72 - For the Love of a Poppy Seed

You couldn’t ask for more perfect weather.   The Jamaican sun shone brightly overhead and the palm leaves stirred in the warm saltwater breeze.  It was the idyllic setting in which to spend a relaxing morning on the beach with his fiancée. 

If only Jon were relaxing instead of strategizing.

[11:35 AM]JON:  Send me the press blurb as soon as it’s ready.  Nothing gets released without my explicit approval.  That includes TIME of release.

[11:37 AM]JERI: Of course.  Vague details I assume? 

[11:38 AM]JON: The vaguest.

[11:40 AM]JERI: I’m on it. 

And he knew she would be.  Unfortunately, he also knew that the press vultures weren’t going to be content with what he wanted to tell them.  They never were.  They would be digging and hounding, looking for more dirt on this sudden marriage.  While an unplanned pregnancy wasn’t exactly headline news, he still didn’t want it paraded out there for the world to pass judgment on.

To that end, he would have to school Sheridan on the Bongiovi press rules.  They were simple, yet effective – smile, wave and don’t say shit.  It was a way of life that she would become quickly accustomed to, he was certain.  Dorothea had learned it very early on.

Probably better not mention that helpful little factoid to Sheridan.

The bottom line was that the press could be controlled with proper planning and precaution.  The public would take his two sentence blurb, happily accepting it as long as he continued to shake his ass.  He was living proof that you could hide anything you wanted to from the public.  There were plenty of skeletons in his closet, but he kept them under a firm lock and key.  A vague rumor might float around here and there, but there was no confirmation of anything. 

He was that good at spinning and controlling PR.

His family however…

That was more of a concern.

His parents might go a little nuts, considering that they hadn’t even met Sheridan or known they were dating.  He could grovel to his mother, playing the star-crossed romance card to work his way through it.  In the end all they wanted was for him to be happy, and Sheridan made him happy. 

The kids, at least, had met her and seemed to like her.  Children were typically more resilient than adults, and it was all a matter of how he presented it.  Almost like a mini press junket.  He wasn’t particularly worried about them or his brothers.   

It was terrible to say, but the one he was most concerned about was Dorothea.  She hadn’t displayed any type of fondness for Sheridan thus far and if she decided to bare her venom-dipped claws it wasn’t going to be pleasant for anyone. 

As long as she doesn’t try and turn the kids against it, it will be fine.

But then…  Jesus, there was Sheridan’s family.  If he’d thought it hard to look her father in the eye when they were sleeping together, what was it going to be like when the shrewd lawyer figured out what was at play here?  And was Cole the stereotypical big brother type?  Riley was the only one of the Norrises that he was fairly certain who might be in their corner.

A quiet ‘harrumph’ found his ears as her yellow polka-dotted rear flipped into the air.  Concern and curiosity had his eyebrows climbing high in his forehead.  Dropping his phone to the center of his bare chest, he peered toward her through the dark tinted lenses of his sunglasses.  “Something wrong?”

“No,” she huffed, glancing at him over her shoulder as she propped her iPad on a wadded towel.  Her toes wiggled into the hot sand as the only part of her that wasn’t under the shade of their oversized beach umbrella.

Last night had been cathartic for both of them.  Coming back to the scene of the crime, as it were, reminded them of how much had transpired since that one very heated hook-up.  They weren’t horny ships passing in the night anymore.  They had common respect, beliefs and goals – and they had found a safe harbor in one another. 

To Jon, while people and circumstances around them were whirling out of control, things between the two of them felt settled.  He liked that.  He liked it a lot.

But his epileptic cat was trying to go into seizure mode for some reason.  He steered his quietly flapping duck feet in her direction to find out why.

“What are you reading now?”

Earlier it had been something about expelling mucus plugs and he had immediately tuned it out while he supportively patted her sunscreen coated thigh.  If he’d survived through four births without coming face-to-face with a mucus plug, he was confident he could escape one more time.

It can’t get worse than mucus plugs, right?

“Pregnancy information, what else?”

Lord, God please don’t let it get worse than mucus plugs.

“And you’ve found something about it that displeases you, I guess.”

She flipped the iPad face down on the towel and rolled to sit on her bottom, bending her knees up and turning her head so that her tinted lenses were pointed at his tinted lenses. 

“Do you realize this baby is the size of a poppy seed right now?  A poppy seed.”

Apparently that should have outraged him in some way, shape or form?

“Everybody’s gotta start someplace?” he offered lamely, unsure as to what kind of stance she wanted him to take.

Her ponytail flipped back and forth as she shook her head.  “All these books and articles talk about a maternal glow and bonding with your unborn baby.  It’s a poppy seed!  How the hell am I supposed to love a poppy seed, Jon?  I don’t even LIKE poppy seeds!”

He dragged a hand over the still-unshaven lower half of his face to cover the grin that bloomed under her outrage. 

Do not laugh in her face.  Hormonal pregnant women are vicious.  Remember the time you told Dorothea her jeans were about to split in the back??

“Kitten…  It isn’t always going to be a poppy seed.”

“No.”  Her eyebrows arched wayyyy above the rim of her sunglasses and she gave a humorless bark of laughter.  “Next week it will be an apple seed.  As in a seed at the core of an apple.  I don’t love those either, Jon.  I SPIT THEM OUT AND THROW THEM AWAY!”

This time he couldn’t control himself.  He would likely have to do penance, but it felt good to throw his head back and laugh.  It was one of those things that got funnier the longer he thought about it, morphing his amused chuckle into one of those hearty, gut-busting laughs.  The kind that forced him to draw his knees up and cross his forearms over his stomach as he cackled with delight. 

This was going to be a fun nine months.

“Stop laughing!” she ordered with a light smack to his arm, even though she was fighting her own reluctant laughter.  “It’s not funny!”

“Oh, baby, I hate to tell ya, but yeah... it is.”  He rolled to his side, reaching for her hand and placing a quick kiss on the back of it as his half-hearted apology.  “I never thought I’d see you this worked up over something like a fucking poppy seed.”

“It’s not a fucking poppy seed, you goofball, it’s our baby!”  All traces of humor gone, she tugged free and pursed her lips in helpless frustration.  “Pardon me for being a little concerned that I might turn out to be one of those mothers who eat their young because I have no emotional attachment to it.”

“Okay…”  He pushed himself up into a seated position that matched hers and turned his head in her direction, dangling his forearms over his knees.  “I think the fact that you’re even thinking about this is a pretty good indication that you’re not going to ‘eat your young’, for Chrissake.”

“You don’t know that.”

Her petulant tone had him sitting up straighter.  She was pouting.  Sheridan was pouting!  Un-friggin’-believable.

All bets are off.  Confirmed pregnant only two days ago and she’s already become an alien life form that I don’t recognize.

“No…” he slowly agreed, scratching his head.  “But I know you.  You’re going to take care of our baby as well as any mother ever has – if not better – because that’s who you are.  You’re not going to go rogue cannibal.  I can guarantee that.”

“Probably not.”  She let herself fall back onto the towel with a heavy sigh and placed both palms over her lower abdomen, her fingers experimentally poking through the material of her swimsuit.  “But you can’t guarantee I’ll ever have anything besides this empty feeling inside.  I mean, if they hadn’t personally shown me the results of the blood test I would have said they were lying.”

“It’s too early to feel anything yet.  When the baby gets bigger, you’ll feel it.”

“Yeah, but do you see this?”  She poked at a spot directly between the points of her hip bones.  “I have a teeny little pooch already.  Poochy, yet empty.”

He snorted as quietly as he could, intent upon not getting clawed in the midst of a seizure.  Jon hoped this neurotic phase would pass soon, because if the hormones he knew were building inside of her got dumped on top of this, it was going to be more of a clusterfuck than the Three Stooges – with him playing Larry AND Curly.

“You’re probably just constipated,” he offered helpfully.  “Vitamins will do that to ya.”

Oversized sunglasses were slipped up onto her forehead so that he could benefit from the full force of her emerald-green glare.  Practicality clearly had no berth in this race.

“I haven’t started taking vitamins yet, and you’re not helping.”  The glasses were reseated on her nose as she shook her head in disgust.  “You’ve had four kids.  I was hoping you would be able to tell me that, at some point, I will feel something for this baby besides responsibility.  That I’m not a heartless freak forced to bear offspring that I will view with all the affection of alien pod-child.”

She was really serious about this.  Quite probably the most together, capable and logical woman he knew and she was terrified that she wouldn’t love her baby.  Wasn’t it obvious that she already did?

“Kitten…”  Jon rolled over and stretched his arm out toward her, laying his palm over the one she still had splayed over her stomach.  “I want you to stop for just a minute and think.”

Her head swiveled in his direction and the sunglasses were once again flipped up.  “About?”

He showed her the same consideration by removing his and tossing them behind him onto his towel.  “About the best Christmas present you ever got.  What was it?”

“Jon, this is – “

“Don’t argue…” he interrupted with a placating smile.  “Just answer the question.”

“I don’t know...  My first car, I suppose.  The Christmas after my seventeenth birthday.”

“Mom and Dad had the keys wrapped up under the tree for ya, huh?”

“Yes.”  Her eyes got a faraway look in them as she recollected the scene as vividly as he’d hoped she would.  “It was a package the size of a ring box, wrapped in shiny red paper.  It had the biggest curly, green bow on top.  I was just sure it was the class ring they’d promised me earlier in the year.”

“You were happy enough thinking it was a ring?  You would’ve worn it and been proud of it and all that stuff?”

“Of course.”

“But when you ripped that paper off and found car keys inside?  What was that like?”

She laughed quietly.  “I think I screamed.  I was so excited not to have to share a car with Riley anymore that I danced around the tree and threw my self at Mom and Daddy, declaring my undying love.  Which lasted until I hit a tree later that week.”

He laughed with her, turning her hand sideways so that he could twist their fingers together.   Squeezing gently, he said, “That feeling…  That’s exactly what it feels like when they hand you your baby for the first time – only better.  There won’t be enough room in your heart to hold all the love you have for him.”

Her eyes sparkled with a glimmer of hope as they searched his, seeking confirmation that he actually believed what he was saying.  “Really?”

“Really.”

“You promise?”

Leaning over to dust a soft kiss over her lips, he whispered, “I promise that if you don’t, I’ll buy you another car.”

She grinned against his mouth.  “I love you.”

“Of course you do.  I rock.” 

And then he swallowed her pretended outrage and her giggles with a soul-searing kiss.