Page 110 of Possessive Ink

“Thank you so much for this, Jill, and congratulations,” Cora says, hugging the woman with one arm while she holds her baby with her other.

Once Jill has left, Cora takes a fabric sling out of her diaper bag and positions Jerico in it, unfastening a clip on her dress and freeing her boob so the baby can latch onto it.

“Okay, split up. Everyone pull two dresses for Lemon to try on, then we can narrow down styles from there,” Cora orders, cradling the baby through the sling as she strides forward into the aisles of rails.

The next twenty minutes are insane. Knight stands by the door like he’s guarding us from some unknown threat while the rest of us search the sea of rails for dresses for me to try on. By the time I make my way to the dressing room, with a dress over each arm, almost all the others are there too, and there’s a rail full of all different styles of dresses for me to try on.

Drawing back the curtain on the dressing room, Cora gestures for me to go inside. “Lemon, get undressed. I need to put Jerico down, then I’ll come in and help you, if that’s okay?”

“I’ll hold him,” Knight says, his gruff voice garnering all of our attention.

“Would you mind? I should have brought his stroller with us because I don’t like him to sit in his car seat for too long,” Cora says.

Striding forward, Knight takes the baby from Cora like he’s cradling a priceless heirloom or a fragile bomb. Once he settles the tiny bundle into his huge arms, we all fall silent, watching the stoic and kind of scary guy stare down at the tiny baby.

“God, that’s hot,” Leo whisper-yells.

“Yep, if he hadn’t already knocked me up, this is probably how I’d get pregnant,” Octy says on a happy sigh.

Rolling her eyes, Cora huffs. “We all have hot guys who look even hotter holding babies. Right now, we’re looking for a wedding dress.”

“I don’t have a hot guy,” Leo tells her.

“Do you want a hot guy?” Octy asks her.

“Maybe, or a hot girl. I’m not picky,” Leo says, winking playfully at me.

The first five dresses I try on are hard nos. “I look like a birthday cake,” I tell everyone as I shuffle out of the changing room in the huge princess dress someone picked for me to try.

“Oh wow, that’s…big,” James says diplomatically.

“So big,” I agree.

“I thought you were making your own dress,” Tori says.

Sighing, I try to tame the huge skirt, then stop, twisting my hands together on top of the net monstrosity. “I tried to. I designed the dress I wanted, but I’m not a seamstress. I can use a sewing machine, and I have sewn some of my own dresses, but I only know the basics, and that doesn’t stretch to making a wedding dress. I made a pattern, and when I sewed the basic design out of calico, the bodice fit me, but when I made it again out of the fabric I planned to use for the dress, it was too small, and my boobs were spilling out everywhere and not in a sexy way.”

“Do you think you measured it wrong? It seems a shame not to wear your own design,” Verity says.

“I checked it a hundred times, and the measurements are right. It should fit, but it doesn’t, and I have no idea why. I’ve wasted hundreds of dollars’ worth of fabric because I’ve messed up the stitching or because it wrinkles instead of lying flat. I feel like I’m letting Atticus down by buying a dress, but yesterday I just lost it. I cried all over him and told him we should cancel the wedding. Honestly, trying to sew this dress is making me feel like I’m losing my mind. Yesterday I was crying and then shouting and then crying again in the space of five minutes.”

“That sounds like me when I’m pregnant.” Cora laughs.

“God, me too. I felt like I was going crazy,” Bonnie agrees.

“Yep, no one warns you about how insane all the hormones make you feel,” James says, rubbing her pregnant belly affectionately.

“Jesus, if women were actually told the realities of being pregnant, I bet the world’s population would drop dramatically,” Cora says. “The sickness, the aches, the constant need to pee.”

“Sore boobs that seem to double in size almost overnight, not to mention how big your nipples get,” Bonnie adds.

The floor feels like it drops from beneath me as my friends talk about the worst bits that no one warns you about before you get pregnant. But I barely hear them through the buzzing in my ears.

Bigger boobs.

Crazy emotions.

When was my period due again? I’m on the birth control shot, and it’s up to date…right?