Unexpecting (Unexpecting #1)

40. Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty

“Deciding on a baby’s name should be a quick and instinctive process and should only be done once the child is born.”

A Young Woman’s Guide to the Joy of Impending Motherhood

Dr. Francine Pascal Reid (1941)

I had my second ultrasound when I was twenty weeks along. It was not nearly as eventful as the first one. J.B. was really taking these appointments seriously and told me he’d pick me up from school. As I waited outside the school in the warm October sun, I suddenly wondered how that was going to happen. There was no way I should be riding on his motorcycle. That just screamed irresponsible mother, and if you considered how I got pregnant, I was sure I’d have enough to do to get rid of that moniker. A shiny black Pathfinder pulled up beside me.

″Hey,” J.B. said as he lowered the window. He had a huge grin on his face. “Get in.”

″Whose car is this?” I marveled as I settled in the passenger seat. It was brand-new since it still had that new-car smell. I ran my hands across the dashboard and the dark leather seats.

″Mine,” J.B. said as he pulled out of the school driveway.

″Yours? But—did you sell your bike?” J.B.’s motorcycle is his favourite toy. He thinks he’s so cool when he’s riding it—okay, he is pretty cool when he’s riding it .

J.B. just gave me a look. “Don’t be dumb. I sold the car.” J.B.’s second favourite toy was his car—a shiny blue two-seater Lexus that he drove when inclement weather forced him to keep his bike at home.

″You sold your car?” I asked quietly.

″I thought it was time I got something bigger,” was all he said.

Whoa. This was big—and not just the SUV. This was huge. This was—my eyes actually welled up when I realized this was one of J.B.’s ways of proving to me that he was up for taking responsibility for our babies.

He looked over with a quizzical glance. “What’s wrong?”

″You sold your car for the babies,” I told him, sniffling a bit.

″It’s not that big a deal. It was just a car.”

″It was your car.”

″Yeah, and these are my babies. Sort of. Yours and mine. Besides,” he said with a smile of embarrassment, “you think I want you driving around with the babies in that tin boat you call a car? You can fit three car seats in the back. Now you don’t need a minivan.”

″You remember I hate minivans!” Now the tears were starting to flow.

″Hey, hey, it’s okay. Are you going to be okay, or is this some sort of hormonal thing?” Now he looked nervous, and I smiled through the tears.

″Hormonal probably.” There was no way I was going to admit I was bawling because he sold his car. Because it was something like a husband would do, or at least a person in a committed relationship, expecting a child with the woman he loved. But since it was J.B. we were talking about and he was not in any sort of committed relationship, it was probably just hormones making me cry. “Get used to it.”

″Great.”

I was surprised at how light my heartfelt as we sat together waiting for my name to be called for the ultrasound. For the first time, it really felt like we were in this together. At the last ultrasound and the doctor’s visit, J.B. was there with me, but still separate. Before today, I had always considered myself a single mother planning on raising triplets on my own with the help and support of friends. I always included J.B. as one of the friends. But now—now I was a woman preparing to raise my babies with the help and support of the father. And our friends. It was like we stepped into this new level of togetherness.

Considering how only two months ago, J.B. was dead set against being a father, he’d come a long way. I thought he was really okay with it—better than I was some days. There was no hesitation nor visible fear, other than what was to be expected. It was like once he found out—and after he was a dick about everything, but luckily that didn’t take too long—he got his head set on straight and jumped right in. If he was not quite ready to be a father yet, I knew he would be when these babies were finished cooking.

″So you really want to find out what I’m—we’re—having?” I asked, stumbling a little over the word we’re. I hadn’t drunk as much water as last time, but I was still finding it difficult to sit still while we waited. Compared to fidgety me, J.B. was calm and cool, leafing through a magazine like he didn’t have a care in the world.

″Since we’re here, why not? The doc seems to think we might be able to have a good look.”

″I’m not sure if I want to know,” I admitted.

″You don’t?” J.B. asked with surprise. “I figured you’d be dying to find out.”

″I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I might like the surprise.”

″Isn’t having three babies enough of a surprise?” he asked wryly.

″Yeah, maybe,” I smiled. “It would help pick out names, though. What do you think about Kaitlin?”

″Aren’t there a lot of Kaitlins out there?” J.B. put down his magazine. “I think I dated a couple.”

″Well, that will make things more difficult,” I teased. “If we can’t name them after someone you dated.”

″I think that can go both ways,” he pointed out. “Your list is fairly long as well.”

″I think we can agree on no significant others? For me, someone I dated for longer than three months; for you, if you knew her last name.”

″Hey!” J.B. looked offended, but I was laughing too much to care. He gave my shoulder a shove, which made me laugh even louder. “I’ll have you know I know lots of last names.”

″What’s mine?” He looked like he was about to growl at me, but I kept laughing. “Please tell me you don’t keep a list of all these last names.”

″Do you mean my little black book, volumes one to ten?” I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have a black book,” he added patiently.

″Anymore,” I said darkly.

″I never did,” he said quietly. I met his eyes and something wiggled in my stomach. I didn’t think it was the babies yet .

″Speaking of which, I haven’t seen any long, tall, blonde things popping up over breakfast in a while.” I had to congratulate myself on being able to say this so casually, especially with the way he was looking at me.

″Nope,” J.B. was just as casual.

″No? Hitting streak over then?”

″I thought I’d just take a little time out on the bench, that’s all.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Thought it was a good time to do that.”

I gave a careful nod. “Oh. Maybe.”

″Maybe what?”

″Maybe it’s a good time to do that.”

″I thought so. What about you?”

″Oh, I started my bench warming the night this happened,” I told him, with my hand on my belly. “Remember?”

″Except for David,” J.B. said with a tiny note of scorn in his voice. If I hadn’t been listening to it, I might have missed it.

″Yes, but that didn’t last too long.” When he grimaced, I tried to hide my smile. “Are you still mad at me about that?”

″Why should I be mad?” he bluffed.

″No reason. In case you were curious, David is in Rome with Marco. I got an e-mail from him—he’s not sure where things are going, but they’re taking it slow. I guess Marco’s family is an issue.”

″The whole being Canadian thing?”

″No, more likely the whole being gay thing.”

″Parents should accept who their children are and be happy for them,” J.B. pronounced darkly. This, of course, surprised me more than a little.

″It’s nice you have such a tolerant approach when you’re on the cusp of being a parent yourself. I guess things change when you face life-altering events.”

″I’ve always been tolerant. My best friend growing up was gay. I was the first person he told.”

″I—I didn’t know that. Why didn’t I know that?”

″It’s not something I felt the need to bring up in everyday conversation. There are things you don’t know about me, Case.”

″I think there’s a lot I don’t know about you. And I think I might be looking forward to finding out more,” I told him shyly.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, but it was a good, comfortable silence. The lab was packed, so our wait was longer than before, but today I didn’t seem to mind .

″Back to baby names?” I finally ventured. “I like Sarah.”

″Not bad.”

″What do you think? Boy and girl.”

″Well, I like Ben, for a boy,” J.B. finally said slowly. “For a girl, I kind of like Dorothy.”

″Dorothy?” I repeated. “Really?”

″Kind of.”

″She might need a pair of ruby slippers and a dog named Toto.” I gave a little laugh, not knowing how serious he was about the name. “But I guess we could call her Dot.”

″I was thinking Dory,” J.B. said defensively.

″Dory,” I echoed. “Like the fish.”

″What fish?”

″Haven’t you seen Finding Nemo?” At the shake of his head, I smiled. “We better get you watching some kid movies.”

″I guess. So maybe not Dory. What about Sam, if it’s a boy?”

″Sam Samms. I don’t think so. Sort of like Bob Roberts.”

″The last name’s going to be Samms?” J.B. asked.

″Well, I guess. It is my name. I hadn’t really thought…” It was then that I got called in for the ultrasound. I left J.B. sitting in the chair without any resolution on the last name of our children. It was not bad enough that I—we—had to figure out so many first names; now there was going to be confusion with the last name as well.

There was no problem with seeing the babies this time, and the technician got all her measurements without using the internal probe. This one wasn’t as nice or talkative as my Scottish Jeannie, so I just lay on the table with my mind wandering until she asked if I wanted her to call in the father.

″Please. His name is J.B. Bergen,” I told her. Bergen-Samms, I wondered to myself. Or Samms-Bergen. Sam Samms-Bergen still didn’t work.

J.B. followed the technician in, and I smiled when I saw his eyes flicker to the sheet covering my lower body. I knew he was looking for the probe sticking out from between my legs again. “Just the regular one this time,” I told him as the technician squeezed another dollop of gel on my belly.

″It’s bigger,” J.B. said, and for a second I thought he was talking about the babies. Then I saw him looking at my stomach.

″This is nothing,” I smiled. “I’m going to be huge.

″There’s one,” the technician interrupted, pointing to one of my—our—babies on the screen. Both J.B. and I eagerly leaned forward at the same time, and I ended up bumping my head on his chest. For a moment I breathed in his cologne, and then moved away.

Despite the technician’s best attempts, our babies were modest today, and there was no way of discovering if they were girls or boys. Not that she could tell us, I was informed, but later J.B. said he was sure he saw something like a penis on one of them. I replied that it must be wistful thinking, and the way he is, it would serve him right to have three daughters. The bad thing about not knowing what we were having was that I still had to figure out a lot of baby names.