a second chance - Hotchniss

Lonely together [Aaron]

In the evening, I brought Alaska home to Emily. Since we had decided to have dinner together with our daughter, I stayed.

"What's this?", Alaska asked as she entered the kitchen and saw that Emily was about to make dinner.

"We planned to have dinner together", I explained.

"Oh", she said. "I actually planned to go to the movies with Jonas tonight..." She gave us a sad look.

I shot Emily a look and she sighed, but nodded. "Go have fun", she smiled and Alaska first hugged her, then me. "Thank you", she whispered before heading to her room to get ready.

"Shall I leave again?", I asked carefully.

"Are you kidding me? Do you think I'm gonna eat all this alone?", she exclaimed and I laughed before rolling up the sleeves of my shirt so I could help her.

"Do you want me to cut the onions?", I grinned. "I remember how you started to cry every time before even touching them."

"You dumb-ass", she laughed. "but yes, if you want to, they are all yours."

I couldn't even remember the last time we had so much fun together. We fooled around like teenagers, until the kitchen looked like a total mess.

"Oh my god, what happened?!", Alaska suddenly stood in the doorframe.

"Oh, uhm-", Emily started, but she did not know how to explain, neither did I.

"Whatever", Alaska grinned. "See you!"

"Have fun, honey", I smiled. "But don't come home too late!" But I guess she overheard that.

"Maybe we should clean up this place", Emily said, looking around.

"We definitely should", I grinned and we started to tidy up. Just as we had finished, the phone rang.

"Hotchner?", Emily answered it. "Oh, Principal Declan..." She left the room and I smiled to myself since I knew why he was calling.

I continued to clean up the kitchen and put everything into the dishwasher, then prepared the table for dinner and finished cooking the noodles. When Emily came back, I had already put food on the plates and was looking for drinks in the fridge.

"Seriously?", she sighed. "She insulted her arts teacher!"

"I know", I chuckled.

"Why didn't you warn me?"

"I forgot about it, sorry", I smiled. Some months ago I would have kissed her to show her how sorry I was, but I knew that this wouldn't be right now.

"Whatever", she sighed in the same way Alaska had done it some minutes ago. Then she recognized the finished dinner on the table. "Is this going to be a candlelight dinner?", she asked sarcastically and grinned.

"No, why?", I asked. "I don't see any candles."

"Very funny", she smiled as she sat down. I chose a bottle of red wine and sat down in front of her.

At first, we ate in silence, neither of us saying a word. But it was comfortable silence, it was not tensed at all. Then she started to talk about Alaska and her little arguments with all of her teachers. We had to be honest, our daughter was not easy to handle, especially not for teachers. It had already started in Kindergarten, where she gotten into a fight with her nursery nurse because she did not want to tinker the same stuff as every child had to. This day we had to take her home since she had not stopped to put glue on the walls until we had arrived. She had not changed a lot since then, apart from the fact that she had become more clever, knowing how to bring her teachers in difficult situations.

"She is just as stubborn as you are", I grinned.

"Me? No! You are the stubborn one!", she complained.

"I'm not!" "You so are!"

We then agreed on the fact that we were both stubborn and that Alaska was twice as stubborn since she had way too much stubbornness in her blood.

"Alaska became very emotional today", I told her. "She found old photos of her and Sergio."

"Oh", my wife whispered. There was a short phase of silence until she said: "I miss him, too."

I saw how her eyes filled with tears and even though she tried to hide them, I got up and quickly sat down next to her, pulling her into my arms. As soon as her face touched my chest, tears ran down her face and she cried a lot. After some times, she started to calm down and slowly pulled away from me.

"Thank you", she sobbed, wiping away the last tears. "This is so embarrassing."

"Embarrassing? Really?", I smiled. "There have been worse situations."

She smiled, she knew I was right. And I maybe was able to get her mind on other things, to distract her a bit from all the sad memories with Sergio.

"Please don't come up with this one time again where I-"

"Threw up on me?", I grinned.

"What did I just tell you?", she sighed and hit my chest playfully.

"Hey, I will never forget this moment", I smiled. "It was actually the moment where you told me that you were pregnant."

"I know", she now smiled as well. "And it did totally not go the way I wanted it to!"

"Oh, I can tell", I chuckled.

"I had waited for the perfect moment to tell you for so long", she explained. "And I remember how nervous I had been, we had not been in a relationship for that long and we had never talked about kids in general. So I made my way up to you, sitting in front of you on the couch in my old flat, remember?" I nodded and had to hide my laughter because I already knew the end of the story but I loved it so much when she told it. She continued; "And you looked at me in this weird, scary but also so sexy look and just as I was about to open my mouth, I felt this morning sickness coming back and before I could turn away, it just - happened. But you were immediately so worried and comforted me, not caring about being covered with vomit. That was the moment where I knew that you would be the perfect father. And as you asked me if I had a stomach flue, I just said it out loud. God, I was so scared in this moment! But you just smiled so brightly and kissed me, telling me you loved me..."

We remained silent for some moments, both still in our memories.

"It's insane, isn't it?", I asked her. "This moment was nearly 17 years ago."

"How quick we've gotten older", she sighed. "and how fast she grew up."

"God, we are old", I sighed as well.

"We really are."