Serendipity Strikes

14

Emmaline

"Okay, so that was super fun!" I exclaimed as I collapsed on the couch at the end of Halloween night. "I can't believe I saw two homemade Fergie costumes!"

Shawn and I had handed out candy with his parents for an hour or so before he suggested we take Jax for a walk in his stroller. We didn't go door to door for candy, but rather just ambled through his neighborhood so that we could check out all the costumed kiddos and festively decorated houses.

None of them compared to his mom and dad's house, though.

They'd transformed the front yard into a cemetery with hand painted tombstones lined up across the grass. Manny and Karen were made up to look like a pair of spirits with powdered white skin, white gauzy clothing, and silvery hair. They told the trick or treaters that they were ghostly soulmates who met in the graveyard once a year on Halloween. The fact that they'd created this detailed backstory was enchanting, and it fit perfectly considering it was their anniversary.

Jax didn't cry when he saw them, like he had with Zombie Mendes, but he didn't want either of them to hold him. He split his time before the walk between me and Shawn and was quite entranced by all the colors and lights in the yard and on the children's costumes.

Our stroll had been wonderful, and Shawn was mostly left alone, which surprised me. Maybe the residents of Pickering knew to respect his privacy when he was at home. I did see a couple people with their phones out and suspected our pictures would end up online. This would probably open up a whole new can of worms since spending a holiday with his family came across as less 'we're just friends' and more 'we're dating.' There was nothing we could do about that shy of never being seen together in public. That's how it had been with Kennedy, and I didn't want to be someone he kept a secret. Yes, I knew that kind of contradicted that I wanted privacy, but in my head there was a distinction between not exposing everything about our relationship and being together in the open.

Shawn sat down next to me on the couch, Jax sound asleep on his shoulder. "I set the crib up in my room earlier, so whenever you're ready, we can put this little pumpkin down."

I looked at my baby. His curls were matted to his head since he'd had a hood on all night, and his cheeks were pink. He was no doubt the cutest thing in the world.

"Let me take a couple more pics for Mike," I said as I pulled my phone from my hoodie pocket.

Mike was out of town at an away game. He wasn't playing because of his concussion, but he was cheering his team on from inside the team box. I'd been sending him photos all night since it was Jax's first Halloween.

I snapped several pics and sent them to Mike and Jordyn, who was out with Brian at some bar tonight. She'd texted me earlier that the people watching in a club on Halloween was awesome when you were the only sober person in the room.

"Okie doke, lets put him to bed," I said when I was done.

Once we'd completed the routine, we grabbed the baby monitor and tiptoed out of the room to meet Karen and Manny in the kitchen. They'd just gotten out of their ghost costumes and make-up and were popping open a bottle of champagne.

"Congratulations on another year of couplehood," Shawn said enthusiastically as he raised his glass.

I clinked mine against his and his parents. Since it was a special occasion, I was having a couple small sips of bubbly.