The sky was an inky black as night fell over the small town of Aspen. Just on the outskirts of the city, there was a little pink home on a little green hill; the Wilkes estate. Lights of a pale yellow hue hung inside and around their humble abode as Mrs. Emily Wilkes sat indoors at a half-empty, four-seated dinner table with her now-wife, Larkin.
The girls had decided to take Larkin's surname, as "Larkin Clarkson" didn't "roll off the tongue quite as nice," according to herself. Emily thought Larkin was obsessing over the details like she always did.
The young women held hands as they ate and talked, sitting beside one another rather than face-to-face. When one spoke, the other admired her as newly weds do. Emily gently ran her thumb over the back of her wife's hand, noticing she had taken off her engagement ring. She furrowed her brow for nothing more than an instant, thinking quite little of it. Soon, Larkin spoke up:
"If you're wondering about my ring, dear, I've left it in your jewelry box so that I won't lose it at work," She explained. Larkin always seemed to know how to explain herself well. Emily nodded slowly, now understanding her wife's intentions.
"I thought maybe you had lost it, or that it had fallen down the drain again," The two chuckled.
"That was one time, Em!" Larkin defended, but to no avail, as Emily raised a single brow at her. Larkin sighed in defeat; she knew how careless she could be with valuable items. Once again the room was filled with the sound of laughter.
Emily looked down at their linked hands, she inhaled and her brief smile fell off of her face as quickly as it had climbed on. Removing her fingers from underneath the brunette beside her's, she looked up at her wife's dark eyes.
"Larkin," she began, and her nerves rattled her skin, "I've been thinking a lot lately." She watched as her wife tilted her head in confusion. How her dark curls that fell at her shoulders bounced with life, even when yanked back into a tight ponytail for work.
"About what exactly?" Larkin squinted at the blonde before her. They looked nothing alike, but always got asked if they were related when meeting new people, due to sharing a last name.
"About us, our life and whatnot," Emily broke eye contact for a moment, gazing at her glass of cherry wine on the table.
"Where are you going with this, Em?" The brunette grabbed her wife's hand that was not holding the glass of wine up to her red lips. That old lipstick faded over the course of her busy day, Larkin noticed.
The blonde gulped down the last of her drink and stared down at the table, too nervous to look her wife in the eyes. She finally broke the long silence, "Larkin, I think I want to start a family with you."
Larkin looked around the dining room, clearly thinking about it, "Like adoption?" She asked, picking up a huge bite on her fork with her free hand and shoving it into her mouth. This bought her time to think a little before having to speak.
"I was thinking more like... a sperm donation," Emily put the empty glass down on the table. She pushed her plate out in front of her and placed the silverware over it. Larkin noticed that her wife always seemed to lose her appetite when she was tense.
"Wait, what? Are you sure you want a pregnancy, sweetie? Think of how many things could go wrong!" It was now Larkin's turn to push the plate away. The only difference was that her plate was fully finished, whilst her wife had just barely touched her food.
"Of course I'm sure! Nothing will go wrong, babe. I have a safe job, we have a tidy home, and we live nearby a nice school and day care center. I'd be more worried if you wanted to be the one to carry a baby."
"Hell no, I can't even imagine myself getting pregnant," Larkin and Emily laughed, but they both knew she was serious about that. "I just don't know how I feel about having a kid just yet, you know? We've only been married for what, six months or so?" Larkin got up to put the plates in the dishwasher. Emily followed suit, taking the stove pots and pans back into their kitchen.
"Honey, we'd been dating and living together for years before actually tying the knot. I think it's about time that we, you know, take the next step in the walk of life." She put the leftovers into plastic tupperware containers as she spoke. They worked on opposite counters, with Emily setting up the meal prep for the remainder of the week, and Larkin loading up the dishwasher.
"How come you want a kid so bad anyway, darling? Is it baby fever?" She asked her wife, turning around to hold her waist from behind.
"Maybe," Emily sighed, "It's just... Ever since I saw Patsy and Rob's twins at that neighborhood dinner party last month, I couldn't stop thinking about what it might be like to raise my own child with the love of my life."
"They do have pretty cute babies," Larkin smiled to herself.
"It's not even just the babies, either. Throughout the past year and a half everybody I know have been having children and telling me how wonderful the experience of having your first kid is."
Emily continued to work on what she was doing, but gave it no thought. Instead, the shorter blonde continued to enthusiastically ramble for what seemed like hours, when her spouse looked her in the eyes. "Slow down, honey," she stopped her for a moment, "So you want a baby, but you need to think about the longterm of this. How about we figure out all of the details first before we jump into anything, yeah?"
"See, I knew you would say that, and that's why..." She freed from Larkin's grasp, walking over to the table and picking up her phone. "I have a list of things we can do in preparation for our first child, starting with transforming one of the guest rooms into the baby's room."
Larkin looked at the glint in her wife's eyes. Whenever she was passionate about something, her cheeks went pink and she talked with her hands significantly more than normal. Larkin knew her wife never thought she noticed any of the little things she does. That wasn't true, though. She noticed them all, and she knew them each by heart. It's her tiniest mannerisms that made Larkin fall in love with this small town girl in the first place.
"Alright, sweetie, tell me all about it." She sat at the table with her very excited wife, thinking about how she can't wait to spend the rest of her life with this beautiful little dork.
