Post by beanygirl on Mar 11, 2006 22:30:06 GMT 10
This is a fic set in the future about the luby baby's birthday...on the 4th of July. My grandfathers birthday is on the 4th of July and when I was a little kid, my grandfather had all of the kids in my family convinced that all of the parades, cookouts, and fireworks were for his birthday. So this story is kind of a spin off of that idea.
This is my first time ever writing a fanfiction, so let me know what you think! I hope everyone likes it!
Nearly 9 months after that one fateful night, I finally got to hold the one thing that would forever shape my world. That one thing was my daughter, Julia Lauren Kovac, born on the Fourth of July. Despite her knowledge of the truth as she grew up, I would forever tell her that the parades, the parties, and the fireworks were all for her; all in celebration of the day she was born. As she grew older, my reminder each year that it was all for Julia Lauren Kovac, eventually grew tiresome to her, and the amazement I could once read in her eyes turned instead to more of an expression of annoyance marked by an exaggerated roll of her dark brown eyes. It didn’t matter to me whether she believed it as she grew older though, because in my heart, it was all true. The Fourth of July, beginning the day she was born, was a day of celebration, all for my little girl.
I was terrified up until the day she was born. There were so many questions, concerns, and “what ifs” that played over and over again in my head like a broken record. The minute I saw her though, all the fear was erased. The tiny baby was my daughter, and I loved her more at that moment than I have ever loved anything in my entire life. The love erased my fears and my worries, and I knew it would all be ok. No matter what, I would always have her and she would always have me.
Two days after she was born, Luka and I took her home. Going home seemed to quickly kill the certainty I had felt only two days before, during her entrance into the world. This was a whole new ballgame for me. A baby? Who decided I should be completely responsible for another human being? What if she choked while she was sleeping? What if I didn’t hear her cry while I was sleeping? Eventually I calmed down a little, and learned I could do it; I could be a mother to a daughter; I could be responsible for this little person. I did have Luka there to help me through it all, but I have to say, he was a nervous wreck right there with me at the beginning. Somehow we did it though. We managed to get through the first night, then the first week, and soon the first month, and so on. We were raising a little girl, and doing a pretty good job. Might I also add that I soon learned the mother-daughter dynamic wasn’t so scary when done correctly.
After Julia’s first birthday, we went to Croatia. Luka and I decided we’d like Julia to know about her father’s past as she grew up, and we wanted her to be able to think of Croatia as another home. We stayed for 3 weeks during that first visit, and it was wonderful to finally get to see where Luka had grown up and where he had spent the first part of his life. He and I were married on the beach on the Dalmation Coast. It was a small ceremony, a priest, me, him, Julia, and a small group consisting of Luka’s family. We also had Julia baptized in the small church that Luka had been baptized in. Following that first year, we returned every summer to Croatia for a month.
Julia’s first word was “Da,” and from the moment she uttered the word, she had Luka completely wrapped around her finger. Luka and I had got a 2 bedroom apartment in the city and moved in together a couple of months before Julia was born. We rather quickly outgrew the apartment though, and bought a house in the suburbs, the October after Julia turned three. It had 4 bedrooms, a living room, a family room, a rec room in the basement, a pool, and a huge backyard. I was fairly certain we were crazy for getting a house that large; what were with going to do with all the room? We managed to find enough stuff and visitors to fill the house quite well though. We also found a rather large dog to help fill up the house. Yes, a dog; a huge golden retriever in fact. And it was all thanks to Luka, who got the dog, a puppy at the time, without ever mentioning a single thing to me. It was Julia’s present for her 4th birthday.
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Mumma?”
“What’s the matter baby?”
“I can’t sleep anymore.”
I turned my head to the nightstand to read that it was 6:45.
“Ugh, Julia, it’s too early to get up.”
“But daddy’s up already.”
“Why can’t you sleep baby?” I said as I patted the bed next to me for her to crawl up beside me.
“I’m too excited.”
“But birthday girls need lots of sleep. Especially when they have to stay up late to watch their fireworks.” I knew that if she got up this early, we’d never make it until 9:15 when the local fireworks were scheduled to start.
“Can I sleep with you?”
“Since it’s what the birthday girl wants, I guess I’ll have to allow it this once,” I said kissing the top of her head and pulling her closer to me. Within minutes we were both sound asleep again.
What seemed to be a few minutes later, but actually turned out to be a couple of hours later, I was awoken to a high-pitched squeal followed by high-pitched barking coming from the foot of the bed. I opened my eyes to see Julia beside me on her knees, wide-eyed, with a huge smile across her face, and she was squealing with delight. I looked towards the foot of the bed to see a golden ball of fur with a pink ribbon around its neck, romping playfully and barking occasionally in response to Julia. Behind the yellow ball of fur, stood Luka, with a huge grin on his face, staring intently at me.
“Happy Birthday Princess!” Luka said to Julia.
“You did not,” was the only thing that escaped from my lips. He just smiled back at me.
“You did not,” I said again.
“Daddy? Is she for me?” Julia said with nothing but sheer delight in her voice.
“Yep pumpkin,” Luka started before I interrupted.
“Whoa, Luka, you did not do this!”
“Abby, every 4 year old girl needs a puppy.”
“Mummy, I NEEEEED a puppy!”
“Luka,” I said, as I got out of bed and headed towards the bathroom, “you are in SO much trouble.” I followed the comment up by slamming the door shut behind me.
A few minutes later I emerged from the bathroom after somewhat collecting myself, and found Luka, Julia, and the fur ball rolling around on the floor of the bedroom.
“Miss Julia lets go get some breakfast,” I said as I approached her.
“But mumma, I wanna play with the puppy.”
“I know baby, but the puppy will still be here after you eat breakfast,” I said scooping her up off the floor.
As I carried her out of the bedroom and headed down the steps and into the kitchen, we decided we should have Belgian waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. A birthday breakfast fit for a princess (of course). When we got down to the kitchen I set Julia down on the island countertop, kept my arms wrapped around her, and bent slightly so our noses and foreheads were touching.
“Happy Birthday my baby girl,” I whispered.
“Today’s my day?” she whispered back to me.
“Today is all for you. The Fourth of July is all for Julia Lauren Kovac”
“What are we going to do for my birthday?”
“Well, let’s start with your birthday breakfast, and then we have get dressed and go to the parade, and then we have your party, and then tonight we have fireworks.” The smile on Julia’s face grew with every passing second. I loved it. I loved the smile, the happiness that twinkled in her eyes, I loved it all. I kissed her on her tiny nose and whispered to her while again going back to being nose to nose.
“I love you baby.”
Julia wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled her face up to my ear.
“I love you mumma.”
I wished we could stay like this all day, just me and her, and not a care in the world. I knew that wasn’t really feasible though, and as she pulled away from our tightly wrapped hug, I set her down on the floor and watched her race towards Luka, who had just entered the kitchen holding the controversial golden ball of fur that I knew I’d never be able to take away from Julia. Luka passed the puppy off to Julia, telling her to take it into the living room to play until breakfast was ready. He then came and stood beside me on my left at the sink, where I was washing my hands and staring out the window. I didn’t really feel like talking to him about the dog; what I really felt like doing was yelling ‘are you crazy?’ while trying to shake some sense into him. But I knew that really wouldn’t get us anywhere, so instead I kept my mouth shut and my soapy hands in the sink. When I was done washing my hands, he handed me a towel, then waited until I was done to take the towel back from me, and set it on the countertop. He then took my hands and pulled me to him, moving me so I was now facing him, and he tilted my head up to look at his face.
“Hey,” he then said to me in his quiet, sexy, Luka voice that always makes me melt.
“Hey,” I said in reply, trying not to melt and to stand firm on my position of being angry about this dog.
“I love you.”
“Don’t even pull the ‘I love you’ card, Luka. This is a big deal.” The attempt to buy me with an ‘I love you’ was helping with my cause of standing firm on my angry position.
“Abby, we can do this. It’s a golden retriever, they’re great with kids, and they’re obedient and easy to train.”
“You never said anything to me Luka, this is a big decision. You should have talked to me about this. And we’re hardly home, how are we going to take care of a dog?”
“We’ll figure it out Abby, we always do.”
I had nothing to say in return. I didn’t want to fight with him; he knew I was angry with his decision; what else was there to say? Plus, he had a point; we always did manage to figure things out. So much for really standing my ground.
He brought his forehead down to meet mine, and rested it there for a minute while looking into my eyes.
“I love you,” he whispered to me.
“I love you too,” was all I could say in reply, before he leaned further in and started to kiss me.
It was now 2:00, we were back from the parade, and Luka and I were running around the house and backyard, trying to get everything ready for the birthday cookout/pool party that started in about an hour. This was the first rather large-scale event we had ever hosted in the house, seeing as we only bought it slightly less than a year ago. There were quite a few people coming, and I was hoping everything would run smoothly. We had invited family friends, Julia’s preschool friends and their families, a few friends from the hospital, neighbors, and Maggie and Eric (completely medicated). Maggie and Eric were due at any moment actually, and perhaps that’s what I was most nervous about. We saw them a couple times a year since Julia had been born, and my relationship with my mother was better than it had been in years, although it still was far from anything perfect. I still didn’t trust her completely, despite her improvement and commitment to being medicated over the past 4 years, but can you really blame me? I spent the previous 30 years fighting her and watching her fluctuate on and off medication. Anyway, I still tensed up anytime they were visiting, I couldn’t help it, and today, was not any different.
By 5 o’clock, the party was in full swing. People were splashing in the pool, kids were playing on the swing set, others enjoyed the cool air inside of the house, and the picnic table on the back deck was covered with an array of hotdogs, hamburgers, salads, corn on the cob, and pies. Julia’s birthday party was officially a success. I went down to the yard, where Julia was playing with some other kids and her new puppy that had earlier in the day been officially named Sam, after “Uncle Sam”, despite the fact that the dog was a girl. Although, Sam was 10 times better than “firecracker,” Julia’s first choice for a name.
“Hey birthday girl!” I said as I leaned over and swept her off of her feet the next time she ran by me.
“Mommmmy,” she said in a disappointed tone because I was holding her back from playing.
“Who wants to sing happy birthday and have some cake and ice cream?” I said to her, hoping she’d be agreeable to the idea.
“Me!” exclaimed Emily, the 5 year old playing with Julia, who lived a couple houses down.
“Me too!” Julia shrieked following Emily’s lead.
I set Julia down and she raced back across the yard towards the house yelling ‘it’s time to sing happy birthday.’ We crowded everyone into the kitchen and dining room to sing happy birthday and then began to dish out cake and ice cream. After cleaning up the cake and now melted ice cream, I went out onto the back deck, and found Luka leaning against the railing overlooking the backyard and pool. I assumed my position next to him, half leaning into him, and half leaning into the railing. He wrapped his arm around me and kissed the top of my head; he then went back to watching the birthday scene. As I looked around, I couldn’t help but to think about our lives and all that I was seeing. Here I was, Abigail Kovac, leaning against the railing of my deck on the back of my house, watching my daughter’s 4th birthday party transpire right before my eyes. I was watching my mother stand in the shallow end of the pool reaching out to catch Julia as she jumped in, squealing out of both fear and delight. I was watching our puppy run around in the backyard barking and chasing the heals of anyone who happened to walk by. I had my wonderful husband standing here beside me with his arm around me watching the same scenes unfold. At that moment, I was fairly sure I was living the American (American/Croatian??) dream. I had to stop and wonder, ‘how did I ever get to this point??’
“It’s crazy, isn’t it? I said to Luka without looking up at him.
“What?”
“All of this, our lives, me standing here with you watching our daughter who is now 4 years old.”
“You think?”
“You don’t?”
“I guess it is. When I think back to so many years ago after I lost my family, and I thought I would never have any of this again. But here I am. Here we are. Our one fateful night that was the beginning of a new chapter for both of us. Maybe we were meant to be, meant to have all of this, and all we needed was a little push in the right direction.”
“It was kind of a big push” I said as I turned my head and gazed up at Luka.
“Yeah, it was a big push,” Luka started, as a smile began to creep across his lips.
“But look where it got us. And I don’t think I could be happier.”
“Me neither,” he said. He then finally turned down to look towards me, returning my gaze at him, and kissed me on the lips. The kiss was unfortunately cut off before I wanted it to be, by a passer-by making a comment about this being a kid’s party.
“I guess we should go socialize with some of our guests,” Luka suggested.
I shrugged my shoulders and sighed in return. I’d much rather stay here with him on this deck and be in our own little world. Luka was obliged to do otherwise, and instead grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the steps in order to descend towards the majority of the party that was taking over our yard.
The rest of the evening flew by in what seemed to be an instant, and before I knew it, Julia, Luka, and I were at the park, sprawled out across a blanket in the grass. As the streetlights in the park began to go out marking the start of the fireworks show about to begin, Julia crawled over into my lap. Initially she insisted I cover her ears, but as the show went on, the noise began to bother her less, and she pulled my hands away from her ears and leaned her head back onto my chest to angle herself in fashion that yielded a better view. I was tempted more to watch her than the fireworks. I wanted to absorb the look on her face with her gorgeous eyes wide open in amazement and excitement. I watched her tiny lips curve into a bigger and bigger smile as the show went on. Her dark brown hair waved slightly in the breeze and it would occasionally tickle her face, and in response her nose would crinkle up, but just as soon as it crinkled up, it would return to normal. I think if I could capture moments and put them in a bottle to save so I could relive them again and again later in life, I’m pretty sure this would be one of those moments. It was so simple and mundane, but it was absolutely perfect. Happy Birthday, to my little girl.
This is my first time ever writing a fanfiction, so let me know what you think! I hope everyone likes it!
Nearly 9 months after that one fateful night, I finally got to hold the one thing that would forever shape my world. That one thing was my daughter, Julia Lauren Kovac, born on the Fourth of July. Despite her knowledge of the truth as she grew up, I would forever tell her that the parades, the parties, and the fireworks were all for her; all in celebration of the day she was born. As she grew older, my reminder each year that it was all for Julia Lauren Kovac, eventually grew tiresome to her, and the amazement I could once read in her eyes turned instead to more of an expression of annoyance marked by an exaggerated roll of her dark brown eyes. It didn’t matter to me whether she believed it as she grew older though, because in my heart, it was all true. The Fourth of July, beginning the day she was born, was a day of celebration, all for my little girl.
I was terrified up until the day she was born. There were so many questions, concerns, and “what ifs” that played over and over again in my head like a broken record. The minute I saw her though, all the fear was erased. The tiny baby was my daughter, and I loved her more at that moment than I have ever loved anything in my entire life. The love erased my fears and my worries, and I knew it would all be ok. No matter what, I would always have her and she would always have me.
Two days after she was born, Luka and I took her home. Going home seemed to quickly kill the certainty I had felt only two days before, during her entrance into the world. This was a whole new ballgame for me. A baby? Who decided I should be completely responsible for another human being? What if she choked while she was sleeping? What if I didn’t hear her cry while I was sleeping? Eventually I calmed down a little, and learned I could do it; I could be a mother to a daughter; I could be responsible for this little person. I did have Luka there to help me through it all, but I have to say, he was a nervous wreck right there with me at the beginning. Somehow we did it though. We managed to get through the first night, then the first week, and soon the first month, and so on. We were raising a little girl, and doing a pretty good job. Might I also add that I soon learned the mother-daughter dynamic wasn’t so scary when done correctly.
After Julia’s first birthday, we went to Croatia. Luka and I decided we’d like Julia to know about her father’s past as she grew up, and we wanted her to be able to think of Croatia as another home. We stayed for 3 weeks during that first visit, and it was wonderful to finally get to see where Luka had grown up and where he had spent the first part of his life. He and I were married on the beach on the Dalmation Coast. It was a small ceremony, a priest, me, him, Julia, and a small group consisting of Luka’s family. We also had Julia baptized in the small church that Luka had been baptized in. Following that first year, we returned every summer to Croatia for a month.
Julia’s first word was “Da,” and from the moment she uttered the word, she had Luka completely wrapped around her finger. Luka and I had got a 2 bedroom apartment in the city and moved in together a couple of months before Julia was born. We rather quickly outgrew the apartment though, and bought a house in the suburbs, the October after Julia turned three. It had 4 bedrooms, a living room, a family room, a rec room in the basement, a pool, and a huge backyard. I was fairly certain we were crazy for getting a house that large; what were with going to do with all the room? We managed to find enough stuff and visitors to fill the house quite well though. We also found a rather large dog to help fill up the house. Yes, a dog; a huge golden retriever in fact. And it was all thanks to Luka, who got the dog, a puppy at the time, without ever mentioning a single thing to me. It was Julia’s present for her 4th birthday.
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Mumma?”
“What’s the matter baby?”
“I can’t sleep anymore.”
I turned my head to the nightstand to read that it was 6:45.
“Ugh, Julia, it’s too early to get up.”
“But daddy’s up already.”
“Why can’t you sleep baby?” I said as I patted the bed next to me for her to crawl up beside me.
“I’m too excited.”
“But birthday girls need lots of sleep. Especially when they have to stay up late to watch their fireworks.” I knew that if she got up this early, we’d never make it until 9:15 when the local fireworks were scheduled to start.
“Can I sleep with you?”
“Since it’s what the birthday girl wants, I guess I’ll have to allow it this once,” I said kissing the top of her head and pulling her closer to me. Within minutes we were both sound asleep again.
What seemed to be a few minutes later, but actually turned out to be a couple of hours later, I was awoken to a high-pitched squeal followed by high-pitched barking coming from the foot of the bed. I opened my eyes to see Julia beside me on her knees, wide-eyed, with a huge smile across her face, and she was squealing with delight. I looked towards the foot of the bed to see a golden ball of fur with a pink ribbon around its neck, romping playfully and barking occasionally in response to Julia. Behind the yellow ball of fur, stood Luka, with a huge grin on his face, staring intently at me.
“Happy Birthday Princess!” Luka said to Julia.
“You did not,” was the only thing that escaped from my lips. He just smiled back at me.
“You did not,” I said again.
“Daddy? Is she for me?” Julia said with nothing but sheer delight in her voice.
“Yep pumpkin,” Luka started before I interrupted.
“Whoa, Luka, you did not do this!”
“Abby, every 4 year old girl needs a puppy.”
“Mummy, I NEEEEED a puppy!”
“Luka,” I said, as I got out of bed and headed towards the bathroom, “you are in SO much trouble.” I followed the comment up by slamming the door shut behind me.
A few minutes later I emerged from the bathroom after somewhat collecting myself, and found Luka, Julia, and the fur ball rolling around on the floor of the bedroom.
“Miss Julia lets go get some breakfast,” I said as I approached her.
“But mumma, I wanna play with the puppy.”
“I know baby, but the puppy will still be here after you eat breakfast,” I said scooping her up off the floor.
As I carried her out of the bedroom and headed down the steps and into the kitchen, we decided we should have Belgian waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. A birthday breakfast fit for a princess (of course). When we got down to the kitchen I set Julia down on the island countertop, kept my arms wrapped around her, and bent slightly so our noses and foreheads were touching.
“Happy Birthday my baby girl,” I whispered.
“Today’s my day?” she whispered back to me.
“Today is all for you. The Fourth of July is all for Julia Lauren Kovac”
“What are we going to do for my birthday?”
“Well, let’s start with your birthday breakfast, and then we have get dressed and go to the parade, and then we have your party, and then tonight we have fireworks.” The smile on Julia’s face grew with every passing second. I loved it. I loved the smile, the happiness that twinkled in her eyes, I loved it all. I kissed her on her tiny nose and whispered to her while again going back to being nose to nose.
“I love you baby.”
Julia wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled her face up to my ear.
“I love you mumma.”
I wished we could stay like this all day, just me and her, and not a care in the world. I knew that wasn’t really feasible though, and as she pulled away from our tightly wrapped hug, I set her down on the floor and watched her race towards Luka, who had just entered the kitchen holding the controversial golden ball of fur that I knew I’d never be able to take away from Julia. Luka passed the puppy off to Julia, telling her to take it into the living room to play until breakfast was ready. He then came and stood beside me on my left at the sink, where I was washing my hands and staring out the window. I didn’t really feel like talking to him about the dog; what I really felt like doing was yelling ‘are you crazy?’ while trying to shake some sense into him. But I knew that really wouldn’t get us anywhere, so instead I kept my mouth shut and my soapy hands in the sink. When I was done washing my hands, he handed me a towel, then waited until I was done to take the towel back from me, and set it on the countertop. He then took my hands and pulled me to him, moving me so I was now facing him, and he tilted my head up to look at his face.
“Hey,” he then said to me in his quiet, sexy, Luka voice that always makes me melt.
“Hey,” I said in reply, trying not to melt and to stand firm on my position of being angry about this dog.
“I love you.”
“Don’t even pull the ‘I love you’ card, Luka. This is a big deal.” The attempt to buy me with an ‘I love you’ was helping with my cause of standing firm on my angry position.
“Abby, we can do this. It’s a golden retriever, they’re great with kids, and they’re obedient and easy to train.”
“You never said anything to me Luka, this is a big decision. You should have talked to me about this. And we’re hardly home, how are we going to take care of a dog?”
“We’ll figure it out Abby, we always do.”
I had nothing to say in return. I didn’t want to fight with him; he knew I was angry with his decision; what else was there to say? Plus, he had a point; we always did manage to figure things out. So much for really standing my ground.
He brought his forehead down to meet mine, and rested it there for a minute while looking into my eyes.
“I love you,” he whispered to me.
“I love you too,” was all I could say in reply, before he leaned further in and started to kiss me.
It was now 2:00, we were back from the parade, and Luka and I were running around the house and backyard, trying to get everything ready for the birthday cookout/pool party that started in about an hour. This was the first rather large-scale event we had ever hosted in the house, seeing as we only bought it slightly less than a year ago. There were quite a few people coming, and I was hoping everything would run smoothly. We had invited family friends, Julia’s preschool friends and their families, a few friends from the hospital, neighbors, and Maggie and Eric (completely medicated). Maggie and Eric were due at any moment actually, and perhaps that’s what I was most nervous about. We saw them a couple times a year since Julia had been born, and my relationship with my mother was better than it had been in years, although it still was far from anything perfect. I still didn’t trust her completely, despite her improvement and commitment to being medicated over the past 4 years, but can you really blame me? I spent the previous 30 years fighting her and watching her fluctuate on and off medication. Anyway, I still tensed up anytime they were visiting, I couldn’t help it, and today, was not any different.
By 5 o’clock, the party was in full swing. People were splashing in the pool, kids were playing on the swing set, others enjoyed the cool air inside of the house, and the picnic table on the back deck was covered with an array of hotdogs, hamburgers, salads, corn on the cob, and pies. Julia’s birthday party was officially a success. I went down to the yard, where Julia was playing with some other kids and her new puppy that had earlier in the day been officially named Sam, after “Uncle Sam”, despite the fact that the dog was a girl. Although, Sam was 10 times better than “firecracker,” Julia’s first choice for a name.
“Hey birthday girl!” I said as I leaned over and swept her off of her feet the next time she ran by me.
“Mommmmy,” she said in a disappointed tone because I was holding her back from playing.
“Who wants to sing happy birthday and have some cake and ice cream?” I said to her, hoping she’d be agreeable to the idea.
“Me!” exclaimed Emily, the 5 year old playing with Julia, who lived a couple houses down.
“Me too!” Julia shrieked following Emily’s lead.
I set Julia down and she raced back across the yard towards the house yelling ‘it’s time to sing happy birthday.’ We crowded everyone into the kitchen and dining room to sing happy birthday and then began to dish out cake and ice cream. After cleaning up the cake and now melted ice cream, I went out onto the back deck, and found Luka leaning against the railing overlooking the backyard and pool. I assumed my position next to him, half leaning into him, and half leaning into the railing. He wrapped his arm around me and kissed the top of my head; he then went back to watching the birthday scene. As I looked around, I couldn’t help but to think about our lives and all that I was seeing. Here I was, Abigail Kovac, leaning against the railing of my deck on the back of my house, watching my daughter’s 4th birthday party transpire right before my eyes. I was watching my mother stand in the shallow end of the pool reaching out to catch Julia as she jumped in, squealing out of both fear and delight. I was watching our puppy run around in the backyard barking and chasing the heals of anyone who happened to walk by. I had my wonderful husband standing here beside me with his arm around me watching the same scenes unfold. At that moment, I was fairly sure I was living the American (American/Croatian??) dream. I had to stop and wonder, ‘how did I ever get to this point??’
“It’s crazy, isn’t it? I said to Luka without looking up at him.
“What?”
“All of this, our lives, me standing here with you watching our daughter who is now 4 years old.”
“You think?”
“You don’t?”
“I guess it is. When I think back to so many years ago after I lost my family, and I thought I would never have any of this again. But here I am. Here we are. Our one fateful night that was the beginning of a new chapter for both of us. Maybe we were meant to be, meant to have all of this, and all we needed was a little push in the right direction.”
“It was kind of a big push” I said as I turned my head and gazed up at Luka.
“Yeah, it was a big push,” Luka started, as a smile began to creep across his lips.
“But look where it got us. And I don’t think I could be happier.”
“Me neither,” he said. He then finally turned down to look towards me, returning my gaze at him, and kissed me on the lips. The kiss was unfortunately cut off before I wanted it to be, by a passer-by making a comment about this being a kid’s party.
“I guess we should go socialize with some of our guests,” Luka suggested.
I shrugged my shoulders and sighed in return. I’d much rather stay here with him on this deck and be in our own little world. Luka was obliged to do otherwise, and instead grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the steps in order to descend towards the majority of the party that was taking over our yard.
The rest of the evening flew by in what seemed to be an instant, and before I knew it, Julia, Luka, and I were at the park, sprawled out across a blanket in the grass. As the streetlights in the park began to go out marking the start of the fireworks show about to begin, Julia crawled over into my lap. Initially she insisted I cover her ears, but as the show went on, the noise began to bother her less, and she pulled my hands away from her ears and leaned her head back onto my chest to angle herself in fashion that yielded a better view. I was tempted more to watch her than the fireworks. I wanted to absorb the look on her face with her gorgeous eyes wide open in amazement and excitement. I watched her tiny lips curve into a bigger and bigger smile as the show went on. Her dark brown hair waved slightly in the breeze and it would occasionally tickle her face, and in response her nose would crinkle up, but just as soon as it crinkled up, it would return to normal. I think if I could capture moments and put them in a bottle to save so I could relive them again and again later in life, I’m pretty sure this would be one of those moments. It was so simple and mundane, but it was absolutely perfect. Happy Birthday, to my little girl.