Page 134 of Call You Mine
I nod, because there’s nothing else to say.
He exhales a quiet laugh, shaking his head like this was the last thing he expected today—between soccer games and ice cream and August heat—but somehow the only thing that makes sense.
“I love you too, Ava,” he says.
There’s no hesitation. No overthinking.
Just certainty.
And somehow, that feels even bigger than anything I imagined.
CHAPTER 49
AVA
“What are you doing?”I ask as Anderson opens the car door for me. I was too confused to open it myself when he parked, turned off the car, hopped out, and literally ran to my door to even open mine.
“Come here,” he says as I take off my seatbelt, pulling me into his arms before I can even protest. Ever since I hit the third trimester at the end of August, Anderson has stopped letting me do even the most basic of things. Like apparently getting out of the car on my own.
He just picked me up from a late night finishing up some work at Hey Honey’s. My car is in the shop for a few upkeep things before the baby comes, and Georgie is seeing a movie with some friends.
Our life together, the three of us—almostfourof us—blended together to a point that I forgot what it was like before we all lived under one roof. Somewhere between shared responsibilities and shared spaces, it stopped feeling like we were making an effort to fit into each other’s lives and started feeling like this was simply how it had always been.
Mornings become orchestrated chaos between the three of us getting ready and out the door with hugs and kisses goodbye.Grocery lists that stopped beingmineorhisand just became ours, filled with things we all liked and knew Georgie wanted without thinking twice about it. Nights blurred into routines—dinners at the table, homework sprawled across the counter, the quiet hum of the record player in the background, while he absentmindedly rested his hand on my stomach like it belonged there while we listened to whatever vinyl Georgie put on.
I hit thirty-four weeks this week, and I can’t believe how fast time is flying.
Pregnancy moves impossibly fast and impossibly slow at the same time, and I can only imagine how much truth there is to the saying “the days move slow, but the years move fast” that everyone likes to tell me when they see my stomach.
Pregnancy also becomes the only topic of conversation when you hit a certain point. I started showing halfway through my second trimester, but it became hard to ignore in these last couple of weeks.
Whoever says pregnancy is beautiful likely forgot about the aching in your boobs, peeing every time you sneeze, and needing to roll to get off the couch—not to mention the swollen feet, face, and hands.
It’s been taxing both physically and mentally.
I didn’t think that my OCD would have any sort of change when I got pregnant, but I’ve noticed changes as the weeks have gone on. There’s this level of stability with my OCD that I haven’t had since before the fire and before Jett. It’s almost like a lightness in my mind, a grounding in my being, a stability in my thoughts.
It’s in no way gone, or cured—but it feels manageable.
I still spiral and feel the compulsions coming on, but there’s this control over my thoughts I haven’t had in years.
Maybe it’s because my thoughts are so focused on the pregnancy and relearning what it means to be in control.
Maybe it’s the therapy and how hard I’m working—withthe help of Anderson—toward managing my responses to my triggers through the ERP therapy.
Or, maybe it’s just a combination of all of it.
Either way, things feel like they’re working out for me for the first time, and I don’t want to question it—even though there’s a small voice in my head telling me that I have to.
I just want to enjoy it.
I was so nervous to be pregnant because there was so much out of my control. I didn’t know what symptoms I was going to have, how my body was going to change, what the day-to-day changes were going to feel like.
But instead of focusing on all of that, I’ve been focusing on the things with this pregnancy I can control, and it’s healed me in ways I didn’t think were possible.
As I get closer and closer to my due date—I’m only five weeks away as of today—I’ve spent time preparing for everything I can and just sitting in the uncertainty of the things I can’t.
The thoughts terrify me and constantly threaten to send me into a cycle of compulsions I’d never be able to escape, but I’m determined to manage it, through therapy, through the support of Anderson, through my own strength.
