Chapter 10
When I made it to Ryann’s place later that night, she had all of Mocha’s stuff packed up and sitting in the foyer.
“Hey,” I said when she opened the front door and stepped back to let me walk into her place.
She was wearing pajama pants, a tee shirt that accentuated her little round stomach, and a robe that was open. I reached out, palming her bump like it was a miniature basketball. I would miss being able to do that once she gave birth.
“Hey,” she told me before making her way back over to the disheveled sofa.
I took in the mess. It wasn’t like Ryann. Even when she was in the throes of morning sickness, she still tried to keep her place presentable. “You cool?”
“Don’t judge, Brix. I’m not in a good space.”
I crossed the room and took a seat next to her on the sofa, despite all of the blankets, pillows, plates, and empty food packages. “I don’t like hearing that, Ry. Anything I can do to make things flow better for you?”
“Why’d you pull away from me, Brix? Why’d you stop spending time over here and laying down with me at night? Why’d you stop giving me massages? Why’d you stop?”
I didn’t know how to tell her that I overheard the conversation she had with her father all those weeks earlier.
The one where he insinuated that she should try to keep a wall between us because what we had was a business arrangement.
I didn’t agree with him. Having the baby with Ryann was more than a business arrangement.
She was special to me. She was somebody that I could see myself falling for. Hell, I was already falling for her.
I could see where her dad was coming from.
He was trying to save her from getting caught up in a messy entanglement with me.
Where the lines were too blurred and feelings were hurt.
Where new suitors would come in and not understand the dynamic.
He had a point. I needed to honor the fact that Ryann wasn’t mine. I needed to stop crossing boundaries.
If Ryann was regular, non-pregnant, reasonable Ryann, I would tell her straight up what the deal was, but I had to handle pregnant Ryann with care because her emotions were all over the place.
“I felt like I was crowding you, lil mama.” I semi-lied. “I felt like I was doing too much and I wanted to make sure you felt like you had your space.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that. I didn’t want my space.”
I didn’t have a response for that, so I stayed quiet.
She rolled her eyes at me. “Mocha! Mocha!”
A little dark ball of fur rounded the corner and skidded to a stop in front of the sofa. “She’s ready to go.” Ryann dismissed me.
I took the cue and stood. Shit. There wasn’t really anything else for me to do.
She was inviting me to leave. “Yo, way back when, we talked about you getting my house together for me. We’re at the halfway mark with this pregnancy and our daughter will be here before we know it.
” I had to take a pause at the thought of having a daughter.
The idea of that caused my heart to do weird shit in my chest. “I want my house to be a home before she comes. And I especially want her room to be ready. Would you still be willing to do that for me? You could come by and get the pictures you talked about, and you mentioned something about boards—”
“Vision boards.” She gave me the genuine smile she used to give me so easily. It had been a long time since I’d received one of those from her.
“Yeah, vision boards. We could go shopping, or you could go shopping. Anyway, we only have about four to five months, give or take. I—”
“I wanna do it. When can I come by?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Perfect. That’ll give me something to look forward to.” She picked Mocha up and cuddled her. “Okay, please take her now before I start to cry.”
The next day, I gathered Mocha into her carrying case and drove over to Cozy Canine Connections so she could be reunited with her owners.
Tiffany practically met me at the door. “Mr. Cole,” she began.
“Brixton.”
“Brixton, I was about to reach out to you. I just got off the phone with the Wallertons.”
From the look on her face, I knew it wasn’t good.
“Due to personal reasons beyond their control, they can’t make it into town today to claim Mocha.
I informed them that we had an agreement.
Cozy Canine Connections finds homes for dogs in two ways—we find temporary placement due to relocation or some other unforeseen circumstances, and we find forever homes for displaced dogs.
I had a feeling about them all along. They just presented to me as owners who were going to breech their contract.
But even with the feeling in my gut, I hoped that they would prove me wrong.
I told them so. I told them that they weren’t on the ‘forever home’ track.
They need to reclaim their dog. Do you know what they said to me? ”
I tried not to chuckle. She was pissed off, and I could already see where it was going. Ryann’s house was about to become Mocha’s forever home. “Nah. What’d they say?”
“They said I should put her on the forever track because they didn’t know when they’ll be able to pick her up, if ever. They don’t plan on picking her up, Brixton.”
“It’s cool. It’s cool,” I assured her. “My friend’s had her for six months at this point. If it’s okay with you, we’ll adopt Mocha. Tell me what I need to do. This is a problem with an easy solution.”
When Ryann showed up at my house later that day, I positioned Mocha at the front door, so she would be the first thing Ryann saw. Mocha saw Ryann first and went to barking hysterically until Ryann noticed her.
“Oh my word! Oh my goodness.” Ryann dropped to her knees in my foyer, which I didn’t think was good for her or the baby. Her mind wasn’t on that. It was on having a reunion with the puppy she’d come to love and cherish. “Mocha mommy. Mocha, my baby.”
I stood back and watched the excitement exuding from both of them at being back together.
Finally, Ryann looked up at me. “What is she doing here? I thought you were taking her to the agency early this morning.”
“I did. Her owners flaked on picking her up. They told Tiffany they probably won’t be back to reclaim her and that she should find a home for her. I told Tiffany that you would probably take her, but if you don’t—”
“I want her.” Ryann had Mocha wrapped in her arms like she dared somebody to try to take the dog from her. “I’ll call her in the morning and find out what I need to do to make her officially mine.”
I helped Ryann from the floor while she still clung to Mocha. “You want me to snap the pictures while you get reacquainted with your first born daughter?”
She laughed. “I’ll take the pictures.” She gave Mocha one last loving squeeze, then put the small dog back down on the floor. “What room have you picked out as the nursery for our little princess?”
“Come on.” My home was a single story ranch.
The main living spaces were on one side of the house—the living room, dining room, kitchen, office, family room, primary bedroom, one guest room, the sitting room…
all that type of stuff was on one side. Off behind the kitchen was where the other two guest bedrooms and the flex room were located.
“Do you have any ideas for girl names?” she asked as we walked. “Transparency moment, if it was a boy, I was gonna suggest Brixton.”
I chuckled. “So now that it’s a girl, are you thinking Brixtonia?” I joked.
“Absolutely not!”
“Brixtonisha? Brixta? Brixtiana? Britta?”
“Britta is the only name you’ve said that I would even consider.”
“I don’t know. My mind is still blown on the fact that I have a baby girl on the way.”
“Same.”
“Do you have any ideas for names?”
She shrugged. “Some people put both parents’ names together. So maybe, Ryton or Brixann.”
My only response was a laugh.
“Let’s keep thinking about it,” she suggested as we walked into the empty bedroom.
The room was a box, perfectly square—11x11. One wall was solid drywall from floor to ceiling. Two walls offered windows, and one wall held the small walk-in closet.
“Oh, this is perfect.” She snapped pictures and took video of the room. “This is perfect.”
“Have you decided what you’re doing at your house?”
“Uhm, I thought part of the contractual agreement stated that I had to move closer to you. I wasn’t doing anything to my house except getting it ready to put on the market.”
I sighed. “If our families wouldn’t freak the fuck out and if it wouldn’t jam you up for meeting your future husband, I would suggest that you just move in here. It would make things so much easier.”
“It would,” she said thoughtfully. “But you’re right about the Uptons and the Coles having something to say.
They already think we’re crazy for doing this as friends.
They’d really crash out if we lived together.
But truth be told, now that I’m getting my child and a reliable baby’s daddy, a relationship with some imaginary man isn’t what I’m on. ”
“Right now, Ry. Because you just got out of the throes of morning sickness. In a couple of weeks, with the next hormone spike, you might get horny as hell and a relationship will be at the forefront of your mind.” I had to cut myself off from talking before I offered to be the dude scratching that itch for her and digging all up in what I knew was probably a juicy ass pussy.
Ryann looked like she had good pussy. And her lips?
She definitely gave good head and looked pretty as hell while doing it.
I shook those thoughts away.
“Yeah.” I heard what I thought was defeat in her tone. “I have a lot of ideas for this room. Show me the next one, please.”
We went through every room in my house. She got pictures and took notes. Then she left so she could start working out all of the ideas she had in her mind.
Later that day, I met up with Beaux to eat. After we exchanged dap and sat down, he started with his questions.
“How’s the off-season going? You resting, or you busy running behind your baby’s mom?”
“I’m not running behind Ryann. I know this because she was getting on me the other day about how I stopped showing up for her.”
“Did you stop showing up for her?” He didn’t bother looking up from the menu. He kept perusing the selections while he confronted me with a casualness that annoyed me.
Sometimes I hated how laidback Beaux could be. “Uhm—”
He cut me off. “You’re taking too long to respond. So, basically, yeah. Why’d you stop showing up?” He finally looked up from the menu.
I held his gaze. “I wasn’t necessarily trying to stop showing up for her. I was trying to fall back.”
“Why? When we chopped it up in South Carolina, I thought we established that she had your nose wide open.”
“Fuck you.” I chuckled. Before I could say more, the waitress appeared to take our orders.
He continued once the waitress walked away. “You feeling spooked?”
“Nah. I actually overheard a conversation between her and her dad. She thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t.”
“Was Mr. Upton talking shit?”
I told him what I’d heard him say.
“You think he’s right?”
“He could be,” I admitted. “I know Ryann fucks with me physically. I mean…” I gestured up and down myself.
“Facts. You’re not as fucking jaw-dropping as I am, but we favor. You’re not a completely ugly ass dude.”
We both laughed.
“But other than that,” I continued. “She’s pregnant and before that she was on a shitload of hormone pills.
She doesn’t know if she’s coming or going.
She’s probably feeling vulnerable and a whole lot of other emotions.
I can’t take the fact that she likes me holding her while she sleeps or that she likes receiving my massages as proof that she’s into me.
Who’s to say that she’ll want something more than just raising this baby with me once her hormones settle and she’s no longer pregnant?
I don’t think now is the appropriate time to ask her for a commitment. ”
“Bruh, she’s pregnant. She hasn’t suffered a traumatic brain injury. Fuck are you talking about? Of course her hormones are raging, but that doesn’t stop her from knowing if she wants a relationship with you. If you’re too pussy to ask her, just say that.”
“You’re always talking shit.”
“You just hate it when I’m right.”
I didn’t respond to his irritating ass for a minute. “Yo, we did the ultrasound yesterday. We found out the gender.”
“Straight up? What’re we having? Am I getting season tickets to take my little nephew to football games, or am I getting a shotgun to keep YNs off my little niece?”
I snickered. “Make sure your FOID card is registered with the state of Illinois.”
His face broke out into a huge grin. “Get the fuck outta here! A princess niece, just like we talked about. Aww shit. Her and Giselle are about to be keeping their big unc on his toes. Congratulations, bruh.”
“Thanks, man.”
We stood up and exchanged hugs and dapped.
“Damn, it’s really getting real. You’re about to be a father, son.”
“I know.”
“So on some real talk, you can’t be on some lovey dovey shit with Ryann and not consider the real situation she’s in.”
“Shut up, Twin. Ain’t nobody on no lovey dovey shit.”
“Whatever. All I know is that you always said that you wanted a big family. You want a lot of children. As beautiful and enticing as she is, Ryann does have a medical diagnosis. She probably won’t be able to give you all of those kids that you want.
Just think about the extreme measures that y’all went through to get this one pregnancy.
You willing to give up your goal of having a big family for her? ”
I didn’t respond to Beaux when he posed the question. But in my heart, I knew the answer. When it came to Ryann and my little princess in her stomach, all I needed was them. Fuck some imaginary kids that I decided I wanted when I was in high school. All I needed was Ryann and my princess.