Chapter 24 Willow
WILLOW
Charleston in late summer is a wet blanket that learned how to smother.
The heat doesn’t sit on you so much as lean—cheek to cheek, breath to mouth, sticky and insistent.
By the time I waddle out of MUSC’s maternal-fetal clinic after my NST, my dress is pasted to my spine and my sandals make small, tragic sounds.
Non-stress test, take three this week. Two wide elastic belts, cool gel, clicky buttons.
Thirty minutes of are you moving? and please move, of tracing paper curling off the machine like a ribbon.
Two babies cooperated. The third, as usual, treated the test like a dare and napped through most of it, forcing me into the chair-dance of belly wiggles and apple juice.
When the line finally spiked the way it was supposed to, the nurse patted my hand and said, “Good babies,” like they’d done me a favor.
The doors whoosh. Outside, the asphalt breathes heat. I blink, adjusting, and see that Sean Byrne is already there, leaning against a column like he’s part of the scenery. He’s part of the scenery of my life lately, at least.
Sunglasses are hooked in his shirt, his wheat-colored hair is a little wild from the humidity, and his grin is at half-mast. My heart does a loop-de-loop when I see that grin, those shining teeth settled in his thick lips that I’ve kissed a few times.
I don’t know if I ever will again. It seems like we had that one conversation and then all ran scared back to our corners.
In his hand is a plastic cup crowned with whipped cream, my name scrawled on the lid like a charm.
“Now, care to explain,” he says, lifting the cup, “why I’m holding the world’s most perfect milkshake and you’re not?”
I don’t even pretend to be cool. “If that’s vanilla with extra malt, I might cry on you.”
“Vanilla, extra malt,” he says solemnly, because of course it is. “Doctor’s orders.”
“You are not my doctor.” I take the straw anyway. The first sip is almost indecent, cold and sweet enough to make my eyes close. I moan. I can’t even be embarrassed about it.
“Jaysus,” he says, delighted, “if that sound had a Yelp page, I’d give it five stars.”
“Don’t be gross,” I manage, and then I take another unapologetic pull. The babies rouse under my hand like they can smell the sugar. “Where’d you come from?”
“Top-secret mission,” he says, falling into step beside me. “I texted Cheyenne your ETA. She texted back, quote, Bring her something cold that won’t give her heartburn. And you know how I like a direct order.”
“Yes, you’re a very good boy,” I tell him, staring into his hazel eyes and giving the smallest smile.
“You’re both terrifying.” He angles me toward a patch of shade like he’s issuing a redirect to an airplane. “Benches this way, Miss Abel.”
“Where’s Cheyenne?” I ask, but I let him herd me because resistance is futile and also because my ankles have turned into decorative gourds.
The shade under the live oaks is its own kind of weather—green and buzzing.
Cicadas drone, relentless. Spanish moss sways, the only thing in Charleston with any chill.
“She’s on her way. You’re in good hands, Willow.”
“I know, I know,” I mumble, even as he pulls my heels onto his knees.
He pulls a fan from seemingly out of nowhere and starts to fan me like an enthusiastic handmaiden in a period drama.
He does it so matter-of-factly my eyes sting.
“Well, two were cooperative, one took a union break. We made quota in the last five minutes.”
“Any decelerations?” His tone goes deceptively light, a doctor’s ear hiding behind a boyfriend’s joke. He’s not my doctor and not my boyfriend. He’s Sean.
“None,” I say. “Spirited little baseline, some nice accelerations. Dr. Patel said ‘good.’ She also said to keep doing kick counts, keep hydrating, keep not murdering anyone.” I lift the milkshake. “Hydrating. Check.”
He gives a satisfied little “Hah.”
For a minute we watch a pair of med students walk by holding iced coffees and anxiety. I study Sean’s profile, strong and a little smug, like a man who knows he can talk any room into liking him and also knows I see through it.
He points to my belly. “Alright, roll call. Which one was the strike organizer today?”
“Baby C,” I say. “The troublemaker.”
“That tracks,” he says. “They say the third child is the comedian.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Me. Just now.” He dips his head toward my cup. “How’s the milkshake situation?”
“Dire,” I say, and hand it back for a sip he doesn’t take. Instead, he peels the lid, steals the cherry with his fingers, and drops it into my palm.
“Your prize,” he says.
“Chivalry isn’t dead. It just got sticky.
” I pop the cherry in my mouth. It tastes like childhood and fluorescent lights.
He wipes his fingers on a napkin he magicked from I-don’t-know-where.
The same place he found the fan. Sun shines out of his ass, and maybe he keeps napkins and fans in there too.
Two teen girls in MUSC tees drift past, comparing nail polish. One glances at my belly, goes soft around the eyes, and looks away quick the way people do when they’re scared they were caught caring.
A breeze lifts the edge of my dress. I shiver and then melt again, the way you do when your internal thermostat is being run by a committee. “I hate this part,” I blurt. “Everything’s heavy. People tell me to enjoy it and I want to bite them.”
“Permission to not enjoy anything you don’t enjoy,” Sean says. “Third trimester’s no spa stay, right? ’Tis a marathon in a wool blanket.”
“Sexy.” I stare at my hands. The swelling makes them look like they belong to a different person. “I don’t feel…pretty. I feel like a parade float.”
“Oh, good,” he says. “Because I’ve always wanted to escort a parade float.
” When I shoot him a look, he sobers, the showman tucking away.
“You’re gorgeous, Willow.” He says it like he’s reading a vital sign off a monitor.
Factual. Not up for debate. “People will want you to feel like you’re taking a break from gorgeous until you have kids.
And then they want you to feel like you’re taking a break until the kids are older.
No. You are gorgeous, inside and out, whether you’re pregnant or postpartum or dressed up on a cruise ship.
Curly locks and green eyes and a button nose, that smile so wide ’tis your whole face.
A girl after my own heart. Don’t let anyone tell you different. ”
Heat rises in my throat that has nothing to do with the weather. I wave him off because I can’t accept the compliment right now. Instead, I lean against his shoulder and hide my face in his sleeve. “Can I ask you something?” I mumble.
“You can ask me two somethings,” he says. “I’m feeling generous.”
“Were you scared the other night?” I don’t look at him. “When I came in for reduced movement?”
He doesn’t answer right away. When he does, it’s without a joke. His voice is somber and direct. “Terrified. I just knew it wouldn’t help to show that. I’m more worried about you than I am about me.”
I nod. “You’re allowed to be scared in front of me.”
He shakes his head. “No, telling you later is enough. What about you? How did you feel?”
“I was…blank,” I admit. “Like there was a pane of glass between me and everything. And then they moved and I felt stupid for being scared, which is also stupid.”
“Fear isn’t a test you pass or fail,” he says. “’Tis just a place you stand for a bit. Then you stand somewhere else.” He bumps my knee with his knuckles. “Standing with you is easy.”
I bite my lip. “You’re pretty good at this.”
“At what?”
“At making it…not awful.”
“Ah,” he says lightly, but there’s something serious under it. “Fair play, put that on my headstone. Sean Byrne: made it less awful.”
I roll my eyes, holding back tears and a smile simultaneously. It’s always been like that lately.
“Don’t you joke,” I say, but I’m smiling. The smile fades. “It’s getting real, isn’t it?”
“It’s been real all along, so it has,” he says softly. “But yes. This is the part where we do the boring, careful things over and over until it’s time to be brave. Boring saves lives.”
“Sounds like a poster in a DMV.”
“Right next to Indicators: Not Just For Fun.” He nudges the milkshake toward me for a final sip. “I can come tomorrow. To the appointment.”
“You don’t have to,” I say, because some part of me still tries to protect him from the parts that don’t sparkle.
“I know,” he says. “I want to.”
I look at him. At the smug mouth and the kind eyes and the way he’s somehow both show and shelter. “Okay,” I say. It feels like relief.
His phone chimes, and he glances at it, then says, “Cheyenne’s here.
” He stands, offers me his hands like we’re about to dance.
I let him lever me upright; everything in me sloshes into new positions.
He steadies me with a palm at the base of my spine.
Not proprietary, just present. “Slow walk?” he asks.
“Slow is the only gear I got left.”
We take the long way to the parking lot under the oaks, the gravel complaining under my sandals.
A little girl in a sundress points at my belly and whispers to her mother.
The mother smiles at me with that soft, conspiratorial look women give each other when we’re doing something hard and obvious and ordinary.
At the car, he opens the door—old habits die handsome—and says, “Hey, Cheyenne.”
“Hey, Sean,” she says, not moving from her seat as Sean helps me into mine. For a flash of a moment, I realize what that means, that my best friend trusts him enough to stay right where she is and let him handle it. The it being me, but that’s how being pregnant with triplets feels sometimes.
He leans on the frame, eyes on mine. “For the record, I’m proud of you.”
My skin feels itchy, knowing Cheyenne can hear him being so sincere. I laugh out, “Proud of me for what? People do this all the time.”
He leans forward, and I think he might kiss me, but he buckles my seat belt. “I don’t care about them,” he says, closing the door before I can respond.