8. Clem
CLEM
Eight months in, the world has rearranged itself around two facts: I’m thirty-six weeks pregnant, and Stellan Byrne is the single most insufferable husband on the eastern seaboard.
It’s a Saturday morning in October. We’re at the brownstone—our brownstone, two blocks from the bakery, bought in cash at a closing that took forty-five minutes and produced more paperwork than any of his contracts ever did, which Antonin and I both made a joke about in front of Stellan.
The kitchen has good morning light. The little garden has a fig tree I don’t think will survive winter, and Stellan has bought it a hand-built wooden cover he’ll install in November.
There’s a nursery upstairs that’s been finished for two months. Mrs. Petrosyan made the curtains.
I’m on my back on the bed. I’m wearing one of Stellan’s shirts—none of the shirts in this house aren’t his at this point, mine don’t fit—and nothing else.
The sun is on the wall. The radiator clanks softly.
I’m thirty-six weeks. I’m the size of a small house.
I’m also, somehow, more on him than I’ve ever been, because pregnancy has done what neither of us expected and made me want him constantly.
It’s frankly ridiculous. I’m enormous and hornier than I’ve ever been in my life, and I’ve made my peace with both.
He’s on his side behind me, one hand spread warm over my belly, the other arm a pillow under my head.
He slid into me slow a little while ago, when I rolled over and pushed back against him and made it embarrassingly clear what I wanted, and now he’s moving in me in lazy inches, in no rush to do anything but have me.
“Clementine.”
“Stellan.”
“How is she?”
“Asleep.”
“Are you sure?”
“Stellan, she’s asleep, you’d feel her if she were awake, you feel everything.”
“I do feel everything.”
He fits the heel of his palm low and careful, the way he does everything to do with her now. Then his mouth finds the back of my neck, and he goes a little deeper on the next slow stroke, and I stop being able to think about anything but him.
“Tell me about your day,” he says.
“Stellan.”
His lips graze the curve of my shoulder.
“My day’s going to be you carrying me to the bakery, sitting at the corner table for two hours while I sit on a stool and direct Antonin and Mrs. Petrosyan’s grandson and the new girl who I don’t think is being paid by you because I haven’t seen the books, then you carrying me home, then me passing out cold the second I’m horizontal. ”
“Mm.”
“You don’t need a description of that.”
“I want one anyway.”
I huff a laugh into his shoulder.
“You’re insufferable.”
“Yes.”
“You’re also very late on returning that call from your sister.”
“My sister is fine.”
“Your sister has called you three times.”
“My sister knows we have a baby coming. She called to confirm dinner the eighth. We’re going to dinner the eighth. It’s settled.”
I reach over and tap his sternum.
“Did you tell her this?”
“I’ll tell her tomorrow.”
I tap his sternum again, harder, in case the first one didn’t take.
“Stellan.”
His hand spreads wider on my belly.
“Call her today.”
“Yes.”
He moves once, slow, inside me. I gasp. The baby kicks once—a small protest at the disturbance—and then settles. Stellan smiles. I feel the smile against my hair.
“Was that you?” I say.
“That was me.”
“Don’t wake her.”
“Yes ma’am.”
He doesn’t move again. He just stays. His hand on my belly. His cock inside me. The morning light getting longer on the wall. The smell of coffee from downstairs, which Antonin will have brought up by ten, which Stellan will go down to fetch when I tell him I want some.
“Stellan.”
“Yes.”
“It’s been thirty-six minutes.”
His arm tightens.
The light has crept halfway up the wall, and I am in no hurry for any of it to move.
“Stay until forty.”
He kisses my temple.
I shift my hand on top of his on my belly. The baby moves once, slow, then settles.
“Stay until an hour.”
“Yes.”
“Stay until you have to fuck me.”
“That’s now.”
“Yes.”
He moves.
He moves slow because she’s asleep. He moves slow because I’m thirty-six weeks pregnant and we’ve spent six weeks figuring out which speeds the baby allows.
He moves slow because we have all morning and nowhere to be.
And he watches my face, and in the low quiet voice he uses when we’re like this, he tells me he loves me.
“Stellan. I’m going to come.”
“Yes.”
“I came already. Twenty minutes ago. I’m going to come again.”
“I know.”
“Did you notice?”
“I felt you, Clementine. I always feel you.”
I come on him slow—fluttering around him in soft deep waves, wet enough that I feel it where we’re joined, where he’s still moving in those careful inches.
He keeps me cradled back against his chest, his cock buried deep, his eyes on mine in the morning light.
I don’t stop coming for a long time. Pregnancy has done that, too, and I haven’t decided whether it’s generous or cruel. On Saturdays at ten AM, generous.
He comes inside me with his mouth warm to the back of my shoulder, a low sound going into my skin. He stays.
We doze, both of us. The baby kicks once. We doze again. Antonin texts the front door—coffee at the bottom of the stairs, taking the boy to the park at noon—and Stellan reaches for his phone with one hand, replies, and puts the phone back without lifting his cock out of me.
“Antonin’s son?” I say.
“He’s three. He likes the tire swing. Antonin builds his entire Saturday around that swing. The boy is going to be devastating in fifteen years.”
I laugh into his throat. The laugh moves the baby—she shifts once, slow, then settles.
“Stellan.”
“Mm.”
“You and Antonin have done a lot of work in eight months.”
His chest rises slow against my back.
I tuck my cold feet between his calves, and he shifts to let me.
“You’ve moved an entire person’s life.”
“Several people’s. We’re still moving them.”
“Mrs. Petrosyan.”
“Mrs. Petrosyan we aren’t moving. Mrs. Petrosyan is going to live where she lives, outlive us all, and knit blankets for our entire family for the next twenty years.”
His hand traces a slow line under my belly.
“Stellan.”
“Mm.”
“You love Mrs. Petrosyan.”
A nod, against my hair.
His hand spreads warm and easy over my hip, no hesitation in it at all.
“You love everybody now.”
“Not everybody. A small number.”
“How small?”
“You. Our daughter. My sister. Antonin and his wife and son. Lucas, in a different way. Mrs. Petrosyan. The women on Tuesdays at the prenatal yoga class who think you’re extremely brave for tolerating me. That’s the list.”
I press my forehead against his collarbone.
“It’s bigger than it was.”
“Mm.”
“It’s going to keep getting bigger.”
“Probably.”
The radiator clanks once. The morning light has shifted across the wall.
“Stellan.”
“Yes.”
“Say my name.”
“Clementine.”
His hand stills on my belly, the word landing soft against my hair.
“Mrs. Byrne now.”
“Clementine Byrne.”
The ring catches the light when I lift my hand to his jaw, still not used to the weight of it.
“Once more.”
“Clementine Byrne.”
I close my eyes. He’s still inside me. The clock on the bedside table reads ten oh-eight.
“Stellan.”
He kisses my temple.
“How long have you been inside me?”
“Fifty-nine minutes.”
I settle deeper into the curve of his arm, the fullness of him a warm fixed point I’ve stopped wanting to be without.
“Stay until two.”
“Yes.”
“Until I tell you to lift me.”
A nod, against my hair.
I press back against him the smallest bit, just to feel him there, and he lets me.
“Until the baby comes, if you can manage it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
His thumb moves on my hipbone, slow, once.
“Stellan.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for the smiley face.”
“Thank you for the smiley face, Clementine.”
The baby kicks once. Strong. We both look down at my belly, and we both put a hand on it, and we both feel the small ripple under our palms. Stellan presses his forehead to mine.
“She’s going to be the same,” he says.
“Same as what?”
“Same as you. Someone who draws a smiley face on a stranger’s coffee cup the first day.”
“And that’s good.”
“That’s everything.”
I close my eyes. He’s inside me. His hand is on our daughter.
The morning is soft. The bakery is two blocks away.
The avenue hums distantly with traffic. There’s coffee at the bottom of the stairs.
There’s a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday, prenatal yoga on Thursday, dinner at his sister’s on the eighth.
In three weeks there’ll be a small new person who’s going to arrive into a world she’ll have no idea was ever any other way.
She’ll have a father who never lets go.
She’ll have a mother who said yes the first morning.
She’ll have Mrs. Petrosyan. She’ll have Antonin.
She’ll have a man named Lucas who’s going to be a little scared of her on principle by the time she’s six.
She’ll have a fig tree. She’ll have a wooden cover for the fig tree.
She’ll have a bakery she can grow up in if she wants.
She’ll have an apartment in Tribeca she’ll inherit one day, and a brownstone in this neighborhood, and a key to all of it.
She’ll have, mostly, two parents who don’t pull out of each other and who don’t pull out of her.
The radiator clanks once.
Stellan tightens his hand on my belly.
“Clementine.”
“Yes.”
“Stay.”
“Yes.”
“Forever.”
His forehead comes to rest against my temple, his breath warm in my hair.
“Forever, Stellan.”
His arm settles heavy across me, holding me where he wants me.
I sleep on his cock until noon. He carries me down the back stairs to the kitchen at twelve-fifteen, still inside me, the coffee Antonin brought waiting on the counter, and he sits with me in his lap at the kitchen table and we drink the coffee in long quiet sips while the fig tree shakes once in the cold October wind, and the baby in my belly moves once, slow.
Three weeks later she’s born at five-twelve AM at a hospital Stellan paid for the entire wing of in advance because he’s who he is.
She’s six pounds eleven ounces. She has my mouth, his eyes, the same absolutely unbothered look that he has.
And Stellan doesn’t put her down for the first six hours of her life.
Her name is Clementine June Byrne.
Stellan named her after me. He told me on hour two, when she was on his bare chest and he was sitting on the bed with his back against the headboard and his hand the size of her whole back.
“I want her to have your name,” he said.
“June for my mother. Byrne because she’s mine.
” I cried so hard I think I scared him a little.
He held us both. He didn’t pull her off his chest until the nurse made him.
We bring her home on a Wednesday.
Mrs. Petrosyan is waiting on the brownstone steps with a casserole and a knitted blanket the size of a small country.
Antonin is at the curb with the car. Lucas, who I’ve met exactly twice and who terrifies me less than he should, has sent flowers ahead—three arrangements, all white.
There’s a card on the kitchen table from Stellan’s sister that says finally, you absolute disaster, congratulations, I love you.
The bakery has been closed for the week. Stellan put up a hand-lettered sign that says NEW HUMAN. BACK SOON.—B. He drew the B like the B on my window. Nine months in, I’ve learned he wants my last name on every surface I touch.
That night Clementine June sleeps in a bassinet at the foot of our bed because Stellan refuses to let her be in another room.
I’m six days postpartum and sore in places I didn’t know I had, and Stellan—who hasn’t let me lift anything heavier than the baby—curls around my back every night like a wall, one hand spread over the soft empty place where she used to be, our daughter ten feet away under a video monitor he checks every twelve minutes.
“Stellan.”
“Mm.”
“You’ll wake her.”
“I won’t.”
His thumb sweeps once across my belly, slow, like he’s soothing both of us.
“You’re checking the monitor every twelve minutes.”
“Eleven.”
I find his free hand in the dark and lace my fingers through it.
“Stellan.”
His arm tightens.
“Sleep.”
He sleeps.
He sleeps, somehow, with one of his hands on my belly and one of his eyes already half-tracking the bassinet at the foot of the bed.
Our daughter sleeps four hours through. I drift in and out.
Somewhere around four AM she makes the small starting sound that means she’s about to wake up.
Stellan is up before I am. He carries her around the bedroom while I sit up against the headboard.
He hands her to me. She eats. She falls back asleep with her cheek on my breast.
Stellan watches us.
“Clementine.”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Byrne.”
“Yes.”
“Good girl.”
The baby’s weight settles warm against my chest, her breath gone slow and even.
“Stellan.”
“Yes.”
“Come back.”
He comes back. He sits beside me, his arm around the both of us, his mouth in my hair. The three of us. The radiator. The slow grey hour before sunrise. The bassinet empty for now.
I draw a smiley face on his coffee cup at six AM.
He drinks it. He sits at the corner table by the window the way he’s sat at it for nine months and counting.
The bakery is open again. Mrs. Petrosyan is in the booth in the front window with the baby asleep in a sling against her chest, knitting something, complaining about the espresso machine in three languages.
The bell jingles. A new face comes in. I make her cardamom roll.
I draw a smiley face. I send her on her way.
Stellan watches all of it.
It’s the first day of the rest of our life.
Smiley face up.
The End