“Okay, I think I’m going to go and get some more… orange juice.” She just kept laughing and excused herself to the bathroom.
~*~*~
The first thing Lucah did when we got home was remove anything from the fridge that April had put on the list. There were a lot of things.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to give everything to Sloane so it doesn’t go to waste,” he said as he filled several plastic grocery bags with forbidden food. He walked them down the hall and returned with a few himself.
“She’s giving us all her good stuff and she’s going out right now to buy anything that has a lot of folic acid.” I was on the couch resting my eyes. Okay, I was taking a nap. At least now I had a valid excuse. I had a valid excuse for pretty much anything. That part was going to be nice.
“I feel like a science experiment. Just add folic acid and watch the baby grow!” Lucah put everything away and sat down next to me.
“Is there anything I can get you? I’m at your beck and call for the foreseeable future.” That was Perk #2. I could ask for just about anything and he’d get it for me. Not that he wouldn’t normally, but now I could be really unreasonable in my requests and he really had no choice but to do what I wanted.
“What are you smiling so mischievously about?” he asked. I wasn’t aware that I’d been smiling.
“Nothing. Just reveling in my Pregnant Power.” I opened my eyes to see his reaction. It was totally worth it.
“Pregnant Power?”
“Yup. I could ask you to get on a plane, go to the middle of a tropical forest and find me a coconut because I had a craving and you’d have to do it. Pregnant Power.” I wiggled my fingers. Lucah snorted and looked up at the ceiling as I begging for mercy.
“I should get you a cape.”
“You’d better.” I pointed at him.
My eyes closed again and he took off my shoes for me.
“I hope my feet don’t swell. I think my feet are supposed to swell. I’m curious about what’s going to happen to me, but at the same time, I really don’t want to know.” He started rubbing the arch of my right foot with his knuckles and it felt so fucking good.
“I don’t care if your entire body swells and you’re a human balloon. You’re still going to be the most beautiful woman.” He was absolutely full of it, but I was not going to turn it away. Don’t look a gift compliment in the mouth.
“Can we not talk about pregnancy right now? I feel like we haven’t talked about anything else all day,” I said. All I wanted was a glass of wine, but the closest thing I could have was unfermented grape juice and that definitely wasn’t the same thing. Not even close.
“We can talk about anything or nothing,” he said. “We can do whatever you want.” That was nice. I leaned my head back and sighed as he moved on to my other foot.
“This is good. Let’s just do this.”
Twenty-One
Once I was in bed, I woke up and couldn’t get my mind to shut down again. It ran in a thousand different directions and I started thinking about everything that could go wrong again. I’d been distracted during the day, but now that I was alone with my thoughts, they were free to rampage through my mind in multiple herds and I couldn’t control any of them.
“Shut up,” I whispered to myself. JUST SHUT UP, BRAIN.
Maybe if I let all the thoughts go nuts, they’d wear themselves out and then leave me alone. So I did the opposite of everything else I’d ever done when things got crazy in my mind. I let the thoughts go. I allowed myself to go to the worst of the worst. It was horrifying and awful, but once I’d let them all have their say, my mind drifted to more mundane things and slowly, I got control and then the next thing I knew, Lucah’s tongue was in my ear and it was morning.
~*~*~
I got online and scheduled a doctor’s appointment for the following week to get everything started. This baby thing was complicated. I’d had no idea. Or maybe my fiancé and best friend were taking things a little too far. I’d never seen so much kale in my refrigerator before. Or so much fruit. I had to admit that the food was great, but I really missed feta cheese. And wine. And coffee. Lucah went out on Sunday and got me a huge container of decaf.
“Here you go,” he said, bringing me my first cup. It smelled like regular coffee, but I knew it wasn’t going to do the trick. Lilia made me drink decaf when I got too wired on regular, but I’d never had decaf only.
“It’s not fair,” I wailed after I swallowed my first sip.
“I know, Sunshine. I know. Would you like me to sing to you to make it better?” That was probably a good idea for me and for the baby. Wasn’t there something about music making babies smarter? I really needed to do at least a little research about pregnancy. I knew next to nothing. I mean, apart from the fact that I couldn’t drink or smoke (not that I had in the first place) or fly after a certain point.
“Sure, you can sing to both of us.” Another thing I didn’t know: if the baby had ears or eardrums yet. Still, best to err on the side that it did and let him or her hear his or her father’s voice. I didn’t like thinking of the baby as “it.” Made it seem more like something that was happening to me and not something that was a good thing that I was excited about.
Lucah got his guitar and started singing modern songs, but in lullaby form.