“You don’t know the half of it.” I left them in stitches by regaling them with tales from the last few days with my crazy husband. “I’d pay good money to see that. I didn’t think he could get any more protective. It’s a wonder he let you out of the house.”
“Don’t mention it Tracy, I shudder to think what the next few months are going to be like. He’s already hired poor Lucille to watch over me. He says she’s there to help, but I know better.”
“I hope Dan is the same when we get pregnant. I wouldn’t mind that kind of pampering.”
“Oh he will Lisa, you know your husband’s just as crazy as mine.” We spent the rest of the afternoon talking babies and crazy over the top husbands and I left feeling even better because I knew I had two more people in my corner who promised to be with me every step of the way.
I was finally getting use to the idea of being a mom and had caught Gage’s feverish excitement once the fear had worn off by the end of that first day. I should’ve known that with a husband like Gage, who was with me and there to hold my hand every step of the way that everything would be okay.
I had to get over my embarrassment at him seeing me throw up in the morning, something he’d yelled at me for when he learned that it wasn’t the first time, because he follows me into the bathroom and holds my hair before putting me back to bed.
He’s gone through those books like he’s studying for a test and I’m to the point where I’m ready to burn them because they only give him ideas. I think those things were written back in the stone ages, because all the ideas he gets from them seem to say I should be bed ridden until the baby comes.
He’s scheduled to go to my next checkup with me and he already has a journal full of questions for the doctor. I’m dreading what new limitations he’s going to shackle me with once that’s over. I say that but inside I couldn’t be happier. His whole attitude has made this the best experience it could be for me.
When I have moments of dread and worry he’s there to hold my hand and assure me that there’s nothing to worry about. But those moments when I think about the fact that I’m bringing a whole life into the world I get an anxiety attack, his answer is always to drag me off to bed.
* * *
DONNA
* * *
“What do you mean you quit? You can’t quit, who’s going to cook and clean for me? You have to give me more notice than this.” Just one more thing in a long line of shit in the last week and a half, but this is the last straw.
“I’m talking to you, where do you think you’re going?”
“I told you, I quit, I’m needed elsewhere.”
“Where, what’re you talking about? You don’t have any family to speak of…”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” I watched her walk towards the door and barely restrained myself from making a grab for her. How dare she? Granted I’d only hired her to get news about Gage and didn’t really have any uses for her beyond that, but how could she think that she could be the one to end the relationship?
In the last week and a half, ever since that little debacle in Gage’s office I’ve been keeping a low profile, trying to come up with ways to get back at both him and his wife for humiliating me. Not since my transformation has anyone made me feel like that discarded little fool from the nowhere small town I’d been born in.
People these days show me reverence and go out of their way to please me or curry favor. And it’s a sure bet that had it not been for Gage that smarmy bitch Holly wouldn’t have stood a chance against me.
I’m still not sure why nothing I tried worked, why he chose her over me when I have so much more to offer. From everything I’ve learned about him, he’s not the one woman type, though people in this town seem to think their love affair is one for the books, I refuse to believe it.
A man like Gage, so forceful, so much bigger than life can’t possibly be happy with someone as plain as her. Okay she’s not exactly plain but her simple looks don’t hold a candle to my more exotic beauty. Her elegant reserved high manor shit has been dead and buried since the eighties. So why couldn’t he see past her?
I’d stayed in bed the first few days after leaving his office, but after licking my wounds and fighting back the embarrassment of what I’d faced in his office I’d decided to give it one more shot. Maybe there was something I was missing.