Wish Come True (The Blogger Diaries Trilogy Book 3) (24 page)

We went the rest of January and half of February without seeing each other, and Jason had basically been insane not being able to be around us. To the point that he bought a plane ticket and decided he was coming to see us for a four-day weekend for Valentine’s Day. He got here super early the morning of the fourteenth.
 

And I don’t know what it is about Jason coming to visit turning into a traditional trip to Myrtle Beach, but that’s what happened. Before he booked his ticket to come, Mom and I had booked ourselves a hotel room down at the beach because she had ‘a hankerin’ to go see Brookgreen Gardens’ as she put it. Finding out Jason would be visiting, she offered to cancel, but he told her to do no such thing, that he would love to see the beautiful sculpture garden and wildlife preserve. So, he found out what hotel we were staying at and reserved us another room.

The trip was a ton of fun. The first thing we did after checking into our hotel was go straight to the gardens and spent a few hours taking pictures and admiring all the giant sculptures, topiaries, and the maze you could walk through. There weren’t a lot of flowers blooming because of the time of year, but it was still beautiful. Josalyn liked the huge fountain and threw every coin all three of us owned into the water, until we finally had to tell her we didn’t have any more.
 

When we left, we went to Calabash Seafood Buffet, which had all-you-can-eat snow crab legs. Boy, I bet they didn’t know what hit them when we walked in the door. Between us three adults, no lie, we probably put away about fifteen pounds of those suckers. Even little Josalyn ate a couple, Jason cracking them open and dipping them in a little butter before handing them to her. Even as full as we were from the crab legs, we still managed to try just about everything on the dessert buffet before we hobbled our fat asses out of there.

For Mom’s birthday on March 6
^th
, Jenna and I took her to Paddy’s Irish Pub. I don’t think my mom had ever even been in a bar before, but she thought Paddy and Bill were hilarious and loved watching them perform all the songs on the guitar and electric violin. I told Paddy it was her birthday, and after flirting with her from the stage and having everyone in the bar sing her Happy Birthday, he asked her if there was anything she’d like them to play. I had been telling her how awesome they were when they sang “Take On Me” for almost two years now, so she chose that, dancing in her seat. Paddy couldn’t get her to come up on the platform, so he handed her the tambourine to play from our table, which was right up next to the stage. I had called and reserved it for us when I had the idea to bring her.

By this time, Jason was done. He could not take being away from us any longer, especially knowing I had his child growing inside me. There had been rough days, talking to him on the phone, him being in a pretty low mood. At one point, he even confessed that his buddies at work were getting to him, when they were joking around and saying there’s no way this kid could be his. He told me he knows in his heart it is and that I’d never cheat on him. And the guys haven’t fucked with him ever since, seeing how Jason had flipped over his desk and left work for the rest of the day without a backward glance. They must have confessed it was their fault, because he said the next day the boss didn’t mention it, and everyone else acted like it never happened.

And on that same day, official plans were made to move Josalyn and me to Texas. Jason and my sister-in-law Renee would fly from Texas to North Carolina, and while Jason drove the moving truck with all our stuff in it, Renee would help me with the drive back to Texas in my car. This all happens in about two weeks, so I need to get packing as soon as I have a spare minute.

Jenna’s birthday is on Saint Patrick’s Day, which was last Tuesday, so Paddy’s had their big shindig on Saturday the 21
^st
. I told Jenna we had to leave at 11:30 p.m., one: because my pregnant ass didn’t want to be out at a bar too late, even though I was just out celebrating my friend’s birthday with her, being her DD and sipping on my Shirley Temples. I didn’t want Jason to worry. And two: I had to be at Wal-Mart a couple minutes before midnight. I was bound and determined to be the first person to get my grubby little mitts on a DVD of
Twilight
!
 

I pulled her out of the bar at 11:35 p.m., after having to argue with her to get her ass in the car or I’d leave her there.
 

“Why are we going to Wal-Mart this late at night again?” she huffed.

“We’re going on a fucking
adventure
!” I squealed, and reminded her I wanted the DVD of the book-turned-movie the very moment it released.

“I don’t get you and these vampire romances. I mean, you know I love reading as much as you do. I’ve read practically every romance they have at Edward McKay’s. But vampires? Really? I don’t get it.”

“I’ve been trying to get you to read one for years. Just try one, and then you will see what the hell all my fuss is about! I mean, you loved
Buffy
. You saw the romance between her and Angel, and then her with Spike. Now put it in book form and give the heroine a happily ever after, and bam! Those are my paranormal romances.” I grinned like a loon over at her in my passenger seat.

In the end, I watched them open the cardboard box and hand me the very first copy. Yes, it was the first copy sold at that Wal-Mart out of the gajillions of stores selling it, but in my head, I had just been the first person on the planet besides Stephenie Meyer herself to hold
Twilight
on DVD in my hands.

Kayla’s Chick Rant & Book Blog

August 14, 2009

Holy crap, has it really been five months since I posted anything on my blog? Epic fail, Kayla. Jeez. Are any of y’all still around? I’m still alive, I promise! God, where do I even begin to update everyone? Okay, let me think. Last post, I was about to move to Texas, so let me start there.

April:
 

Jason and Nay flew into Fayetteville, we went and got the moving truck from the rental place, and then we started loading it up. There was a little bit of my crap in an old storage unit I had with Aiden, and at first I almost decided to just say fuck it and leave it, but I remembered it had a bunch of my old pageant trophies and my big pretty dresser in there. I didn’t have a key to the lock, so (awkwaaaaaaard!) we met Aiden there and grabbed everything we needed, Jason mumbling what a piece of shit he was the whole time, since he’d made the effort to see Josalyn only a handful of times since our divorce over a year ago. I was able to shush him and keep him from making a scene, whispering he’d ‘upset the baby’ in his ear while pushing my little bump into his abs through my oversized hoodie. Aiden didn’t know I was pregnant. I didn’t feel it was any of his business. He wasn’t fighting me in any way about the move. I mean, he really wouldn’t have a leg to stand on anyway, considering how he never came to see her while living fifteen minutes away, so why would he care if she lived across the country? But I didn’t want to say or do anything that might change that.
 

That night, after all the work of packing everything into the van, Jason and I treated Renee to a night out at Paddy’s. She had never been before, and I wanted to go one last time to hear them sing my songs.
 

The next morning, Jenna came over for the big farewell. Josalyn and I hugged and kissed her, Mom, Granny, and Dad, me bawling my eyes out as I got in my car and began backing out of the driveway. Jason had Riley in the front of the moving truck with him as his ‘companion’, but Mom wouldn’t let me take Jade. She said I could have visitation rights to the cat whenever I came home to visit.

We stopped frequently, between me having to pee, changing Josalyn’s diaper, having to gas up, me having to pee again, letting the dog pee, and stopping for food. We stopped in Alabama overnight, and then finished the rest of the drive the next day, meeting my brother Jay in Baytown late that night so he could take Renee home to Kingwood.
 

A couple of weeks later, we had Josalyn’s birthday, my brothers and their families coming for the event, filling up the Robichauxs’ entire huge backyard, which I had decorated and scattered water toys, from sprinklers and water guns to slip-and-slides. We got an awesome picture of all three of my siblings and me, my little bump protruding proudly like the baby wanted to be in the photo too.
 

Okay, y’all. I’m going to try something out. I have to write a short, true story for my creative writing class, so I’m gonna tell you what happened to me after Josalyn’s party and then turn it in as my assignment. My professor is a really cool, artsy-fartsy poetic type, and thankfully, she doesn’t mind the use of adult language in our writing. Let me know in the comments what you think!

Being Texas, the mosquitoes were horrible, but I made sure to cover Josalyn’s body, clad only in a swim diaper, in bug spray, but one managed to bite her right on her eyelid, obviously the one place you can’t protect from the little fuckers. It swelled up, making her look like she’d went a round in a boxing ring, so Jason called her his ‘Little Boxer’ for the rest of the day.
 

The next day, on the way to the grocery store, I looked in the rear-view mirror to find her scratching at it. Turning around in the driver’s seat to pull her hand away from her eye, since she wouldn’t stop just from me telling her to, I wasn’t paying attention and went right past a stop sign that wasn’t there when I used to drive to come visit Jason every day. Random stop sign, completely useless, making you stop for seemingly no reason—and lo and behold, I happened to look up at that exact moment, and of fucking course there was a cop sitting a few car-lengths back on the street.
 

I barely had time to say, “Oh, shit,” before he pulled out onto the road behind me and turned on his lights. When I pulled over and he came up to my window, I looked up to find a super-hot romance novel cop—not the Fatty McFattersons we have in Fayetteville. And damn my uncontrollable facial expressions, my jaw must’ve literally dropped, because he smiled as he asked, “Ma’am, do you know why I pulled you over?”

The sun reflecting of his perfect white teeth must’ve jerked me out of my drooling state, because the next words out of my mouth were, “I went right through that damn stop sign! I can’t believe I did that. It didn’t used to be there, and I just moved back here from North Carolina, and I was turned around yelling at her to stop scratching her eye,” I word-vomited, hitching my thumb over my shoulder at the little booger in question. He bent at the waist and looked in my window at Josalyn. “Da’gone mosquito bit her right on the eye yesterday and she won’t leave it the hell alone. And I can’t stop cussing for some reason. I’m sorry. I’m the daughter of a sailor. I can’t help it. Oh, my God, I’m going to shut up now.”

With a smirk, he asked, “License and registration, please,” and watched as I leaned over to reach into my glove box. As I opened it, an old CVS Pharmacy bag fell out onto the floor, and the policeman held out his hand. “Can you hand me that please, ma’am?” At my questioning look, he explained, “Any visible prescription drugs in a vehicle must be checked during routine traffic stops.”

I shrugged and handed it over. “It’s just my old birth control pills. Obviously they didn’t work,” I said with a snort, rubbing my baby bump.

Seeming to notice for the first time that I’m pregnant, the officer smiled and asked how far along I was as I got my wallet out of my purse and handed him my new Texas Driver’s License.
 

“I’m twenty-four weeks, so a little more than halfway done baking.”

He lifted his chin at my wallet and handed me back the pills. “Is that a military ID?”

“Yes, sir. I just moved here from Ft. Bragg. I was born and raised there,” I replied.

“Good ol’ Fayettenam. I was at Cherry Point at the Marine base. We used to go to Ft. Bragg for training all the time,” he said almost excitedly.
 

“You’re a Marine? My boyfriend’s best friend is a Marine. He’s at Camp Pendleton though. Do you know Logan Cachete?” I asked eagerly.

“Name doesn’t ring a bell. Did he go to school here?” At my nod, he asked, “What year did he graduate?”
 

“Hmmm, I think he’s a year older than me, so 2001 maybe?” I shrugged.

“Ah, a few years younger than me then. Well, I’m gonna go run your stuff. Sit tight,” he told me, and when he walked back to his cruiser, I turned to look at Josalyn.

“You little stinker. You made Mommy get in trouble,” I whispered, but then smiled to let her know I wasn’t mad at her. “No more messing with your eye, little girl.”

“It’s itchy,” she complained in her sweet little voice, using the back of her fist to rub at it this time, instead of her fingernails.
 

“As soon as the nice policeman comes back, we can go get you some medicine for it, and it’ll feel a lot better. But no more scratching. You don’t want to leave a scar on your pretty face.”

A few moments later, the officer came back to my window and handed me my cards. “I’m going to let you off with a warning this time, but please be aware of the traffic signs. We recently had a change in speed limit down the road too, so careful down that way. Congrats on the baby, ma’am. And welcome back to Texas.”