“Yeah? How?”
“I could be poor. Or ugly. Or have BO.”
“You do smell really good,” I say, as he straddles me again. “And Mia would be sad without all those shoes.”
Nodding, his mouth grazing my earlobe, he says, “Someone else may have actually hurt her. I never will.”
Closing my eyes, I tell him, “I’m very glad to hear that.”
“Plus I come with a bonus best friend,” he says.
“I guess we are a pretty sweet deal,” I agree.
His hand creeps down over my protruding belly, dipping between my legs. “Are we done talking about Mia now?”
“I’m gonna start calling her Crack Nipples.”
His free hand comes up to cover my mouth. “Shh.”
I grin, planning to keep talking as soon he moves his hand. Anticipating that, he covers my mouth with his, and well, kissing him more fun than talking, so he wins.
—
“Oh, my God, it’s so cute I wanna die.”
I’m in the middle of texting Mateo to let him know Operation Buy Rosalie’s First Dress has been completed (even though he doesn’t really care), but I spare Mia a smile while I type. “Yes, I caught onto how much you liked it at the store when you literally bounced with joy.”
Mia holds up the cute, frilly baby dress we picked out for Baby Morelli’s homecoming. It’s still months off, and we definitely didn’t need to pick it out yet, but Mia loves to shop and apparently when you see the perfect dress, you just know. Sure, it’s not her baby, but since I’m not letting her have one, I figure I can let her pick out the outfit our baby will come home in.
“She’s going to be so tiny and adorable. I’m not jealous of the labor, but I’m totally jealous of everything else.”
“Mateo doesn’t strike me as the type to spend the night on a cot at the hospital with me, so you can come in his stead. When I’m exhausted from evicting a tiny human and the baby is like ‘holy shit, there’s a world out here, I’m not sleeping through this’ you can stay up all night walking her around the hospital and trying to get her to sleep.”
Mia’s eyes widen. “I am so on board.” She looks to the driver’s seat, turning the dress around so it’s facing the front of the car. “Adrian, did you see Rosalie’s dress?
“I did,” he answers, without enthusiasm. “It’s great.”
“When you and Elise find out what you’re having, we have to take her shopping, too.”
“Elise doesn’t like us,” I remind Mia.
“She will have to like us. We’re going to buy her so many cute little baby clothes, she won’t be able to resist.”
Wrapping an arm around her and giving her a sideways hug, I tell Adrian, “She’s starting to think like a Morelli. I’m so proud.”
He just shakes his head at us and doesn’t respond.
I release Mia and slide my phone back into my purse. She’s grinning goofily at the baby dress, and I worry—not for the first time—about her baby fever. As long as her womb stays empty until I have Rosalie, I think we’ll be fine. She can help with baby duty as much as she wants, so she might feel like she has a baby. And it’s still Mateo’s baby, so I’m sure she’ll be head over heels for her from birth.
I can manage it if my beloved can keep his goddamn word, but it’s difficult to trust that.
Now that I’m thinking about their sex life, I remember something else I wanted to cover with her while we were outside the house.
“Hey, so, Mateo and I were discussing your sex life the other night,” I begin.
She blinks a few times. “That’s weird.”
“Is it?”
Nodding, she says, “We never, ever discuss your sex life.”
I shrug. “You’re more territorial than I am. Anyway, we were discussing your sex life and I had a thought. Obviously things are good now and I’m really happy about that, but since he has put you through the wringer twice in the last year, it stands to reason it could happen again.”
“He promised he wouldn’t do anything this bad again,” she volunteers.
“Right. And I’m sure he totally means it—until he doesn’t anymore. He’s not the most stable man in the universe, but he’s also difficult to manage because, well, he’s him. So sometimes you have to get creative with your problem-solving in regards to Mateo. Me, I’m a creative problem solver. I can mostly deal with his various levels of heinousness, but there’s one that consistently sticks in my brain and causes me anxiety. Not right now, because things are good, but next time he makes you hate him… the mother hen in me wants to do what I can to protect you. Without, you know, actively getting in his way, because I don’t want to get murdered.”
Smiling slightly, she looks at her lap and shakes her head. “I’m fine. Honest. You don’t have to worry about me.”