“They don’t use words, at first, but they tell you what they need in other ways. They cry.” He kissed my head again and rubbed his hand up and down my back. “And you won’t be raising this child alone. I’m going to be here for all of it, and if that’s not enough, we’ll hire nannies or nurses or whatever it is you need to make this something you feel like you can do.”
God, he was wonderful. Never once did he suggest that he would support me if I didn’t go through with the pregnancy, and somehow that helped. Took away an option I didn’t want to think that I’d consider.
He brushed the hair from my face. “What are you thinking? Talk to me.”
“I didn’t want this.” I shifted so that I was in his arms, but my face was no longer buried in his clothes. “You know that. Especially not now when we’re just starting our lives together.” I remembered what Laynie had said about people changing. She’d been right, but what was it that made people change in the first place? Usually being confronted by something outside their comfort zone, I’d imagine. Wasn’t that exactly what me being pregnant was? An uncomfortable confrontation?
And now that I was facing it head on, the anxiety of what if was replaced with what now, which was, in some ways, an easier anxiety to manage. Because I could do something concrete about it. It felt more productive than just worrying.
JC wrapped me tighter into him. “I didn’t ever mean for this to happen now.”
“But that’s how it’s always been with us. I didn’t mean to meet you. I didn’t want to be so attracted to you. I didn’t want to fall in love with you. I didn’t want to still love you, even when you left.”
“Does thinking about it that way change how you feel about this?” This. He wouldn’t say “being pregnant” or “a baby,’ and I knew it was himself he was protecting with the avoidance of such tangible terms.
How could he be this selfless? For me? To try to distance himself from something he really wanted for no other reason but to take care of me?
Maybe that deserved some sacrifice on my part as well.
I shifted again, facing him this time. “Tell me how you feel about it, JC. Not what you think I want to hear, but the brutal honest truth. I need to know.”
He twirled a stray piece of my hair around his finger. “Well.” He paused a second longer before dropping his carefully masked expression, his lips morphing into a wide smile. “Honestly, I’m pretty fucking happy.”
More tears came. At least I could blame hormones for being a crybaby. “If you’re really happy, JC, then I am too. Because all I need to be happy is you, and this…” He was scared to say it, but I wouldn’t let myself be. “This baby of ours, it’s half you. And how can I not love that?”
He was cautious. “Are you saying that because it’s what you think I want to hear?”
“Maybe. Partly. But I also think it’s true.” I let out a laugh—a silly half chortle that was just as much a sob as it was laughter. “I’m going to be terrible at mothering. I’m warning you now. I hate things that smell and make messes. I sleep like the dead. You’re going to have to really nudge me to wake up when the baby cries.”
“Or I’ll just get the baby myself.” He reconsidered. “We’ll take turns.”
I scooted into his lap. “And you’ll still love me when I’m fat?”
“That much more of you to love.”
“We might have to cut back on the sex.” I actually had no idea if that would be an issue, and the thought that it might be made my heart sink a little.
“Oh, no,” he assured me. “We’ll still have plenty of sex.”
I tried to laugh again, but it was shaky. “It’s really going to be okay?”
He cupped my face in his hands. “It’s going to be much better than okay. It’s going to be everything.”
“I love you so much. So much.” I would have said it again, explained my affection in more detail, told him how he was the best thing I’d never planned and how I believed it could be possible that I would one day feel the same way about our child.
But I couldn’t say anything at all. Because he was kissing me, his lips wrapping around mine in ways that told me he already knew the things that I wanted to tell him. His tongue stroked against mine—softly, yet with confidence—and I was pretty sure I knew all the things he wanted to tell me too.
***
JC got me in for an appointment with an obstetrician first thing the next morning. I’d suggested waiting until after the wedding, but he was too excited. His enthusiasm was adorable. A turn on, even. Who knew that expectant fathers were a hot button for me?