by Julia Kent
I open my mouth to tell her something Andrew's tried to get through my head–that I can leave my work at Anterdec and be a stay-at-home mom to the twins. Like Shannon, I'm being offered something very few women get: the freedom to be a stay-at-home mother without worrying about money. At all.
“Do you ever wonder what life would have been like if Dad hadn't been so dysfunctional?” I ask, surprising myself with the question.
“All the time,” she answers, upping the surprise.
“How?”
“It would have been easier to raise you. He loved you, but Leo was a tormented man, and he didn't give two whits about being self-reflective, or getting real help. His journey was his, and he didn't really see you or me as people after a while.”
“Like a narcissist?”
Mom shakes her head. “No. When Leo was sober, he was a good guy.” Nostalgia softens her tension. “We had so much hope in the beginning. But time wasn't kind to us. And the alcohol made him selfish.”
“I think addiction does that to people.”
“It sure does. So I can't imagine a life with Leo in it that didn't include his mistress.”
“Mistress?”
“The bottle. Hardest relationship to quit.”
“Ah.”
A sad silence settles in between us until Spritzy's collar begins to jangle. He jumps off Mom's lap and toddles over to the food dish, which is empty now.
“Right! Sorry!” I say to him, moving away from Mom into the kitchen, where I find the bag of dog food and a little more into the bowl. He begins gobbling, making huffing sounds, and Mom laughs.
“I fed him a few hours ago! He has the metabolism of a humming bird. Would you pour a few small bowls and set them on the counter for me? Then I just have to bend down and put them out for him.”
“Of course.”
“And the mail?” A small stack of envelopes is on the counter. “I forgot to put it next to my chair,” she says sheepishly, as if that's some sort of mistake.
“Here.” I hand the stack to her and watch as she sorts, then turn away to pour dog food into four small bowls I find. If it makes life a little easier for her, I'm happy to do such simple tasks.
Her flares come and go, and hopefully by the time she's used up these bowls, she'll be on the upswing.
“Junk. Junk. Junk. Another political donation request. Junk. Replacement windows. Junk.” She pauses her description of the pile. “Lab.”
“Lab?”
She sighs, shaking her head. “James has it in his head that I might not have fibromyalgia.”
“WHAT? How dare he? He doesn't have the right to–”
“No, no. He doesn't think I'm faking. Plenty of people think it isn't a real disease, but he's not one of them. He thinks I have Lyme disease.”
“Lyme?” I look at her, searching her skin for the red bullseye rash Lyme brings.
“He said there are stories of people with autoimmune conditions who turn out to have Lyme disease. Treat the Lyme, and the condition fades.”
“What's the lab work for? Did you get bitten by a tick?”
“Not that I know. And I've had the fibro for so long. I think he's wrong. But there's a special test that can find antibodies if your immune system ever mounted a response, so...”
“He convinced you to do the test?”
She nods and stares at the envelope. Her finger is halfway through the flap, but then she stops.
“You're nervous about the results?”
“No. Just–what if he's right?”
“You know James. He is right, in his mind. Always.”
“But what if I've had Lyme this entire time and everyone missed it?”
“You were tested for it, though.”
“Not with a test as sensitive as the one James's doctor ordered.” She taps the envelope. “I wonder what this says.”
“Are you afraid to read it?”
Spritzy jumps up and snuggles in her lap again. Mom looks at me with eyes I don't recognize, the skin around them sagging with age, eyelids half closed, exhaustion turning my no-nonsense mother into someone slower, sadder, smaller.
“Yes?” The fact that she phrases it as a question breaks my heart.
“I'll read it for you, Mom.”
“This is silly,” she gasps, but doesn't move. “Having Lyme won't change a thing.”
“Of course it will! You'd use different treatments. You might be able to get rid of the flares.”
“I'll still be sick.”
“But you'll be sick in a way that doctors could try to cure. Fibromyalgia doesn't have a cure!”
We both look at the envelope. She thrusts it at me.
“Yes. You read it.” Closing her eyes, she uses her right hand to scratch Spritzy's forehead. His eyes tighten and he looks like he's grinning.
“Okay.”
I slide the letter out of the envelope, unfold it, and scan the document. My throat tightens, stomach dropping as all the pieces come together in my mind, the implications enormous.
Then I grab her hand and gently, so gently, I squeeze. Years of her pain and suffering, her stoic resolution, of supporting her through it all, have to be expressed in pressure so tender that it conveys love, but not so hard that it adds to her struggle.
That balance is impossible.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
The tears I'm trying to hold back don't care about what I want, dotting the page as I tell her, “James was right.”
5
Amanda
“Your father!” I say in a voice that even I know sounds accusatory. Andrew just walked in the front door, and he's dripping with sweat, so soaked that I cringe when he wraps his arms around me and tries to kiss my cheek.
“Why won't you hug me? And what about my father? What did he do now?”
I ignore the second part and focus on my husband's sweaty, humid body. “Why didn't you shower at the gym?”
“Vince made me go for a long run.”
“How long?”
“All the way home.”
“To the condo?” We still have his condo in the Seaport District, though we moved to Weston a while ago, renovating Andrew's childhood home. “There's a bathroom there, with a shower.”
“I know there is. We've had some fantastic sex in that shower, but no. He made me run here.”
“He made you run all the way from the city to Weston?”
Andrew rakes one hand through soaking wet, dark hair. “Yes. Stuck with me the first ten miles, then peeled off to head to his home.”
“That's got to be twenty miles!”
“We started at the gym. Fourteen point eight, to be exact.”
“I didn't know you could run that far.”
“Neither did I, until today.”
“Your security team let you do that?”
“Let?” Andrew's glare makes me feel like my skin is being peeled off by lasers. “My team doesn't let me do anything.” He puffs up. “I do what I want.”
“Right.” I avert my eyes. “Why is Vince pushing you so hard?”
“Because old Jorg told him.”
Uh oh.
The chain of gyms is Andrew’s personal project, and I'm so excited for him. Telling Vince about it was presenting a challenge to my husband, and now it sounds like that has just exploded.
Andrew begins to stretch, giving me a chance to admire his body, but nausea is trying to creep back in. This mixed reaction to the world is driving me nuts. How can I be nauseated and sexually aroused at the same time? The two conditions are wholly incompatible, but welcome to pregnancy, where nothing makes sense and all of the inconvenience is on you.
“I'm sorry. How'd it go?”
He lets out a laugh that doesn't sound amused at all. “It went fourteen point eight miles of pain, that's how it went. Vince thought I was firing him.”
“But you want to hire him!”
“I know. He misinterpreted everything.” Andrew stops at the foot of t
he stairs and stretches more, a long, slow movement that moves my inner turbulence up a notch.
“So he's angry with you?”
“Fourteen point eight guesses why.”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“He thought I wanted to remodel the gyms and make them–his word–bougie.”
“Bougie! No! You want to keep them authentic and comfortable and… gritty. Like they are.”
“Right.”
“And have Vince be in charge of keeping them that way.”
“I told him that. Gina's sending the proposal to him. Already did, in fact. Not sure he'll bite.”
“I hope he does.”
Andrew winces. “Vince replaced my arms and legs with rubber bands filled with pain.”
“You say that every time you come home from a training session with him. Why torture yourself?”
“Because keeping a body like this takes effort.”
I let my eyes comb over his tall, muscular form. “I owe Vince my gratitude, then.”
“Oh, really?” The gleam in his eye makes my stomach clench. He wants sex. My joke triggered the always-on-the-surface reaction that makes it clear how ready he is. Gym shorts hide nothing.
A war begins in my mind, two very different Amandas squaring off.
“So, about your dad,” I blurt out.
Something in his eyes dims. “Yes?”
“He figured out my mother's fibromyalgia.”
“I see. The conversation is now about our parents. Got it.” Andrew pauses, as though my words are finally sinking in after a time delay. “My father did what?”
“Figured out the source of her fibromyalgia.”
“My father? James McCormick? Are we talking about the same man?”
“We are. He encouraged Mom to get some complicated Lyme disease test, and it came back positive. It could explain everything with her.”
“Lyme?”
“I know, right?”
Andrew guides me upstairs, gently encouraging me to walk up the stairs first.
“Where are we going?”
“I need a shower.” He winks at me, eyes going straight to my midsection, his wolfish smile softening. My body is growing two human beings that are part him. It connects us. His loving gaze is endearing, a source of comfort.
The babies are part me, too, of course, but the idea that I have a piece of Andrew in me is so amazing.
Happiness makes me warm. Or maybe that's just hormones.
We walk into the bathroom together, and Andrew turns on the shower jets. The renovated master bath is half shower room, half everything else. Satin nickel frames the creamy white subway tiles of the shower walls, the floors all Carrera marble. We went for a classic look in here, timeless elegance to suit this antique estate. Sconces are mounted on the mirrored wall over the sinks, adding extra sparkle that’s both flattering and soft.
It’s like staying at the world’s most luxurious hotel, but it’s also your home.
“You joining me?”
Before I can answer, he stops himself, reaching for my hand, eyes concerned.
“Wait. Sorry. Let me drag my lust-filled brain out of the lake of testosterone it's swimming in and ask: How is Pam?”
“She's stunned. It was hard to leave her alone today,” I admit, growing even warmer as he pays attention to me. Andrew has a one-track mind. No, not just sex. It's literally a one-track mind: He focuses on one thing at a time, and one thing only, with one hundred percent attention. Nothing else exists when he's lasered in on whatever captures his focus.
It feels very good to be that object.
“You can go back to her. Honey, I'm sorry,” he says, voice dropping. “Is she in danger?”
“Danger?”
“From the Lyme?”
“Oh, no. The tests show she's had it for a long time. Probably years. Maybe even way back when the fibro was first diagnosed. It's not an emergency. Just... it's a lot to process. Mom was furious that none of her other doctors ever figured it out, and then she went into research mode. You know how she is.”
He smiles, but it's a muted amusement. “I'm sure she had PubMed pulled up within seconds and created a database of possible treatments before you could brew a cup of coffee.”
“Close,” I say, smiling right back. My stomach flips, not from the babies, but from knowing he understands my mother so well. This is what families do, right?
They accept one another. They watch each other. They see people and help them feel seen and heard.
“Are there treatments we can help with?”
“Help?”
“Research trials? Specialists Pam can't easily access? I'll pull whatever strings I need to,” he says firmly. “Dad will, too. I’m on the hospital board, after all.”
“You know Mom hates that.”
“Too bad.”
That's the other side to family: Sometimes, there's conflict.
“You can't alpha your way through my mother's medical issues.”
“Who says I can't? Watch me.”
Protectiveness radiates off Andrew like the sweaty musk from his workout. While I'm slightly outraged by his dominance, I have to admit, it's also a relief. And sweet. And hot.
Mmmmm, hot.
I reach for my top button and undo it, his eyes growing wider by the second, attentive to my fingers in that super-focused manner he has.
And then he acts.
Naked in seconds, Andrew reaches behind me and slides his hands under the thick elastic of my maternity pants, the fabric pooling at my feet. Sex has been hit-or-miss these last months as morning sickness has ravaged my whole self. When he kisses me, I taste the salt of sweat and the sweet flavor of something fruity, and then he dissolves into just Andrew.
“You sure?” he whispers as he deftly unclasps my bra, pregnancy-augmented breasts spilling out into the space between us, my nipples rubbing against his chest, the air around us filling with steam.
“Yes. Please, yes.”
“You do not have to ask. Trust me. I'm the one saying please.”
His kiss stops whatever response was forming in my mind, the day's worries stacked on top of each other in a pile I have to sort, organize, distribute, and dispense with, but as he moves us into the water's spray, the tumbled mess of everything is suddenly over there, off to the side, out of sight. He pulls me back into my body, and the worries fade.
I'm nothing but wet skin and full lips, Andrew's eager hands taking over, making me feel. Far too much time has passed without this, and it feels good to feel good. To feel great.
To feel with my body, and not only with my heart and mind.
His palm slides down my wet breasts, cupping the growing hard ball beneath my navel. Then he drops to his knees and kisses me there, twice.
Once for each baby.
But the next kiss he gives, going lower, lower, lower, is very much for me.
And only me.
6
Andrew
On Sunday, the doctor's office robo-called to remind us about our eight a.m. appointment today. Amanda had to drink a gallon of water and hold her bladder, so she's twitchy, excited, miserable, and fussy.
Which means she's not all that different than she's been since the first trimester.
But now she needs to go.
The chairs in the waiting room at the ob-gyn's office are simple, with thin wooden armrests and gray tweed upholstery. They’re wider than I'm used to, but then it hits me:
They're wide because pregnant women grow.
“I can't believe that with so many medical advances in modern society, obstetrics still hasn't managed to come up with a way to get images of a fetus that doesn't make me feel like my bladder is the Titanic,” Amanda hisses at me, earning an appreciative glance from a woman across from us, who literally looks like she swallowed a whole watermelon and it's trying to escape out of her belly button.
“Your bladder hit an iceberg and cracked in half?” I whisper back to my wife.
“Taking on so much water, it's sinking me. Andrew, I don't think pelvic muscles were designed to clench this hard.”
My body and my mind have two distinctly different reactions to that comment.
“Wait until the baby's this big,” the woman across the way says, pointing to her belly. “Your bladder will be flatter than roadkill.”
Amanda's face turns green.
The woman puts her hand over her mouth in horror. “Oh! I'm sorry! Are you still dealing with morning sickness?” Her eyes drift to Amanda's belly. “You look like you're well into the second trimester.”
“Twins,” I explain, the woman's male companion looking at me with an expression I can't quite name, but I swear there's pity in it.
And, of course, admiration.
That's right. My shooters scored, big time.
“Twins? Are they your first?” the guy asks, patting his wife on the knee. She removes his hand with a vacant expression.
The gesture makes me shiver.
Amanda nods. “We're first timers. You?”
“Fourth baby,” the woman says, eyes cutting to her husband. “And this time, you don't get to listen to the Red Sox game during pushing.”
“They were in the Series!” he snaps back, looking to me for validation.
I go full poker face.
I'm not stupid.
“Fourth!” Amanda exclaims. “Good for you. Any tips?”
“Get the epidural in the parking lot,” the guy mutters.
“They do that?” I ask.
Amanda elbows me. “Ha ha.”
“You going for a natural birth?” the woman asks us.
Amanda tenses up. I'm not sure why she does, but I'm suddenly uncertain what to do.
So I take her hand in mine and smile at her.
“We, well... we're not sure,” Amanda says, eyes searching mine.
I kiss the back of her hand. “Whatever gives us two healthy babies and a healthy mom is all that matters.”