Page 160 of Dirty Like Dylan

In the end, Jessa won a giant gift pack of teas, chocolates, bath salts and other indulgences, for making the most correct guesses. And Maggie won a bottle of wine, provided by Katie, for being voted the absolute cutest baby, with her big gray eyes and honey-colored skin and her little round face. She was wearing a lace dress and her hair was in a bow in the photo.

“Sweetie,” Roni told her, “I don’t say this to women, believe me. But you need to procreate. Don’t waste those adorable genes.”

The rest of us agreed.

Maggie left that alone, pouring herself another mimosa.

Jessa opened her gifts, the most impressive of which was a whole collection of beautiful baby clothes knit by Dolly. Second to that was the all-terrain stroller wired with its own sound system, from Zane; the girls who knew him best seemed the most surprised by his thoughtfulness. Elle actually texted him to tell him what a good job he’d done, but Katie brought us up to speed. “He just paid the bill,” she said. “Maggie picked it out.”

Again, Maggie just drank her mimosa and shrugged.

Afterwards, the girls wanted to keep the party going, and since I wasn’t really in any hurry to head back to Dylan’s and walk into whatever conversation he and Ashley might’ve been having, I went along.

We all went for dinner downtown. Then we sent Dolly home in a cab, and the rest of us went back to Jessa’s place in North Vancouver. We weren’t done celebrating; in fact, we were just getting going as the post-dinner drinks kicked in. But Jessa was so very pregnant, she needed to get off her feet and, as she put it, “put on stretchier pants.”

When we arrived at Jessa’s house, Maggie took us straight into the giant “party room” downstairs, where Summer did her DJ thing. She threw on a remix of Halsey’s “Bad at Love” and I glanced over at her; she wasn’t looking at me, at all, so she definitely didn’t mean to call me out with the song. But I felt pretty exposed. How had this become the theme song of my life?

Fortunately, no one seemed to realize it.

Katie poured the wine, and more sparkling apple juice for Jessa and Elle. Dimly, I wondered where I was going to sleep tonight and how I was going to get there, but the thought vanished with my first sip and never returned.

There was dancing, drinking and of course, girl talk. Brody wasn’t home; apparently, he’d gone on an ice fishing trip way up north with Jude, to give Jessa girl time. And without any men around, the conversation definitely took a different turn than it would have. Eventually, maybe inevitably, it landed on men.

Specifically, it landed on me and men. As in, the two men I was currently involved with.

Everyone seemed incredibly curious about my relationship with Dylan and Ashley, and I couldn’t blame them. But I really didn’t feel like voicing my feelings—at all—or even acknowledging them right now.

I knew I was falling for Dylan. Head-over-heels and hard. Scary enough on its own, if you were as bad at love as I was, but on top of that, I knew I didn’t feel the same way about Ashley. Which was natural, probably, but also fucking sucked.

I couldn’t even bear to fully face it myself, or relive the painful conversation with Ashley from today, so I definitely wasn’t going to open up about it here.

Instead, I gave the girls a vague response and a smile, and just let them assume whatever kinky shit they wanted to assume about the three of us. Then I helped myself to another glass of wine, passed the bottle off to Katie, and turned the conversation over to Jessa’s girlfriend, Roni. She seemed pretty game to talk about her love life. In vivid detail.

As it turned out, Roni had been seeing some hot biker guy who liked to fuck her on his Harley. And a few of the girls, including me, were pretty curious about the, um, physical logistics involved in that. Which Roni was more than happy to divulge.

Eventually, Maggie left the party with some flimsy excuse about having to be up early, even though the girls all boo’d her as she left. Roni ended up rubbing Jessa’s feet for her—grudgingly—on the couch. Summer and Elle were spinning music and chatting across the room, while me, Katie, her sister, Becca, and her best friend, Devi, ended up in a pile of cushions on the floor, talking.

Devi asked Katie how she was doing, which I discovered was partly because Katie and Elle, her husband’s ex, weren’t exactly close; they were civil and seemed to share a mutual respect, but they weren’t exactly friends. Also, it was because we were at a baby shower for Jessa, Elle was pregnant too, and apparently, Katie wanted to be.

“We’re trying,” Katie explained to me. “But it’s not happening.”

“You’re so young, though,” I told her, “and so healthy.”

“You have tons of time,” her sister agreed.

“If you want it, it’ll happen for you,” I said. I fully meant it when I said it, but really, what the fuck did I know about it?

It seemed to make Katie feel good, though. She gave me one of her sweet smiles and said, “Thank you, Amber.” And I just hoped I’d done my duty as a friend. The way Devi gave me a nod and clinked her glass to mine, I figured I’d said the right thing.

“Fucking right, it’ll happen,” Devi said. “Don’t stress about it, babe.”

“Besides,” I added, deciding to go that extra mile, “you and Jesse are gonna have like the world’s most adorable baby—”

“Uh… nobody panic…”

I stopped mid-sentence as Jessa shuffled into the room. I hadn’t even noticed her leave. Everyone looked over at her and went really still; she had a hand on her belly and looked kinda pale.

Katie and Roni got to their feet, and Summer turned the music down so we could all hear Jessa when she said, “… but my water just broke.”

---