I didn’t hear him come downstairs so I jumped when he sat down next to me and put his arm around me. “You ready to go Lissa?”
“Yeah. Are you?”
“Not yet.” I gave him this weird look and he smirked. He stood up and leaned over the couch and kissed me and I obviously returned that kiss. It had to be an awkward position for him. If I hadn’t been six ½ months pregnant he just would have straddled me. When he pulled back he helped me stand up and said. “Now I’m ready.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, I could use another kiss in a position that isn’t that awkward.”
“I knew you were in an awkward position.”
“Just shut up and kiss me.”
“Yes sir.” I put my arms around his neck and gave him a deep kiss.
We arrived at the mall and went to baby store after baby store. We’ve been walking around the mall for about 2 hours. Nick stopped and said “Baby, I’m gonna run to the food court to get a snack. I’ll meet you in the toy store.”
“That’s fine sweetie.”
“Are you sure you’ll be ok while I’m gone?”
“Yes Nickolas. Now go get some food before you starve yourself to death. I don’t want to raise this kid alone and I don’t want to read in an obituary that the cause of death for Nick Carter was lack of food.”
“Very funny.”
“Go.”
“I’m going.”
I walked into the toy store and passed a CareBear display. I snickered at the memory that the display brought back. I was looking at the CareBears when I heard behind me. “Fancy meeting you here, and in the CareBear section.”
I turned around to come face to face with Florence, a girl from my college orientation group. “Florence, hi.”
“Oh my gosh. You’re pregnant.”
“6 ½ months.”
“Congratulations. Where’s your husband?”
“Oh he’s somewhere around this mall.”
“Oh, did you ditch him?”
“No, he went to get food.”
She nodded as her husband snuck up behind her. “Flo, why are we in the toy store?”
“Because I had to say hi to Lissa.”
Her husband walked to stand beside Florence. I recognized him immediately. He was Chris, my college orientation leader. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks Chris. So you two are together now?”
“Yes we are.”
“That’s cool.”
We were talking and laughing in the CareBear section when Nick returned. He walked over to us and protectively put his arm around me. I knew what he was thinking. “Relax Nicky. You’ve marked your territory quite well.” He relaxed a little but he was still a little tense. “I know these two from college.”
“We were just catching up and talking about the events in college that occurred.” Chris said.
“And reminiscing about the CareBear incident. Right Lissa?”
“You bet Flo.”
“The CareBear incident?”
“Yes Nicky, the CareBear incident. But I’ll explain that later. First I should probably introduce the three of you. Nick, that is Florence and Chris, Flo, Chris, this is my husband Nick.”
They each said nice to meet you and they joined us for the rest of our shopping spree.
“So what are you two having?”
Nick, being the smart ass that he is, replied. “A baby.”
Florence and Chris turned around when he said that and as I slapped him for that smart ass remark.
Florence and Chris laughed and said, “We gathered that much. Are you having a boy or a girl?”
I put my hand over Nick’s mouth. He was behaving for a couple minutes. I said. “We don’t…” Before I could finish my sentence, Nick licked my hand. “Nickolas.”
“What?” He said innocently.
“Behave.”
“I am behaving.”
I just laughed at him. “I’m gonna answer their question. You stay quite.” I turned back to my college friends “We don’t know what we are having. We decided to make it a secret. That’s why he made that smart ass remark about having a baby.”
Nick looked at me and said, “I’m a smart ass?”
“Yes, you are a smart ass.”
Florence and Chris were watching us interact. Chris asked, “So how did you two meet?”
“Well we were both in the mall alone and not paying attention to where we were going and we walked into each other and he spilt ICE COLD water on my WHITE shirt.”
“I felt bad for that so we went to some store in this mall so I could buy her a new shirt and we spent the rest of the day together.”
“Everything just happened from there.”
“That’s an interesting way of meeting your spouse.”
Nick and I laughed. Then Nick said, “I never do things the easy way.”
Florence and Chris agreed and Florence said. “No, I guess not.”
When we got home, Nick and I collapsed onto the couch. Who knew shopping could be so exhausting. We were relaxing in silence when Nick said. “The CareBear incident? Why am I thinking that I don’t wanna know what that is?”
“It’s nothing bad Nicky.”
“Would you like to explain it to me?”
“Sure are you ready to laugh?”
“It’s funny?”
“Oh quite funny. I was almost crying the day this happened. It was about my first room mate in college. Her name was Lisa Cooper. At the beginning of the semester, she was cool. She liked to drink but there were ways around that. We got along ok. Then she became quite inconsiderate. She pissed me off so bad one day that I completely lost control and when she was gone, I started crying. Then I had the whole weekend to myself. It was awesome. I was online talking to a few of my friends and I was like, ‘right now, I have this fantasy about suffocating my room mate with her pillow.’ Then she went and pissed me off further. I got back from my physics lab and she had placed a room mate agreement on my desk. I didn’t want to sign it so I threw it out. But she made me so mad. Then I was talking to another one of my friends and I was like ‘well, my fantasy of suffocating her with her pillow is still quite funny. After all, she has SO many of them. I could choose which one to suffocate her with. Then I was like, I can choose, one of her two pillows which she sleeps on, her body pillow, her “husband”, her couch pillows.’ Then I got dramatic and I was like, ‘OR I COULD SUFFOCATE HER WITH HER CAREBEAR PILLOW.’ At that point my little suffocation fantasy became known as ‘Death by CareBear.’ And to make it funnier, well maybe not funnier, but definitely more ironic, the CareBear that she had was the pink one with the rainbow on its stomach, which I soon after learned to be Cheer Bear. And well, that was the CareBear incident or Death by CareBear.”
I looked over to my husband to find him hysterical laughing. “Oh god, Lissa, that’s the best. You actually fantasized about suffocating your room mate w/ a CareBear?” He said in between his hysterical laughing. He had tears streaming down his face.
“Yep, every time she made me angry I would just picture her squirming under Cheer Bear.”
He was almost calm when I said that, then he became hysterical again. He tried to calm his laughing but every time he calmed down, he would look at me and start up again. “I’ll be back. That story has me laughing so hard that I think I’m about to piss in my pants, so I’ll be going to the bathroom now so I have no embarrassing accidents.”
When Nick returned, I looked at him but he was avoiding my eyes. “Well, did you make it on time?”
“Yes I did.”
He still wasn’t meeting my eyes. “Why won’t you meet my eyes?”
“Because If I do, then I’ll be hysterical laughing again and my stomach hurts too much from laughter to be able to handle laughing that hard right now.”
“Ok sweetie.” I was determined to get him to look in my eyes so I walked up to him and looked into his. Sure enough he started laughing so I used my one guaranteed way to shut him up. I kissed him. And of course, it worked. Although, it turned into a two hour make out session, but that’s ok. It’s allowed.
2 ½ Months Later
“Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Carter. You have a beautiful baby girl.”
“You did a wonderful job baby. I love you.”
“I love you too Nicky.”
“Lissa, I have an errand to run. I’ll be back later.”
“Ok. See you later.”
“Bye baby.”
Our little girl was a very healthy baby. After about two days in the hospital, we took our baby home. When we got inside, we took our sleeping daughter upstairs to the nursery. Nick had redecorated her nursery, so now it had a CareBear theme. All around the room, were giant CareBear pillows. In her crib, however, there were two small ones, Bedtime Bear (Blue with a crescent moon and star on his stomach) and Wish Bear (Aqua with a shooting star with a rainbow tail on her stomach.) I loved the room. My history with CareBears, didn’t matter.
After our daughter was asleep, I whispered, “Nicky, I think I’m gonna lay down. I’m still pretty tired.”
“Ok, baby. I’ll either be in here or downstairs.”
“K. I love you.”
“I love you too baby girl. Have a nice rest.”
“I will. Don’t you worry.”
I walked into the master bedroom. Sitting on the bed was a CareBear pillow. It was Love-a-Lot Bear (Pink with two intertwined hearts on her stomach.) I walked closer to the bed laughing at my husband. As I got closer, I realized that there was a piece of paper folded on the CareBear’s lap. I opened it and read. “Just don’t suffocate me with it:"
