I looked over at Reggie who’d been remarkably quiet through all of this.
“I didn’t know what to say,” I admitted. “She had these fucking tears. You know how I am with the tears.”
When Eerie had come to me two years ago and asked me to fertilize her eggs because she had cancer and had to undergo chemo, I’d done it.
Thinking back, I probably should’ve stayed far, far away. Because I knew that that wasn’t the end for Eerie. She could’ve just as easily done the same thing with a sperm bank.
Yet, I’d done it anyway.
At the time, Eerie hadn’t done me wrong time after time as she had over the years. At the time, I was a lovesick fool.
I loved Eerie, and I’d do anything for her. Even fertilize her eggs and freeze them for when the time came that she wanted to have babies.
The chemo and radiation that she was required to have due to the cancer was sure to harm all of the eggs that were in her body. The eggs that the company harvested for her said that the eggs would do better if they were fertilized, and at the time, Eerie and I had been going strong. I’d loved her and I’d thought that she loved me.
“Mark my words, kid. This is going to come back and bite you in the ass.”
I was already shaking my head.
“It’s not,” I said. “When her lawyer called me today, I already told them that there was an ironclad agreement with the cryo-bank that we did this with. She can’t use them. It’s against the law.”
Reggie snorted. “Since when has that ever stopped Eerie Foster?”
Since when was right.
But Eerie had some morals. She wouldn’t do this without making sure it was okay with me.
Right?
Chapter 1
The difference between your opinion and coffee is that I asked for coffee.
-Reggie’s secret thoughts
Reggie
One year later—present day
“You’re an event planner?”
I looked over at the woman that was standing next to her daughter’s bedside and smiled.
“I am,” I confirmed. “Well, kind of? I do it as a hobby on the side. This.” I gestured to the room around us. The NICU. “This is my passion. The other gig is just a thing that I like to do in my spare time. A way to, I don’t know, have fun without actually having to go out and attend the functions?”
The woman smiled at my explanation.
“When did you start doing this?”
That was a question from the man standing beside the woman.
He was intense.
I wasn’t sure why every time I looked at him I felt the need to confess all my sins, but I guess that was common when faced with who I was facing.
Dracon and Flo Green were a beautiful couple. Dracon, the city of Longview’s police commissioner, was an intense man that always made me stand up to attention.
His wife, Flo, looked nothing like I would’ve expected someone to look who could handle such a forceful personality like Dracon. But she didn’t seem too overwhelmed when it came to his presence like I did.
He was staring at me intently as I spoke, making my heart pound. God, he was a beautiful man.
“Umm,” I hesitated. “I just started, actually. I started by planning birthdays for friends. Things like that. Then I moved into larger-scaled things like reunions and anniversary dinners. I know East Texas like the back of my hand now. It’s pretty great.”
“So what’s the biggest thing you ever planned?” Flo asked.
I moved Dracon and Flo’s baby onto her side where she mewled in protest.
Dracon reached his big hand into the incubator and rubbed his blunt finger down the length of the baby’s arm. His finger and the baby’s arm were the same size.
“I planned the mayor of Kilgore’s commencement ceremony not too long ago,” I said.
“That was you?”
I winced.
Dracon’s words had me stilling.
“It depends on what you heard,” I admitted.
Flo’s laugh was infectious.
The mayor of Kilgore had his commencement ceremony last fall. The only reason anybody had really heard about me at all was thanks in part to what had happened at that ceremony. And, I’d just like to point out, that it wasn’t my fault that I’d allowed a gunman into the event that was intent on murdering the mayor before his commencement.
I did, however, make it all better by making sure that the man’s testicles were shoved up into his body so far that he would likely never have kids again.
Now, sadly, I was known as the ‘Princess of Kilgore’ thanks to saving a man that didn’t need to be saved.
“I heard what happened,” Dracon said. “I was actually there. And nothing that I ‘heard’ was anywhere close to the truth.”
That was true.
I swallowed hard thinking back to that day almost a year ago.
***
“Everything set?”
I looked up at the mayor and smiled, fiddling with the small kid’s McDonald’s toy keychain I’d found on the floor moments prior.
Smoothing my hand down the length of my dress, I looked up into the beautiful eyes of the mayor and nodded once.
“I think so,” I said. “We can open the doors when you’re ready.”
“Sounds good. I’ll let the greeters know,” Lynn, the mayor, said.
I gave him a thumbs up and he winked before disappearing into a side hallway that led to the offices.
I looked around at the perfectly set tables and the beautifully decorated room and knew that I’d done a great job.
I was so excited with how it’d turned out that I hadn’t realized that the doors had opened, and people were filing in until the room started to fill up around me.
I nodded at each and every person that smiled at me, giving them what I hoped was a gracious smile.
Feeling quite underdressed in my blue floor-length sleeveless gown that I’d gotten from a boutique in town for sixty bucks, I made my way to the outskirts of the room hoping that by doing so it would keep me out of the way.
The only thing that it did was bring me closer to a person that
