Yes.
She could have sworn her belly moved at the response. Alan had been more active for the past week or so, kicking at random times throughout the day—and night—but there’s no way the boy could have read his father’s response and have had a reaction to it.
He could be feeling the clenching in her lower parts, though. Reacting to that.
There’s a one-day class available through the Parent Portal for women in their third trimester and their coaches. I was going to have a friend drive up from San Diego to go with me, but if you’d like to be there, I’ll tell her she doesn’t need to come up.
It was asking a lot more than just a background identity in her son’s life. Maybe too much for him. If he said no, she’d have a boundary she wouldn’t cross again.
Or so she told herself while she practically held her breath waiting for his response.
Sitting up, she put down her phone. What was she doing here? Creating some kind of fantasy where she and Wood were the parents she’d always dreamed her child would have?
Because that wasn’t this. At all. And she had to make certain she knew that.
Give me date and time.
Was that a yes? Attending a parenting class wasn’t something that you just did if the time worked out.
They’re offered on a regular basis. 8:30–3:30, various days. I plan to do a Saturday. Goes over third trimester, what to expect in the last stages and then labor and birth.
They cost seventy-five dollars, too, but she was covering that part, no matter who went with her.
Pick a Saturday and let me know when to pick you up.
Well, now wasn’t he assuming a lot?
He’d taken her to all three of her major tests—of course they wouldn’t suddenly start meeting at the clinic.
I’d prefer to be asked if I’d like you to pick me up. She hit Send, in spite of the fact that she knew full well she was being cantankerous.
Noted.
It wasn’t his fault she’d chosen a sperm donor who was so nice she was becoming addicted to him. Most definitely wasn’t his fault that she was alone, making all the plans, the decisions. The choice had been fully, consciously hers. And what she still wanted.
Just...
Nothing.
It was time to count her blessings and remember all of the things for which she had to be grateful.
And she added a new one.
She was grateful that there was still a possibility that she’d meet a man who moved her as much as Wood did without all the other emotional baggage in the way.
* * *
Wood was just finishing dinner Wednesday night—meat loaf and asparagus—when Elaina came through the door of her suite into the kitchen.
“I thought you were going out with friends tonight,” he said. “I would have knocked and let you know there was extra...”
“I already ate,” she told him. “We me
t early for appetizers, and I didn’t want to stay and drink. I was thinking maybe you and I could watch a movie or something.”
He had furniture waiting to be built.
And this was Elaina, probably in an emotional flux because her new relationship, if it was one, was now known to him. Making it that much more real.