by J. J. McAvoy
“Down, boy.” She laughed, snuggling against me. “Doctor said not for another week, but I just wanted to feel you.”
Disappointed, but understanding, I nodded. It didn’t take long before our legs became tangled, and our bodies pressed tightly together. Being this close and unable to have her, but also far too tired to even try was one level above screaming and crying babies in hell.
“Sorry for yelling at you earlier,” she whispered.
“When?”
“In the bathroom with Ulric.”
Right. I hadn’t given it much thought, since we were all yelling. Ulric, included. “Me too.”
She reached up, putting her hand on the side of my face, and kissed me. It felt like I was kissing her for the first time all over again. What started off gentle, ended up much more passionate, her mouth opening for my tongue, as I rolled on top her. All her warmness against me, her breasts now too big for my hand, which only turned me on more.
“Levi,” she moaned as I kissed her neck. “One more week.”
Damn it.
“Ugh,” I groaned in frustration, lifting my lips from her skin.
She kissed me quickly, smiled, and said, “One more week, and then your work is cut out for you.”
“Why?” I asked, still on top of her.
“I have stretch marks everywhere, Levi.” She pouted. “Even on my ass … my ass! Not to mention, this little kangaroo pouch, which I’m working on getting rid of. It’s going to take your best moves to get me feeling sexy again.” She nodded down to her stomach. Was she as small as she was before getting pregnant? No. But I didn’t want her freaking out just because she had a tiny belly now. She looked beautiful, and you’d never guess she’d had our child a little over a month ago.
“You are sexy now.” I kissed her and pulled back. “Believe me, you’re fine.”
“Thank you, but I also like my clothes and want to fit into them again.” When she said it, I rolled over back on to my slide.
“And here I thought you were worried I wouldn’t find you attractive, when all the while you were thinking about your clothes.”
She giggled, cuddling up to me more, but I rolled over.
“No, nope, it’s fine—”
“Levi.” She laid on top of me. “I like clothes, because when I get all dressed up, when you’re dressed in your suit, and I walk next to you, I feel like … we’re this power couple. Mr. and Mrs. Black. My grandmother always told me the clothes make the person. I know it’s lame, but I really love the way people look at us when we walk together at the firm or the courthouse.”
Just like that, I was defenseless against her.
“Mr. and Mrs. Black, huh?” I repeated.
She nodded. “March 31st.”
“What?”
“Our wedding. I want it on March 31st. I go back to work in April, and when I do, I want to be Mrs. Thea Black, with everything changed—”
I couldn’t help myself. I needed to kiss her. Everything that was coming out of her mouth was so sweet. My right arm wrapped around her waist, while my left grabbed a handful of her ass and squeezed.
“One more week, Levi.” She said those damn words again.
“Ugh,” I groaned out in agony, and she had the nerve to laugh. I slapped her ass and she jumped. “Never laugh at a man with blue balls.”
“I’ll take my punishment in a week.” She smirked seductively.
Closing my eyes, because I couldn’t bear to look at her, I said, “Go to sleep, Thea.”
“No, Professor Black.” She whispered and reached under the sheets, taking me in her hand. “I don’t want you to be in pain, Professor,” she whispered innocently. And I didn’t dare open my eyes. I couldn’t look at her. I’d … I want her too badly.
“Ahh…” My mouth dropped opened as she cupped my balls.
“Yes, Professor, did you say something?”
Clenching my jaw, I took her torture … because there would be a reckoning. I’d get her back for this.
BABY: DAY 39
LEVI
“Good morning, and I’m so sorry! We didn’t mean to oversleep,” I said, entering the kitchen where my father sat at the island, a bowl of oatmeal, with a side of fruit and glass of orange juice in front of him.
Ulric, in his infant carrier on the counter next to him, was dressed in a new outfit and sleeping soundly. Walking over to him first, I put my hand on his head.
“Don’t worry about it. Thea has everything so nicely organized, and he was a sweetheart,” my mother said, placing a plate of French toast dusted with powdered sugar, and a side of bacon and egg whites.
“Mom, you didn’t have to do this.” She used to make this for us on special occasions.
“I wanted to. It felt…” she paused looking at all of us, “nostalgic.”
“I’m so sorry!” Thea ran into the kitchen, and my mom put out a plate for her too.
“Sweetheart, it’s all right. Everyone is fine. Ulric has been fed, bathed, changed, and is sleeping now.”
Thea looked to our son beside me, and then back to my mother, wrapping her arms around her.
“Thank you. Thank you for everything.”
“We’ve set a date,” I announced before she could say thank you or sorry again.
“Really?” My mother smiled.
And so did I, looking to Thea for her to say it again.
She nodded her head. “March 31st.”
“That’s so soon!”
“No, it is not,” I said quickly, before she made Thea doubt the choice.
“They have a child, live and work together. They are long overdue,” my father said with a nod, and I wanted to thank him.
“There is so much to do…” My mother was already reaching for her phone, most likely to call everyone in the state. But then she froze and slowly turned back to Thea. “That is, unless you had other things in mind.”
“Anything you want, I want,” Thea told her.
“Translation: fork over your wallet,” my father whispered to me as I gently rocked Ulric’s seat.
“Just when it was recovering from this house,” I muttered back.
“It’s a good house,” my father said, looking around the kitchen.
“Kinda far from work though.”
“Not really.” The problem with people who lived in cities was the moment anything was more than a few minutes away, it was considered far.
“When do you go back?” he asked.
“It was only supposed to be a month, but after yesterday I’m glad I took off more. I had no idea how in the world Thea would have dealt his coughing and crying alone.” Just the thought of it was stressful.
“She would have called an in house doctor and after the fourth time, you’d be fighting over why he needs his own personal doctor all the time.” My father snickered though he didn’t seem to find any of it funny. He looked to my mother again before taking another spoonful of oatmeal. I didn’t need to press it more. I could piece it together. It was no secret my father was a workaholic. Some of my earliest memories were of him in his study pacing back forth on the phone, yanking the cord when it got tangled.
I’m glad some of his generations’ habits, the whole men must work, were less pushed.
“When does she go back to work? I’m sure she’ll want as much time—”
“She wants go back in April.”
He looked at me like I was insane. I nodded and he opened his month, but I cut in one more. “I fought for April.”
Oh, how I fought and oh how I was thoroughly put in my place.
PREGNANCY: MONTH 8
THEA
“You are acting crazy!”
Grabbing the pillow beside me, I threw it at him. “Don’t call me crazy!”
He glared at me, breathing out his nose. “I said acting crazy. Acting, because you are not crazy. However, you aren’t being logical, Thea.”
“Logical?!” I yelled, placing my hand on my watermelon-sized stomach. “Let me remind
you of page three, section four, of the Black-Knox and Associates policy and terms—”
“Thea—”
“Employees, upon birth or adoption of an infant, toddler, or young child not yet of grade school age, are entitled to twelve weeks leave, designated by the Employer as FMLA, and shall have full pay during the duration of the twelve weeks which has been given!”
“Section five!” he hollered back. “If the employee wishes to extend FMLA for another four to eight weeks, they may do so, only having given notice to the employer three weeks prior to the completion of their twelve-week leave; however, the employee will do so with partial or no pay at the discretion of the employer!”
“I don’t want to extend leave!”
“I do!”
“Then stay home!”
“Thea! Ugh!” He stretched his hands as if he wanted to strangle me, but I simply crossed my arms over my stomach, glaring. “Thea, love,” he said softly, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“I’m coming back after twelve weeks; my due date is on the 23rd. That means I start on March 20th, as per your policy.”
“Exactly, baby, my policy! It’s my firm. You are my fiancée, soon to be my wife, and the mother of my child; you do not need to rush back to work. What about Ulric? I don’t want him to have a nanny, neither do you, and it isn’t fair to drop him off at my parents’ everyday while we go work! So what? We bring him to work, too?”
I put my hands on my face, trying stay calm, but I felt like crying. And not understanding he put his hand on my leg.
“I work so hard, baby; what is the point of having money if you can’t relax and—”
“You’re such a chauvinistic ass sometimes.” I tried to ignore the tears as they fell.
He pulled his arm back from its place on my leg. “Excuse me?”
I nodded, repeating, “You’re chauvinistic. You aren’t saying we should take off longer. You’re saying I should take off longer. Do you really thinking having you as the boss is something I’m happy about? I was your student, but not just any student. I was the daughter of Margaret ‘The Shark’ Cunning. I had to prove myself to every preppy white kid at Harvard, why? Because half of them, the ones who knew of my mother, thought I got in because of her. The other half, who didn’t know of her, thought I’d gotten in because Affirmative Action. And just when I was proving myself as Thea Cunning, not The Shark’s daughter, everyone finds out I’m sleeping with you, and almost overnight I become the Whore of Babylon, sleeping her way to graduation. Every time I came in first, got the highest grade, ‘she probably blew him too,’ was said. I ignored it. I never talked about it. Because we were happy and in a good place. I graduated at the top of the class, and I ended up working for you. Great, right? I’m no longer the whore. I’ve proven we aren’t just a fling. But now I’m Levi Black’s girlfriend, then Levi Black’s fiancée, then Levi Black’s baby mama.”
“Who’s talking to you like that at the firm?! Why didn’t you say anything?” he snapped, leaning forward.
“I told you, I don’t need you to play white knight—”
“Goddamn it, Thea!” he snapped, rising up from the bed. “I’m not playing the white knight; I am being your partner! Every time someone insults you or treats you any less than … than anyone else, you don’t tell me until weeks … apparently, years later!”
“What am I supposed to do!” I screamed back. “I can’t call you to come protect me, I’m a big girl who can—”
“You can, what? Huh? Ignore it? Lift your head up, dig your heels in, and prove them wrong? Meanwhile, you just take the abuse until they come to their senses? You can lie to them. You can pretend as if nothing they say hurts. But I know you, Thea, and I know you’re not as tough as you pretend to be! You are not made of stone and neither am I. You can’t keep telling me to just stand on the sidelines. You can’t keep telling me not to protect you when that is what I am supposed to do! It is what I want to do! Black, white, green, purple, I don’t bloody care! If they insult you, they are insulting us. And while I cannot control every racist, bigoted, ignorant asshole in the world, I can and I will control my own goddamn firm!”
I rubbed the side of my head; it felt like my brain was splitting. How could he be both right and wrong at the same time. “Please, sit.”
“I’d rather stand,” he snapped, still frowning.
“Fine.” I lifted the covers, moving my legs over to edge of the bed.
“What are you doing?” He rushed to grab me.
“If we’re going to argue, I need to be at eye level with you, and since you won’t sit, I’ll stand!” Or, at the very least, fucking try, I thought, pushing my arm out to brace myself as I tried to stand.
“For the love of God.” He sighed, sitting down, and shook his head at me. “Why are you so damn stubborn?”
“Have you ever met a lawyer who wasn’t stubborn?”
He frowned, and looked at me, while I tried to speak as calmly as I could, “Levi, you are at the top of the pyramid. Right now, you’re about to go defend the governor’s wife. I understand, I hear. But hear me. You aren’t seeing it from every angle. Shelve our previous conversation, and remember that just because you love me, and I always will love you, that career-wise, we are not on the same level. I’m at the bottom of the pyramid. I’m fresh out of school, and you made me first chair for Rita Gibbs.”
“And people thought that was favoritism?” He inhaled, fighting to keep his voice down too. “I knew you’d win and you did. Plus, you being pregnant was—”
“Was part of the strategy of winning. I know.” I got him. I got us. But it also didn’t help me. “But how did you know I could do it, Levi? You were my professor for a year. Fine. I shadowed you during that time. Fine. Atticus also got to first chair a case. I know. But they aren’t seeing me as lawyer. They don’t think I’ve earned it. They think that, once again, I’m using my body or something other than my brain and skill to win. Don’t you remember how cutthroat it is fresh out the gate? Everyone is trying to get to the top. To prove themselves, to have name recognition, and respect. To be like you, Levi! Even me. I’m still battling people. You told all the new associates there were four slots for the six of us. They hate me because they know you aren’t going to fire me. So I can’t earn respect. People are either buttering me up or talking behind my back. If I take off more than twelve weeks, when I go back … Levi, you might as well just make me your secretary. No,” I paused, remembered Betty, “you might as well make me Betty’s assistant.”
His gaze softened, and I’m sure he understood that part at least. He rubbed his forehead, not sure what to say. We sat in awkward silence. Not for long, though, when there was a knock at the door.
“Come in.” Levi stood again.
Selene stuck her head in slowly, and then opened the door wider. “It got quieter so I figured everything was good now?”
Levi grabbed his jacket and his files, coming over to me and with a kiss, his hand on my stomach. Selene moved to the side, leaning against the door, when he approached.
“If you need anything—”
“Totally have that covered,” she replied, lifting the bag of snacks and smiling at him.
He nodded and looked back at me. “I’ll call you before the trial.”
“Good luck.”
He didn’t reply like he usually did, which hurt. He just walked out and Selene stuck her head in, waiting for him to leave. Once he left, she rushed over and jumped onto his side of the bed.
“Pop or Kettle.” She lifted the bags for me to see.
“Kettle.” I pouted, taking the bag from her and ripping it open. “Was I hard on him? He just wanted me—”
“Exactly … he wanted,” she said, opening her popcorn. “Not what you wanted. And what you want is important.”
I looked over to her, really taking in the woman now sitting in front of me. Selene was a rainbow, completely different than how she was a few years ago. Her brown hair had finally grown out into thes
e soft curls. Her curls stopped at her shoulders, kind of like mine did when I let it out naturally. If only had time and half the talent she did for styling. Her fashion had also changed. Gone were the greys, blacks, and burgundies, and now you could always see her coming from a mile away, dressed in bright yellows. Her brown face was always glowing. I nearly cried at the pink dress she’d worn last week.
“What?” she asked, stuffing her face with popcorn.
“You’re so beautiful, you know that?” I told her. “I’m really proud of you.”
She paused sitting up and crossing her legs. “Thank you. I’m happy you are, but … remember, I’m your sister, not your kid.”
“Of course—”
“I’m not trying to be mean,” she said quickly. “And I’m not trying to say anything you said is wrong…I mean…I’m not a kid anymore, Thea, you can count on me. I’m your sister, not your daughter, meaning you can burden me with your problems. If not, I don’t want to talk about what’s going on with me with you.”
“What’s going on with you?” I sat up, facing her, and she made face at me. “I’m coming off mom-ish again?”
She nodded, picking up my kettle corn and handing it to me, before continuing to eat hers.
“Fine? How about…” I tried to think of the way Bethan spoke to Levi. “Please tell me your life is much more interesting than mine?”
She smiled. “Better.”
Smiling, too, I grabbed the apple juice from her bag. “Well, is it? Any wild frat parties on campus?”
“Trying too hard.” She shook her head.
“Fine, Miss Know-It-All! You start the conversation.”
“Perfect.” She laughed, winking at me. “And, yes, there are parties, but they aren’t frat parties. More like football parties, and I’m usually good at parties, but this last time … I felt like odd man out.”
“Why?” I asked, before stuffing my mouth.
“Funny enough it’s kind of the same reason as you.” She turned, relaxing against the pillows.
I laughed. “DeShawn is the boss at the firm where you’re working? And everyone but him and his best friend, who is also the boss, is ready to trip you down stairs when you’re around? And are probably glad you’re stuck on bedrest while they all battle to be on the governor’s wife’s case.”