29. Eric
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ERIC
“All the bedrooms are massive in this one,” Amanda says over her shoulder, standing in the doorway of the third bedroom in a first-floor apartment two stops away from our side of campus. “I could have the baby next to me for a while.”
“Sure.” I lean against the living room wall, hands in pockets. “But he’ll eventually need his own room. That’s what the third bedroom’s for, right? For a nursery?”
“We could have a nursery in a two-bedroom.”
If we shared a bedroom. A bed.
Neither speaks the words, and yet they linger between us anyway. Her green eyes do, too, assessing my expression as she teases but doesn’t add. Her gaze is warm and sizzling. Suggestive. Or maybe it’s all in my head.
She struts away from me and presses her palm against the large bay windows in the living room. The Pink Line goes by, right on the other side of the alley east of the apartment, making the glass rattle against her hand. “How loud does that get at night?”
While Amanda still looks out the window, the property manager rolls his eyes at her question.
He opens his mouth to speak, and I lean off the wall, clearing my throat.
His gaze flicks to me before he answers.
I do this more and more since I said, “When we kiss.” Step in to avoid battles she doesn’t need to waste energy on.
Amanda then examines the kitchen, standing in the middle of it, while holding her stomach, pushing it upward. I close the distance between us until our arms brush. “Are you alright?” I ask.
She nods, then rubs her hips. “He’s getting heavy.”
Amanda is not even in her third trimester. A trickle of anxiety rises up when she jumps twice trying to get the cabinet above the fridge open.
“Let me.” I stand behind her until my front brushes her back, bracketing her as I open both doors without any strain. “Satisfied?”
She huffs, but squeezes my forearm. As she turns, her gaze catches mine again, and everything slows down as I become hyperaware of the softness of her skin against my own.
My forearms are above her pressed into mine against the top of the fridge while every ounce of air between us turns to delicious torture.
In the last two weeks since Val’s conference, Amanda has made it clear without words.
If I want us to kiss, the move is mine. Everything I’ve ever wanted is so close I can taste it.
My heart hammers, cold sweat gathers in my palms, and every time, I manage to get so very close to her… until I look away.
It’s not fear, although there’s a suffocating amount of that, too.
There’s always something missing, and I want it to be…
perfect. Right now, though, her vanilla body wash mixed with her perspiration in the heat; her curved stomach, fully touching my flat belly while she licks her lips when my eyes flick to her mouth. It feels pretty fucking perfect to me…
And then it’s the property manager’s turn to clear his throat, arms crossed over his chest. I narrow my eyes at him. Amanda pats my middle, but she doesn’t step away from me. She’s back to surveying the kitchen now.
“This one won’t do.”
“Why the hell not?” This is the fifth fucking apartment that won’t do today.
“There’s no outlet by the stove.” Her tone is flat, as if it’s my mistake for not noticing. “Where would the coffee machine go?”
I’ve never checked for outlets or lighting or closet space before.
“There’s one right there.” I point at the wall across from the stove. “We can get a kitchen island.”
Her eyes squint, considering it, then light up a little when she finds another problem. “Then where would we put the dining room table?”
We go back and forth. Going over what would make the space work for us. There’s something unbearably healing about how we’re not pretending. We’re… fighting—quite often—and figuring out the domestic, messy part of preparing to welcome a baby.
As we step out of the building, she turns to me, flushed from the stairs with a smile full of joy. I could kiss her. I don’t. But the want is there, simmering every second more loudly and impatiently.
The sun is blazing with heat this early July afternoon.
Amanda stretches her arms over her head, a little sigh slipping out as her top rides up a fraction, exposing the damp sheen of sweat along her stomach.
The movement arches her back just enough to pull her chest forward, sunlight catching on the fine layer of perspiration at the base of her throat.
It’s hot enough that strands of hair cling to the sides of her neck, and we haven’t even made it to the end of the block yet.
“Okay. Are you done browsing apartments for the day?”
“It’s still early,” I answer. “There’s a cute little promenade with small businesses not too far. Want to grab a bite? Gelato?” I ask while fishing my keys out of my pocket.
Her cheeks rise up on her face, a deeper crimson lighting them up. “You know me so well.”
I do.
“It’s so nice out. Could we just walk?”
I focus on the bead of sweat dripping from her neck and running down between her cleavage. I curl my fingers around the neck of my T-shirt and air it out, a breeze cooling the flash of heat down my chest. Too hot.
She wraps her fingers around mine, tugging on me before I hit the fob to unlock the car. “Please?”
This is a thing now; Amanda and I brushing, touching, holding. “Three or four blocks, you’ll be okay walking that much?”
She’s twenty-four weeks and five days along now. Her complaints about the heat come several times a day.
“Of course!” she says. “I feel like a million bucks.”
We walk hand in hand, her voice drifting melodically beside as she lists the pros and cons of each apartment.
Sometimes, the third bedroom is an office.
Sometimes, it’s her room and a nursery. And in either case, the longing that’s lived in me for years quiets because there’s no scenario where she’s leaving me out of the next step.
I have a right to want. So I dare to let go of her hand and slip my arm around her shoulders.
Amanda leans into me, wrapping her right arm around my waist and pulling me closer.
Amanda stops walking next to a shop with pale wooden siding and a glass door flanked by succulents.
The window display swarms with pastel onesies and plush animals that look too expensive for a baby to drool on.
I glance down and catch the look on her face, that soft-blooming smile that still knocks the breath out of me.
“Wanna go in?” I ask, surprised by how exhilarated I am to look at baby crap.
She nods, already pulling the door open.
The inside smells faintly of lavender. Everything is ridiculously curated: nothing louder than oatmeal or sage.
Amanda moves straight to a display of onesies, running her fingers along the fabric.
She lifts one with a tiny mountain print and bold navy lettering: Future Climber.
“Fuck yeah,” I say. “The kid’s going to be unstoppable.”
She pulls her lips at the corners into an even bigger smile. Then she leans in, her belly against my middle, and pushes the onesie against my chest. “Ours, Eric. You can say it.”
Before I say it, I drag my gaze over her form, memorizing everything: the green dress clinging to her stomach, the way it matches her eyes, the sun catching the auburn in her hair.
“Our kid, Amanda.”
Her smile stretches wider than I thought possible, and something inside me shifts around it.
Not just around the woman I’ve always wanted and been too chicken shit not to ruin it, but also around this tiny person who isn’t even here yet, and is already rearranging the shape of my entire life.
I savor the way Amanda doesn’t flinch when I say our kid, the way she keeps proving me wrong at every turn by staying.
I want to hold the moment in like a live photo, keep it breathing and warm forever—unforgettable and healing.
I take the onesie from her before she can put it back. We’re getting this.
We meander deeper into the store until she picks up a giraffe that rattles and presses it to her chest.
“Do you think any of these would work in his nursery?” she asks.
Not the or a nursery. And with each stuffed animal and blanket we grab, I start piecing together his nursery in my head, and that greedy, aching hope that we’ve made it out the other side together takes root and grows inside my chest.
Amanda turns around, her eyes shining and equally greedy. “We need a rocker.” She breathes out.
“There’s a secondhand furniture place up the street.”
“Let’s go pick one.”
I am greedily consumed by every we, every let’s and the hold of her fingers around my wrist.
We ended up getting a mahogany dresser. Antique, heavy with varnished wood and intergenerational baggage.
We argued because it’s going to be a bitch to move wherever we end up.
But when Amanda told me babies need stability and history, I could tell she didn’t mean the furniture.
And I’d move a thousand mahogany pieces to show her I got her point.
A gelato sign glows bright and pink at the end of the street.
She wraps an arm around my waist, fingertips slipping beneath my shirt where my hip meets my stomach.
Her chin tips up, brushing my arm, and the movement catches the purple highlights in her hair.
I thread my fingers between them, and she leans forward, our faces so close…
when a malicious smirk overtakes her expression.
Going on her tiptoes, her breath skirts over my chin. “First one in the store cleans the bathroom today.”
It’s a silly dare. I’ve been cleaning everything that needs kneeling since long before we found out we’re having a boy.
I chase her anyway, briskly walking rather than jogging, until she makes it inside the store with a grin, pathetically out of breath and holding her stomach.
Amanda is many lovely things. A runner, she is not.
She groans dramatically. “My ankles hate me.”
“You were all for walking.”