“All right, all right,” Harrison says, taking me by the arms and walking me out onto the balcony and into the rain. It’s cool, despite the hot weather, and feels remarkably cathartic on my raging skin.
Still, it’s not exactly normal practice to walk a pregnant woman out onto a balcony in the rain, so I put a voice to my curiosity.
“Um, what are we doing out here? It’s raining…”
“You said you want to scream, right?”
I laugh. “Well, yeah. Of course, I do. I’m coming out of my freaking skin in this ginormous body I don’t seem to be able to control anymore. I can no longer see my shoes. I don’t even know if they match or not. Honestly, I don’t think they do because they feel different on my feet, but fuck, I can’t freaking see them to confirm.”
“Then scream,” Harrison says like it’s a completely normal thing to do. “Scream your head off. Hell, I’ll do it with you. We’ll both scream until you feel better, until some of the weight is off your chest. Until you don’t feel like screaming anymore.”
“Have you lost your mind too? I can’t just scream into the night like a crazy person, Harrison.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because it’s crazy!” I shout and stomp one foot to punctuate. “Insane, actually!”
“It’s not either of those things, baby,” he says, and his voice is so tender it almost makes me want to cry. “If it makes you feel better, it has a purpose—an important one.”
“But I’m not just anyone. Someone could get a picture or a video or a—”
“Will that picture or that video or anything else that may come of this make you worse off than you already are?”
“Maybe?” I say with a slightly unhinged laugh.
He rolls his eyes. “Physically, I mean. Will it make you sick or hurt the baby?”
“No. It might kill a career, but I’ve never heard of a paparazzi photo killing a baby,” I admit morbidly.
“Will screaming, right now, make you feel physically better?” he challenges. “Lower your stress, your blood pressure, the presumed strain on you and the baby and everything your body is doing right now?”
“Yes…but—”
“But nothing, then. Let’s scream. We’ll do it together.”
I feel just on the verge of an actual meltdown, and the release that would come with a scream is so dang tempting. Maybe if I just do it for a second…
I open my mouth and let one fly. “Ahh!”
Harrison scowls at my beyond pitiful attempt at unleashing myself. “Oh, come on. That wouldn’t even pass in a mediocre high school horror film. Show me what you’ve got! Open up your lungs!”
I shake my head but try again. “Ahhhh!”
“AHHHHHH!” Harrison adds, absolutely destroying my wimpy scream in every capacity while banging on his chest like a wild gorilla.
I try again, using my diaphragm like I would if I were singing for a role. “Ahhhhh!”
“Yes, yes!” Harrison encourages. “That’s so much better! Go again!”
High off his praise, I put my arms out to my sides on the railing and lean all the way into it until my lungs burn a little with my effort. “AHHHHHHH!”
“AHHHHH!” he answers in a fiercely wild call.
I scream again until I’ve expended all the air in my lungs, and when the silence finally rings out afterward, it is remarkable just how much better I feel.
Seriously. All the weight on my chest is just gone.
Blind with relief, I lose myself to the moment. A cackle starts up at the bottom of my throat and crawls all the way to the top until I’m doubled over—as much as I can be over my huge stomach anyway—and look up at the man in front of me from under my veil of tacky, wet, mascara-coated lashes.
Harrison’s hair sticks to his forehead, dripping little rivulets the same way it did that night in August when he first walked into the bar and turned my world upside down.
His eyes are alight, and his heart is on his sleeve as he nods at me as if watching me act like the world’s biggest mental case is the best thing he’s ever seen in his life.
And I could swear, it’s like time stops. Right here in this perfect moment, with just him and me and the baby we made and unadulterated joy.
Maybe it’s the hormones. Maybe it’s the memory of his hand in mine, strong and warm and resilient as he walked me out of Gary Bull’s studio tonight.
Whatever it is, it makes resisting impossible.
I will not survive this moment—not physically, not spiritually—if I do not feel the weight of his lips on mine.
Emboldened by spontaneity, I unbend at the waist and take his face into my hands. His laughter stops abruptly at the look in my eyes, but I don’t wait out the moment at all—I don’t want to have time to second-guess.