“I got you a creamed coffee. Heard how much you’ve been getting them lately. I thought we could just have a chat. Talk things over. We could really use your expertise right now, Foxx. Lives could depend on it,” he adds.
Ah, trying for the guilt switch. I disconnected that long ago.
One look down at Mandy, my blushing bride-to-be, and I know.
She gives a tiny little nod, and even though we don’t say a word, it’s settled. She’s learned everything about being a man in my shoes in just a few seconds.
That’s the kind of shit we all put up with on a daily basis, Mandy….
And I know, we both know, what we’d both rather have instead.
Making for the door, I nudge past Mark Chandler, only turning my head briefly to let him know a few facts.
“I got all the cream and sugar I need here, Mark. And yeah, there are lives at stake… Ours,” I tell him firmly.
I give our doorman a nod which means Dr. Chandler can go fuck himself before he sets foot in our building.
And Mandy and Me?
I think we’ve got some family planning to keep working on. Those lives I was talking about include ours, but it also means I have to devote myself to all the other little lives I know we’re gonna bring into the world.
“That went well,” I say with satisfaction, watching the elevator door close on one part of my life, zooming me up into my new life.
In the clouds for now again, where we both belong.
Together.
Mandy and me.
“I love you, Dr. de Silva,” she says proudly, hugging my chest.
“And I love you, Mrs. Mandy De Silva,” I answer her back, kissing her until our stomachs flutter, long after the elevator has stopped.
THREE MONTHS LATER
Mandy
“I just don’t want to end up…ya know?” I tell Foxx.
But he doesn’t know what I mean.
“I’m worried I’ll be like my parents, whoever they were. Worried I won’t…,” I say, but Foxx knows me better than to let me think like that, let alone say it.
“Hey,” he reminds me gently, hugging me close as we lie together in our bed.
He’s playing big spoon, giving me some comfort that I need right now, but I can’t help my pregnancy hormones.
Wasn’t it his ‘big spoon’ that got me like this in the first place?
My mindset bothers me. It’s really not like me to think like this, especially seeing how happy we are. How proud a man Foxx is now that he has his woman and a little baby on the way.
Thinking too much. Not thinking enough. Mood swings, not to mention the weight gain.
And I’m only three months in… Damn.
“We’re not our parents,” Foxx tells me matter of fact. “And I know as well as you do, Mandy, that you’ll make a terrific mom,” he adds, kissing my neck.
“And a terrific wife?” I ask, not meaning it the way it sounds.
“I think I’m just hungry,” I confess. Feeling like I want to cry now, but also like I want Foxx inside me again.
Oh, I don’t know what I want right now.
Yes. Definitely hungry.
“What can I get you?” Foxx asks, and I know he’ll bring me whatever I ask for, no matter what he has to do to get it.
Puffing my cheeks, I try to think. I try to put a food group or food combination together that will fix my mood right now.
“Mandy?” Foxx asks again, smiling as his fingers start to walk up my shoulder, brushing my hair that’s grown so long back from my ear.
He makes me purr.
“I love it when you do that, but I’m trying to be a grouchy pregnant woman,” I protest, almost whining by the time he’s calmly listing off all the possible foods I could eat.
And I’m only so upset about that because I want all of it. As unreasonable as it might sound. It’s perfectly logical to my eating for two brain right now.
“I’ll make you something,” Foxx murmurs in my ear, kissing it as I feel my hands clench over his.
“Thank you, Foxx,” I whisper. “I mean it. You’re always just so…calm. It’s what I need when I’m like this,” he hears me tell him for the millionth time.
We hardly if ever argue, and even when I said I just wanted a simple wedding, a judge to marry us, that’s all I wanted, he was okay with it.
Even though we did have a full church wedding about a week later. Foxx got the same carriage to take us when he proposed to me.
Foxx knows me better than anyone now, and he listens to me and all my stupid problems with only one thing in mind. Finding the solution that makes me happy, regardless of what I say beforehand.
“I love you,” his deep voice rumbles gently, holding me until he hears my belly groan a whale song of hunger.