Frayed

by Kim Karr

You’re crazy. You know that. Right? See you soon.

  If I said my nerves weren’t back in full force, I’d be lying. By now I’ve really begun to hate S’belle’s favorite restaurant. But I make it there by six. She’s already seated at a table by the window with her back to me, and her red hair hangs in curls. The restaurant is by no means busy, so the atmosphere is tranquil and the room is somewhat quiet. Bending down, I swipe her hair to the side and kiss her neck. “Hi, sexy.”

  She twists and her lips meet mine. “Hi.”

  I take a seat and pull my chair right up to hers. When I glance at the tabletop I see two glasses of sparkling water and a dish of lemons as well as a wrapped package that looks a lot like the one I brought her from Fiction Vixen the last time we were here.

  I grab her hands. “Let’s cut to the chase. Please don’t torture me by making me wait until after dinner to tell me why I’m meeting you here.”

  Her innocent green eyes shine, although she looks a little peaked and a little scared.

  “Are you still sick?” I ask, concerned.

  She shakes her head. “I have something to tell you and I’m really nervous.”

  “Why, have you been bad?”

  “No,” she says quickly, and looks more sickly with each passing second.

  “Shit, I thought I was going to have to spank you,” I say, trying to ease her nervousness, but honestly my stomach feels as if it might fall at any second, so I’m not sure I’m doing a great job.

  But when a slight smile crosses her lips, I think I’ve succeeded. She twists and pulls a brown paper bag out from her purse and hands it to me with trembling fingers.

  “What’s this? Nothing that’s going to jump out at me, I hope.”

  She stares at me, looking scared shitless.

  My own hands are shaking as I unfold the bag. What the hell could it contain that makes her look like that? I pull out a purple box that reads EPT, with the words early pregnancy test written out below it. My eyes widen, my heart pounds, and my pulse races as my head snaps to her.

  “Are you pregnant?” I ask in shock.

  “I don’t know but I think I might be,” she answers. All the color has left her face now.

  A million different emotions pass through me, but I settle on one—pure elation. I jump from my chair and take the box and her hand. “Well, let’s find out.”

  “Now?” she asks, completely taken aback.

  “Right now.” I grin at her.

  “You’re not upset?” She sounds surprised.

  I pull her flush to my body, not caring that we’re in a restaurant. “Upset? Are you out of your mind? Now come on, you have a stick to pee on.”

  She tugs on my hand.

  I turn around.

  “What if I can’t go?”

  I stride back to the table and pick up both glasses of water. When I return to her I tell her, “Drink these, baby.”

  She smiles in a way that lights up her eyes and gulps both of them down.

  “You can’t come in here,” she says when I push open the door to the restroom.

  “Fuck I can’t.”

  She shakes her head and enters under my arm.

  I shakily open the box and hand her the stick.

  She stares at me.

  “You have to go in there,” I say, pointing to the stall door.

  “I know.”

  “Then go!”

  “So bossy,” she says as she takes the stick.

  When she comes out we both stare at it as she sets it on the counter.

  “The instructions say to wait two minutes to read the result. Be sure to read the result before ten minutes have passed,” I tell her.

  With my hands gripping the counter, my eyes are locked on the stick as the time slowly passes by. S’belle is pacing the room. My foot taps the floor at a hundred miles an hour. When a blue line appears in the square window, I twist toward her. “It’s turning.”

  She looks at her watch, the one I finally had fixed for her. “It says wait two minutes. It hasn’t even been thirty seconds. You shouldn’t be looking yet.”

  “I’m impatient and never follow instructions. You know that.”

  She gives a little giggle. The one that makes my heart flip.

  I decide I’ll pick up the instructions to see what the window means.

  “I thought you didn’t follow the instructions.”

  “Shhh . . . let me figure this out.”

  She rushes over to me and pushes her way under my outstretched arms.

  I read out loud with her cocooned inside my arms, “If a blue line appears in the square window within ten minutes, the test has worked.” I continue reading the instructions. “A plus sign in the round window indicates a pregnancy result—”

  She pulls the folded paper from my hand.

  “Hey, let me finish reading that.”

  She holds the stick up. It has the biggest, bluest plus sign displayed in the first window.

  Every part of my body hums with a kind of happiness I’ve never felt in my life. “A baby?” Shock takes over.

  She nods.

  “How?” I ask her.

  She grins. “Well, the birds and the bees . . .”

  I pull her to me and kiss her, soft and gentle. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I got a second chance at life.

  After a few moments she leans back. “I think this explains my mood swings and my puking. My mother told me taking antibiotics makes the pill less effective. I had no idea—”

  I shut her up by putting my finger over her lips. “Shhh . . . I don’t care how it happened.”

  Her hands go to my cheeks and she holds them there. “Are you sure?”

  I nod with emotion clogging my throat. Is she kidding me?

  We stare into each other’s eyes for a long while and then I drop to my knees. She follows my movements as I lift her shirt and kiss the shamrock she wears to never forget our first baby. I look up at her and then glide my mouth to kiss above the gleaming green symbol of remembrance. And this time when I look up again I say, “S’belle Wilde, I love you and I promise you forever.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Happy

  Bell

  Seven and a half months later

  You might be a little horny were the first words I read when I opened a pregnancy book to a random page many months ago. It made me laugh because the description fit. I had bought Ben two books from Fiction Vixen the day I thought I might be pregnant—the first one The Modern Kama Sutra: An Intimate Guide to the Secrets of Erotic Pleasure and the second Finding Out You’re Pregnant. It was the latter that shared that helpful tidbit with me. Once we both calmed our racing nerves in the bathroom, we went back to our table and decided food to go would be best. I was ready to leave my refuge and go home. I just wanted to be alone with Ben.

  Sex with Ben has always been . . . well, amazing. And in the past several months my need for him has been off the charts. When we were first together I knew that what we had was different. I don’t know how I knew—I just did. And no one I was with after him had ever made me feel the way he does. Everything about him, every touch, caress, word, and whisper, makes my body come alive. It still does. And now even though my belly is swollen beyond belief as I enter my ninth month of pregnancy, I want him more than ever.

  Ben doesn’t mind at all. He’s happy to indulge my every need—whether it’s a slice of triple-crusted pie from Four & Twenty Blackbirds at midnight, or my weird craving for vegetables, especially carrots with lemon juice drizzled over them, or of course my constant arousal. He likes that my breasts are bigger—a fact that amazes him on a daily basis. The Kama Sutra book has come in handy because as my body has changed, our favorite sexual positions have grown uncomfortable and some aren’t even feasible.

  We’ve had to get very creative and experiment with different ways to please ourselves. We take turns picking new positions to attempt. It’s been so much fun.

  After showering, I tug the
towel off my head and let my hair dangle in curls, patting the water from it.

  He picks up the book as I walk into the bedroom and with complete focus looks through it.

  I point to one of the drawings. “That one.”

  He strokes his chin. “You think? I’m not sure about the leg placement.”

  I giggle and toss the book aside, throwing myself back on the mattress and bringing him with me. “Let’s make something up.”

  Both of our towels come undone. “Sounds like a plan,” he growls.

  It’s not an exaggeration that we have sex at least twice a day. I made the mistake of telling my new girlfriend Summer from Lamaze and I don’t think she believed me. We took a spin class together and when we went to the juice bar afterward, I told her my vagina was really sore and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to have sex tonight.

  Her head snapped to mine as she rubbed her own swollen belly. “You’re still having sex?” She went on to say, “God, that’s the last thing I feel like doing.” And then she laughed.

  I didn’t answer but laughed along with her even though that couldn’t have been further from the truth for me. I love Ben and we do it a lot. Obviously I’m very attracted to him and with him I’ve discovered I love sex, I really love it—a lot. And I know he definitely feels the same.

  When he rests his head on his elbow and moves one hand to caress my stomach, I’m pulled back to the here and now. His lips trail down my neck, over my breasts, and stop to kiss the shamrock in my belly button, then just below it. He kisses the baby like this all the time. It gives me butterflies.

  He looks up at me. “So we agree. We’ll name the baby Huck?”

  We found out the sex of our baby at my four-month prenatal visit, and ever since then Ben has been relentless about naming him Huck. I peer down at him. “No, we did not agree. Remind me when we had the conversation where I said yes.”

  His fingers drift down to circle me.

  I let out a long heavy breath, knowing soon my body will be hovering on the edge waiting for the crashing pleasure to peak.

  “This morning,” he murmurs as his tongue licks a path down the curve of my belly to join his fingers.

  I raise myself up on my elbows. Still breathing heavy, I try to see over my stomach. “Do you mean when your mouth was”—I point to where his fingers are—“there and you were whispering things I couldn’t even try to understand in the frenzied state you had me in?”

  His devilish grin widens. “Yes, when I had my tongue on your clit and you were screaming my name and calling out to heaven—yeah, that’s when. You said yes.”

  “I love you, Ben Covington, but we are not naming our child Huck.”

  He stares at me and pats my cheek. “Maybe once you see him you’ll change your mind.”

  His eyes gleam whenever he talks about the baby. It’s so cute. His thumb strokes my face and he kisses me gently before he moves his mouth to that spot behind my ear that makes my body dance on its own. When I arch my back and moan, I feel the grin that forms on his lips. I knot my fingers in his hair, feeling more than a little ready to do this again. His hand moves back down to caress my belly as we lie in bed naked getting ready to make love for the second time since I got home. I can’t even wait until tonight.

  His hands move quickly as we lie on the bed both still lightly damp from our shower. One chaste kiss on the mouth and before I know it his lips are sucking on one of my nipples and his hand moves to cup my sex and I’m aroused all over again. I close my eyes as my body soaks in the pleasure of his touch. A loud moan escapes my throat and I lick my lips, but when he stops abruptly and jerks up, my eyes fly open.

  “S’belle, there’s a lot of, um . . . water on the bed.”

  I sit up and look. Oh my God, I feel it.

  Ben is staring down—petrified.

  Once I realize I haven’t lost bladder control, I almost laugh at how scared he looks. Calmly I say, “I think my water broke.”

  He bolts off the bed and pulls a pair of boxers from his drawer. “You’re not due for two weeks.”

  I shrug. “The doctor did say anytime now.”

  “We have to call the doctor.”

  I pat the bed. “Ben, sit down. Let’s see if I have any contractions.”

  I try to be calm, summoning all my willpower to not crumble and have him rush me to the hospital, because I know what to do—what the classes taught me.

  He looks at me as he lowers himself down onto the bed, his leg tapping up and down with his foot on the floor. “How long does that take?”

  “I have no idea.” I laugh.

  “What do you mean you have no idea? We went to all those classes.”

  “You were there too.”

  “Yeah, but I was always a shitty student.”

  I have to laugh at that. How can I not? I slide my feet to the floor and rise from the bed. As I slip into one of his button-up shirts, I feel a cramp and I slump over.

  Ben rushes over to me. “Let’s go to the hospital.”

  “Let me call my mother and see what she says first.” I sit back on the bed, taking a deep breath.

  Ben quickly hands me my phone from the night table. “Did you pack a bag yet?”

  “No. I thought I still had time.”

  He strides over to the closet. “I’ll do it.”

  I call my mother.

  “How far apart are your contractions?”

  “I’ve only had one.”

  “Jack and I are on our way. You should be fine until we get there. Just relax, okay, Isabelle?”

  Isabelle? She only ever calls me by my real name when she’s nervous. Great. “Yes, Mom.”

  I hit END and look up to see Ben standing in utter sexiness in the doorframe. He is disheveled and so handsome—his jeans are unzipped, his shirt, the frayed one that I love, is unbuttoned, and his feet are bare.

  He lifts his eyes to me. “Do you think we made a mistake?”

  My mouth drops. “Why would you say that? It’s a little late now.” My voice breaks.

  He furrows his brow. “I mean that we didn’t get married before we have the baby. What did you think I meant?”

  Relief courses through me at the same time as another cramp bites from my lower gut. I wince and he flies to the bed.

  “What can I do?”

  I grab his hand. “Just stay with me. I’m scared.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Why are you second-guessing our decision?” I ask as I look down at the large radiant-shaped diamond that adorns my finger.

  The sun shining in the window reflects against the ring’s cut edges. He proposed to me a week after we watched the white stick turn to a plus sign. It was so romantic—like a scene out of an old film. He took me back to Hearst Castle. No one was there—it was just the two of us. Before we entered the large exquisite doors, he dropped to his knee, called me his “Rosebud,” and told me he wanted to marry me. Whoever said he wasn’t romantic? He told me I was his missing puzzle piece—a guy couldn’t get more romantic than that. The gesture made my heart skip beat after beat. But later when the adrenaline rush slowed, we talked about it more. We agreed that we would get married . . . but only when the time was right. Plus, I would need time to plan the wedding.

  “I don’t want to be that couple that gets married only because they’re having a baby,” I reminded him.

  “Does my name still go on the birth certificate? Will the baby have my last name?” he asks.

  His voice is full of concern. I muster all of my energy as another cramp hits. Once it passes I straddle his lap and take his face in my hands. “This baby is yours and mine. Yes, your name will be on the birth certificate and, yes, he will have your last name.”

  He slides his lips to kiss my hand and takes them in his. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” Then I know what he needs. “Ben, just so you know, I did put your name on the birth certificate that just read baby.” I can finally talk about the
baby, our baby that I gave up, and feel that I did what was right.

  His eyes glitter with tears, but before they can spill I let out a scream.

  He takes my hand. “Let’s go. They’re coming too close. We need to get to the hospital.”

  “Did you pack my bag?”

  “S’belle, I can’t find shit in there. Tell me what you want to wear to the hospital and I’ll get it. We’ll worry about the rest later.”

  “My white top with the . . .” I gasp for air.

  He’s really in a panic now. He shoves his feet into his boots and zips and buttons his clothes.

  When the contraction stops I stand up. “Let me show you.”

  “Okay, but make it quick.”

  “Ben, you have to put socks on.”

  “What?” he asks, confused.

  “You didn’t put socks on before you put your boots on. Your feet are going to smell.”

  He laughs and grabs a pair from the dresser as I make my way to the closet. I can see what he’s talking about. Huge mess of clothes everywhere. I point to the items I want. Ben throws them all in a bag along with some of my toiletries. Then he helps me slide on my panties. Next I shimmy a pair of jeans on and decide to wear his shirt with no bra. I don’t really care at this point.

  Once I’m ready he takes my hand, but a knifelike pain radiates from my hipbone to my pubic bone and I can’t move.

  Sweat coats his brow.

  I look around the room as I ride the wave out and spot the book with the blue spine. When my gaze swings back to Ben, his eyes are so wide with fear I can almost feel it. I take a step forward but stop again. “Wait, can you bring that book?”

  He looks confused but grabs it and shoves it in the bag.

  “So you can read to me while we’re in the hospital,” I tell him as we leave the house.

  He looks down at me and stops to hold me; then he says, “You’re so fucking adorable.”

  From the car I call my mother and tell her to meet us at the hospital. My insides feel as if they’re twisting inside out at this point. At the hospital I’m quickly whisked to a room, given an IV, and asked if I want an epidural. Ben and I already decided I would take the epidural. My mother and Jack arrive just as it takes effect. Shortly after that River, Dahlia, Ivy, and Xander show up. Ivy is three months pregnant and still experiencing morning sickness morning, noon, and night. They all pop their heads in before going to the waiting room. When the nurse calls the doctor and time approaches, my mother leaves as well. And it’s just Ben and me.