After the movie the four of us tumble out onto the sidewalk and the air is muggy and slightly chilled. A distant roll of thunder surprises me.
“Should we walk somewhere for a drink?” Willa asks.
“I think I’m gonna pack it in,” I tell her. My heart has nearly beaten itself out over the last two hours and I desperately need a soft bed and a dark room.
“Should we get you a cab?” Shep asks.
“Oh, I’ll just take the train.”
“There’s one!” Willa says, jumping forwards to flag it down. I guess the Balders have spoken. I’ll be going home in a cab.
The cab has stopped half a block down, so I head in that direction when there’s another crack of thunder, this one much closer than the last. A few raindrops pancake themselves on the top of the cab as Shep holds the door open for me.
“It’s raining, you guys,” I tell them. “Why don’t we all take the cab. I can drop you somewhere on the way home.”
It starts to really rain, and a balmy fifty-degree night in March is very different from a rainy fifty-degree night in March. Isamu jumps into the front seat and Willa pushes me gently into the cab. The Balders sandwich me into the middle seat.
Willa gives the cabdriver my address and off we go.
Manhattan slides past and we speed across the bridge back to our borough. Every time the cab sways I find myself pressed more and more into Shep’s warmth. This has been an entire night of sitting next to Shep, only this time there’s no movie theater armrest between us. If I closed my eyes I could probably count his ribs against my arm. One, two, three, four…
“Oh, Isamu, look!” Willa bursts out as we stop at a red light in a familiar neighborhood. She lunges forwards and grabs the back of his headrest. “It’s that bar…do you remember?”
We’re at a stoplight and he’s squinting through the rain. “Is that…”
“Sure is.”
He turns around and gives her a very transparent smile. “Should we…”
“For old times’ sake,” she agrees before she gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Text me when you get home, sweetie.”
And then the two of them are slamming out of the cab and running through the rain, hands over their hair, and into the bar.
“Wow.”
“Wow.”
“So…” I say. “That was pretty obvious. You think they—”
“Banged in the bathroom of that bar at some point? Yeah.” He shivers. “Oh, Christ. I’m definitely wearing my noise-canceling headphones tonight.”
We both laugh and I tip my head back. I can’t help but notice that at some point during the scuffle of Willa jumping out of the cab, Shep’s arm has ended up along the back of the seat. It would make a lot of sense for me to unbuckle and slide into the seat that Willa vacated. It would make sense, but I don’t do it. Instead, I stay exactly where I am, partially crowding Shep into his door while he partially crowds me with his arm along the back of the seat and there’s a lot of crowding and none of it makes sense and everybody seems pretty okay with it, okay?
The streets melt past and the night melts around the cab and inside the cab I’m melting against Shep. I close my eyes and let the car rock me into him. Everything’s an excuse to be close to him.
“We’re here,” he says quietly, bringing his mouth down to my ear. He pays the driver and slides me out onto the street.
“You’re not—” I point at the cab that’s pulling away.
He shakes his head. “I’ll make sure you get upstairs okay. You seem beat.”
I am a little dead on my feet. My bedtime has seemed to get earlier and earlier over the past few weeks.
And then we’re in my apartment. Alone together again. The rain is sparkling against the windowpane, but everything is dry and warm and close in here.
We take our coats off and then our shoes, and he walks a slow circle around me. My heart beats hard and heavy in my chest. The baby kicks in response. He comes to stand in front of me, looking down at me. Neither of us has turned on any lights. I think my apartment is in on the secret.
He takes a deep breath and so do I.
He was so protective over you.
There’s a buzzing energy in my toes. They want me to tip up, give me three extra inches. They want my arms around his neck, my fingers in the buzzed hair at the back of his neck. They want his stubble against my cheek. They want irrevocable and they want it now.
“You never wear your hair like that,” he says in a low voice, his eyes on my complicated braid, and then on my face.
“I wanted to look pretty,” I whisper. For you, I don’t whisper.
I’ve said too much and I can’t bear to hear what he’ll say next. “There are too many pins, though,” I say in a rush. I’m just talking to say anything because if we keep staring at each other like this I’m as good as naked, as good as breathing his air, as good as in love and gasping for more.
I reach up and fumble with the pins in my hair, my fingers clumsy with nerves.
“Let me help you,” he says, continuing his circle around me. His hands are in my hair.
I spent so much time this afternoon getting that braid right. Lacing myself up for him. And there he is, his heat at my back, slowly, gently, taking me apart. Each piece he frees comes to settle at my shoulders and I shiver with the brush of it. It might as well be his fingertips.
“There you go,” he murmurs.
I turn around and am face-to-face with his sternum. “I’ll, um, just be a second. There’s lemonade in the fridge if you want.”
I scuttle to my bedroom, choose my most comfortable pajamas. I quickly scrub my makeup off in the bathroom and I’m shiny and pink when I get out, but I’m also warm and clean and this man has already seen me without makeup too many times to count. So I get to not care. I get to just wear these soft pajamas (jogger-style pregnancy pants with white and blue triangles and a matching tank top) and go out there and let him be utterly delighted with me.
And he is. His smile is genuine and shy and a little exasperated as he watches me walk out into the living room. “You’re so cute.”
I’m not convinced he meant to say that out loud.
I’m so glad he did.
He’s happy when I’m happy.
“How’re you feeling?” he asks. I plunk down on the couch beside him and he instantly reaches for my socked feet.
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” I say, but it ends on a pleased little groan, completely negating my point.
“Here.” I try to right myself. “Let’s tradesies.” I pat my lap.
He blinks. “Huh?”
“Gimme your feet.”
“You’re going to rub my feet?”
“Sure. You’re rubbing mine.”
“Eve. Yours are so cute and little. Look.” He holds one of my feet on the palm of his hand. “My feet are the size of your femur.”
“Cough ’em up.” I reach down and tug at his pant leg. His leg does not move an inch. I spy a smattering of blondish leg hair that makes me feel suddenly very shy.
“No chance. Man feet are…not on the table tonight.”
“Well.” I’m stymied. “Come on, I don’t want to be in debt to you.”
He finds a tender spot and I involuntarily hum and go boneless. “This is not a hardship,” he says with heavily lidded eyes. “But if you’re worried about it, you can play with my hair later.”
My eyes flick to his haircut and the shyness increases.
Haircuts and massages, he’s really got his brand down.
“I should go soon,” he says low. “If I want to be safely ensconced in my bedroom before Isamu and Willa get home. Or else I might witness something I can never unsee.” He groans. “I really need my own place.” His eyes slice over to mine. “Any interest in coming to look at places with me tomorrow? I have some appointments set up.”
“Definitely!”
“Good. They’re, uh, mostly in this neighborhood so it shouldn’t be too tiring. The first one’s at ten.”
“Shep…” I can’t believe I’m going to say this. “If…if you’re going to be coming back here in the morning and, um, you’d rather not sleep at Willa’s tonight, you could always just crash here.”
His hands stutter on my feet and his eyes are burning into me, but I can’t look up from the loose thread at my knee. I physically can’t.
“Okay,” he says.
“I think I have an extra toothbrush, hold on.”
I’m up and trembling and skittering into the bathroom. I have an entire organized basket of extra toiletries and I very well know it. I grab one and walk it out to the living room to him. He takes it.
He goes into the bathroom and I’m left to stare at the couch he just vacated. It’s far too small for him to sleep the night. I could blow up the air mattress I keep for guests but…but…but…
“Shep?” I’m talking through the door.
“Mm-hmm?”
“I doubt you’ll be comfortable on the couch, so you can sleep in my bed…with me. We can watch a movie and then just…fall asleep whenever?”
I don’t give him any room to argue. If he wants to leave, he can. If he wants to insist on the couch, he can. If he wants to sleep in my bed with me…
He appears in my bedroom doorway and I stop breathing.
I’m already in bed cross-legged, my laptop open, sitting on the covers.
His eyes are dark and searching me, his short hair mussed. He’s wearing his jeans and an undershirt. And then he does the thing. The one thing that’s hotter than a fresh haircut. He rests his elbow on the doorframe over his head and lets his wrist hang down around forehead level. I can see armpit hair and the scaffolding of his rib cage.
Hello, sir, you look like you’ve come to absolutely destroy me.
He doesn’t say anything. Just comes into the room, eyes on mine, and walks around to the empty side of the bed. He sits, his back to me, and gives me his profile. “I don’t have any sleep pants.”
“That’s all right. I’d give you some but I don’t think they’d make it past your knees.”
He laughs, stands, and takes his pants off in front of me.
I should look away, but instead I stare. Navy blue, in case anyone was wondering. Perfect ass, for the record. Shadows at his lower back. I cover my eyes with my hands because I am completely perving on him. He laughs again when he turns around and sees me in that pose. I feel the covers shift, the bed dip, time stop. “All clear,” he says.
I look at him and now I know what color my cheeks are, because his are the same highlighter pink. He’s tucked in and on his side, already having slid one big hand underneath one of my pillows. My bed will never be the same after this.
“Movie?” I gulp. And for the second time that night we watch some crap we don’t care about nor will ever remember.
But alas, not even the tension of lying in the same bed as Shep can keep me awake when I’m this pregnant. I wake up as the credits are rolling. I carefully get out of bed to pee, trying not to wake Shep.
When I come back, the movie is completely over and I quietly close the laptop and set it on the nightstand. When I click off the light, he stirs and rolls to his back.
“All right?” he asks in a gravelly voice.
“Mm-hmm.” And then we fall back to sleep together.
I wake up in the morning two feet from Shep, both of us facing each other, curled like swans. I think of the arrow he drew on my hand. I can still feel it burning into my skin. It’s in bed with us right now.
He stirs, his eyes moving behind the lids, and then his lashes dip-dip-swoop and we’re staring at each other. It’s a dozy perusal; nothing quite feels like the real world yet. The light from the window is grainy and it sounds like the rain is still coming down. His eyes are sleepy and happy. Our worries are not invited into this moment.
He slides his face to the inner edge of his pillow and I do the same. Two feet becomes six inches just like that.
“Good morning,” he whispers, and then reaches forwards and pulls an eyelash off my cheek.
I say nothing, because I can’t say anything. Every word is trapped, along with all my air, in my lungs. His hand floats back to my cheek; he touches the eyelash spot again and then slides to the back of my head. He pulls us together, our foreheads touching. We’re point-blank and all I can see is the blurry summer brown of his eyes. His eyelashes go fingertip to fingertip with mine. Our noses slide, greet each other. His fingers slip through my hair, all the way down to my scalp.
I can’t speak and I can’t stay still. I’d crawl inside him if I could. My entire body is spelling out the word yes exclamation point. I scoot another inch towards him, but my belly precedes me and presses firmly against his belly.
“Oh!” he says, and lifts his head to look down at the bump. He pulls the sheets back. “Good morning to you too.”
I’m blinking up at him. We, in fact, did not just kiss. But the reason he pulled away was in order to say hello to my baby bump, so…I’m confused. But not hurt? Disappointed but…elated? He’s up on an elbow, smiling at my baby bump and then turning back to me. He blinks down at me, a slow expression, filled with a depth that only decades of knowing someone can give you. This here is a man who knows me. And I feel known. His palm is warm against my cheek, and then he’s tucking my hair behind my ear.
“I’ll make you breakfast,” he says. And gets out of bed.