We get to the door to find Henley and Noah standing before us. Henley is barely able to control her excitement and barges past her best friend before throwing her arms around me. “You’re home,” she squeals.
“Damn straight, I’m home,” I grin, spinning her around before helping her find her feet.
She moves aside as Noah comes in and takes her place, pulling me into his arms and clapping his hand against my back. “It’s good to see you,” he chimes. “How the fuck have you been?”
“Who cares about that?” Henley laughs, looking up at me. “You’re having a baby. I’m going to be an aunt!”
I look across to Tully who can’t wipe the grin off her face as she pushes her brother and me out of the doorway so she can close the door. “Would you all stop crowding my door?” she says. “The neighbors are bound to complain about the noise.”
“What are you talking about?” Henley says, scrunching her face at Tully. “You have great neighbors.”
Tully’s face flames. “Yeah, that was until Rivers and I kind of kept them up all night.”
Noah shakes his head and walks towards Tully’s couch, dropping down and pulling a stick figure cushion out from behind his back. “I can’t unhear that,” he says. “I liked it better when you were with Spencer and kept all that shit to yourself.”
“What can I say?” Tully laughs, practically skipping towards her brother and dropping down beside him. “I’m happy and when I’m happy the whole fucking world needs to hear about it.”
“Shit,” he groans, sliding down on the couch. “I can’t even pretend to be upset about that. This is only the beginning, isn’t it?”
Tully looks across at me with a beaming smile. “It sure is.”
I drop down on the opposite couch and my pack instantly falls into mindless chatter. I can’t help but feel that I’ve finally come full circle. My group is together again and this time, nothing is standing in the way of us being the incredible four that we used to be.
I never thought I’d be so happy to have normal back, except this is a much better version of normal. I have my girl by my side with my child growing in her stomach. I no longer have to worry about where I’m going to sleep at night, if I’m going to accidentally run into my father on the streets, or who’s keeping Tully warm at night. No, I’ll never have to worry about that shit ever again. This new version of normal is more than I could ever ask for. It’s fucking perfect and for the first time in my life, I’m content.
I have a home now, well sort of. My father is in prison and my mother is right where she should be. And Tully; the most important one of all, is finally standing by my side, willing to live the rest of her life with me, willing to bare my children, and love me until our dying days.
How could I want more in life?
There’s only a slight chance that over next few years that I could be deployed again, but I’ve done my time. I’ve served my four years and now I have another four years of reserve, but if Tully wanted me to, I’d leave the military. I hope she doesn’t, though. I know going away sucks and will be hard, especially with a child to think about, but the Military is my home, just as much as Tully is.
The Military offered me the freedom that I couldn’t find anywhere else and no matter what, I’m always going to be grateful for that.
“So,” Henley says, stealing my attention. “Has Tully shown you all the progress photos of her bump growing?”
I grin as I look to Tully before glancing down at the bump she’s currently cradling. “No, we’ve, uh…been a little preoccupied.”
Noah groans again as Tully shoots to her feet and grabs a folder off her dining table. Not a second later, she comes to sit down on my lap and I can’t help but rest my hands against her thighs as she opens the folders and starts showing me every tiny little detail.
She starts right from the beginning where she first discovered her pregnancy. She was at work and the smell of the flowers was overbearing and making her nauseous. She came home early, laid down in bed and after watching a movie on Netflix, she realized that her period was late. She instantly took a test, and the very next page has a picture of the positive piss stick.
I flip through each page, learning about her doctor visits, and taking in the ultrasound pictures. I watch with emotions that I can’t quite make sense of as I see her bump steadily growing.
I focus on a photo of Tully at four months. She stands in Noah and Henley’s living room, but I can’t shake the feeling that something looks different than the last time I was in that room and then it clicks. I look up at Noah. “You got a new couch.”