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I scramble to put the last-minute details into place.

The store has been open for a little over a month and a half now.

Mandy has been married for a little over two months.

Today’s the day of the surprise baby shower I promised her in lieu of a wedding shower.

Between raising a ten-year-old girl largely on my own for the last month and a half since Travis has been in-season, attempting to create a tutoring schedule and start making a difference for kids at the bookstore, working with Ellie in the mornings, and planning a baby shower for my best friend, the days and weeks are passing in a flash as I attempt to wear all the hats.

But as I thank another guest for another pack of diapers and bring them over to the gift table, I can’t feel anything but gratitude.

I didn’t tell her it was today. I told her mom, who apparently can keep a secret, and she’s bringing her here in twenty minutes.

They didn’t register. Jaxon told her to put everything she wanted in a cart and use his credit card to check out, so that’s what she did. Instead of asking for gifts, I told guests to bring diapers in a variety of sizes and, you guessed it, a book for the baby.

We’re at her favorite restaurant, and it’s all women from our past and present, some friends who we worked with at Stratford together and some football wives who we’ve befriended over the last couple months as we stand together and cheer for our husbands often in the team owner’s suite.

Ellie was a key part of planning this shower with me. She loves events of any kind, but she’s especially good at anything related to football—ironic considering she knew nothing about the game before she married her husband even though her brother was one of his teammates.

She loves telling that story, and I love hearing it.

“She’s coming!” Jenn, one of the teachers still at Stratford, yells from her lookout by the window.

We all take our seats, including me, even though one of the centerpieces is a little crooked and a pack of diapers just fell off the table.

She won’t care.

She’s waddling a little when she walks into the room, and everyone yells, “Surprise!”

She freezes as her jaw drops, and her hand flies to her baby bump that seemed to pop out of nowhere overnight. “Oh my God! For real?” I’m grinning when her eyes land on me, and she narrows hers a little. “Was this your doing?”

“I had a lot of help,” I admit, and I sling my arm around Ellie, who’s sitting beside me. The two seats on my other side are reserved for Mandy and her mom.

It’s classy, and it’ll stay that way until it’s time to play some raunchy games after lunch in true Amanda Miller style.

She hasn’t spilled whether she’s having a boy or girl yet, but she knows.

We place our orders and wait for our lunches, and I elbow my bestie and lean in close while everyone around us chats merrily amongst themselves. “So are we having a Mandy Junior or a Jaxon Junior?”

“A Man—” She slaps a hand over her mouth as her eyes widen comically like some emoji. “I’m not telling!”

I giggle. “Right. But if I wanted to buy you a gift for the baby, I should get something pink?”

She pretends to zip her lips as she looks around to make sure nobody’s listening, and then she nods.

Aww, my best friend is having a baby girl.

After lunch, we play a rousing round of Pin the Sperm on the Egg as our blindfolded guests have to pin a little felt spermie onto the center of a rather large egg. Mandy can’t stop laughing as she watches everyone attempt to pin a sperm, including her mother.

We have an egg shaped pinata and a penis-shaped stick to hit it with, and each woman at the party takes a turn. This time I can’t stop laughing as these professional women I used to work with in dresses and heels take a dick and toss it at an egg to win what’s inside.

And when it finally bursts open, candy doesn’t come flying out. Instead, a variety of different sorts of condoms burst out of it along with some…toys. Ribbed for her pleasure, strawberry flavored, and even a cock ring spill onto the floor, and I watch as Mandy’s mom rushes to pick up one of the cock rings.

She looks at it then wiggles her eyebrows, and yeah. That’s a little more than I needed to know about Mrs. Miller.

We match celebrity dads to their babies, and then Mandy opens the books. She cries when she sees the final stack of board books and baby books, and I start to cry, too.

I can’t wait for my own little one that I can read books to. I can’t wait for Harper to read books to a little one, too.

My time will come, and I’ve finally come to terms with that. It’s okay not to rush things. It’ll happen when it’s supposed to. And if it doesn’t, I still feel so blessed that I have Harper in my life, and I’ll get to be an aunt to Mandy’s little one. I’m an aunt to my sister’s kids, too, but she’s still not talking to me and I haven’t had the time in the last couple months to try to mend what’s broken between us. Someday we’ll get there, but running a store even though Travis has others officially managing it has taken up all my time and energy…because I want it to. I want to make it the most amazing place it can be, and so far, it’s been nothing short of incredible.

After the games and the presents, we eat cake with one layer of pink and one layer of blue, and then the guests start to leave after wishing Mandy well and thanking me for organizing the fun party.

It was a beautiful way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Travis is out of town this weekend with the team, and he’ll be back tomorrow night.

And I for one can’t wait. Maybe it’ll be the perfect time to start trying for a little one of our own.