pretty girl (Lauren/You- first person)

chapter thirty eight.

"You can take the window babygirl." I nodded forward as I lifted Lauren's carryon into the overhead compartment. "Do you have your headphones?"

"Yeah, I'm good." Lauren smiled and scooted out of the aisle and into her seat, flipping up the armrest that would divide us and sitting upright, waiting for me to sit down. When I finally did, she snuggled down into my shoulder right away. I smiled, kissing the top of her head gently and leaving my lips to linger for a few seconds, relaxing with the smell of her shampoo filling my nostrils.

"I still can't believe we did that." I chuckled, leaning back in my seat and turning by my head to look at Lauren with a dopey smile.

"Did what?" She said, but matching my smile so I knew she got what I was saying.

"I love you, okay?" I told her, still with the same smile on my face for probably the hundredth time since we got home from the club in Italy.

"I love you more I think." She responded, squeezing my hand and pressing a quick kiss to my shoulder. "We did something crazy alright," she paused to let out a soft giggle, "not exactly what I was expecting for our honeymoon, but I definitely had fun. And if I'm going to experience new things, I always want them to be with you."

"I feel exactly the same. I would've never done that if you weren't there." I blushed lightly at the memories flooding in from the other night.

"I think I'm going to nap." Lauren spoke, breaking me out of my thoughts as she shuffled around, trying to find a comfortable position. I leaned to the side, offering the shoulder closest to Lauren for her to rest her head on.

"Right here babe." I reached my arm out to pull her close. Lauren unfolded her blanket as she leaned into me, shaking it  out and draping it over her, and somewhat over me as her arm rested across my abdomen. She snuggled down, tucking her face into my neck and sighing contentedly. "Almost home, pretty girl." I mumbled, kissing the top of her head and closing my own eyes. I opened one and peered down at my wife when she spoke.

"Almost to our babygirl." Lauren sighed happily, shrugging her shoulders with a soft smile on her face. "God, I just want to squeeze her. This was way too long." I nodded my head in agreement.

"She's coming with us next time. This was absolute torture."

"Are they back home now?" Lauren asked simply, tilting her chin a bit to try and look at me.

"It's..." I trailed off, opening my phone to check the world clock so I could find out what time it was in North Carolina. Before I could, I got distracted by my new lock screen, which was a picture of Delilah posing in front of a sign that said "Welcome to Texas." Since Ally had family from San Antonio, they had planned a last minute trip to the southern state. We found out they had taken the trip a few days ago, when Anthony sent the picture of Delilah to my phone with no explanation. Lauren and I tried calling him immediately after I opened the message, but he never answered. We spent nearly two hours in a small panic of not knowing exactly where Delilah was. Anthony finally called back, explaining they had been eating dinner with Ally's family, and only after I pressed further did he admit that they had decided to take the mini road trip, supposedly in celebration of Delilah finishing the school year.

I might have been overreacting a bit, but I was upset that he didn't see a need to mention to us that he was taking our child out of her home state, and I didn't fail to express that to him. I told him how worried we were from reading the sign in the picture with no explanation, and how it was made worse by the fact that we hadn't been able to get ahold of them for days before. He didn't see our point of view, and I noticed he kept saying things like, "shes my daughter" and "we are her parents." The conversations got a little heated, at one point I set the phone on the table and walked a circle around the kitchen, trying to calm my breathing and gather my thoughts. Although Anthony did eventually apologize, it didn't sound sincere but more like he was trying to pacify us, claiming that next time they wanted to take a trip they would talk to us about it first. Rolling my eyes, I agreed.