And those eight ounces of caffeine I require daily to make sure I don’t stab anyone. God, I miss drinking a full coffee pot on my own. Stupid doctor rules.
“No.”
I sigh and then roll over to face him, raising my eyebrows. This had better be good.
A softness overtakes his expression, and his eyes crinkle around the edges as he smiles.
“Did you know that exactly one year ago today, at this exact moment … well, this moment two minutes ago when I first tried waking you up, we first met?”
And suddenly, I’m the asshole.
I love how this crazy, thoughtful man loves me even when I’m at my worst.
“I … I didn’t realize that was today.” I smile fondly at the memory of Jeff taking the seat next to me on the plane to Denver. I was headed there for work, and he was off to visit his family and celebrate his brother’s engagement. I had planned on working on a presentation during the short ninety minute flight from Kansas City, but instead, I listened to him nervously prattle about nothing and everything. It was quite endearing. Without hesitation, I slipped him my card as we deplaned and told him to call me when he was back in Kansas City if he ever wanted to meet up for drinks.
“Yep, it was today. I overslept and nearly missed the flight, and the first available seat I saw was next to a gorgeous, fiery, red head. I never imagined the course of my life would change all because I accidentally turned my alarm off. If I had been there on time, I would have been one of the first people on the plane, finding a way to bogart an entire row to myself, and our paths would never have crossed.”
I giggle and lean over to kiss the tip of his nose. “Happy day-we-met-iversary, Jeff. It’s a shame you couldn’t oversleep this morning too, babe. I am seriously sleep deprived.”
“I know, but this will only take a minute.” He sits up and reaches over to his nightstand and takes out a small slip of paper, then hands it to me. I push myself up and wipe the sleep away from my eyes. I scan the small square, and it’s the stub from his boarding pass from last year.
After all this time, he kept it.
“Flip it over.”
Scrawled in his chicken scratch in faded blue ink he wrote, Today I met Henley. The woman I’m going to marry.
My breath hitches and when I look up, he is down on one knee on the floor holding the most ridiculous rock I’ve ever laid eyes on.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, then swallow hard, suddenly wide awake.
“Henley Louise Carson, it took an hour and a half at ten thousand feet to fall in love with you one year ago this morning. And now my favorite part of every morning is waking up next to you and falling in love with you all over again. Would you give me the privilege of spending every morning, noon and night with you for the rest of our lives?”
“Oh my god! ” Excitement floods my veins like a runaway train, and all I want to do is kiss him in spite of my horrendous morning breath. “Oh my god, yes!”
Jeff takes my hand and slips the princess cut stone encased in white gold onto my ring finger — except it gets stuck at the knuckle.
“I’m sorry, I swell in the morning. Just one of the many joys of pregnancy.” I laugh with tears of happiness prickling my eyes.
He smiles, then kisses my knuckle, licking it in the process so he can maneuver the ring on the rest of the way. “It’s okay, we can get it resized.”
Jeff climbs back up onto the bed, and I throw my arms around him tightly. We quickly lose balance and fall backward into a pile of pillows. The awkward way he lands on top of me triggers an urgent and insatiable need to relieve myself.
“Oh, shit! Move! Now! I gotta pee!” I playfully swat at his chest.
He howls with laughter as he rolls onto his back and I hustle into the bathroom to avoid embarrassing myself right here in front of my fiance.
Fiance. I roll the strange word around in my mind while I admire Jeff’s excellent taste in fine jewelry from the confines of the porcelain throne.
When I come back to bed, Jeff is propped up on his arm, watching me intently. “Are you’re sure you’re not just proposing because I’m pregnant?” I mean, I’ve always known that Jeff and I would one day get married. I just figured it wouldn’t be for a while.
Jeff looks at me earnestly and pats the empty spot next to him on the bed. I snuggle into his chest, and he threads his fingers between mine. “First of all, we’re pregnant, not just you. You may be carrying my baby, but we’re a team. We’re in this together — I am with you every step of the way. And secondly, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life.”
He leans down and presses his lips to mine in a feverish kiss. This kiss is full of hope and unspoken promises. When we pull apart, there’s a truth in his eyes that reassures my soul.
This man is it. He’s it for me.
“I wish you knew just how much I love you, Henley.”
“I do. I not only feel it in my bones, but because I love you just the same.”
6. A BLUR OF MONTHS SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE
To say the past few months have been rough is an understatement.
“Oh, the morning sickness will subside when you reach the second semester!” they said.
“You’ll have more energy and feel great!” they said.
I want to find whoever “they” are and hex them to a lifetime of morning sickness where they can only dry heave glitter. Because let’s be honest, glitter is awesome.
And a bitch to clean up.
But the toilet and I have become close friends. Jeff has been pretty great about it all. He holds my hair back like Tara used to do after a long night of drinking back in college. But if he offers me ginger ale and saltines one more time, I may lose my shit. I make sure to remind him that this is all his fault on a regular basis.
But being pregnant is just … weird.
There’s really no other way to describe it.
Half the time I can’t tell if I’m having gas or premature contractions. The instant I walk out of the bathroom, I have to pee again. That pregnant glow my mom keeps complimenting me on? It’s just sweat. Which means I’m “glowing” all the damn time. When my sex drive finally started to come back, I wanted to punch Jeff in the face every time I looked at him in spite of my severe horniness. And feeling the baby kick for the very first time wasn’t this amazing, miraculous moment. It was really fucking freaky. It’s like this kid already hates me since it’s beating me up from the inside out. And just last week I had a nightmare that my labor and delivery mirrored the scene in Spaceballs where the tap dancing alien burst through John Hurt’s stomach to a rousing rendition of Howard and Emerson’s Hello! Ma Baby.
I woke up traumatized.
Aside from this constantly running list of amazing moments on the road to motherhood, things have been relatively normal. Work is boring. Morning sickness is plentiful, which is a bullshit name for it considering it lasts all damn day. And the highlight of my second trimester was Jeff and I moving in together, finally settling on a new apartment. Partly because I couldn’t envision myself in his place, and my apartment never fully recovered from the great bread-burning incident of 2016.
Our modest two-bedroom is a brownstone walkup in the Waldo neighborhood of Kansas City. I love the wood-burning fireplace, though Jeff jokes that I’m not allowed near it with anything remotely flammable. The nursery is coming along beautifully. We agreed not to find out the sex of the baby since it’s one of the last great surprises you can get in life, so we’ve stocked up on yellow and green clothes that look like they belong on a Cabbage Patch doll, and found an adorable woodland creature theme for his or her bedroom.
The secondhand glider from Tara squeaks softly as I rock back and forth, admiring the painting of a fox wearing a top hat and monocle hanging on the wall across from me. Jeff’s heavy footsteps thunder down the hall, and before I know it, he pops his head inside the door.
“So babe, I’ve been meaning to
ask, how does it feel to have a penis growing inside of you?”
I scoff in disgusted horror. “You do realize that you have a fifty percent chance of being wrong, don’t you?”
He winks at me playfully.
“And that is the most repulsive and disturbing thing you’ve said in a long time. I have a penis inside of me? Seriously? That’s as bad as Tara trying to convince me that the few times she and her husband tried to have sex while she was pregnant constituted an orgy since she was expecting triplets.”
“Okay, now that’s just wrong. And incestual. I love your friend, but I don’t need that particular visual seared in my mind the next time we’re all hanging out together.”
I chuckle, and Jeff comes inside the nursery to take a seat on the ottoman in front of me. His face turns serious, and I instantly know where this conversation is headed before he even says a word. We just had this conversation last week.
“Please don’t.”
“Don’t what?” He feigns innocence.
“Don’t ask me again right now. I beg you.”
He reaches out and places his hands on my legs, gently brushing his thumbs against knees and sighs audibly. “Hen, our families are asking. We should really give them some kind of details of where our heads are at with this wedding.”
I shift uncomfortably. Every time Jeff suggests making plans for our wedding, I have to remind him to come back down to earth. There is no way I am planning a wedding until after this baby has been evicted from my body.
“I know, it’s just that I think we should wait to get married. Nobody wants to see a bride waddle down the aisle only to have her go into labor at the altar. If we have a shotgun wedding before this kid debuts, then everyone is going to think I’m a floozy.”
“Henley, you’re already pregnant. If that makes you a floozy, then you’re my floozy. Besides, they’re not going to think that. This is the twenty-first century. And I’ve never been one to be conventional.”
His beautiful baby blues plead with me to give him something. Anything to get his mother to stop nagging. “Okay. Let’s try this. Big or small? If we can give my folks some kind of inkling of what to expect, that ought to buy us another week or two.”
I wrap my arms around my belly and slowly rock back and forth, trying to figure out how to best answer the question.
“I know my parents want to throw a big wedding for me, but honestly I just want a small celebration. If I had my way, we’d elope. It’d be just the two of us..”
He raises a knowing eyebrow at me and then looks to my baby bump.
“Okay … the three of us.” I smile, gently patting my stomach. It’s kind of surreal that this is my life now.
“So you wouldn’t want your family there at all?”
“It’s not that I don’t want them there. It’d be nice to have them there, for sure. It’s just that everything I need is right here in front of me. And my mom tends to overdo things. Heck, she even threw a party when I first got my period. Congratulations on bleeding without dying every month for the next forty years! Have a cookie cake!” I laugh then lean over to press my lips against his. Jeff wraps his hand around the back of my neck, deepening the kiss and tangling his fingers in my hair. When he pulls back, there’s a look in his eye that can only be described as complete and total adoration.
“I love you, woman.”
“I know. What’s not to love? I am pretty awesome.”
“That you are.”
7. TEN CENTIMETERS TO GO
“When you invited me out for lunch, this was not what I had in mind.” I carefully climb down from the front seat of Tara’s SUV and place my hands on my hips, trying to stretch out my back. I look up at the towering warehouse above me, and my eyes narrow in on the oversized Costco sign.
“Oh, quit complaining. We’re killing two birds with one stone. Your cute pregnant ass couldn’t make up its mind about what it wanted to eat, and I needed to get some shopping done for the monster squad. Costco has food samples in nearly every aisle. It’s a win for both of us.”
I smile at her monster squad comment. Tara’s triplet boys are in their ferocious fours and tear everything apart. Literally everything. Last week I walked in and found the inside fluff of her couch cushions scattered across the floor like a giant cloud because of a game of ‘Hot And Cold’ gone wrong. Apparently, the small dinosaur figurine was hidden underneath the couch and not inside the back pillow like Jack had assumed. Tara has had many babysitters quit on her after one night because they can’t keep up with the F5 tornado that is Jack, Miles, and Wes. Mini monsters, they most certainly are. And it makes me excited about one day having a monster squad of my own with Jeff.
Just not three.
And not all at once.
Tara and I eat our way through Costco, stopping at nearly every single sample station for a taste. It’s surprisingly more fun than it sounds and they have a killer selection. The fried macaroni and cheese balls in the frozen food section have been my favorite, hands down—though I would never admit that to her.
My nose curls up when I sample some spinach artichoke dip that was secretly laced with habanero peppers. No doubt this kiddo will make me pay for that later.
“Quit making that face, Henley. This isn’t that bad.”
“What do you have against sit-down dining? When you sold me on a girl’s day out, parading around the aisles searching for bulk toilet paper and a bag of one hundred forty-four count nuggets isn’t at all what I had in mind.”
“Oh, come on, where else can you taste chicken fingers, cheese spread, fruit snacks and a Swedish meatball all in the same meal?”
I love how she keeps reiterating this whole extravaganza like it’s fine dining. “Um, I dunno, any middle school cafeteria in the Kansas City metropolitan area?”
“Touche.”
I can only shake my head at her absurdity. This is what I get for having a free lunch on her. I really should know better by now. This is hardly lunch, and there is certainly nothing free about this experience. Judging by the contents of my cart, I probably have two hundred dollars worth of impulse food purchases here, most of which is in the form of fifteen different kinds of cookies. I really shouldn’t be shopping on a mostly empty stomach.
We make our way through a few more aisles in silence, pausing to toss in random basics like a gallon on mayonnaise and a jar of taco seasoning the size of my head. Whatever she plans on making with the random contents of her cart, I definitely want to steer clear from.
“So how are things going with you and Cameron? I can only imagine how little time you two actually get to spend together with the boys running around all over the place.”
“Oh, you know. It’s the same old, same old. We’ve mastered the art of the five minute quickie while the kids fight over their toys. It’s super romantic.” Tara grins.
I know she’s happy and wouldn’t change a thing, but I can’t even imagine the chaos that is her life now. “But I don’t want to talk about me today. Tell me what’s going on with you and Jeff. I’m really happy you found each other, and that things are working out better than you imagined. He’s a really good guy, Hen. I mean … shit. Imagine what your life would be like if you married that muscle-clad, limp dick, Tommy? Or Charlie? Or what’s his name? That tall drink of water with the thick-rimmed glasses? Ever wonder what happened to those guys?” She grabs a sample taste of a buffalo chicken egg roll as we walk.
“Not really. But I’m pretty certain Tommy turned out gay, and I’m sure that’s somehow my fault. Charlie was too busy getting high to get a real job and has probably entered some hippie compound where he’s busy fashioning organic bongs out of cow shit. And that tall, four-eyed drink of water? His name was Leo. And he was a Grade A cheese dick.”
Tara whips her head toward me so fast I’m pretty sure it’s going to snap off her neck.
“Oh my gosh, Henley. Could you imagine having a dick literally made of cheese? Ho
ly shit! That would be amazing. I might actually enjoy giving blow jobs for once.” She grabs a bag of string cheese and tosses it into the cart making a phallic and inappropriate gesture. Her expression suddenly turns serious, and she tilts her head like she’s about to say something thought-provoking.
“You know, whoever came up with the phrase ‘it is far better to give than it is to receive’ clearly wasn’t talking about blow jobs.”
Good point. Though I’ve never really minded them much.
“Where do you come up with this shit?”
Tara shrugs and goes back to her previous thought. “I forgot his name was Leo. He headed out west for med school after breaking your heart, right?”
“First of all, he didn’t break my heart. He was just my greatest disappointment in spite of his supreme douchebaggery.” I give her a pointed look, trying to push his memory from my mind. After he took my virginity, he grew accustomed to calling me Fire Crotch, like it was a shock that my carpet matched my drapes, and I became so self-conscious that I didn’t sleep with another man until Jeff. Dating Leo was not one of my finer moments.
“But yeah, I think he ended up at UCLA. Orthopedic surgeon or podiatrist or something.”
“Huh,” Tara grunts matter-of-factly as she hoists a bag of Swedish meatballs roughly the size of Montana into the cart. “You know, that idiot simply couldn’t see how incredible you were. Anyone that blind to your awesomeness probably gets off with braille porn pictures.”
“Is that even a thing?” I double over in laughter as the sheer stupidity of her last comment. I could totally see Leo finding amusement (and orgasms) in something like that.
“I don’t know, but it should be.”
I freeze mid-step, gripping the handlebar of my shopping cart until my knuckles turn white. “Oh my God.”
“What?” Tara whips around then piles on an oversized bag of mixed greens on top of her ever-growing pile of bulk food.
“I … I think I just peed myself.”
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