Chapter 21 #2
With a tilt of his head, unsure if she meant to complete a gymnastics routine or if it was an accident, he huffs. “What the—”
“I fell on that stupid salt block and had to protect the baby,” she tells him, as if it’s the most logical thing.
They stare at each other for a beat before breaking out into mutual laughter, which triggers Emma’s giggle from a stall.
“That was impressive.” He smirks. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. I’ve got moves you’ve never seen,” she laughs, but it becomes clear that once she’s begun, she can’t stop.
Her laughter turns into tears until she has to rest on a hay bale to try to gather herself.
What does he do? What does he say? He’s out of his depth here.
“I’m so confused.” She throws her hands up with a shrug as he sits beside her.
He reaches over to wipe the tears off her face with a gentle thumb. “My girl is so damn pretty, and she’s an acrobat, too. I fucking scored.”
She nudges him with her elbow. “Stop it, or I’ll drown in my own snot.”
“That was some Cirque du Soleil shit right there.”
“I’m quitting the circus after just one act. My back hurts worse now. I’m not in any shape to be tumbling around.”
“Want me to try the thing?”
She winces.
“The book says it works.”
He flipped through five hundred pages to find a trick he thought he saw years ago, but couldn’t be sure. Then there it was, the end-all, be-all fix for pregnancy back pain.
“You’re not a chiropractor, Wyatt. What if something pops out of alignment?”
“I’m not popping you like bubble wrap. Trust me.”
She sighs, leaning her weight against him through their connected shoulders. “I do. Always. It’s my own body I don’t trust, it’s so broken and brittle it feels like I’ll fall apart if you look at me wrong. Maybe tonight.”
“Alright. Maybe tonight.”
* * *
“I can’t do anything right. How am I going to raise this child? I can’t even put a fitted sheet on the bed properly. I can’t even fold one. That’s not normal, Wyatt.”
If he thought things were getting better after the somersault incident, he was dead wrong, and now they’re trapped in a housekeeping disaster before bed.
“I don’t think fitted sheets are a requirement in baby raising.”
“You’re not taking this seriously,” she snaps, grabbing the other corner of the sheet to try again.
“I…am.”
“You’re not. You think I’m too stupid to do it. Admit it. Tell me I’m too dumb to put a sheet on the bed.”
He stands there with his mouth open, watching her try and fail a fourth time when the opposite corner pops up again. “Here lemme help—”
“I. Don’t. Need. Help.” She barks the words at him in a level voice that makes him think she might shank him if he tried again.
“Okay.”
“If I can’t do this, then what else will I be terrible at? First it’s sheets and then it’s diaper changing and feeding. It’s a slippery slope, and I don’t understand how you don’t see that.”
None of this connects in any possible way, but something tells him that he’d better tread carefully. “You fed and changed Emma, right? So you’ll—”
“That’s not the same. It’s not even close to the same. This baby is going to starve because of me. You might be the only one she has left after I fail her.”
He’s pretty sure it’s exactly the same, but he doesn’t dare say that. She is angry and frustrated. Disagreeing with her only makes things worse. So he goes against all his instincts and follows this convoluted line of thought as best he can.
She rips the sheet off the bed, growling when it refuses to go on the fifth time, and tosses it to the ground. Stomps on it with both feet like a bird trying to kill a snake. “Fuck this thing, fuck it, we can sleep on the mattress. Who even needs sheets? Who invented them? What’s the point?”
She pauses, looking at the trampled sheet on the floor while her anger transforms into despair.
“Addison…”
“We don’t have sheets to sleep on now. What have I done?”
“Hey, hey, we still have sheets. There’s another one in the closet, and the baby won’t starve. We won’t let that happen.”
“But how can you be sure? You can’t.” She’s full-on sobbing, grabbing a tissue from the bedside, and collapsing on the edge of the bare mattress.
“This is what you’ve gotten into. This is who you’re with.
I fucked this up, and it’s simple. How can you trust me with other things?
I shouldn’t be allowed to have a baby at all if this is what happens with sheets.
I lost the last one, Wyatt. I lost her, so how do we know that we won’t lose… fuck, fuck.”
He’s been trying to sit back and accept whatever comes out of her mouth, but he can’t agree this time when she couldn’t be more wrong.
“Listen to me, this baby ain’t the same as a fitted sheet.
You’re the best mother I’ve ever met. She’s lucky to have you, and what happened years ago isn’t a guarantee of what could happen now. ”
Briefly, when the first looted pregnancy test came back positive, she shared her fears about losing this baby while sobbing in the bathroom.
But she hasn’t mentioned it since, perhaps preferring to focus on what they can control instead of what they can’t.
He hasn’t pushed her to talk about it, and now it’s festered long enough to come bursting from her seams.
He fears she might object, and he doesn’t have much of a follow-up planned, but her lower lip only trembles.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It wasn’t like this with Emma.
I didn’t feel anything back then. I never felt happy or sad, and I never cried.
I wasn’t afraid. I was just…empty, and I thought that was a bad thing, but now I’m not sure I can handle this instead. ”
“You can handle it. You already are.”
“I’m so unprepared, Wyatt. For everything.”
He rubs her back while she tries to hold her tears in. “I’m afraid, too.”
“Really? Because you look more prepared than I am.”
“I’m fucking terrified. You mean everything to me. This is a one-way train, though, and all we can do is ride it until it stops.”
“What if I wanna get off the train?”
“Little late for that, they already punched your ticket.”
“Dammit.” She huffs through her tears, her voice turning small and quiet. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to keep it together, but it gets more difficult the bigger she gets. Hard to ignore a bowling ball in my stomach.”
“Don’t have to be sorry.”
“I have you picking up dropped food for me so I don’t explode. That’s worth an apology.” She slides him a half-amused, half-horrified glance. “I would have lost it if I couldn’t finish those crackers. I’m not even joking.”
“I am well aware.”
She hisses with a sharp inhale, holding her lower back. “Shit, shit, it won’t stop.”
“Come on, lemme try the thing. I’ll be gentle, I promise.”
She must be miserable because this time she agrees. Let’s him guide her to the floor, where she gets on all fours, putting her back in the right position for him to apply pressure to either side of her hips. “It’s like she’s taking a tiny, baby-sized chainsaw to my spine.”
He’s never done this before, but he read the instructions ten times. It can’t be that hard. He searches for the right spots and carefully digs his knuckles in, rolling and pushing until she lets out a strangled sound and her body lifts up to meet his touch.
“Oh my god. That actually worked,” she gasped, rolling over to brace backward against the bed.
“Thank fuck, because I wasn’t sure it would help.”
“You said you were sure!”
“Yeah, well, had to be better than nothing.”
She shakes her head, going silent for a long moment before her next comment takes a wild turn. “I won’t be like this forever, you know? Once the baby is here, I’ll be back to normal. I won’t look so whale-like.”
He squints. “You aren’t a whale.”
“I feel like one. Everything’s changed so much that it has to be hard to deal with it, so I’m just saying it’s temporary.”
“Where’s this coming from?”
He can’t remember doing anything that would lead her to believe he’s bothered by the changes to her body. Nothing could be further from the truth.
She stares at him a beat, and whatever calm they managed to gather disintegrates right before his eyes as her face crumbles. Then she’s gone. Rushing into the bathroom, where the door clicks shut behind her, and a steady stream of sobs filters through the wood.
That’s not at all what he expected to happen.
Is she hungry?
Did he say something wrong?
Did he make the sheet situation seem minor when she thought it was major?
He’d have an easier time figuring out how to handle a herd of rotters.
He runs a hand through his hair and cautiously approaches the door as if it might fly off the hinges and smack him upside the head. “Can I come in?”
A strained hiccup precedes her reply. “No.”
“What’s happening? I don’t know why you’re crying.”
“I’m not crying.” She blows her nose so loudly that he’s sure the dead can hear it in the next county over.
“Sounds like you are.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m fine. Everything is fine. I need a minute.”
“Okay. I’ll be out here when you’re ready.”
“Don’t leave.”
He pauses. “You wanna talk through the door, or can I come in there? Please?”
She makes a non-committal sound that he takes as permission.
He finds her on the bathroom floor with her back up against the tub with a fist full of those M&M’s he found on a run.
“I didn’t see you take those in here,” he says softly, grateful the bathroom is big enough that he can sit comfortably beside her.
“I hid some in the medicine cabinet from Emma. I know it’s terrible, but she had some already, and if I run out, I’ll combust.”
“Hey, no judgment.”
“You’re so good to me,” she cries, popping two more candies into her mouth as her shoulders shake with barely contained sobs.
“What’s got you so upset? I can’t help if you don’t tell me.”
“You can’t help. It’s a me problem. It won’t go away until the baby is out, so I have to accept it. You can’t do anything.”
“Is this about the sheets?”
She shakes her head. “Fuck those sheets. Fuck them.”
“Right. Fuck ‘em. Low thread count. Scratchy.”
“You think I’m being silly, and you’re right.”
He reaches for her free hand that’s not gripping a fistful of candy, lacing their fingers together. “I want to know what’s got my girl crying this hard. That’s all.”
Her next words come on hitching breaths that trigger a river of sorrow down her cheeks. “We haven’t had sex in eight days, and it’s because I’m the size of a beluga whale.”
“Oh.”
Now this is something he can fix.