The Other Side of the Pillow

“I’m just saying. I’ve seen enough men with bald heads that look like a two-year-old’s Play-Doh project gone bad.”

“Here’s what we’ll do. At your appointment next week, we’ll ask Dr. Horton to guesstimate his size and go from there.”

Jemistry seemed please. “So you agree? If he’s too big, I can get cut.”

“No, I agree that we can ask and you’re going to have to push his ass out, big head and all, unless there’s a medical reason not to.”

Jemistry realized that it was a touchy subject for me. It was. The thought of something actually going wrong during TJ’s birth terrified me.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to prepare myself for the madness. The things us women have to go through.”

I grinned. “We’re already signed up for Lamaze classes. It’ll be fine.”

She rolled her eyes playfully. “So both of us going in there and taking fake breaths is going to do exactly what when the time comes? You’re not seriously planning to sit beside me going through the motions and acting like you know exactly what I’m feeling, are you?”

I didn’t respond. It was a crazy concept now that she put it that way.

“I sure hope not. I can see me losing it right then and there. If you or the male doctors start trying to tell me to ?

?just push’ or ‘relax,’ I’m going in. Fair warning. I’ll listen to advice from the women but you men don’t know jack shit about labor. Hell, I don’t know jack shit about it yet.”

I changed the subject. “Are you sure you’re ready to return to work?”

“Tevin, we have almost four months before I’m due. I’ll be a freaking sociopath if I sit at home all that time. I’d rather watch paint dry than watch another episode of the shows that I’ve been watching.”

“Baby, there are hundreds of cable channels.”

“I know, and half the time I still can’t find anything interesting on. Crazy, isn’t it?”

Again, she had a point. Outside of the few sports- and news-related shows that I watched, there wasn’t much on that interested me either.

Jemistry pushed her plate away. “I’m tapping out.”

I pushed mine away as well. “I’m tapping out, too.”

“Just because it’s a buffet, it doesn’t mean that I have to pig out,” she said.

“Agreed.”

She eyed me with “that look.” “You need to take your missus home and put me to bed.”

I winked. “My pleasure.”

* * *

When we got to our house, I carried Jemistry over the threshold. Then I did what she requested: put her back to bed and made love to her for the rest of the day.

I finally had it all, and I would do whatever it took to keep it.

Chapter Thirty-three

“Love in its essence is spiritual fire.”

—Lucius Annaeus Seneca

November 22nd, 2013, will forever go down on record as being one of the worst days in my life. I will never forget it. We’d been married a little over a month and we were looking forward to spending our first Thanksgiving together as husband and wife. We had decided that we would spend it alone together. The following year, we would have TJ there and would invite a lot of friends and relatives over.

Jemistry was decorating the house early for Christmas. She had enlisted me to put up a nine-foot tree in the living room for us to enjoy in the evenings, and another seven-foot one in the sunroom with lots of lights so that passersby would see it and hopefully be inspired. She had even almost completed all of her Christmas shopping, so she said. Something told me that once Black Friday sales hit, she would hit the pavement as well with some of her friends. She was really in the spirit.