Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are all in the high fifties and sunny, and when I wake up on Thursday to birds chirping and a forecast of highs in the sixties, I take a rare personal day from work. There’s been an odd galloping inside me since I met with Nurse Louise, and I think I need to exercise it out.
Around lunchtime, at peak sun, I take the bus up to the park and I do the exact same walk I did with Ethan just days before. Only this time there are buds unfurling on almost every branch of every tree I pass. Everything is tulip-stem green and waxy with fresh growth and it smells so good out here, I’d like two bottles of it, please.
People are jogging and biking and sprinting full speed out of winter and into spring.
I’m walking up the long, slow hill on the east side of the park (though I guess it might be a long, fast hill for those who are not prepartum) and there’s a crowd of people spilling into the bike lane. They cheer and cheer. There’s a girl with a stick and a blindfold taking wild jabs at a piñata shaped like the Red Sox logo. She lands a solid blow and everybody screams. She gets one more good one in and a firework of contents explodes onto the grass and blacktop. The kids all cheer and converge and then squawk in disappointment when the haul turns out to be little cellophane-wrapped sandwiches and baggies of baby carrots. The adults howl with laughter at the children’s outrage.
I’m laughing, one hand on my belly, and suddenly, so badly, I wish the baby could see what I just saw. Meaning: for one bright moment, I wish the baby were ex-utero. Terrestrial. Here with me in a stroller. There are two hearts in my body right now and in a few months, I’m going to set one of them free into the world.
The galloping is back full force.
Oh, my God. Clear as a bell. That’s what this is.
“I want you. I’m excited to meet you. I’m excited to be a mom.”
I’m halfway up a hill while the season charges forth and my heart charges along with it. No more passive acceptance of my situation. This is my life, on purpose. I didn’t choose the way this pregnancy started. But I can choose the way I bring this kid into the world.
With joy and full desire: “I want you.”
It’s racing at me, I can picture all of it, right here on this very spot. A baby in a terribly knit cap slung across my chest while I huff up the hill, laughing and chatting with Shep. A toddler in overalls, hands spread wide and tripping from foot to foot while Shep and I dash after, arms outstretched. An elementary schooler, standing up on a bike while the wind billows their T-shirt, Shep and me clapping from the sidelines.
Wanting means I get to look ecstatically forward to the future. Wanting means I get to fling open the doors to my life and say come in.
I stop walking, two hands on my belly—booty and head as usual—and the little rump roast must feel that something is happening to its mama because there it goes. I feel the head rotate; I feel the baby moving. There’s a stretch, a strain, I breathe through it, and then the baby has settled into a new position.
The leaves are green, the people are laughing, the wind turns everything alive. I’m here and I’m not alone. There is someone here with me and they are, currently, part of my body.
All those months ago, sitting on a stoop with Shep and crying into his shirt. “Your body will take care of you,” he’d told me. Did he know? Did he know that what was once just my body would become this person, right here under my hands? Who needs me, needs me but has already done so much for me in return?
I sat on that stoop and couldn’t imagine being anything but scared of whoever this person was going to be. They weren’t even a person to me yet, they were bad news I’d had to tell Ethan. Nausea and fatigue and a whole lotta what-the-hell-am-I-gonna-do.
But here, under the green, in the swollen, hopeful park, right this very second, I am accompanied by someone who loves me, I can just feel it. My body, the baby’s body, connected where it matters most. I am, at this very second, doing perhaps the most intimate thing one person can ever do with another: giving life with your very own body.
“Is this what he meant?” I ask the baby, not caring if anyone watches me talk to the bump. “When he told me that my body would take care of me, he already knew I’d love you like this, didn’t he? He already knew…”
That I wasn’t going to be doing this alone.
Because the baby would be there.
And he’d be there too.
He was telling me, all those months ago, that he wanted me. Infinitely kind words in a dark moment. I’ll never leave you whispered in a secret code that he was content for me to never solve.
That’s what wanting without taking looks like.
Other-centered as he is, maybe he’s been waiting for me to do the taking.
I’ve been thinking that Shep is hard to read, thinking that he’s just been mirroring my own emotions back to me. But what if…what if he’s exceptionally easy to read. Maybe the only thing hard about Shep is accepting that the sweetness we’ve created between us could possibly be real.
Would I offer up my T-shirt as a snot rag? Would I buy groceries and fill up his fridge? Has Shep been teaching me how to want little by little?
Shep running to catch up with me in front of Good Boy. Shep’s coat surrounding me on the train. Shep giving up his bed. Shep’s only requirement for a new apartment is me being comfortable there.
He is not deciding whether or not he’s gonna be involved.
He is never gonna leave us.
And there on the bike path, with the baby shifting and children screaming about the injustice of health food, I finally understand my own heart.
Please be closer.
Please, more.
Please eat food out of my fridge and let me pet your hair.
Please just stay still and let me make your apartment perfect for you.
Please be closer.
I have an answer for Willa. But infinitely more importantly, I have an answer for myself.
I’m tears and laughter and adrenaline. “You feel that?” I ask the baby. “This is the exact chemical cocktail that happens when you realize you’re flat-out in love with someone, no caveats. Take notes. Maybe you’ll be a little quicker on the uptake than I was.”
I’m still laugh-crying, standing in the bike path, when I see him. Up the hill. Walking towards me. There he is. Out of nowhere. Shep. Right when I need him. How does he do this? He must be magic—
Oh. Wait. No. That’s not Shep. That’s just some tall dude talking on his cellphone. As he comes closer to me the differences become even more stark and I shake my head at myself.
I think this might be what “got it bad” looks like. If you look it up in the dictionary there’s a very pregnant woman in overalls and Crocs with socks and a fuzzy fleece coat. She’s got her hair in a braid that she’s praying some tall, lovely man will carefully undo with big, clumsy fingers.
When you finally admit you want someone, the main perk is that you get to ask to have them.
Why deny it? I want to see him, see him, see him. Now.
Mr. Eyelashes. Mr. Movie Theater. Mr. Old Friend in a New Light.
Shep answers on the first ring.
“Hey!”
“Hi.” I feel suddenly shy. Was his voice always this deep? “Um. Have you had your lunch break yet?”
“I’m a freelancer,” he says. “My entire day could be a lunch break.”
“I took off work today and I really, really wanna see you. Like right now.”
“Yes. Done. I’m there.”
Is there any compliment higher than someone dropping everything for you?
“You have the time?” I ask.
“I don’t care. I’ll quit. Where are you?”
I’m laughing and sending him my location pin in the park.
“Shoot,” he says. “It’ll take me a half an hour to walk there, I think. Can you hold on to this exact feeling for that long?”
“What about your bike? Willa mentioned the other day that you got a new one?”
“Oh.” There’s a long, awkward pause. “I guess I could…but…”
“Great! Just come meet me.”
“Yeah. Yeah, all right. See you soon.”
I realize that I can’t keep walking now that I’ve sent him my pin, but there’s a handy bench not too far from the carrots-and-sandwiches Red Sox haters, so I figure I’ll have enough entertainment to last me.
About twelve minutes later I’m just walking my granola bar wrapper to a trash can when there’s a blur of movement.
It’s Shep, on a bike, riding in circles around me.
“Hi!”
“Hi.” He comes to a stop, one foot on the ground, one of his pant legs rolled up so it won’t get caught in the gears, and that’s when I notice it. His bike. His new bike—the one he took the train up to the Bronx to buy and then rode all the way home—has a baby seat fastened onto it.
He sees whatever my face is doing and goes immediately sheepish. “I—it’s not a big deal—I needed a new bike anyhow—and I saw this one and thought—just in case—it might just be a good thing to have.”
I face-plant into a new reality. One where taking a single step towards Shep means taking every step towards Shep. I want him. I want to tell him. And the possibility of failure suddenly burns white-hot in my gut.
He’s looked at approximately every inch of the park that isn’t me. When he finally does glance at me, either the sun is suddenly ten times too bright or he’s so embarrassed about this he has to squint.
“Say something,” he mutters.
I take two steps towards him and grab him by the zipper of his hoodie. It’s Shep warm, sun warm, everything is lion brown and lemonade tart and tears are pinching my eyes.
“What if we fool around like crazy for like three weeks and then it just falls flat?” I ask him on a whisper.
“Huh?”
“What if we break up in a year?” The tears crack their shells and roll down my cheeks. “Does the baby still get to ride on your bike?”
“Eve.”
“What if we try this thing for a while but then you meet your soulmate on a plane. In Paris. And she can pull off all-black outfits and smokes cigarettes with no regard for the future. What then?”
“Eve.”
“Dirty diapers.” I start a list. “No sleep. I’ll look like shit a million percent of the time. I’m already a mess. What’ll happen when there’s a whole other person’s mess added into it? Package deal? Package deal mess?”
He’s alarmed now. “Hold on. Slow down.” His hands squeeze my shoulders and they firmly glide down to elbows to wrists to fingertips. “Is this all because of the bike seat? It doesn’t have to mean all that.”
I cannot be consoled. “You’ve met the Dereks, Shep. They were weird. What if I’m absolutely terrible at this? And I ruin everything?”
His face softens. “Instead of panicking about possible endings…I wonder if…maybe we should…” He stops and looks around. We’re definitely drawing a bit of attention. Pregnant woman sobs and accosts a man’s sweatshirt while he’s still wearing it. I’d watch that.
He takes me by the hand and wheels his bike off the path towards the woods. He uses a wizened old tree as his bike’s kickstand and then leads me around the other side of it. We’re shielded from view.
“Slow down,” he says, finishing his sentence from before. There’s gravel in his voice and an easy determination in his eyes. Instead of racing to an end, he wants to go honey-slow with me. He wants to experience every single second, especially this one.
His hands squeeze my shoulders again; my back is against the tree. And then he finds the one thing that’s hotter than a fresh haircut or doorway elbow-leaning. He plants one of his hands on the tree over my head and leans in.
He’s inches away.
“We can’t have a first kiss!” I blurt.
He pauses, leans back. “Why?”
“Because then we’ll have kissed.” I’ve got two hands on my cheeks and I think my eyes must be the size of lightbulbs.
He laughs and gently removes my hands from my cheeks. “Yes.” He takes one of my hands and puts it on the back of his neck. He guides the other around to meet with the first. I’m slow-dance-style hugging him and he made it that way.
He’s leaning in again. He’s all eyes and eyelashes and breath. The first day of spring swells around us, crowding us towards each other. “Do you really not want to?” he asks. “Or are you scared of change?”
“I’m scared of everything,” I tell him, and for some reason that makes him smile.
“Okay. I’ll help.”
I close my eyes and then there’s his forehead, pressing warmly against mine. I blink my eyes open and he’s point-blank with me again, the way we were in bed. “Here,” he says. “We’ve been here before. Not so scary, right?”
“Not scary,” I manage. “Well, a little scary.”
He laughs and his eyes change shape and please, please, please can I have this moment forever? He was right. Slow is good. I want it in such slow motion it becomes the rest of my life.
Our eyelashes flirt, our noses slide.
“I’m right here,” he tells me.
If it’s scary, he means. He won’t leave me, he means. This isn’t something I’ll be doing on my own, he means. He’ll be here with me. As always, Shep is here with me.
And it’s that that has me tipping my face up to his.
The first touch of his mouth is light, warm, ends in a smile and a rush of breath. My eyes are squeezed so tight it takes stages to open them. When I do, there he is, brown eyes and waiting. I move an infinitesimal amount towards him and his lips are back. The second kiss is a press, even warmer, a nip of his lips against mine. The third is a slide. His hand finds the hinge at the bottom of my skull and my head tips back, my mouth opens. He makes a sound. It’s a delicious, private sound that is for me and only me.
Hi, it’s me, his tongue says to mine, and now I’m the one making a noise. His free hand goes from my hair to my cheek down my neck and rests for a moment, palm over clavicle. My arms tighten around his neck and bring him even closer. We start to tip to one side, losing our balance, but, of course, he catches us, one hand against the tree and all my weight in his arms.
The sun is in my eyes and everything is opening, blooming, starting new, my heart is growing petals. His fingers are touching my scalp, sliding down my spine. He’s got a forearm locked at my lower back. He’s everywhere. It’s not enough yet. He tries to end the kiss but I chase him back and open his mouth with mine. He grunts. And then we’re slow tongue and a pinch from my teeth. His hands close into fists and then open back into warm palms. There’s a thumb painting an arc against my cheek, his breath is inside me. And then his forehead is against mine, our eyelashes kiss, my eyes follow his.
He pulls away and presses his forehead into his forearm, which is on the tree over my head.
I make a valiant effort at getting my bearings. I’ve somehow started gripping my own elbows around his neck. He’s basically wearing me as a turtleneck.
He reaches back and loosens my grip, turning his head and kissing the inside of my elbow through my fuzzy fleece. He kisses the middle of my forearm, yanks my sleeve back, and kisses the inside of my wrist. He opens my fingers against his cheek, kisses my palm, and then arranges my hand at my side. My other arm gets symmetrical treatment.
“I can feel the earth turning right now,” I whisper.
He laughs and then starts the arduous process of straightening himself back to his full height. It takes a while. There’s a lot of him.
“Hold on,” I say, pausing him. “Have you been standing like that the entire time?”
His legs are making him into an upside-down Y, his feet about four feet apart from each other.
“There’s quite a height difference here.” He waves his hand between us. “Among other geometrical obstacles.” He’s grinning at my belly. Which he then greets with a sweep of his hand. “Hi.”
He’s back to his full height, flattening his hair with one hand.
“Hey,” I say, with a poke to his chest. “We kissed.”
He gently takes my elbow and leads me back around the tree. He grabs his bike by the handlebars and we start walking.
The adults from the piñata party have apparently taken an interest in us. There are a lot of eyeballs and side-whispers and absent baby carrot munching as we walk past them.
“Hey,” I say again to Shep, who seems to be staring into the abyss. “We kissed.”
We’ve automatically started walking down the hill instead of up, and even though our steps are slow, the world seems to zoom past, a moderately paced free fall.
“Yes,” he agrees, and then glances at me. “And how are you feeling about that?”
“How long is your lunch break? Can we go to my house? I didn’t even get to touch your shoulders yet. Let’s go eat plain donuts and Popsicles at my house. And…maybe Greek food?”
He laughs. “Taking it well, I see.”
I eye him. He’s looking a little dizzy up there. “And you?”
“I’m good,” he assures me. “Just suffering through, you know, acute euphoria. So you’re back on plain donuts, huh?”
“And Popsicles and Greek food.” I give him a sly look. “And you, if we’re talking about things I want in my—”
He puts two fingers over my lips. “You will literally kill me if you finish that sentence.”
I shrug a shoulder. “You’re gonna have to get used to it.”
He blushes and we keep walking.
“Up against a tree,” I muse. “That’s not quite how I pictured it.”
“You’ve pictured kissing me.” It’s not a question. More of a statement. One he seems to need to say aloud in order to believe.
“I’ve spent an awful lot of energy trying to stop picturing kissing you over the last few months.”
His eyes are on the side of my face as we make it to the park’s southeast entrance.
“Ooh! Bus!” I shout.
“You go get on and I’ll just lock up my bike and be there in a second.”
I do the pregnant lady I’m a’comin’ waddle and the bus driver opens the side doors to holler, “Don’t run, honey! I won’t leave you!”
I’m a gasping mess when I get on the bus and I fumble for my MetroCard. But then Shep is behind me, his forearm clamping over my collarbones, and swiping us both through. He doesn’t unhand me and we duck-walk to a free area. People are smiling at us, glancing at my belly and then smiling more.
“Here! Sit!” a teenage girl says, halfway standing up from her seat.
“That’s okay!” I wave her back down. “I’m happy right here.”
“We can see that,” a middle-aged woman says as she peers at me over knitting needles.
The bus kicks into motion, Shep grabs the overhead bar, and I grab him around the middle, pressing my smile into his sternum. We have to stand a little funny to accommodate for the belly but it works. I press my ear to his chest and isn’t it so wild that you can go forever knowing someone and never really listen to their actual heartbeat until they kiss you behind a tree?
The bus stops and starts, stops and starts. When we finally get off at my stop it’s been a little lifetime. He points with one thumb to the bodega. “Do we have everything we need, or should I stop and pick up some stuff?”
He must see the word condoms? written across my forehead because he laughs and blushes and scrubs a hand down his face.
“I meant, like, seltzer or Popsicles or potato chips or something,” he insists.
“Oh. Seltzer, yes. But I have to pee. I’ll leave the doors unlocked for you!”
He nods and watches as I safely cross the street and then I’m racing upstairs. I pee for nine years and it’s a blank, mind-buzzing heaven. I wash up and blink at myself in the mirror.
I look ecstatic. Red cheeks and wide eyes and kissed lips. My hair is frizzy and my fleece is zipped all the way to the collar. This is how I looked when he kissed me. And then he suffered acute euphoria.
I take my hair down and go to my bedroom, hanging up my fleece in the closet. It’s hard to say what’s sexy right now, but all I can think about is comfort, so I quickly shuck off my overalls and T-shirt and change into a long-sleeved dress I haven’t worn yet. It’s loose and blue and soft.
I hear him come through the door, whistling—there go his shoes thump-thump—and head straight for the kitchen. Ice cubes, seltzer. I meet him in the living room. He’s got two drinks in his hands and a look on his face I can’t interpret.
“You changed clothes.”
“I looked like a dork.”
“You looked perfect.”
He sits on the couch, puts the drinks on coasters. As I approach, I wonder if this’ll be awkward. How to sit next to someone you just kissed for the first time? I should have googled that while he was in the bodega.
But instead of awkward, I go on autopilot and fix the problem by sitting down almost on top of him and putting my mouth on his.
“Mmmmph,” he says, half in surprise, half in pleasure. I think for a moment he might try to slow us down, but then his fingers are in my hair and he’s dragging me onto his lap. I’m sitting sideways, my feet off to the side, and he’s leaning me back, kissing me silly. This might just be the deepest kiss of my life and we’ve barely started.
I’m the best thing he’s ever tasted. I know because he whispers that in between kisses, his eyes on my mouth and his hand reflexively tightening in my hair. I can’t hold this leaned-back position forever but he doesn’t seem to mind when I switch to straddle him. At all. He’s got one hand pressed into the small of my back and one hand touching and touching at the clasp of my bra. He’s still over the top of my dress, but even so, he wants that bra undone and he’s forcing himself to go slow.
When my legs start to cramp from that position, I push us over onto our sides. My back is to the back of the couch and he’s twisted, his top facing me, but one leg on the floor to keep himself from falling off the narrow cushion.
Our mouths go from demanding/pushing to soft/asking and back again. My fingers hurt from death-gripping his T-shirt. All the ice in our drinks has melted.
“Okay, wow,” he says, an untold amount of time later. He stares at my ceiling and seems to be having some trouble breathing. He turns his head to look at me. “We haven’t fed you yet.”
“Food is for losers. More kissing.” I reach for him and he obliges for all of three seconds.
“Let me feed you,” he says against my lips.
I growl in frustration but also because it hurts to have your heart squeezed like that. “Oh, fine.”
He’s up off the couch and poking around my kitchen. “Were you serious about wanting Greek food? If not, I can make something. Stir-fry? Baked potatoes?”
“Tofu bibimbap,” I decide, and he laughs.
He quickly puts in an order at the Korean restaurant a few blocks away and comes back to sit with me on the couch. He puts my drink in one hand.
I set it aside and give one of his hands a thorough inspection. Wide fingers. The kind of thumb that has an obtuse angle where it connects to the base of his palm. None of the lines on his palm touch one another. It’s a wide-open field, nothing but possibilities. There’s not a single closed door on this man right here. Except that he’s gone quiet. His cheeks are pink and he’s lost, staring impenetrably at our nestled hands. I cannot think of a worse time for someone to be gathering their thoughts.
“Shep?”
“Hm?”
“You all right?”
He sandwiches my hand between his and glances up at me. “I was just thinking…kissing you…I’ve been waiting twenty-five years for that.”
The words go cardboard flat and flop to the ground. I’m aghast. “Twenty-five years?” I ask. Surely he means days. He must mean days.
He gives a little laugh at my expression and strokes my jaw, gently closing my wide-open trap. “Give or take.”
“Since you were six?” I ask.
His gaze is back on our tangled hands and it takes a moment for him to bring his eyes to mine. “Eve, for as long as I can remember I have always wanted to be as close as possible to you.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I fling his hand back to him and haul myself off the couch. I’m holding my heart with two hands and seeing fireworks. “You can’t just say stuff like that!”
He has two hands on my shoulders and he’s lowering me back on the couch. Somehow the glass ends up in my hand again. I drink it to the bottom just so he’ll stop handing it to me.
“You…don’t like hearing it?” he asks.
“It makes me so happy I might pass out,” I tell him. “And I mean that literally. I feel faint.”
“Okay. Hold on.” He’s back a moment later with a string cheese and an apple. I can see the wisdom here so I make quick work of both. He disposes of the wrapper and the core and comes back, picking my feet up and starting in with his thumbs. “Better?”
“Yes. No. I’m overwhelmed.”
“One step at a time, Eve. I know we just kissed for the first time. And I just told you how long I’ve…But one foot in front of the other, yeah?”
I pull my feet back from him and hook my fingers in the collar of his shirt. I don’t have much of a lap right now, but there’s room enough for his head. He looks confused until he realizes I’m reimbursing him for the foot rubs. His eyes flutter closed when I give his hair a friendly tug.
“We haven’t seen each other since Sunday,” I say, and his eyes open.
“Mm-hmm.”
“And we only texted a few times.”
“Right?”
Well, he’s wanted to be close to me for twenty-five years, so maybe he can handle a little clinginess. “What if I told you that I didn’t like waiting that long? And that I want to see you tomorrow. And every day. And, oh, lord, pregnant and off my rocker might not be the best time to start dating me.”
“It’s the perfect time to start dating you.”
I don’t think he’s lying because he’s looking awfully happy down there.
“It’s not just a clingy thing that I want to see you every day. But every time something happens with the baby and no one else is there to observe…I just get so bummed. I mean look. Look.” I grab my phone and toggle through some pictures. “This was my belly on Sunday and this was my belly this morning. That much growth in half a week! And no one was here to see it but me.”
He looks at the pictures for a ridiculously long time. Long enough I start to get self-conscious. “Okay, give it back now.”
He holds it out of my reach. “Gimme a break, these are my first topless pics of you.”
“I’m not topless! I’m wearing a bra.”
“Still, there’s your belly. I almost never get to see your belly.”
I frown for a second. “I wish you could’ve seen my belly pre-pregnancy. It was pretty hot. Who knows what it’ll look like after this. I’m guessing melted butter.”
“I did see your belly pre-pregnancy. Many times.”
“Oh, right. Swimming at the pond. But you never got to touch it. What a shame.”
“I did too!” he insists. He’s looking up at me from my lap, my fingers lost in his hair, and my dizzy feeling comes back. His brow furrows. “You don’t remember?”
“You touching my stomach? No.”
“It was at Kevin Zemeckis’s pool party. His parents came home unexpectedly and we all had to run. Remember?”
“Vaguely.”
“We piled with a bunch of other kids into a van and you either had to sit on Zach Cartwright’s lap or mine.”
This part I remember a little better. “Easy choice. Zach Cartwright was a total dipshit.”
“Well, either way, I felt like I’d won the lottery. We couldn’t get the seatbelt to buckle over both of us, so you told me to hold on tight to you. And I did.”
“I remember that part. I was cold because I was wet from the pool, but you were dry and warm.”
He nods. “I didn’t swim. And when you got off me, there was a big wet stripe down my front from the pool water.” He lets out a long breath. “Eve. If you want to see me every day, you want someone to measure your belly, I’m clearly game.”
Before I can answer, my buzzer does its fuzzy ding and Shep dislodges from my lap. “We’ve gotta get your super to look at that bell. I swear it even sounds like a hazard.”
He slips his shoes on, jogs downstairs, and comes back up with our food in hand. We eat side by side. At the end of the meal, he leans in and gives me a soft kiss that makes my stomach tumble dry low. He pulls back suddenly.
“Holy shit, how much hot sauce did you put on your food?” he demands.
“Not a lot!” I insist, and reach over for the bottle.
He inspects the label. “This is like…ulcer with a cap on it.”
He gulps water and eyes me, so I cover my mouth with my hand. “No more kissing, I promise.”
“Well, that’s a terrible promise.” He tugs me forwards, kisses me deeply, and then pulls away again. “Yeah, no, can’t do it. Sorry. You ate fire.”
He grabs the plates and runs into the kitchen, and I can hear him quickly filling up a glass of water two, three times to wash down the spice. Then I hear him move on to washing the dishes. He’s just in the next room, but I feel a little at loose ends without his mouth here to show me that everything is okay.
But then the baby stretches and pokes and jams upward towards my ribs and I laugh. “I wasn’t ignoring you, I swear!”
I put my feet up.
“What do you think about all this?” I whisper to the baby. “Oh, who am I kidding. He’s the first person you ever kicked for. You clearly like him as much as I do.” I stroke a hand over my belly.
I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of Shep puttering around in the kitchen, and the baby and I sit together and the baby stretches and I can barely remember what it felt like to worry I was going to do this alone.