He looks between me and Carmen, not really sure what to make of her. He eventually leaves my side and goes and gets a couple of his cars. We’ve played endless hours of cars. For Christmas last year, I found this awesome rug that has all kinds of roads on it to roll cars around on. He hands one to me and, shocking both of us, hands one to Carmen, as well.
“Thank you, Milo. This is such an awesome car!” she exclaims, a little over exaggerated, which gets him smiling. He sits down between us and starts rolling his own car along one of the roadways on the rug. Carmen follows suit, zooming her car down one of the other roads.
When Tiffany joins us again, she finds the three of us zooming cars all over the mat. “Well, looks like he’s already won you over,” she muses, taking a seat on the recliner.
“You feeling okay, Tiff?” I ask, noticing that she’s looking a little pale.
“Yeah, just a stomach bug, I think. It’s been hitting me randomly the last couple of days.”
I’m no expert, but random bouts of nausea screams pregnant, to me, but I don’t want to be the asshole that asks her, so I keep my mouth shut. “Sorry, do you want to go take a nap while we play with Milo?” I offer.
“Really? You don’t mind?” she asks, sitting up straight like the idea of a nap is the greatest thing she’s ever heard of.
“Go, take a nap, or a shower, or both. You deserve it!” Carmen tells her. “I don’t know how you do it all the time. Being a stay-at-home mom sounds exhausting.”
“It can be, but it’s also amazing to be here for all his big moments,” Tiff says as she stands to go.
“If I’m not up in two hours, come wake me up. I don’t want to sleep too long and then not be able to sleep tonight.”
“You got it,” I assure my sister.
“Milo, you be good for Uncle Lucas and Miss Carmen while Mommy goes and takes a nap.”
“Okay,” he answers her, not really giving a crap that she’s leaving the room.
“He had a small feed about twenty minutes before you got here, so he should be good for a while. We’ve got some finger foods to try at lunch, before we do another feed, depending on how much he can get down.”
“Sounds good, I’ll come get you before attempting to feed him if he says he’s hungry.”
“Perfect. Thanks again,” she says before disappearing out of the room.
Carmen and I play with cars with Milo for another ten or so minutes before he’s ready to move on to something else.
“So, is it just me or do you think my sister is pregnant?” I ask Carmen.
“You think so?” she asks, swiveling her head to look at me, her eyes big as she thinks it over.
“She looked exhausted, said she’s been feeling randomly nauseous…” I trail off.
“I mean, those can be symptoms, but they can also be symptoms of so many other things, like a stomach bug. I wouldn’t jump to conclusions, and don’t ask her about it. She might have already tested, for all you know, and it was negative, or maybe she’s worried that if she is pregnant that she could end up with another premature baby and all the stress that comes with that. I’m also not the best person to ask, seeing as how I’ve been around her a whole whopping ten minutes or so,” she reminds me.
“Yeah, yeah. As soon as she sat down, I knew something was up,” I tell her.
“Well, maybe she’ll talk to you about it later. I could see how she might be a little shy to talk to you about anything personal when she’s got a stranger in her house.”
“Tiffany, shy?” I snort. “If there is one thing my sister isn’t, it is shy,” I inform Carmen.
“You never know,” she sing-songs as Milo hands her another toy.
I sit in amazement as I watch her playing with Milo, and how quickly he’s opened up to her. I knew he would quickly fall for her once he got past being shy, but she made it easy for him to do so. Seeing her with him makes me think of how good of a mother she’ll one day be. We’ve briefly glazed over our desire for families of our own. It is obviously way too early in our relationship for us to even be thinking like that, but it’s something I could see down the line. While Carmen is still under the impression, we’re just giving this whole relationship thing a trial run, I’m in this for real. I’ve developed real feelings for her. I hate it when we’re apart for more than a few hours and want to spend all my free time with her. I hate the nights and following mornings that we aren’t together in the same bed.
Eventually, we’ll have to take our relationship public. We’ve kept it pretty low-key at work, not that the guys haven’t known that something was going on since that first night in Toronto. Thankfully, they weren’t dicks about it when we were still playing. Now that we’re in the off season, we don’t see each other all that often. Most of the guys leave town and head back to their hometowns. Even though I’m not from Indianapolis, I’d stay here so that I could be around Milo and Tiffany, even if Carmen wasn’t in the picture.
“Hey,” Tiffany says, joining us again.
“Hey, feeling better?” I ask quietly.
“I think so, I’m going to try eating something small and see how that goes. How have things been out here?” she asks.
“We played lots of cars, and with about every other toy he’s got in here, before I turned on a movie about thirty minutes ago. I think he only passed out within the last couple of minutes,” I tell her as I sit on the couch, my nephew passed out between Carmen and me. She’s rolled right along with everything so far today, and I couldn’t love her more for it if I tried. Seeing how she so easily slides into my family makes me believe that this could be our new normal.
“Sounds like a fun time. Did he ever mention being hungry?” she asks.
“Nope, I think he was too distracted by playing and then the movie,” I tell her.
“Okay, let me go find something to settle my stomach and I’ll be back.”
“Would you like any help or company?” Carmen asks Tiffany.
“Sure.” My sister perks up slightly at the offer. I just roll my eyes at her, knowing she’s been waiting for a day like today to dish all my embarrassing stories from when we were kids with someone I’m dating. Little does she know, I don’t care what stories she can dig up, I want Carmen to know everything there is to know about me. I want her to see that we can make this work between us and that at the end of the day baseball might be my job and livelihood, but it is still only a portion of me.
Carmen slips off the couch without waking Milo up. I snag her wrist before she gets away, pulling her in for a quick kiss. “Only believe half of what she tries to tell you about me.” I smirk before she pulls away.
“Only half?” Carmen quips back. “I hope she’s got some naked baby pictures somewhere.” She chuckles quietly.
“I can show you naked later.” I wink at her and she just shakes her head at me.
I watch as she disappears into the kitchen. Unfortunately for me, they are far enough away that I can’t listen to what they’re saying, so I just have to believe that they’re talking all sorts of crap about me, but that’s okay, I’ve been expecting it.