15. Fifteen
15
FIFTEEN
ONE MONTH LATER
S hopping for a baby was more fun than I envisioned. Like … a lot of fun. There were so many options, and for some reason, the women who worked in the baby stores—and it was always women—loved me. I’d never gotten more phone numbers shoved under my nose when I was signing credit card pads and slips.
I didn’t call any of them. I didn’t even hold onto the numbers. I had zero interest. I was already in love after all. It was just with the idea of being a father.
When I looked back at how I’d reacted when I’d first found out about the baby, I was ashamed. I should’ve jumped for joy, made sure Ruby was comfortable, and told her I couldn’t wait to help her. Sure, rationally I understood that I was in shock and was always destined to come around. I wanted to be a stand-up guy for my kid, though. Never once did I want her to doubt that I loved her.
That meant shopping trips, keeping Ruby fed, and plotting out what the nursery was going to look like. I was still determined to decorate in ghost Elvis, although I was the only one who thought that was a good idea. I was never one to back down, even when the whole world was against me.
“I don’t care what you say.” I stared at the ghost Elvis mobile and sighed. “It’s perfect.”
Livvie moved up on my left and Ruby moved up on my right. They had twin looks of disgust on their faces as they studied the mobile.
“That is the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Livvie complained.
“So tacky,” Ruby agreed. “It looks as if it’s made out of cardboard.”
I lightly slapped her hand away when she reached out to touch it. “It’s classy and I’m getting it.” I slid her a sidelong look as she rubbed her ribs. She was a little bigger now. She’d finally popped enough for some people—not all, but some—to realize she was pregnant … and not with a food baby. I thought that would be a relief to her. It was the exact opposite.
“What’s wrong?” I caught her around the waist and stared into her eyes. “Does something hurt?” Ruby wasn’t a complainer. Not in the least. That’s why I had to constantly ask her point blank if something was going on. The flutter thing at the doctor’s office had taught me a very important lesson.
“I’m twenty-five weeks,” she replied, not missing a beat. “My uterus is expanding and it’s normal to feel a bit of discomfort when that happens.”
“You sound like a walking, talking version of Pregnantpedia,” I complained.
She ignored me. “Do you want to know what else happens at twenty-five weeks?”
That was a trick question. If I said yes, she would tell me things that would give me nightmares. They weren’t the sorts of things I was all that interested in either. Like … no offense to the mother of my child, but I didn’t want to know about the baby getting eyelids for the first time, or that she was blinking in there. The whole thing creeped me out.
On the flip side, if I didn’t want to listen, she would give me grief. She knew exactly what buttons to push, which was why when I said that I didn’t want to hear her pregnancy facts that her response was fine, and that if I wanted to be a disinterested father, it was completely up to me.
Before I could respond to her current challenge, Livvie did it for me.
“I want to know what to expect at twenty-five weeks,” she said excitedly.
I shot her a suspicious look but didn’t ask the obvious question.
“I’m not pregnant,” she volunteered, as if reading my mind. “Take a breath. I’m just curious because I plan to be pregnant one day.”
I tipped my head toward Ruby so she could start yammering away. There was no escaping from the baby facts today.
“So, at twenty-five weeks, the baby can get frightened so it’s best not to make any loud noises or jump around,” Ruby started. The smile she sent me was absolutely beautiful, to the point of being distracting. It was like seeing the sun for the first time.
“The baby starts putting on fat at twenty-five weeks, too,” she continued.
“I’m pretty sure that’s the lunches I’ve been bringing to you every day,” I countered.
She ignored me. “If our baby has hair—and given we both have full heads of hair, I don’t expect a bald baby, even though they’re really cute—that will start developing now, too,” she said. “She’s a foot long and weighs more than a pound. Her nose is starting to work too.”
I froze, my hand on one of the ghost Elvis mobiles. “How can she smell in there? Wait … can she smell in there? Is it like when Han cut open the tauntaun and shoved Luke in to save his life on Hoth?”
The looks Livvie and Ruby pinned me with had me taking a step back. “Or pretend I said something less annoying,” I suggested.
Ruby merely shook her head. “My uterus is now the size of a soccer ball.” She almost looked excited. “Also, this is about the point in pregnancy when hemorrhoids start developing.” Her eyes landed on me. “So we have that to look forward to.”
“What’s this ‘we’ you’re referring to?” I teased. “I’m not getting hemorrhoids.”
“I’ll find a way to make you go through the pain with me.” Ruby turned and headed toward the nearest crib. From behind, you couldn’t tell she was pregnant. Even from up front, her little belly was adorable. I constantly had to refrain from touching it. It wasn’t easy, because I wanted to feel each little kick the baby wanted to grace me with. Since it was Ruby’s body, however, I always asked … and only a quarter of the time the urge threatened to overtake me as I waited for her response.
It was always yes.
“The newest joy of my life is the snoring,” she said as she held up a pillow for Livvie to look at. My sister wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Yeah, it’s ugly,” Ruby agreed as she returned it to the crib.
“Are you saying that you’re suddenly snoring and you’ve never snored before?” Livvie asked. She looked genuinely curious.
“Yup.” Ruby was rueful. “I’ve woken myself up twice this week. Plus, I’m either really hot or really cold when I try to go to sleep. I’m never just right.”
“You need someone to cuddle up to in bed.” Livvie sounded pragmatic, but I almost choked at the words.
The strangest thing was that Ruby didn’t disagree with her. “I know, right?” Ruby shook her head, her dark ponytail swinging back and forth. “I ordered one of those BedJets. It’s for menopausal women, but it does both heat and cold.”
I didn’t care what the BedJet was. I wanted to go back to the cuddling thing.
“How does that work?” Livvie looked intrigued.
“There’s a hose that you put between the bottom and top sheets and it pumps a variety of different temperature air in there. So, if you’re hot, you can pump cold air in. If you’re only slightly cold you hit the dry button. If you’re cold, you go for the heat.”
“And it works?” Livvie acted as if Ruby was explaining magic to her.
“Oh, it’s amazing. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me since the hot flashes.”
I felt terrible. How bad were these hot flashes?
“Well, it sounds interesting. I still think it’s better to cuddle with someone,” Livvie argued. “I mean … there’s nothing better than curling up with your head on someone’s shoulder, absorbing their body warmth, and listening to the sound of their heartbeat under your head.” She took on a far-off expression that both stirred and irritated me because I knew she was talking about Zach … and I did not want to picture that.
“See, it’s not the cuddling calling to me right now,” Ruby countered. “It’s the sex. I’m hornier than a ten-pronged rhino right now.” She leaned closer to Livvie, apparently forgetting that I was even tagging along on this shopping excursion. “All those stories they tell you about pregnancy hormones making you look at your electric toothbrush as if it’s your best friend? They’re totally true.”
“Holy crap.” Livvie looked rocked. “Like … in a good or bad way?”
“Well, if I had someone to help me, it would be in a good way. I mean … I could get off like eight times a day and it wouldn’t be enough.”
A dull ringing invaded my head. Eight times? Was she joking? Wait … were they messing with me? That made more sense than Ruby not being satiated after eight orgasms. Well, unless they weren’t Rex-granted orgasms. It was entirely possible that she just didn’t understand the power of the Dark Side in this instance.
I kind of wanted to show it to her. No, more than kind of. I definitely wanted to show it to her. Ruby had always been hot—like really, really hot—but pregnancy had made her ten times hotter. Suddenly, her skin was glowing. Her hair was growing faster than normal and was to the middle of her back. Her hips were popping, as were her boobs, and her stomach, while no longer flat, was utterly hot and touchable.
“When was the last time you had sex?” Livvie asked.
I jerked up my chin. I wanted to hear the answer to this question. Sure, I thought I knew the answer. Confirmation couldn’t possibly hurt, though.
It wasn’t that I was jealous, or didn’t want Ruby to find someone—really and truly—but since my kid was living in her uterus, it seemed like a good idea to disallow visitors for the time being. Since we were doing this together, I was cutting off visitors as well. It just seemed fair.
Ruby shrugged. Her back was to me and she either didn’t know or care that I was listening to the conversation. “I believe the last time I had an orgasm that wasn’t provided by myself—and there have been plenty of those, mind you, because of the horny thing—was before I got pregnant.”
I stilled. This would’ve been the time to keep my mouth shut. That was the smart move. I didn’t always go for the smart move. No, I often made the dumb move because I didn’t think things through. Being fast and impulsive helped with my job a lot of the time. As for the rest of my life, it was often a mistake.
Unfortunately, I never learned from those mistakes. I just kept repeating them, which was exactly what I was doing now.
“You mean the night we made Rexanne, right?” I blurted.
Ruby’s face was filled with annoyance when she turned back to me. “I will choke you on the name Rexanne if you say it again,” she warned. “You’re on my last nerve with that name.”
“You’re warming to it. I can feel it.”
“I will freeze to death before I warm to that name.”
Under different circumstances, I might have laughed. I couldn’t under these circumstances, however.
I had to know.
“You said you haven’t had an orgasm delivered by anybody since before you were pregnant,” I reminded her. “Technically, you got pregnant the night we were together, so that’s why you’re phrasing it the way you’re phrasing it, right?”
Ruby’s eyebrows cocked. “What?”
She couldn’t possibly be confused. “I said?—”
Livvie was the one who cut me off. “He’s fishing for compliments,” she explained to Ruby. “He’s afraid he didn’t deliver on the orgasms somehow and that’s too much for his teeny-tiny brain to compute.”
That was a gross exaggeration of what I was feeling. And yet, she wasn’t entirely wrong. “I’m just saying that I gave you fond memories that should carry you through the birth.” I puffed myself out because it seemed like the thing to do.
Ruby blinked, then she blinked again. “You didn’t give me an orgasm.”
Right up until the words escaped her mouth, I thought she was going to thank me for reminding her. I figured there would be one of her perfect smiles tossed my way as she pressed her hand to the spot above her heart and trilled at the memory.
I was not expecting what she actually said.
Now, I could’ve laughed at the joke and pointed her toward the velvet ghost Elvis framed artwork that I was determined to place over our daughter’s crib. Instead, I narrowed my eyes. “You take that back.” The words came out a lot harsher than I was anticipating. There was no pulling it back once it escaped, however.
“Take what back?” Ruby challenged.
“There were orgasms.” I was not going to just let this pass. “There were multiple orgasms in fact. There were so many orgasms I thought you were going to explode.”
Ruby folded her arms over her chest and stared me down.
Livvie, however, was mortified. “Are you seriously picking a fight with her in here over orgasms?” She kept her voice low. “That is the most loser thing in the world.”
I held up my hand to obliterate her face and kept my gaze on Ruby. “Are you telling me you faked those orgasms? Because—and this is just me—I don’t buy it. You were too drunk to think that far ahead.”
Rather than admit she’d been messing with me, Ruby narrowed her eyes. “I thought you didn’t remember having sex with me.”
Yup. I’d done it again. I’d put my foot in my mouth, and now I was going to pay a steep price. Weirdly, I didn’t care. I wanted credit for those orgasms.
“I remember parts of it,” I replied.
“Which parts?” Ruby readjusted her arms, causing the shirt to flutter and isolate her little belly. A belly I was desperate to touch for some inexplicable reason. I was starting to dream about that belly, and I couldn’t explain it.
“I remember you lost a shoe.” I looked back on that night and held out my hands. “I can’t remember what happened to the shoe, but we didn’t notice until we were on the skywalk.”
“You carried me,” Ruby agreed. “I remember that part too. I wish I remembered what happened to the shoe because I’ve had nightmares about getting hepatitis ever since it happened. I mean … I know I don’t have hepatitis, but those skywalks are filthy.”
“So filthy,” Livvie agreed.
I ignored my sister and kept my focus on Ruby. “I remember laughing. We laughed the whole way from the Cosmopolitan to the Stone.”
“I remember that too,” she confirmed. “I believe you were telling me about what you being a Las Vegas superhero would look like.”
My lips quirked. “That sounds about right,” I acknowledged. “I don’t remember what happened when I got to your door. That’s all a blur. I don’t understand how I got inside.”
She didn’t say anything. She just waited.
“I do remember being inside and … the stuff that came after.” I wagged my finger in exaggerated fashion. “You remember the stuff too. I know you do.”
“Dude, if you’re going to have a baby, I think you should be able to talk about sexual stuff without acting like a twelve-your-old boy,” Livvie hissed. “You’re embarrassing me.”
I didn’t care. The only thing I cared about in this moment was being right. And how obnoxious was that? I’ll tell you how obnoxious. It was very obnoxious … and yet that didn’t stop me. “She had orgasms,” I insisted. “That’s orgasms plural. I don’t want her telling people that I didn’t give her orgasms.”
“Oh, geez.” Ruby relaxed, if only marginally, and rolled her eyes. “Is that what this is all about? Are you afraid word will get out that the orgasms were missing and it will somehow ruin your game? You need to give it a rest.” She clucked her tongue as she shook her head. “I guarantee, no matter what, women will still throw themselves at you.”
I didn’t care about women throwing themselves at me. I cared about this woman. This maddeningly hot and annoying woman. “There were orgasms.” I refused to let it go. “Just acknowledge that, and we’ll go back to shopping.”
Ruby snorted. “So, basically, you’re saying that you want me to lie. Is that what I’m hearing?”
My ego was taking a bruising here. “Listen?—”
“Rex, you need to stop,” Livvie hissed, her cheeks flooding with color. “Let it go. It’s normal for people not to be on top of their games when they’re having drunk sex. It’s hardly the end of the world.”
That was easy for her to say. Of course, it was mortifying that she was saying it to me. “Stay out of it,” I ordered my sister. I was deadly serious when I turned back to Ruby. “I know you didn’t forget the orgasms. I don’t know why you’re pretending right now, but I don’t like it.”
“And I think this is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had,” Ruby said. “What is the matter with you, Rex? I’ve never seen you like this.”
It was a good question. I did not have a proper answer. All I knew was she’d flipped a switch inside my head. Now I was going to think about things I shouldn’t be thinking about. This was all her fault.
And no matter what she was saying, there were orgasms. They were damned good orgasms at that.
“Whatever.” I clutched my Elvis mobile to my chest. “There were orgasms, though. Stop pretending there weren’t.”