hand out to him, "Congratulations to you too!" She smiled. 

His eyes widened a bit, then he shook her hand and thanked her. 

"There aren't any clothes here that will fit you yet, but we do have a whole book section on parenting if you'd like to see that," she started walking and we followed. 

We came to the rows and books and I let out a sigh of relief. At least now we weren't standing at the door. 

"If you need anything I'll be up at the register." 

"Thank God, I thought she'd never fucking leave," Harry groaned.

 I sighed and rubbed my forehead. 

"She was doing her job. How long do we have to stay in here?" 

"Not too long, I'll let you know," he muttered. 

Why a maternity store out of all the stores they have in this mall? We should have at least gone to the food court so I could have got some samples. Harry started scratching his arms like he was nervous, he picked his nails and started humming song. Poor Harry. I still didn't want to know what had happened to him, but at a certain point I felt like it'd only be right for me to learn. 

He wouldn't want to hear how sorry I was for him, we were both alike in that way. As much as Harry knew we weren't together anymore, I knew it was still hard for him to fully grasp on to the idea. I was basically all he had ever had. He moved to America without his parents when he was thirteen and lived with his drunken bastard of man uncle and his illiterate French girlfriend. We were friends at first but, we both knew it would eventually become more.

I looked around me, trying to distract myself from thinking of Harry. My eyes fell on to a colorful book. The little girl on the cover smiled up at me, her fake mom laughing behind her. I grabbed the book and slowly held it in both of my hands. 

"What are you doing?" Harry muttered coming close to me. 

I sighed and started flipping through the pages. 

"Simone is four years old," I said to myself. 

Harry looked at me for a while then back down at the pages.

"Nat was ready for Simone. She didn't plan on being pregnant but... Once she found out she was, she researched, read all these dumb parenting books. She had found a daycare center for Simone to go to and everything. Then she was in eight months and she got sick. After Simone was born... I think she knew," I said quietly. 

"Knew what?" I didn't want to say anymore. 

Harry never liked Natalie all that much. Natalie thought he had too many tattoos for a high schooler and she had this dumb idea that all foreign boys wanted was sex. They only got a long when I made them but... I was happy he cared now.