25

                                    

                                          
These past two weeks have been weeks from hell.
Last Monday I locked my keys and wallet in the car TWICE. When I got to work I locked them in by accident and had to call Jordan to bring me my extra set of keys. Once I opened up the car, I grabbed my wallet and not the keys and ended up locking them in again. Thank God I had put the second pair of keys in my pocket otherwise I would've been in bigger trouble than I needed.
The following Thursday I forgot that I was experimenting with a new dessert and ended up leaving it in the oven for an hour when the baking time only called for twenty minutes. I always use a timer whenever baking, but it slipped my mind completely. The dessert ended up being completely black, smoke was pouring out the oven and I had to leave the windows open all day Thursday and Friday to get the smell of burnt out of the bakery.
The worst was the following week on Wednesday, though. Jordan and I decided to go pick some groceries up that evening so that we could actually have food in the house for the week since we've been doing so bad with ordering out lately. I was almost done checking out when Jordan said he was going to pop into another store for a quick minute to check something out, some new brand of vodka or something. Twenty minutes later I'm unpacking the groceries when I get a call from Jordan asking me where I am. I left him at the store! Obviously, I rushed back and apologized, telling him that all the wedding planning and the bakery and everything has been making me forget things lately, and he forgave me and actually found it pretty funny thankfully.
Not only have I been forgetful lately but I've been exhausted. I blamed it on the talk I had with Tony's mom the other day. Hearing what she said had really messed me up a little, making me feel even more confused than I already was. For a week straight I blamed her, but its was only when I started adding everything up that I realized what was happening. I also realized that I needed to talk to someone. Dena.
I take a deep breathe in and stand up, ready to go face my problems. Or, at least start to. This wont even come close to solving my problems, but I'm hoping that talking about it will at least ease my mind a little.
Dena and I haven't had a real talk since that day that she tried to tell me to stay away from Tony. She was at my engagement party and we did have a couple of minutes together then, but we haven't really really talked in a long time. 
"Hey." I say as I walk into the kitchen. It's 5:30pm on a Friday so everybody else has cleared out for the night which is what I was counting on. I've been checking her schedule since Tuesday just to make sure I wasn't reading it wrong because I knew this would be the best time to talk to her.
She glances up, her face showing that she's a little surprised. Her tone doesn't let on to the fact that she finds this weird, it's cheery as always. "Hey, I thought you'd be out by now."
I furrow my brows. "I'm usually here at this time."
"Not lately. You've been taking a much-needed step back." she says, glancing up at me with a smile. "Finally. You needed to."
"My paperwork would disagree with you." I joke. I've gotten more of a hold over since I had to spend a week straight doing it. I vowed I would never let it get that bad again.
Dena waves me off. "You can manage. It's just good to see you spend less time here and more time in the real world."
"Yeah, there's been a lot going on." I say. I pull myself up onto one of the free counters beside her. I make a mental note to clean it thoroughly when I get off it. "That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about."
"If you're going to fire me at least let me finish this order." she says with a grin. 
She's been working on another custom platter order, this one is caramel themed. There's mini caramel brownies, caramel fudge, caramel brittle, and she's in the middle of cutting some caramel and chocolate dessert bars. It looks so good that I want to take everything from her and eat it. But I came here to talk, not to eat.
I roll my eyes at her. We both know I'd never fire her. "Okay, fine, but hurry up."
"You cannot rush perfection." she says to me. 
"That is not true." I tell her. "I once made a cheesecake in 13 minutes. I had completely forgotten to make it for my friends' 30th birthday. I ended up waking up in the dead of the night and rushing to the kitchen, making everything in a panic."
Dena laughs at me, a big hearty laugh. "The worst part is I can picture it so easily too."
"I wish I could say that was the only time too."
She laughs then, a genuine laugh and I can't help but realize how much I missed that sound. She lays down the rest of the custom order she was working on and admires it for a moment before pushing it to the side and turning to look at me. In a split second her facial features turn serious quick, now ready to talk me through my problems.  "So, tell me."
"Jordan proposed to me." I tell her. 
She grins at me, genuinely happy for me. Dena and I first met when Jordan and I had started going out, so she's really seen us evolve into where we're at now. Ever since the first time she met him she said that he was a good guy and was "the one" for me. She said she could tell just by how I looked whenever he was around.
"That's amazing, Ava." she says, gushing. "I'm so fucking happy for you guys."
"There's more..." I say. I take a deep breath in for this one.
Nervously I bite my lip. Once it's out, it's out. I've been hiding it from myself, not ready to really come to terms with it, but I can't keep doing that for forever.
"I'm pregnant?" I say, the statement sounding more like a question than anything else.
She stills, her hand hovering over a dessert bar she was about to place on the tray. "Are you sure?"
I nod. "I've been forgetting everything lately and I've been so tired and hungry. I thought it was stress but then I realized I haven't had my period in a long time, like way longer than it should've been. So I took a test, well, I took three actually to be sure and all of them said the same thing. Pregnant."
Dena drops everything and comes over to me, slamming into me as she throws her arms happily around me. "Congratulations! Oh my God, this is so exciting!"
When she feels me not reciprocating, she draws back, her arms still on my sides. "What's wrong? Is there something wrong with the baby? Is Jordan not happy?"
I look down at her, my stomach feeling uneasy and not just for pregnancy reasons. I've never felt this nervous in my entire life. She stares back at me, her face confused for a couple of seconds, but then suddenly her face changes for the worst.
"Oh God, Ava." she says. "It's not Jordans."