Having Your Jelly Baby

19: Homos

'Oi Adam, stop hassling customers before I tell Julie,' one blonde haired girl said as she walked past, staring him down for a second with a roll of her eyes, talking about snitching to who I presumed was their manager.

The guy grimaced, telling us earnestly, 'She's been a pain in my butt ever since I started working here a few months ago. Don't even know what her problem is, man.'

I smiled into my hand as I saw the girl glance back at Adam, her eyes so clearly conveying just how deeply in like she was with the guy, her frustration with his clear blindness to it manifesting itself as slightly bitchy anger at him.

At Drew's insistence that it was all right, Adam handed me his phone, his arm curving across Drew's shoulders as he flashed the peace sign by Drew's left ear and I snapped a picture of them.

'Very cute,' I said with a smile, as Adam gratefully said a thank you to me and Drew before he walked away, still oblivious to the way the blonde haired girl gazed at him from where she stood behind the counter filled with strikingly colourful items from their bakery (although I did wonder if colours that clearly artificial were legal). .

'So...' Drew said after a few minutes that were spent silently eating. I was absolutely starving since it was half past ten, and had subsequently shoveled as much scrambled egg into my mouth as humanly possible, me too focused on eating to care about how savage I must have looked.

'Yeah?' I said.

Drew hesitated. 'I need to apologise properly,' he said finally.

I shook my head and held up my hands, almost as if in surrender, 'Drew, you don't need to do that-'

'No,' he interrupted, waving his fork before he realized what he was doing and set it down. 'I do. I was a twat for going ahead and making a public statement without your permission, Nove. It's your life I've officially gone and turned into a piece of public property and that wasn't fair on you. I should have understood you better, and I never meant to hurt you.'

'Ah don't, Drew. It's all right,' I said quietly, mortifyingly feeling my eyes flood with tears that made me look down in embarrassment. His hand reached up, and he wiped away a pain in the arse stray tear that had decided staying in my eyes was way too mainstream, with his thumb.

'And I bloody hope we're still getting married because I lo- because I've really missed you, you know,' Drew said quickly, as if he wanted to say it before he could think twice about it. 'So... are we friends again?' he asked jokingly, reaching for my left hand which he linked his fingers with, pressing a kiss to the back and nudging the silver engagement ring with his nose teasingly.

'Yeah yeah yeah, whatever,' I said in response.

An hour later, after we finished eating, paid our bill and waved goodbye to Drew's greatest fan Adam, to whom I quickly whispered quietly on our way out, 'That girl - she honestly just fancies you, you know,' we left for the park, where we hung out for a while like a couple of angsty youths.

Neither of us were the most elderly of people (I was only 22, Drew a few months shy of 27), but something about being around him as we sat on the swings, made me feel like I was on that high you got when you were a younger teenager, experiencing your first summer romance with the gorgeous guy on the same Mediterranean cruise as you, and where the only things you actually knew about him were his first name and the colour of his hair.

But this was different, because as the sun hit our tilted back faces and we kicked out our legs to get higher, I knew something about this was real.

'Shall I push you?' Drew asked with a grin, his feet making a dragging noise as his long legs kicked the floor in order to stop his swing from moving, and he stood up.

I was still in midair as he inched closer, shrieking but laughing, 'No! No!' as he gently started to push me higher and higher until I felt dizzy with euphoria.

The park was completely empty since it was midday on a Friday, our only company the ducks that waddled over by the lake a solid few hundred yards away, which meant their sounds were muted by the rushing of the lake water lapping anyway.

'God,' Drew sighed wistfully as we finally ventured back through the park to the car, our hips bumping together as we walked, 'I haven't to a park in years.'

'How many years, old man?' I nudged him.

Drew paused for a second, thinking and calculating as he buried his hands in the pockets of his jeans. 'Mmm, about fourteen years, I think? Last time I can remember was before I went off to boarding school when I was around thirteen.'

I blinked in surprise and stopped, making Drew turn back towards me with a questioning look on his face. 'We'll come to the park all the time with Jelly, I promise,' I said, shaking my head. 'All the time,' I repeated.

He smiled, but it tore my heart in two to think about the lonely little boy Drew must have been.

Taking one of his hands out of his pockets, he held it out to me. 'Come on,' he said.

We made it to the hospital with ten minutes to spare before my appointment time, the waiting room filled with another couple and a very pregnant, frightened looking young girl who looked like she was with her mother. I gave her an encouraging smile.

'Nova Hart,' the doctor called eventually. Drew and I both stood up and followed her into her brightly lit yellow room with its linoleum floor, that clinical smell lingering and making me scrunch my nose at Drew.

After the doctor asked me a few questions, flipping through my medical notes and writing things down, checking the usual things like my blood pressure, she pointed me towards the ultrasound machine beside the bed which she told me to hop up on.

'And did you want to find out the gender of the baby?' she asked as she sat down on the high chair beside the machine.

Drew perched his delightful derriere on the chair beside me as I lifted my blouse and cami up to expose my bump, wincing as I felt the cold gel substance begin to glide across the skin there, but it slowly began to warm up.

Looking at Drew, we both nodded at the same time.

'Yes please,' I said, turning back to the doctor and feeling a rush of excitement sear through me as Drew and I craned our necks to look at the blue-y black and white image on the screen which the doctor had tilted towards us.

Fiddling with the machine for a few seconds, a beam then lit up her face.

'You're having a girl.'