pretty girl (Lauren/You- first person)

chapter thirty one.

"It's three days Mami! I can spell three! Ready? Listen Mami, listen! T-H-R-E-E! Three!" Delilah was jumping and practically screaming around the living room, so much so that the Christmas tree was shaking. Out of everyone, Delilah definitely had the holiday spirit, hardly containing her excitement at the fact that Christmas was in only three days.

"That's wonderful, you'll be a spelling bee champion in no time!" Lauren humored the small girl as she sat on the floor, taping up some last minute presents. "And, really it's more like two days, since you'll be asleep in a few hours."

"It still counts until you actually are asleep!" Delilah disagreed.

"I don't think so." Lauren teased our daughter. Delilah eyed her with a mix of annoyance and confusion before she spoke up.

"I do think so, so let's just pretend that you are on my side because I'm right anyways." Delilah crossed her arms and turned away from Lauren, before they both started laughing at each other. I was curled up on the couch, drinking hot chocolate and just watching my two favorite girls. I smiled as they laughed with each other, singing Christmas songs and dancing, until my phone vibrated next to me. Picking it up, I saw it was Anthony.

"Hello?"

"Guess where we're going right now?"

"Vegas?"

"What? No."

"Oh I just thought maybe you'd finally decided to get married." I joked, causing Lauren and Delilah to both turn to me with questioning glances. I shook my head at them without answering.

"Yeah, anyway, I'm calling because we might have to change up the plan."

"What's changing?" Now I was the one with a furrowed brow. His voice was chipper and didn't match his words, leaving me more confused.

"Well, we can't come over to celebrate Christmas Day with everyone, so I thought maybe we could take Lilah for Christmas Eve, bring her back to see Lauren's family and then pick her up and keep her for New Years like we originally said. That way, she'll still technically be with us on Christmas, we don't want to only have her here to go to bed you know?" In the past, we had split the holidays in different ways, trying to find what works best for all of us. This year, we had decided that Delilah would spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with Lauren and I, and in the afternoon the whole family would come over and she would go home with Ally and Anthony until New Year's Day.

"I mean, I would ask her about it before I agreed, she's old enough now to have a say in things like this. I'm sure she won't mind though, that's sweet of you actually for wanting quality time. What's going on that you have to change plans?"

"Well, we're driving to the hospital right now." I panicked for a few seconds, terrified something had happened to Ally, until I remembered that they went to the hospital every day, to see their son. I took another couple seconds to be scared something had happened to him, to rationalize it was just another visit, but my train of thought was interrupted by Anthony speaking again. "The little warrior gets to come home today." My face lit up at that, my jaw literally dropping.

"Seriously!?"

"Yes!"

"Oh my god, you guys!" Now I really had my girl's attention, and they both closed in on me, talking over each other and asking a million questions. "Let me talk to these two and I'll text you?"

"Sounds good, see ya."

I dropped my phone on the couch, immediately getting bombarded with even more questions.