Unsung Heroes

“Indy, babe, wake up, we’re landing,” Ash murmured in my ear, stroking my upper arm.
I opened my eyes blearily to see Ash smiling at me. I could feel the plane dropping a bit under me as the plane approached St. Louis, Missouri. It was two weeks following our trip to Brazil, and Ash had finally come around to his grandparents’ request to meet me in person.
His grandfather’s birthday was in three days, and we figured it was the perfect time to tell them they were getting a great-grandbaby. His cousin was coming to pick us up at the airport in St. Louis, since Berger was so small it didn’t have an airport. It was so small I’m pretty sure Ash’s relatives made up a good portion of the population.
“How long was I asleep?” I asked, stretching carefully over my stomach, which had grown considerably since I was now closer to five months.
“Only a couple hours. I had to prop you up, though, you were starting to fall over a bit.” He smirked, but then turned away to chew on his lower lip.
He’s been doing that since we got our plane tickets, staring off in the distance and chewing on his lip. He was nervous about me meeting his family because apparently they were… loud. But he seemed to forget that as a Latina, I came from an incredibly loud family, so I didn’t think it would be anything I hadn’t seen or experienced before.
“Ash, you’re gonna hurt your lip if you keep doing that,” I said, turning his head to me and kissing his lip gently. “You don’t have to be so nervous, it’s gonna be fine. I’m sure your family and I are gonna get along just fine.”
He smiled weakly. “It’s more that I’m afraid of what they’re gonna say about you being pregnant. They might ask you if you were a one night stand that turned into a pregnancy.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m gonna be honest and say we started dating way before I got pregnant, and that you and I are excited about it. Ash, from what you’ve told me, I doubt they’re gonna care.”
He chucked nervously. “My grandma will. She’s not necessarily uptight, but she will have something to say about us having a baby and me making an ‘honest woman’ out of you. She’s gonna ask you if you wanna marry me and all kinds of stuff. Plus, she’ll want to come out before the baby is born to be here for it.”
Snorting, I leaned against him. “Ash, if we don’t get married, that’s our business. I don’t care if we get married at all, I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me that I love you.”
He smiled. “Good, because I don’t know how in the world I would propose to you without you either figuring it out or hitting me for being corny.”
Laughing, I playfully hit his knee. “How about this, if we ever do decide to get married, it’ll be the exact opposite of traditional, and we will do it however the fuck we want. It doesn’t even have to be you to propose, I could, too. And I promise if I do, it won’t be cheesy and I’ll make sure you like it.”
He barked out a laugh. “Okay, babe, if you want to propose, I don’t have a problem with that. Just if you do get a ring, don’t do something like hiding it in a bottle of Jack, ‘cause I won’t check before I jug it.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
All of a sudden, we felt the plane hit the track, and I jumped slightly because apparently I had become completely unaware that the plane had come closer and closer to the ground.
I thankfully was able to stifle a noise of surprise into a slight gasp, and I felt the baby jump with me slightly in my stomach, and I put a hand over it to settle my stomach down before I felt the plane lurch to a stop.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived in St. Louis the local time in 1:56 pm and the temperature is 71 degrees Fahrenheit. Thank you for flying with us and we hope to see you soon.” The flight attendant’s voice was calming as the plane stopped at the gate and the seatbelt sign turned off. Ash immediately jumped up to pull our carryon bags out and handed me my backpack quickly before slinging his own over his shoulder.
Standing carefully, I let Ash gently take my elbow and pull me into the aisle with him to guide me down to the plane’s exit. Ash was so excited/nervous that it was pretty funny seeing him getting all worked up over me meeting his family.
“Ash, remember I’m pregnant and can’t move very quickly anymore, so I need you to either let go of my arm or slow down.”
To my relief, Ash chose to slow down as opposed to let go of my arm as we made our way through the terminal. Then he pulled back to sling his arm around my shoulders and press a kiss to my forehead. I wrapped my arm around his middle and stuck my hand in his back pocket. Corny, but Ash liked it when I initiated things instead of just laying back and letting him do all the work.
Ash’s back straightened up when he felt my hand in his pocket, and I saw the corner of his lip pull back into a slight smirk before he donned his mirrored sunglasses and pulled mine out of an inner coat pocket. We didn’t tell any of the fans we were coming out here, but it doesn’t hurt for either of our sakes to put on a slight disguise to keep people at bay.
At baggage claim, Ash waited for our bags to come around while I looked for Ash’s cousin. According to Ash, he had dark hair and skin like Ash, but kept his hair short. Ash apparently told him to look for a pregnant girl with green hair.
“ASHLEY!”
Suddenly, a large figure jumped onto Ash’s back, causing Ash to make a noise of surprise while the wind was knocked from him.
“Eli, what the fuck, man!” Ash said with a laugh as he stumbled forward with a slim, tanned figure on his back.
I put a hand over my mouth lightly to stifle my laughter as Ash stumbled under the weight of his cousin on his back.
The figure slid off of Ash’s back and turned to me, smiling brightly. “And you must be Indy!”
He started to make a move toward me to lift me, but remembered that I’m pregnant so he opted for just giving me a hug.
“I’m Eli, Ash’s cousin!” He stood back enough for me to get a good look at him, and I could see the similarities between him and Ash.
Clearly, he was from Ash’s Native side, because he had a similar, if not slightly darker skin tone, the same high cheekbones and sharp jawline, but his eyes were more black than Ash’s, and he kept his hair pretty short around his face, and his nose had a bit more of an arch to it than Ash did, who’s nose was pretty straight and flat.
I smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Eli,” I said warmly.
His eyes widened. “Whoa, that’s an accent you don’t hear ‘round here e’ry day!” His Midwestern accent was much thicker than Ash’s, whose accent I’m pretty sure diluted over the years that he was in LA. Eli laughed and went to sling his arm around Ash’s shoulders, who had to collapse slightly since he was nearly a head shorter than Ash.
In turn, Ash ducked from under him to bring him into a headlock, laughing all the way.
“Alright you dick, enough teasing my girl, where’s that dump of a truck you drive?”
He forced himself out of the grip and stood straight, a slightly annoyed but mostly amused look in his eye.
“Hey, you leave Lola alone! She ne’er done you wrong!”
Ash scoffed. “Need I remind you what happened at Hardy’s in ’99?”
His eyes widened. “I’m sure your lady don’t wanna hear nothin’ ‘bout that. Let’s get outta here, Grandma is waiting for you guys.”
With that, he picked up my bag from the ground, turned around, and marched out of baggage claim into the parking lot.
I raised an eyebrow at Ash, who chuckled and shrugged casually. “Yeah, he’s always like that. Don’t worry, he likes ya.” His eyes widened when his slang made itself known.
“Should I expect you to speak with more of an accent while we’re here?” I asked teasingly, looping my left arm through his right and picking up my suitcase with my right hand.
He rolled his eyes. “Not necessarily, but maybe just a bit.”
I snorted. “Sure, Ash.”

The town of Berger that Ash grew up in, is incredibly small, but clean. It is one of the smallest towns I’ve ever seen, and I’m still pretty sure Ash and his relatives make up a good chunk of the small population, which was only about 200 people. I could see older buildings for stores and small cafes and supplies for farming, which seemed to make up a good amount of the territory.
I was sitting in the front seat of an incredibly old and beat up Ford truck, that maybe was once a pretty color but was now stained and caked with mud and rust. Ash was behind me, but the entire way here, he’d refused to sit completely on the seat which looked precarious and sharp, so instead he squatted behind me, holding onto the seat to keep from falling over. The truck sputtered along and jumped every now and then – I think the springs were on the very end of their last legs.
“Okay, Eli, I couldn’t care less if you kept this shit bucket or not, but can you PLEASE at least clean up so my pregnant girlfriend has a clean place to sit?” Only Eli knew of the pregnancy, by the way, which is why Ash was mentioning it in the way he was.
Eli scoffed. “There’s nothing wrong with Lola, Ash!” At that moment, something backfired and the truck lurched forward more, and I clung to the filthy door to keep from being launched forward.
“Seriously, why the fuck are you still able to drive this thing?” Ash shouted over the sudden roar of the clearly ancient engine.
Eli ignored Ash and rounded a corner, suddenly, approached a large brown house with an enormous wrap-around porch and a horse stable tucked behind it with an enormous pastor with several horses grazing peacefully.
Several children were running in the yard, while their parents and relatives relaxed on the porch or against other trucks, and there were a few men and women leaning against some motorcycles.
I felt Ash grip my shoulder as the truck approached the house, making the kids pause and then move excitedly towards the oncoming truck, waving their arms in the air. The adults lounging about stood from where they were and started to approach as well, but at a much slower pace.
Eli suddenly pulled the truck to the right in a sharp left, parking it seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
I could hear excited voices outside of the truck, and watched as a number of people came closer to the truck.
I heard the backdoor open, and suddenly I could hear the excited shouting of kids jumping all over Ash and screaming his name.
“Ash!”
“Ash is back!”
“Ashy!”
The last one made me laugh. I could hear Ash laugh and struggling under all of them.
“Alright guys, get off! I need to help my girlfriend out of the monster machine. Ow!” Eli had gotten out of the car by that point.
I reached for the door handle but it opened before I could, and Ash, his clothes slightly ruffled and his face flushed from smiling appeared.
“Need help, babe?”
I rolled my eyes. “Ash, I’m not an invalid.” I will never admit that I was too afraid to get out of Eli’s death trap by myself without hurting myself somehow.
Ash took my hand anyway and helped me slowly out of the truck onto the ground.
All the kids that had run up to Ash and were still clamoring over him stopped suddenly and I found myself the subject of scrutiny to a bunch of ten year olds.
“Ash, who’s that?” A little girl with waist-long dark hair and tanned skin said, pointing at me while tugging on Ash’s pants.
Ash laughed and picked her up, putting her on his hip. “Macie, this is my girlfriend, Indigo. Didn’t your mama tell you I was bringing her?”
I smiled at the girl as the kids dispersed a bit so that the adults could come forth, being led by an older couple that I could immediately see were Ash’s grandparents. Ash set the girl called Macie on the ground, and she took off after the other kids, laughing as she went.
“Ashley!” The older woman, who had skin darker than Ash’s and long graying hair who was at least a head shorter than Ash, making her a few inches shorter than me, moved forward to pull Ash to her into a backbreaking hug that he had to kind of hunch into.
He smiled though and embraced her tightly. “Hey, Gran.”
The older gentleman turned to me. His hair was longer than Ash’s but was turning gray from originally being black, and his face was etched with wrinkles.
“You must be Indigo,” He said fondly, taking my hands and grasping them tightly. “We have waited a long time to meet the first girlfriend Ash has had in years!” He smiled brightly. “The way Ash talks about you, I’m sure you two make each other very happy.”
My eyes suddenly felt a bit hot and I had to bite back a need to sob – damn hormones – as I couldn’t help but compare Ash’s family to my own. Ash and I were raised very similarly, the main difference other than the fact being that I actually knew my parents when Ash didn’t, was that his family was clearly much kinder and more affectionate than mine. I wished immediately that I could have been in similar circumstances, but had to push that jealousy under a smile.
“Thank you so much for having me here, and happy birthday!”
He grinned toothily. “I like this one, Ash!”
His grandmother turned to me, and her eyes suddenly zeroed on my protruding belly. “Hold on a minute!”
The chatter around us paused as his relatives watched as Ash’s Gran suddenly moved to stand almost right up against me, and she pressed a warm, large hand against my stomach, a squinted look on her face that changed into a wide-eyed look of surprise as she whipped back around to Ash. Ash had stuffed his hands into his pockets and was eyeing her sheepishly through his hair, a nervous grin on his face.
“Um, surprise?” He said tentatively.
She marched to him and smacked him upside his head.
“Ashley Purdy! You mean to tell me you’re having a baby and you didn’t think you could pick up the phone and tell your old Gran about it?!”
All of a sudden the excited squeals of Ash’s aunts and older female cousins were all I could hear and I was suddenly bombarded by hugs and hands groping my belly. I could see Ash’s uncles and cousins surrounding him to slap him on the back or “bro-hug” him.
“Congrats, son!” His grandfather said with a laugh, placing a hand on his shoulder.
His grandmother suddenly appeared in front of me again, smiling. “Come with me, dear, my grandson will get your bags for you. You must get off your feet and out of the heat! And call me Gran, dear, everyone else does.”
She took me by my elbow and pulled me out of the circle of people and across the yard. I looked back at Ash, who gave me as reassuring a smile he could with all of the relatives surrounding him and obstructing him from view.
Gran pulled me up the stairs and onto the porch, pulling the screen door wide open, and yanking me inside, onto the brown shag carpet.
“So,” she said. “For dinner tonight, I was going to make something Ash hasn’t had since the last time he visited three years ago, his favorite dinner. Has he told you about it?”
I pursued my lips. “I don’t know, he’s been on such a strict diet, and since we found out about the baby, he’s basically been on the same diet as I have been for the last five months. So he’s been eating pretty plain, boring, organic food. I think the only things he hasn’t eaten are my weird cravings I make him get me at 3 am.”
Gran laughed. “Yeah, he put himself on that diet right before he moved away, but every time he comes back and visits, he can’t resist this food no matter how much he tries.”
I grinned tightly. “Oh, Ash never mentioned that…”
She shrugged. “He’s a private guy. I’m surprised he wanted to date you at all,” she said with a laugh. Then she suddenly grew serious. “Speaking of…”
She turned to me suddenly as she pulled me into the somewhat large kitchen with a massive wooden island that was clearly used as a cutting board.
She moved to stand next to the island and propped herself against it and wrapped her knuckles against it.
“Indigo…”
“Please, call me Indy.”
“Okay, Indy…” she paused. “Please tell me that Ashley isn’t seeing you because of the pregnancy, and that you two aren’t trying to force a relationship from something like that because the baby doesn’t need to have that over their head.”
I pursued my lips because I knew I had to be honest with her. It’s a good thing her fears weren’t true, though, otherwise I’d probably be in for quite the scolding.
“Gran, I won’t lie to you and say Ash and I sort of didn’t start from a one-night stand, but I didn’t get pregnant till much later. Ash and I started dating months before this happened, we just weren’t being careful. But I promise you, I love your grandson and I know he loves me, too. He’s just as excited about the baby as I am, and yes, we’re also terrified, but we live together in LA, and we’re getting a room ready in our house for the baby when they get here. I understand your fear, but please know that it isn’t like that at all.”
Her brow smoothed out. “Well, I can’t say I approve of you guys starting a family this way, but it’s your lives to live. At least it’s not stemming from the pregnancy, and is something you two started beforehand. I can relax at least about that. I can’t wait to meet my great-grandbaby.”
I had to turn to lean against the counter to keep myself from crying again. Why my Vovó be like Ash’s Gran and accept my decisions and the way I choose to live with my boyfriend.
“Dear, are you alright?” I felt her hand on my shoulder.
I cleared my throat. “I’m fine,” I said thickly. “I just need some air.” With that, I ducked out of the kitchen out of a side door into what appeared to be a backyard. Moving away from the door to the wall next to him, I slid down the wall and ducked my knees as close to my stomach as I could and wrapped my arms around my middle, around my baby.
I don’t know how much more of this I can take… I can’t stop comparing Ash’s grandparents to my own, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it through the next few days without it turning into a snotty, sobbing fiasco.
“Hey, has anyone seen Indy?” I froze at Ash’s voice, laced with concern. “Eli, did you see where she went?”
“Gran pulled her inside, so I think she’s in there.”
I heard a side door open. “No, dear, she isn’t in here. She said she needed some air and went out back. I’d leave her be, Ash. She looked upset over something and needed some time to herself to think.”
“What did you say to her?”
“Nothing damaging, I promise. I just told her that I support you two together and your baby, and then she became unsettled.”
“Oh… I know what happened.”
I heard the crunch of gravel, and suddenly the sun was blocked from me, and I hunched closer on myself and hid my face in my arms, finding myself embarrassed.
“Baby?” Ash knelt next to me and combed a hand through my green hair. “Sweetheart, are you alright?”
I looked up at him through bleary eyes. “Ash… I’m sorry if I worried or upset anyone. I… I just… needed some time to myself.”
He nodded in understanding. “You weren’t expecting her support, were you?”
I looked at my feet, feeling guilty over such an assumption. Why would I assume the worst from Ash’s family, they weren’t anything like mine, so I had absolutely no reason to think this way.
Ash pulled me up off the ground and brushed the dirt from my ass and legs. “Babe, I’m not mad at you, nor is my Gran. I think you should explain why to her, but she isn’t upset, I think she thinks it’s the hormones,” he half-joked. “I understand your apprehension over this, though I am a bit surprised after what you said on the plane.”
I turned and curled into his chest, wrapping my arms around his torso and pressing my nose to his clavicle and took a deep breath.
“Ash, I meant what I said, but there was still that underlying fear that I would end up in a similar situation. Let’s face it, Ash, the similarities in how you and I were raised is uncanny, but your family actually supports you. I want so badly for mine’s support, but I don’t think I will ever get anyone except my grandfather’s support. To hear your Gran say she supports me is the first time someone I know who’s maternal has said anything remotely close to that since my mom died.”
He rubbed my back. “I understand, Babe. It’s an unfounded fear, but I understand. Let’s go inside, everyone’s coming in for dinner, and I haven’t introduced you properly to my relatives, yet. Plus,” he suddenly was right in my ear, and he gently took my lobe between his teeth. “You and I christened your old room, but mine is still… untouched.”
Oh, you better make good on that, Ashley Purdy, or else there will be HELL to pay, and you can count on one very angry, hormonal, horny, pregnant girlfriend to make that VERY clear to you.

Notes

Hey everyone!
Thank you for being patient, a lot has happened since my last post.
I unfortunately had to quit my job due to management disagreements, and my semester ended, so now while I do have more time to write, I am looking for new employment and that may take some time, and also, next week I am traveling to the Midwest for a wedding and will be there for a couple of weeks, so that may take some time as well.
Also, as a disclaimer:
I know next to nothing about Ashley's relatives, only the name of the incredibly small town he grew up in and that his grandparents did in fact raise him because his parents died in an accident before he was old enough to remember them, and that he is close to his relatives. All the aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. that will be mentioned are completely fictional, as well as the physical appearances of his grandparents and their names.

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