Oreos for Breakfast: Chapter 28

Oreos For Breakfast: Chapter 31
By the Paperbag Princess and Pumpkin Coach

Clockwatching
Lately we're running out of time, aren't we?

My phone rang, and I pulled it out of my pocket, checking the display. Em. Maybe she had an idea about what we could do next. We'd done the National Portrait Gallery, and shopped a little, and now we were at Yo! Sushi, where Nick had already managed to rack up a huge bill. Something came by on the conveyor belt, and he lifted an eyebrow at me as I answered the phone.

"You're buying," I said. "Enjoy."

"What's he buying?" Em asked, having heard me before I could say hello.

"Sushi. He likes conveyor belt sushi."

"I really like the drinks robot!" Nick said, toasting me with a beer. Every time the drinks robot approached us, he had to get another beer. No wonder he was in such a good mood.

Em laughed. "Whenever we go there with Lex, she ends up with a stack of plates as tall as she is."

"She eats sushi?" Could two-year-olds eat sushi? Granted, most two-year-olds didn't speak French, either.

Nick's phone rang, and he glanced at the display before answering with a smile. "Kate!" he said.

"Did he say 'Kate'?" Em asked.

Nick got very loud when he was drunk. I needed to see if they could re-program the drinks robot away from our table.

"Yeah. Kate Sutton?"

"I was calling to tell him not to answer that. Kate is very annoyed that he's been in town and hasn't seen her and the baby yet."

"Baby?" Kate Sutton had a baby? I'd been here in October, so she could have been just pregnant then. She certainly hadn't looked it.

Kate was obviously ranting at Nick, because he slumped down in his seat, rolling his eyes as me as he ate more sushi. Even I knew it was better to just let her rant, rather than try to interject a word of explanation.

"Tourmaline." What the hell sort of name was that? "They call her Tori. She's adorable."

"Aren't all babies?" Kate Sutton and Jarvis Cocker would make a very interesting baby. She was tiny, and Jarvis was very tall, so maybe Tori would be a normal height.

"Well, yes," Em admitted, "But Asian babies are especially adorable. Lex! Stop poking the baby!"

"But I want her to wake up," a small voice said, and I heard Alex's deep voice saying something else to her.

Asian? So, they adopted a baby. Kate was a bit older than the average new mom.

When was I going to have time for a baby? It certainly wasn't now, but if I kept putting it off, would I have to adopt? Nick and I would never know if our babies would be fair or dark, have my eyes or his. Maybe I should have just…

No. I shouldn't have. It was the right decision. But when was it going to be the right decision to be pregnant?

"So, are you free?"

"Free for what?"

Em sighed. "Are you coming over to Katie's? She's still on the phone with your boyfriend."

I looked up at Nick and he met my eyes. We were both thinking the same thing. Kids were one thing, but babies another. Neither of us had seen a baby since the abortion.

It had been bad enough when Brian told Nick that Leighanne was pregnant. That was just a few weeks after the abortion, and both of us were upset by it. Not that we weren't happy for Brian and Leighanne. It was the right time for them, and not for us. But… it had been a week of late-night phone calls and finally he joined me on the tour for a few days and it was better, being together.

But to go and see Kate's new baby now?

I'd rather do it with it with him than alone. Nick turned the phone away from his mouth. "I can't say no," he whispered, and I nodded.

"Sure," I said to Em. "Can we get there on the Tube?"

"Do you want to hold her?"

No. I really didn't. It was bad enough, being here in this house full of people, everyone focused on the baby. But my heart might break if I had to hold her.

"I want to hold the baby!" Lexa said, and I pulled her up onto the couch.

"Then you're next, Lex," I told her, getting a huge grin in return. Em and Alex kept telling her 'no'. "Don't poke the baby, Lexa." "Don't get so close to the baby, Lexa." "Careful, Lexa." I remembered that, being old enough to think my baby sisters were cool, but too young to be trusted with them.

"Should we…" Em worried, and I put a pillow on Lexa's lap, then motioned Kate to put the baby down.

"She's fine, Em," I said. "I'm the oldest of five. I've been around a lot of babies." And I only dropped Leslie that one time. She survived, didn't she?

Lexa looked down at the baby, her face very serious. "Will she ever wake up?'

"Soon enough, she will," Kate said, falling into a chair. "Soon she'll be on Greenwich Mean Time, won't she? I can't take much longer of her internal Chinese clock."

Kate and Jarvis had just come back from China with her a couple of days ago, so I wasn't sure why Kate was yelling at me about not calling her. She wasn't even in the country!

Lucky me that she was back in time for me to see the baby. She was a gorgeous baby, with a head full of dark hair, but she was still a baby.

I found Rachel and pulled her onto the couch across the room. Being away from Tori was good. Not that I didn't like her, but…

If we hadn't had the abortion, Rachel would be showing by now, a little. She'd be just about four months along, a little bit more than Leighanne.

Would I have to do this the entire time Leighanne would be pregnant? Our baby would have been born in October. October was going to suck.

"You should have babies young, Rachel."

Rachel laughed. How did she manage that? "I'm older than Nick, Kate."

Was Rachel too old? Did we miss our chance?

My mom was way older than 30 when she had Aaron and Angel. But she'd started young.

"Stop scaring the kids," Jarvis said. "Nick looks terrified."

It was something else, but I'd take that explanation. It was easier than explaining why I really looked freaked out.

"I'm not trying to scare them. I'm just saying it took me too long to decide to have a baby, and then I couldn't, and maybe I shouldn't have had those abortions in my 20s."

Kate had had abortions? How could she just casually throw that into a conversation?

"Then you wouldn't have Tori," Em said.

Kate nodded, looking at the bundle on Lexa's lap. "And it wouldn't have been with Jarvis. I know. My whole stupid life is worth it to get Tourmaline Katherine Cocker. Any kids in my 20s wouldn't have had names nearly that great."

Did her voice break a little bit? I'd never seen Kate like this. Besides when she was yelling at me on the phone, she'd been calm and serene since we'd been here. She even liked the stuffed monkey we'd given to Tori. I'd gotten it for Brian's baby, but Rachel had told me we couldn't show up without a present. I was sure that anything I'd picked out wouldn't be good enough, since Kate was always telling me how bad my taste was.

"What does Tourmaline mean?" Rachel asked. "It's a lovely name."

"Do you not buy this girl enough jewelry, Nick?" Kate asked, tearing her eyes away from her daughter.

"I've never bought her tourmaline, no." Because it was an inexpensive stone and I didn't even look at that stuff.

Was it weird that I knew more about gemstones than Rachel? Not that I really knew what it was, just that it wasn't a diamond.

Kate held out her hand, showing Rachel her engagement ring.

Shit. That was tourmaline? Kate had a great engagement ring. The main stone was a million colors, green and blue and pinks, surrounded by small diamonds. Whenever I thought of an engagement ring for Rachel, I thought of Kate's ring.

"It's called the rainbow gem, because it has so many colors in it. You can get it in just one color, but I like the multi-colored ones."

"That is a beautiful ring, and a perfect name for your daughter."

"Jarvis thought of it," Kate said, smiling at her husband. I'd never really met him before. He was tall and thin with thick glasses and looked like he hadn't slept in a week. Rachel loved his music, but I had only heard a few songs. Pulp had been popular when we were starting out in Europe.

"Now I'm going to be buying you both a lot of jewelry." Jarvis laughed, staring down at his daughter like he'd never seen anything so amazing in his life. Would I look at our baby like that one day?

"Jade, too," Kate informed him. "To recognize her heritage."

"Yes," Jarvis said with a sigh. "Em, has Kate mentioned that she's learning to cook?"

Em looked up from taking her 50th picture of Lexa and Tori. "Chinese?"

"Well, I can't let her grow up thinking the food of her homeland is like the greasy take-away from around the corner!" Kate argued.

"Better that it's an ill-cooked disaster cooked by her mother?" Alex said, earning himself a Kate Sutton glare. He just laughed it off. Guess he was more used to them than I was.

"By the time she's old enough to eat, I will be able to cook!"

Rachel could have cooked anything for our kid.

"Are you okay, bunny?" I asked. We'd been quiet since we left Kate's, both of us lost in our own thoughts.

He was looking out the window on the Tube, at nothing but tracks and darkness, and he turned to me with a smile. "Sure."

"Really?" I tried again, and his eyes met mine.

"No," he admitted. "We could be…"

I stopped him. "But we're not. It's hard, seeing someone so happy about a new baby, but we wouldn't have been, in the end."

"I know."

"Just think. We couldn't have had a day like today, running all over the city, with a baby to tote around. And we'd be too tired to go back to the hotel and have sex."

He laughed, putting his arm around me. "You're right. I'm being stupid."

"No. I'm a little sad, too. We're allowed to be a little sad, and wondering 'what if'. She is a very cute baby."

"Kate as a mother is freaking weird, though"

I laughed. "I didn't see it, either, but she seems to be happy. Jarvis is so good with her. But he has a younger sister."

"I've never seen Kate that… calm. Usually she's all over the room, yelling at people, but she didn't even get that upset when Lexa woke Tori up."

"Kate wanted her to wake up, too. Easier to show her off that way."

"If we can't have kids, will we adopt?"

I blinked, a little surprised by the suddenness of his question. "I… I don't know. Sure. If that's what we want. I'm not obsessed with children of my own. Are you?"

Was I? I'd never really thought about it. While it would be nice to have a baby that might have Nick's eyes, or my Dad's nose, that didn't really matter in the end.

"There are plenty of Carters in the world. Adopting is fine."

"I'm not that old yet, Nick," I said quietly, and he kissed me.

"I know. Hey, is this our stop?" It was, and we stopped talking about babies as we walked to his hotel. He was going to pack up all his things so that we could leave for the airport together tomorrow.

But Vinnie and Tony were making their plans for the evening when we got there, and somehow they talked us into going out. Not that it was difficult… Nick and I both needed to do something to remind us why not being parents was a good thing.

Besides, this would give me a chance to see what he did when he went out. Sorta.

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