I just want to smile the way I used to

 "What? She's pregnant?" 

This shocked Carmen. Jade didn't even mention it to her at work. Suddenly, Carmen felt she'd taken Jade's happy news from her. She drew in a frown when Justin told her the news. 

"What's wrong?" Justin was already feeding Velvet a snack, and she hadn't even done anything to deserve it other than crawl up in his lap.

"Oh, she didn't tell me. That's all." She watched the two of them together. No, she wasn't jealous. She couldn't be jealous of a dog. She went to the kitchen and started an egg bake. She put the sausage in the skillet with a sprinkle of water so it wouldn't brown too harshly. She found herself being noisy with the pots and pans.

"Are you OK in there?" Justin called from the living room. Of course, he was playing around with Velvet.

"Go get your coat and take her outside now!" She practically demanded. This was not the way she had wanted a dog to be. The dog was supposed to be her pet, her companion. And yeah, she felt a little guilty about the whole thing with Jade.

She grabbed her phone and leaned against the kitchen counter, giving the meat a stir before she called Jade. She multitasked, getting out the eggs and the shredded cheese.

"Are you OK?" Carmen began apologizing for running her mouth off about the new job at the hospital. "Justin told me you've got some new news too."

"Oh, I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm mad. I don't know, it's so overwhelming," Jade confessed. "I didn't even tell Ari I  called Liv first."

Carmen heard Jade sniff back tears. 

"What happened?"

Carmen cracked an egg with one hand into the rectangular Pyrex and then another until she used up five eggs. She grabbed the milk to splash some on the eggs and seasoned it with garlic pepper, red pepper, and nutmeg.

"Don't be afraid of Ari," Carmen told. "He said he was OK about starting a family, and now he's got a bad case of morning sickness. He's acting like a three-year-old."

Meanwhile, she whisked the eggs, dotted the sausage on top, and spread cheese over the eggs, doing her best to sink the cheese into the eggs. She put the casserole in the oven.

"Do you want me to talk to him?" Carmen snapped as if she'd set him straight.

"It's OK, we'll talk tonight after dinner." But Jade's voice sounded like a trainwreck.

"I want to talk to him," Carmen demanded. "I need to tell him something." She said with such authority that Jade went to give Ari the phone, who was off at his computer playing a video game.

"Listen," she said as she got him on the phone. "If you're going to be this way about Jade having a baby, then I don't want you around Justin."

"What?" Ari's voice sounded stunned.

"If you can't be a good role model, then I don't want you around him. You go and make up with Jade. Right now! She needs to be happy all the time if you want a happy baby." She hung up then, a bit dizzy. Yes, she was going crazy, unsure why. But Jade was important to her, and so was Justin.