101 - Double the Fun

“What time is your appointment?” Riley demanded from the other end of the phone as Sheridan tried to find something that didn’t look like a potato sack to wear. 

She was sick to death of yoga pants, but they were the only pants she had that weren’t too tight in the waist.  None of her sweaters looked good with them, and she wasn’t going into the city looking like she’d just come from the gym.  It was apparent to her that clothes shopping was about to become a priority. 

Ah!

There.  She’d found a pair of black leggings she forgot she had, tucked in between a couple of tops on the hangers.  Paired with her boots and a long sweater, that would work. 

“My appointment is at two.”

“And is Jon going with you?  Because if he’s not, then I want to go.”

Blue sweater?  Or cream?

Choosing the cream off of the shelf, she wandered back into the bedroom with the phone tucked into her shoulder.  “I don’t know if he is or not.  I know we’re going into the city together, because I’m taking him out to lunch for his birthday, but he might have meetings afterward.  Not sure yet.”

For some reason that delighted her sister.  “Is today his birthday?  How old is he?”

“Oh, please,” Sheridan scoffed, rummaging in the dresser drawer for a bra.  As tight as they were getting, bras were going to definitely be on the shopping list.  “You probably know better than I do.  He’s fifty today.”

“Fifty.”  The single word was sighed with a worshipful tone that any Justin Bieber fan would be proud of.  “Damn if he doesn’t look good for fifty.  Is he taking it okay?”

“Honestly, I don’t think he’s given it a second thought.  According to him ‘it’s just another damn number’.”

“When you look like he does, you can afford to say that, but tell him I said ‘happy birthday’ anyway.  And if he bails on the appointment, call me and I’ll meet you there.”

Shimmying into her leggings, Sheridan frowned peevishly.  Tight pants didn’t give her the most pleasant disposition.  And apparently she was hungry because her stomach was fluttery again.  All she'd done for two months now was eat, sleep and outgrow her clothes.  Yeah, she was over this.

“Why are you so anxious to go?  It’s just a doctor’s appointment.”

“It is not, it’s your first ultrasound!  I want to see if she looks like me.”

“Riley, you’re an idiot.  This particular ultrasound is the twelve-week ultrasound – strictly a diagnostic evaluation to determine whether or not the fetus is developing properly.  You can’t even tell if she is a she at this stage.  If we decide we want to know that, we can’t find out until the next ultrasound, between eighteen and twenty weeks.”

“Well, excuse me,” her sister laughed.  “It’s been fifteen years since I’ve done this, and back then you just got one.  Pardon me if I’m behind the times.  I still want to go.”

She loved her sister.  Truly.  With all of her heart.  But she’d been spending way too much time with her lately.  First there was Valentine’s, then the housewarming party, and then the group outing because she couldn’t be trusted to shop for her own nursery.  Even if the nursery had turned out to be beautiful in the end, her big sister was getting to be a bit smothery.  Even their mother wasn’t this into Sheridan’s pregnancy. 

“Kitten, you about ready?”

She only had her pants and bra on, but she considered him to have impeccable timing.  “Almost.  Are you going to the doctor with me?” she asked, nodding furiously at him.

He cocked his head inquisitively, and she thought she must look like one of those ridiculous bobble-headed dolls bouncing her chin up and down. 

“Yes?”

Blowing him a kiss, she spoke into the phone.  “Thanks for the offer, Riley, but he’s going to go.  I’ve got to finish getting dressed now, but I’ll talk to you later.”

“Dammit,” was Riley’s defeated sigh.  "Alright, but send the ultrasound pictures, would you?  And let me know if you find out anything important.”

“Will do.  Talk to you later.”  The phone hit the bed with a bounce and she grabbed her sweater as she spoke to her husband.  “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he chuckled, folding his arms across his chest and leaning one hip into the dresser.  “But what the hell was that about?”

Her head popped through the loose turtle neck and she fluffed her hair out around her shoulders before pulling the hem of the sweater down around her hips.  “I need a break from mother hen Riley.  She wanted to come to the appointment with me.”

“Ah.  And you’d rather go alone.”

That must mean he had other plans after lunch.  She was a little disappointed, but not entirely sure why.  It was just another in a line of doctor’s appointments in the coming months.  It wasn't like it was some earth-shattering event.  She'd already survived that particular appointment alone and the rest were nothing but routine. 

There's really no reason for him to go.  He's done this pregnancy thing four times, I'm sure it's about as interesting to him as a root canal.  You wouldn't go if you didn't have to.

“Be alone rather than have Riley pounce on me for not being excited?  Yes.”

He studied her quietly as she socked and booted her feet.  “That mean you wouldn’t mind me being there?”

Sheridan stayed bent over to finish closing the zipper on her left boot, but her eyes flicked up to him.  “You’re going?  I thought you must have other plans?”

“Nope.  Thought I’d tag along with you and meet our kid.  Unless you have an objection to that for some reason?”

That made her ridiculously happy for no good reason, she thought, standing and spinning in front of the dresser mirror.  “Nope.  No objection.  Do these leggings make my ass look big?”

“Well.”  He took her by the shoulders, turning her away from him and carefully pivoted her first one way and then another.  “Yeah, but the sweater hides it.”

“What the hell?  You said yes?”  That was unbelievable.  Any time she’d ever asked Ian that type of insecure, mundane question, his answer had always been very predictable.  Without fail, he would assure her, “you look beautiful”.  New husband, new rules, apparently. 

“What’d you want me to do, lie?  So you could come home, see a picture of your ass on the internet and go off on me for letting you go out like that?  No, thank you.”   She shook her head as he grabbed onto her wrist, twirling her close.   “Just remember, it takes a real man to tell you the truth, baby.”

Warped as though it was, that made a kind of sense to her.  If he was going to be honest about the little things, there was no reason to believe that he wouldn’t be just as honest about the big things.  She was certain it was one of the few times in recorded history that a woman's big ass was actually something of a relief.

“Well, then.  I guess I’m glad I got myself a real man.  Don’t ever let me go out in leggings that make my ass look big.  Okay?”

He dipped his head, kissing her through the grin on his face.  “Just call me the legging police.”

❧❧❧

“Okay, Mrs. Bongiovi, are you ready?”  The ultrasound tech was a perky young blonde who introduced herself as Andi.  To the young Andi’s credit, she pronounced his surname correctly while seemingly having no knowledge of his ‘celebrity’ status.  They were just another expectant couple – an old one at that – in her day-to-day job.

Standing sentry next to his wife’s shoulder, Jon exchanged a glance with her, instantly interpreting her thoughts.  Her shirt was up, her pants were down and her stomach was covered in KY Jelly – or something close enough.  How much more ready could she be? 

But she was much more gracious than to say that out loud.  His ever-polite wife merely replied with, “Whenever you are.”

From their conversation over lunch, Jon knew she wasn’t into this ultrasound the way some women would be.   It was something that needed to be done to ensure that the baby was growing properly and all that jazz, but that was all.  She wasn’t holding her breath in anticipation of some life-changing moment. 

Jon, however, knew what to expect.  Experience told him that the peek into her womb would give this child life in his eyes.  It was a very cool thing that he had been privileged enough to see with all of his other children, and he’d been looking forward to this appointment ever since seeing the ‘ultrasound’ notation on the kitchen calendar.  As far as he was concerned, there was nothing better to do on his birthday than this. 

With a pleasant smile and a bubbly, “Okey dokey,” their ultrasound tech rested the wand against the glistening bulge of Sheridan’s belly. 

Arms folded at his waist, Jon frowned in concentration, leaning forward to study the blurry little screen that would showcase the baby’s first public appearance.  He should’ve brought his reading glasses, but he was too damn vain to wear them.

“Jon...”  Sheridan’s fingers curled around his forearm and he found her looking up at him with an amused smile.  “Relax.”

“I am relaxed.”

Andi’s soft giggle assured him that he wasn’t exactly giving off the cool rock star vibe.  He patted Sheridan’s hand and obliged by making a concentrated effort to relax the muscles between his shoulders and neck.  He hadn’t thought he was tense, but what the hell did he know?

“There you go,” Andi announced proudly, guiding the wand to the right spot.  Pointing to the screen, she explained, “Here’s the head, the spine and the legs.  If you look really close, you can even see baby’s feet.  See, right there?  And right here is the heart beating.”

Jesus.  It never loses its punch.

That first look at your kid, realizing that you’d created a new life with endless possibilities...  It affected him just as strongly today as it had twenty years ago when first experiencing it with Stephanie.  He was just putting the shadowy pieces together, when Sheridan’s hand clamped onto his thigh. 

Dragging his attention from the screen to his wife’s face, he saw it.  What he’d been waiting for – hell, what she’d been waiting for.  His Kitten finally got what all the hype was about.

Her eyes were pooled with unshed tears and she whispered, without ever looking away from the little monitor, “She has a head, Jon.  And a spine.  It really is a baby.”

Damn if her wonder and emotion didn’t have him going just a little misty-eyed, too.  Curling his fingers around hers, love for this woman and the life inside her filled his heart and he squeezed tight.  “Yeah.  Our baby.  Welcome to parenthood, Mommy.”

One fat crocodile tear slid down her cheek and her lips trembled.  She was about to open her mouth and speak, but the tech stepped in to steal their monumental moment.

“Hmm,” she mumbled under her breath.  “That’s weird.”

“Weird?”  Both Bongiovis whipped their eyes toward the girl, but it was Sheridan who became the interrogator.  “What’s wrong?  Do you see something wrong with the baby?”

“No, no,” she was quickly assured.  “Everything with this baby looks perfectly normal.  The size is consistent with a twelve-week-old fetus and everything appears to be just as it should.  Except...” 

She rolled the device to the other side of Sheridan’s stomach without finishing her sentence, concentrating intently on the screen. 

Jon couldn’t deal with the ‘except’.  ‘Except’ could not go unqualified when you were talking about his kid.  “Except for what?” he demanded in his CEO voice.  The one that had everyone jumping to answer his questions just the way he wanted them answered.

Andi apparently hadn’t gotten that memo.

She bit her lip and squinted at the screen, completely intent on the blurry shapes there.  “It really is...”

“Really is what?” Sheridan took her turn at asking when the words fell off and the pause went too long for her liking.  “What is it really?”

“Well...  It’s really hard to see, but there...  tucked in behind this baby...  is another one.”

“I’m sorry?  Another one?”  His wife sounded as flabbergasted as he felt.  Surely to hell...  This chick had to be kidding, right?  Another baby?

Andi beamed up at them, pointing to the screen.  “Yeah.  Right there is the edge of the second head.  One’s trying its best to hide behind the other, but there are two of them.  You’re having twins.”

Ho...lee.... FUCK!  I’m blaming David Bryan for this shit!  Who else would wish twins on me?

While he was busy cussing his friend a blue streak, poor Sheridan looked completely dumbfounded,  Not that he could fault her.  He would bet he wasn’t looking too smartfounded at the moment either. 

Twins.  Not one mid-life crisis baby, but two.  Not one alien, not one poppy seed, lemon, plum or various other vegetable of the week... but TWO. 

“But... but...”  Sheridan's jaw was working soundlessly and green eyes were glazed with confusion when they found his.  “I only bought one crib.”