Heart & Soul

by Nicole Williams

  “I’m a bit concerned that you just compared yourself to Garth,” I said.

  “What can I say? We’re kindred spirits.”

  My brows hit my hairline. “What am I then? If Garth’s your kindred spirit?”

  Her foot stopped twisting, and the heel lowered back to the floor. Then her heels clacked together, not three times but two. That meant she liked what she’d just inspected with a scrupulous eye. I’d picked up on lots of things I’d never noticed about Rowen—kind of a side effect of being afraid to blink when she was close by.

  Done with her heel clicking ritual, she came around the side of the canvas. On her face was a smile . . . and paint. Lots of paint. I couldn’t tell if she’d mistaken her forehead for the canvas instead of the four-by-four foot thing I’d spent countless hours staring at the back of. I had to rub at my mouth to keep her from picking up on my grin, but really, it was impossible to look at her speckled and splattered face looking like a rainbow had just dried itself all over her without smiling.

  If she noticed, she didn’t say anything. Instead she held her smile in place and moved toward me, intention filling her eyes. “My soul mate.”

  I stopped trying to hide my smile and waved her closer.

  “You feel better now?” she asked. “Or are you still put out I suggested Garth and I are kindred spirits?”

  I’d been too busy staring at her face to notice that it wasn’t the only part of her marked and dotted with color. She was wearing one of my big white shirts, which she’d taken to wearing to bed after her stomach started to stretch through her own sleep tanks and tees. When she’d first slid into one of my shirts a month ago, she’d looked as though she could have gone parachuting in it. The bottom had just barely cleared her knees. Slowly though, day after day, I’d watched that shirt creep higher and higher up her legs as her stomach grew. By the end, the fabric would be stretched and pulled across that part of her where it still hung, but I could just make out the faintest of swells if I looked really close.

  I loved her in my old shirts. I loved that she wore them to sleep in. I loved that within the confines of that cotton was the woman I loved and the baby we’d created as a result of that love.

  So that was what I attempted to focus on when she folded herself into the chair with me, wiggling and twisting until she found just the right position on my lap. I didn’t think about her sick heart, which was also inhabiting that space. That same heart that threatened to take my family away from me in one tragic moment.

  “I feel better now,” I answered at last, winding my arms around her as I tucked my chin over the top of her head. My response had less to do with what she’d said and more to do with having her in my arms. She knew that too.

  We sat like that for a moment, her running her fingers up and down the back of my forearm for so long that I felt a wave of sleepiness hit me. The moment she stirred in my lap, that passed.

  “I still can’t believe he tried that thing with Colt though.” She shook her head against my chest. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Josie so pissed. And I’ve seen her pissed. A lot. In fact, I think that might be her favorite emotion. It’s her most convincing one at least.”

  That blood-boiling sensation flooded back in full force. It didn’t even need two seconds to achieve maximum lift-off. “He can try to set Colt up with the rest of the town for all I care.” I glared through the window across from us. “Just so long as it doesn’t involve my family.”

  “I take it from that tone and steely expression that you haven’t gotten over Colt Mason being Lily’s boyfriend?”

  “He’s not her boyfriend,” I said, feeling my jaw lock into place at the thought of Lily being Colt’s . . . girlfriend. “They’re dating. They’ve been on dates. That’s it.” My fists were curling. “That’s enough.” All I could see was Colt and Lily together, talking, touching . . . “More than enough.”

  “It didn’t seem like you had the see-red bug at the thought of Colt that Garth had a while ago.” She lifted her head off of my chest to look at me, but I just kept glaring out that window.

  “That was before he decided to ask my little sister, who happens to be way younger than him, out on a date.” My eyes narrowed a fraction more. “That’s bad form. Where I come from, that’s not the way we do it. Since Colt’s got about as much country in him as he’s got honor, I guess I shouldn’t have expected him to follow the same code.”

  “Is Garth channeling you right now?” She shifted a bit, framing my face with her fingers and squeezing one of her eyes shut as she focused on me. “Because I swear to God what you just said, in that same exact self-righteous-meets-self-loathing tone he’s perfected, with that so-close-it’s-seriously-freaking-me-out expression . . . Garth, are you in there?” She stopped framing my face long enough to knock on my forehead. “Don’t make me perform an exorcism because, so help me god, I will if you do not leave my sweet, accepting, thoughtful husband alone. Be gone, evil spirit,” she said with a palm shoved into my forehead.

  Winding my fingers around her wrists, I lowered them back into her lap. Although her lap had changed. The soft flatness of it had been exchanged for a rounded firmness that still made me almost jump when I felt it without thinking. Instead of letting my hands slip away, Rowen grabbed my wrists and settled my hands on her stomach. After spreading my fingers on both hands, she smiled down at the picture. I studied the same image and smiled too—my smile was just more touched with sadness than hers.

  My view had changed too. When she’d first started framing her stomach with my hands, all of my fingers had overlapped. By a lot at first, then less and less. I liked being able to look down and see that—my hands on her, my fingers touching, almost as if I could keep all of us together. Last week, my fingers had stopped touching, and yet another, albeit misplaced, sentiment of control slipped out of my grasp and another thimble of hope drained out of my bucket.

  It had the opposite effect on Rowen though. My fingers being unable to touch seemed to be some kind of landmark to her. Something to celebrate.

  Looking down, I saw a noticeable difference in how far apart they were this week over last. That would be the trend from here on out though. Each week, each day, this would slip further and further out of my grasp. I couldn’t keep us all together and safe. I couldn’t catch her or the baby if they fell. I couldn’t protect them if I couldn’t reach them. Even as I stared at her stomach, my hands framed around it, I realized what an odd thought that was to have, but acknowledging that didn’t lessen the reality of what I was feeling. Unfortunately.

  “Okay, okay, so enough with the Garth-channeling jokes.” She fitted her hands on either side of mine, so they made one small circle around her stomach. “What’s this code you’re talking about though? Is it one you can share with, you know, a girl? One who was raised in the, gasp, city of all places?”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw her smirking at me, but I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away from her stomach and our hands circled around it. “It’s not a code, per se, but it’s something Colt would have a basic understanding of if he’d been born and raised the way I had.”

  She nudged her pinkie into my thumb. “Am I to infer from that vague explanation that you’re saying Colt should have known better than to ask out a friend’s sister?”

  “Exactly.”

  She nodded slowly, swinging her legs over the arm of the chair; those glaring orange toes flashed at me. “But don’t you all kind of grow up knowing each other, being from a small dot on the map and putting so much importance on helping each other out? Wouldn’t you, if you wanted to date someone in the same zip code as you, kind of have to ask out some friend’s sister eventually?”

  I wanted to answer with a quick and adamant no, but I couldn’t. Because she was right. Back where I came from, plenty of friends dated plenty of friends’ sisters, so I didn’t know why I was so worked up over Colt and Lily. The age difference had something to do with it, but it wasn’t as though he were fift
y and asking her out. I don’t think it was his family’s money or where they had ties to. So what did I have so against Colt Mason dating my sister?

  I’d been trying to figure that out for a while and had come up empty, so I answered Rowen’s questions with a long sigh.

  “What are you going to do if you see them together at Garth and Josie’s engagement party this weekend?” she asked. “Can you be civil? Not manage to embarrass your sister like you did when we ran into them at the movie theater last time we were in town?”

  “They were all over each other,” I argued.

  Rowen squeezed her fingers tied through mine. “They were holding hands.”

  I huffed and shifted my gaze between our combined hands and her stomach. “Yeah, and look where holding hands got us.”

  Her eyebrow lifted. “Happy? Married? In love?” She let that soak in. “Wouldn’t you want the same for your sister?”

  “Of course that’s what I want for Lily. I want that for all of my sisters.”

  Rowen was waiting with a well, then look on her face.

  “I’d just rather they not find it with any of the Mason brothers.”

  She laughed. “Well in our perfect world, I’ll make sure that happens, but in this world, maybe you can figure out a way to accept it.” As soon as my mouth flew open, she added, “Or at least deal with it. For your sister. You know how much Lily looks up to you and wants your approval.”

  I grumbled to myself, a habit I’d taken up ever since I found out about Lily and Colt. “Yeah, well, she obviously wasn’t looking for my approval on this.”

  “No, but I bet she wouldn’t mind having it.”

  I gave my thoughts to that with another huff.

  “So moving on from that topic that stresses you out like nothing else . . .” Rowen wiggled farther down in my lap, her eyes drooping with sleep’s call. “You all set for tomorrow’s appointment? After the last one, I almost asked the doctor if he could prescribe an anti-anxiety pill I could force-feed you an hour before the ultrasounds.”

  My mouth went dry thinking about her appointment. Since Rowen was in the high-risk category, we’d been having ultrasounds at all of our monthly appointments, and she was right—every one had been like a slow form of torture. Waiting for the tech to find the baby, then find the heartbeat . . . that was the worst. Waiting to hear that flutter of a heartbeat echoing through the room. I knew it was Rowen who had the heart condition, but I’d somehow projected that onto the baby, and half the time, I was worried that our child’s heart would give out too. It probably had something to do with knowing that if Rowen’s gave out with the baby in her stomach, so would our child’s. Morbid thoughts hadn’t been in short supply the past few months. They were either haunting me or I was haunting them. I couldn’t tell.

  “Yeah, that isn’t exactly a less stressful topic to discuss actually.” I couldn’t keep from smiling as I watched her eyes fade a bit more as she slumped in my arms. Pregnancy had turned Rowen into a champion at falling asleep quickly. “But yeah, I’m as ready as I ever am before our appointments.”

  “I know they’re hard on you.” She was interrupted by a yawn. “You don’t have to go to every one, you know? In case you haven’t noticed, you’re usually the only guy camped out beside a pregnant woman in the waiting room, so you don’t have to feel guilty for missing a couple of appointments. It might be good for you to take a break.”

  I drew my thumb down her cheek, cutting a line through the still-wet streaks of paint. “You don’t get to take a break. I don’t either then.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not the one who’s about to have a heart attack every time we go.” It was barely recognizable, but something registered on her expression. She caught what she’d said but wouldn’t, for the life of her, admit it.

  I hadn’t missed it either. Turning my thumb over, I saw the paint had transferred to my skin. A swirl of colors had seeped into the whorls of my fingerprint. I stared at it, wondering how something so beautiful could just be scrubbed away. Gone forever. As if it had never been there to start with. “I want to go. I like to go. I’m just terrified at the same time.”

  Rowen was in the middle of a yawn, but she cut it in half. Her hand molded into the bend of my neck. I hadn’t realized how cool I’d been until I felt her warmth bleeding into my skin. “It’ll be okay. We’ve made it this far. I’ve stayed healthy. The baby is healthy. We’re in the homestretch.” She smiled, waiting for me to mirror it. It didn’t come easily or naturally, but I managed it. I could manage anything for her. “Nothing left to worry about but how to stockpile diapers and keep ourselves sane during the first crazy year.”

  We were nearing the homestretch: the last few months leading up to the delivery and the most physically taxing part of the entire pregnancy. The most stressful, straining endeavor a woman could go through. How would her heart handle it? Could it handle it?

  For Rowen, every day that passed eased her worries. It was the opposite for me.

  I MIGHT HAVE been the pregnant one, but it was as if Jesse was the one sitting on a ticking time bomb. From the time we rolled into my OB-GYN’s office and plopped into a couple of chairs, his left leg hadn’t stopped bouncing. Although bouncing wasn’t exactly the right word for it because it was moving so quickly, it was almost a blur from the corner of my eyes. If the nurse didn’t pop her head through that door soon and call my name, he would rub a patch of the low-pile carpet bald with the heel of his boot. Along with the lacquer coating the wood chair-arm he kept running his hand over, twisting and squeezing it like he was trying to rein it into submission.

  His other hand was holding mine, and it was as steady and solid as I was used to when it came to Jesse. He had my hand gathered in his without a trace of that anxiety he had so bottled up inside it was about to explode all over the place. Like his hand holding mine, his leg skimming my leg was still and sure. The half of Jesse closest to me gave no indication that the man inside was falling apart, but the other half, the one farthest from me, looked as if it had staged war on him.

  It was a phenomenon I’d gotten used to over the past few months. Ever since I’d flashed those pink lines in his face and he’d looked as though I’d pointed at my obituary in the newspaper instead. That pregnancy stick had been like a death sentence in Jesse’s eyes, and each day that followed only brought me closer to my date with the hereafter. He’d never said that in so many words, but he didn’t have to. His whole body said it. Or at least the half of his body that was just out of my reach.

  “Hey, Jesse?” I gave his hand a little squeeze while I snagged the sandwich bag nestled inside my purse. “Maybe you should have some of this before we get called back there.”

  Jesse’s eyes flitted to the door where the nurses called us back as if behind that door was a portal of no return. I had to wave the sandwich in front of his face before his stare could be broken.

  “You made me a sandwich?” he said in a voice I’d gotten used to. It still sounded the same, but Jesse’s clear, smooth tone had been roughed up by stress and sleepless nights. His words came out sounding like they’d been rolled in gravel now. “You’re the one who’s pregnant, and you made me a sandwich?” When a sigh slipped out, it gave an indication of just how exhausted he was. That sigh made it sound like he hadn’t slept in months . . . which might not have been a stretch. “I should be the one making you sandwiches. Not the other way around. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Since the sandwich was still hanging in front of his face, I pulled out one of the halves and had to curl his hand around it. “Hmmm, I don’t know. Maybe because you were busy thinking about getting the truck loaded with all of our luggage, and worrying about every facial expression I made after eating too many pancakes and mistaking indigestion with sudden onslaught death?” When his head whipped in my direction, all I did was arch an eyebrow. His expression led me to the conclusion he wasn’t thrilled with my word choice. “Or maybe because you’ve been busy hovering over me, trying to pr
edict my every need and want, along with trying to keep up with work while keeping our condo so clean and tidy dust and debris don’t dare think to cover one of the surfaces in Unit 212.”

  I was looking into his eyes, but it was everything around them I was really noticing. Shadows had been under his eyes for weeks now, for so long it was as if those dark hollows had become permanent fixtures. Even his skin color had faded a shade or two. The hint of bronze that even a couple of long Seattle gray-skied winters couldn’t touch had been erased by a few months of his wife’s pregnancy. He still shaved every morning, but the small nicks and cuts he left behind told the story of a man going through the motions while his mind was weighed down with worry. The corners of his eyes were perhaps what I noticed most. Even when I woke up in the middle of the night to pee for the one hundredth time and he looked as close to asleep as Jesse got these days, the corners of those eyes were still creased. Three little lines stemmed from the corners of his eyes and stretched out to touch his temples.

  It was clear he was worried about me.

  I was just as worried about him.

  “You eat it.” Jesse nodded at the sandwich still hanging in front of his face. “You need it more than I do. I’m not hungry anyway.”

  I kept half-waving the sandwich in front of his face. “You haven’t been hungry since you know when, so if you’d been following your eat-when-I’m-hungry compass, you’d be a runway model in cowboy boots right now.”

  He eyed the sandwich but wasn’t taking the nutrition bait. I wasn’t exaggerating that I’d all but force-fed him for three months. If I didn’t set something in front of him or remind him or, on some days, order him to eat, it would have slipped his mind entirely. That was how distracted he’d been.

  “Come on, I’ll eat the other half if you eat this half,” I said.