Round 2: Anatole

Amara Anatole is an Adult.

* * *

Amara was doing well at her new job. She liked the better pay, and no longer having to deal with angry customers. Maybe there was something to this career advancement thing after all. She kept studying programming on her own, just in case another job opportunity came up – although the idea of leaving the company she’d been working at for so long made her much more uneasy than the promotion had. In the meantime, she found that she had learned enough to make a basic browser plugin, and even made a few bucks off it.

But with all the extra work she’d been doing, her social life had started to suffer. She hardly ever invited friends over after work anymore. There just weren’t enough hours in the day – if she went too long without working out, she got antsy, and after a run and a couple of hours of working on programming, she was too tired to think about inviting a friend over.

She found a local forum and started chatting online with someone there. His name was Payton, and she was pretty sure she’d actually run into him at the gym a couple of times. It was good to have someone to talk to while she worked – it helped her focus. And if the conversations got a bit flirty from time to time, well, there was nothing wrong with that.

At least that was what she thought until he showed up at her house one day without warning.

Against her better judgment, she let him in. He hadn’t meant anything creepy by it, he claimed – he had just been out for a run, when he’d passed her house and had figured he’d stop by. He hadn’t realized how odd it could look until it was too late. She wasn’t sure whether to believe him. Would anyone actually say, “I stopped by your house because I’m a creepy stalker from the internet?”

Still, she couldn’t deny that some part of her was attracted to him, or at least to the way he had sounded in their online conversations. And hadn’t Stella told her she should find a boyfriend, one she could imagine marrying someday?

Although she was pretty sure Stella hadn’t meant someone from the internet who would randomly show up on her doorstep.

But really, where were her other prospects? All the other men in Wanderer’s Cove were either old or married. And there was certainly no one interesting at work.

Knowing it was almost certainly a bad decision, she asked him on a date.

Almost as soon as their date had begun, she regretted it. He barely seemed interested in anything she said. Being out around other people seemed to make him uncomfortable. And he glared every time another man so much as looked in her direction. He was like a walking example of why meeting people online was a bad idea.

But online he had been so friendly and engaging, and so easy to talk to. He had quickly become one of her closest friends. Maybe she should at least give it one date’s worth of effort.

And then she met Knox.

He wasn’t even sitting at their table. But when she and Payton started talking to another couple at the club, who she suspected were having about as good a time as she and Payton were, Knox kept interjecting himself into the conversation, and she quickly learned that he loved computers as much as she did. Even more, in fact. He knew all the latest games, and was clearly prepared to talk about them for hours on end.

  

He was also much too young for her. And on a date with someone else. And, of course, so was she.

She tried to give Payton the attention he deserved. She really did. But she and Knox were drawn to each other in a way she couldn’t explain, and she didn’t want to resist it. Not to go back to her boring date with someone she knew she probably shouldn’t be with anyway.

In the end, Payton went home early – and Amara and Knox went home together.

At first she was afraid she would never see him again. But those fears quickly proved to be unfounded. Soon the two of them were seeing each other almost every day.

Amara knew Stella had advised her to find someone she could imagine marrying someday. Which obviously meant someone closer to her own age. Definitely someone older than Knox, who had turned out to be even younger than she had thought – he had only just graduated high school! If she wanted to start to grow up, this relationship definitely wasn’t the way to do it.

Next to how she felt when she and Knox were together, though, none of that seemed to matter.

But as she left the bathroom one morning after yet another bout of nausea, she realized that maybe she had been worrying about all the wrong things. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so concerned about their ages. Maybe she should have been more worried about remembering her birth control.

She told herself she couldn’t possibly be pregnant – right up until she saw the result of her pregnancy test.

Even then, she had a hard time believing it. Although she certainly didn’t consider herself old, she also knew that she was no longer young by any stretch of the imagination – but deep inside she still thought of herself as closer to Knox’s age. Despite the recent changes she had made in her life, she was still basically living like someone who had just graduated. She wasn’t the kind of person who could take care of a child.

And Knox? He was practically a child himself. He didn’t even have a job. Surely this wasn’t what he wanted for his life – and even if it was, did she want to live that life with him? Did she want to create a family with someone who wasn’t even old enough to know who he was yet?

Everything she did reminded her of all the ways her life would change once she had a baby. When she made herself dinner, she thought about how once she had a child to take care of, she would have to eat something besides cereal for every meal. Going to bed reminded her that she would need something bigger than this one-bedroom house – and how was she supposed to afford that?

Unwilling to admit to herself that this was actually happening, she didn’t tell Knox until she couldn’t keep her growing belly hidden any longer.

He didn’t take it well.

But after a minor meltdown, he offered to move in with her to help her take care of the baby. He didn’t say anything about marriage, but to be honest, she was relieved – yes, she had been thinking about finding somebody she could consider marrying someday, but now that the possibility was so close, she wasn’t at all sure that it was what she wanted. Or that Knox was the person she wanted it to happen with, for that matter.

For his part, Knox wasn’t at all averse to the idea of marrying Amara someday. Just… not now. He was only just out of high school; marriage wasn’t anywhere close to being on the horizon. He wanted time. He wanted to romance Amara the way she deserved. Jumping straight into marriage would be like skipping all the best parts.

And now there was a baby on the way. He wasn’t at all sure how he felt about that. He wasn’t even sure whether he wanted kids. He had figured he had plenty of time to think about that.

But sometimes, like when he would tuck Amara in at night, he knew that as long as she was in his life, everything would be all right. This was exactly where he was meant to be.

Living with Knox was hard for Amara to get used to. For one thing, he had a tendency to get up and make salads first thing in the morning. For breakfast! Her cereal routine was completely thrown off.

But the salads were the least of it. She hadn’t lived with another person since she had moved out of her parents’ house. She was used to following her own routines, living on her own schedule, and not needing to think about sharing her life with another person. Now, all of a sudden, she had somebody else in her house, living alongside her. So far it wasn’t affecting their relationship – in fact, she was surprised at how little they were fighting, considering the stress and the move and the pregnancy hormones. But between Knox moving in and the baby growing inside her, she was beginning to feel like her life didn’t belong to her anymore. She had lost all control, and it had all happened so fast.

The closer she got to her due date, the more afraid she became. Sharing her fears with Knox was no help – he wasn’t feeling any better than she was. What were the two of them supposed to do with a baby?

Amara was feeling even more helpless now that it was beginning to look like she would be the sole provider. She kept pushing Knox to find a job, but he didn’t seem to be working very hard at it. He spent most of his time all day playing video games, which began to annoy her despite herself.

As Amara got closer and closer to her due date, Knox decided he wanted to take her out on one last date before the baby came. They went out to the museum together – normally neither of them were very into art, but there was a new video game art exhibit that Knox had been wanting to see, and as clumsy as she felt with her giant belly, Amara was grateful for anything that didn’t involve dancing.

Their date left both of them in higher spirits. For the first time, they began to feel like maybe this was something they could do after all.

Still, Knox found himself needing to talk his fears out with somebody, and he didn’t want to dump it all on Amara, who was stressed enough already. He started talking to his high school friend Autumn a lot more. She got it – she couldn’t imagine getting married at their age, and didn’t know if she ever wanted kids. She was a patient listener, and talking to her always made Knox feel better.

Their friendship was entirely innocent, but he still downplayed how much time he was spending with Autumn to Amara. He didn’t want to risk her getting the wrong idea.

Amara kept expecting that eventually she would start feeling ready. Instead, she woke up one night with the certainty that the baby was about to come whether she was ready to be a parent or not.

And several hours of labor later, she learned that there was a very good reason she hadn’t felt ready.

Arden, Elijah, and Xandra Anatole – two girls and a boy. Somehow her doctor had neglected to tell her that she was having triplets…