16. Lo #2
“I’ll let you know. My youngest is twelve and I still get teary at school plays.”
She sends us to checkout. Jesse handles the payment without asking, which I let him do because arguing about co-pays seems petty when he’s holding ultrasound photos like they’re holy relics.
“I’ll meet you at the truck,” he says when we get outside.
“You sure?”
“Just need a minute.”
He veers off toward a bench near the curb. I watch him sit down with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, and I know I should give him space.
But I’ve been giving him space for a year. Look where that got us.
I walk over. Sit down beside him. Don’t touch him, don’t say anything, just exist in the same space.
His shoulders are shaking.
“The special-order shoes are coming out of your royalties,” I say after a moment. “Every pair. Until she’s eighteen.”
He laughs. It comes out wet and broken.
“And she’s got your stubbornness, probably. Based on how often she kicks me when I’m trying to sleep. She’s already got opinions about my schedule.”
“What opinions?”
“She thinks I should be awake at 3 a.m. She’s very insistent about it.”
“Maybe she’s a night owl. Like me.”
“Great. Another person in my life who thinks sleep is optional.”
He lifts his head. His face is wet, tears caught in his ridiculous beard, and he looks at me with something raw and unguarded.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there. For the other appointments. For the first time you saw her.”
“You weren’t there because I didn’t invite you.”
“You didn’t invite me because I made you feel like you couldn’t.”
“Jesse-”
“I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m just - acknowledging it. The way things were. The way I made them.”
I look at him. My husband, sitting on a bench outside an OB’s office with tears in his beard and ultrasound photos clutched in his hand.
“The beard’s ridiculous,” I say.
He blinks. “What?”
“The beard. It’s out of control. You look like a lumberjack who got lost on his way to a mountain man competition.”
“I thought you liked beards.”
“I like beards. I don’t like whatever’s happening on your face. It’s gone feral.”
“It has not gone feral.”
“Jesse, there are things living in there. I saw something move.”
“Nothing moved.”
“A small bird could nest in that beard and you wouldn’t notice for a week.”
He’s almost smiling now. “You’re exaggerating.”
“I’m describing, not exaggerating. The beard started as a style choice and evolved into a wildlife habitat.”
“I’ve been busy. Trimming seemed low priority.”
“Lower priority than basic hygiene? Lower priority than not frightening small children?”
“Rosie’s not frightened.”
“Rosie thinks it’s funny. She told me you look like a cartoon villain who forgot to finish getting ready.”
“She did not say that.”
“She said something very close to that. She’s six, so it was less articulate, but the sentiment was clear.”
He laughs, a real laugh, surprised and genuine, and wipes his face with the back of his hand.
“Fine. I’ll trim it.”
“You’ll do more than trim it. You’ll shape it. Like a civilized person who lives in society.”
“I don’t know how to shape a beard.”
“There are videos. Millions of them. You of all people should understand the power of video tutorials.”
“Low blow.”
“Accurate blow. You made yourself internet famous with those porch confessions. Use that same internet to learn basic grooming.”
He’s grinning now. It’s the grin I fell in love with, the one that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners.
“Speaking of internet famous,” he says, “I meant to tell you - someone commented on my last video that I should apologize specifically for calling you a ‘natural brunette’ in that early interview. They said it was reductive.”
“It was reductive.”
“It was a compliment. Back before everything went sideways - before I started hiding us - I was trying to brag about you and my brain stopped working.”
“You said my hair was dark and you liked it. That’s not bragging. That’s stating a fact about pigment.”
“I implied beautiful.” He’s digging the hole deeper and knows it.
“You implied ordinary. ‘Natural brunette’ is what you say about someone when you can’t think of anything interesting.”
“I was nervous! You were standing there being gorgeous and I forgot how words worked.”
“Oh, so now I’m gorgeous? That’s an upgrade from ‘natural brunette.’” I raise an eyebrow at him.
“You’ve always been gorgeous. I’ve been saying it for nine years.”
“You called me ‘honey-eyed’ in a song. That’s not a real descriptor.”
“Honey’s a color.” He says it like it’s obvious.
“Honey’s not a color. Honey’s a substance. My eyes are brown.”
“Your eyes are honey-colored. There’s warmth in them, and depth, and-”
“And you’re still trying to make ‘honey’ happen. It’s been nine years. Give up.” I can’t keep the laugh out of my voice.
“Never. I will die on this hill. Honey is a color and your eyes are that color and I’ll argue about it until one of us is in the ground.”
“That’s morbid.”
“That’s commitment.”
I’m smiling. I can’t help it. This is how it used to be, the banter, the back-and-forth, the way we could turn anything into a competition. I’d forgotten how easy it was. How much I missed it.
“We should go,” I say. “Bree’s expecting me back for the afternoon feeding.”
“Okay.”
We stand up. We walk toward the truck. We don’t touch, haven’t touched, not once, since he showed up at the gate, but we’re closer than we’ve been in months.
“She’s really going to have my feet?” he asks.
“Apparently. The tech said she’s never seen fetal feet that big. She wanted to know if you were part Sasquatch.”
“She did not ask that.”
“She implied it. With her eyes.” I keep my expression dead serious.
“You’re making things up.”
“I’m extrapolating. Based on her expression. She was clearly thinking ‘this man must have enormous feet to produce a baby with feet this large.’”
“That’s a lot to get from an expression.” He’s trying not to laugh.
“I’m perceptive.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m carrying your enormous-footed child. I’m allowed to be ridiculous.”
He laughs. I laugh. For a moment, it feels like it used to, before the tour, before Sloane, before everything that went wrong. Just the two of us, walking across a parking lot, being stupid together.
Then I see it.
A phone. Across the lot, at the edge of the medical complex. Someone in a dark sedan, window down, filming us.
My stomach drops through the asphalt.
“Jesse.” My voice comes out flat. “Don’t turn around.”
“What? What is it?”
“Someone’s filming us. Across the lot. Dark sedan, driver’s side.”
He goes rigid. I can feel the tension radiating off him, the instinct to turn, to confront, to protect. But he doesn’t move. He stays exactly where he is, positioning his body between me and the camera.
“Can you see who it is?”
“No. Just the phone. And part of an arm.”
“How long have they been there?”
“I don’t know. I just noticed.”
We stand in the parking lot, the afternoon sun beating down, and somewhere across the asphalt a stranger is recording us. Recording this. Recording whatever story they want to tell about Jesse Cooper and the pregnant woman outside an OB’s office.
“We need to report this,” I say. “To Peter. Today.”
“Agreed.” His voice is tight. “I’ll call him from the truck. Get the plate if you can - don’t be obvious about it.”
I angle my body like I’m checking my phone, squint at the sedan. Texas plates. I catch the first three characters before the window rolls up and the car pulls away, unhurried, like whoever’s inside has already gotten what they came for.
“Got a partial,” I say. “Let’s go.”