30. Kendall
CHAPTER THIRTY
Kendall
THEN
“What about Blossom?”
I look at James like he just suggested we have raw squid for dinner. “Blossom. Like a flower?”
He shrugs, my toes spread apart and held between his fingers. He presses a knuckle into my sole, and I suppress a moan. “I thought it sounded pretty.”
“We are not naming our daughter after Mayim Bialik.” Another roll against those sore achy joints and I hum a sigh against our couch cushions. He’s so good with his hands. So good.
“You know she’s a neuroscientist.” Another one of his random facts.
I lean up against my elbows to eye him with a nonthreatening glare. “So, you think if we name our daughter Blossom, she’ll grow up to be a neuroscientist?”
“Unless you want to name her Mayim,” he teasingly suggests. I shake my head, and he throws an offhand, “Doesn’t hurt to try.”
I lay back, my shoulders shaking. I land a playful punch to the bottom of James’s sock-covered foot, and he taps my shoulder with his big toe.
We’re sitting on our couch, one of the only pieces of furniture in our new home, and we’re positioned so we’re facing each other, my feet cradled in his sure hands and his own poking the bluish-gray polyester near my ear.
We went for a darker shade when it came to our upholstery.
With a baby on the way, we thought anything in the white or beige category would be a dangerous choice.
I still have about ten weeks left of my pregnancy.
Right now, the baby’s the size of a cantaloupe, not quite ready to be taken out of the oven but getting close.
Parts of her are still incomplete, and we’re waiting out the final stretch with the start of our nesting period.
We moved into our new house a few weeks ago, and while the larger furnishings have been brought in, we haven’t taken the time to really make it our home.
We have a fridge and a dining table, the same one we bought while we were in my old apartment, but there aren’t any plants or paintings.
No framed pictures or refrigerator magnets.
No throw pillows or scented candles. Those are still in the boxes in the garage.
I’ve been spending the majority of my pregnancy on what feels like a pendulum.
The news came to us as a surprise, just like the last time, but it was different.
We’re married now, a small ceremony followed by an equally small reception dinner.
We took over a local steakhouse, turning the main dining area into the smallest dance floor known to mankind with a simple two tier cake.
It was perfect. Simple and intimate and so appropriately us.
And then suddenly, we’re pregnant. Those two pink lines confirmed that the constant bouts of nausea weren’t some bad lunch meat or indigestion.
And the squiggly ultrasound video and the flutter of a heartbeat further confirmed that assumption.
While we were more ready than we were before, I became vividly aware of all the things that could happen while I was growing life inside me.
What if we lost the baby again? What if, regardless of me being pregnant a second time, we really aren’t meant to have a family together, and I’d lose this baby just like I lost the last?
And it would happen again and again until I gave up.
Until it broke me from the inside. After some time passed, my fears didn’t disappear.
They changed. Those worries about losing the baby to another miscarriage watered down into the fear that I wouldn’t be a good mother.
That I wouldn’t love this baby as much as I loved the first. That something would happen to her after she’s born.
There are so many freak stories about babies being kidnapped, some even in the hospital just hours after they’re born.
I started to wake up in the middle of the night, startled from a nightmare where I couldn’t find the baby.
I was holding her one second, peppering kisses to her silky hair while she slept in my arms, and then she was gone. Vanishing into thin air.
And my biggest fear. What if this baby erased my past and I forgot all about the one that never was? What if this was finally the end to my grief? What if I finally had to move on?
A sharp kick to my side has me wincing, bringing me out of my tormented spiral. I lay a hand on my large belly and shift positions.
“You okay?”
I nod. “She sure likes to play punching bag with my liver.”
James watches me like a pot of simmering water, waiting for it to reach boiling point. Once the pain subsides, I relax back into the small nest we’ve created. James settles himself between my legs, his face inches from the underside of my belly.
“Hey, you,” he says with a stern voice that’s wholesome. I laugh at his attempt at discipline. “You better watch it. You can’t go around kicking Mommy whenever you want.” He has his hand running along where my belly button is turned inside out, and another sharp kick hits his palm.
We both laugh. “I don’t think she likes the way you’re talking to her.”
He kisses my stomach and rests his cheek along the spot where “Not–Blossom” just expressed her protest. His hand slips under my shirt, running possessive sweeps over my overstretched skin.
I try to play it cool. Like his touch doesn’t send shivers up my spine every time he manages to sneak a feel.
A hand slipped under my shirt with the desire to feel my stomach, a playful slap on my ass, an “accidental” brush against my chest when he’s walking by me.
He maneuvers around my stomach and lies down so he’s next to me.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” I say, running my fingers through his hair. He kisses me, our smiles making the kiss flippant and carefree, but then I feel his hand move up, teasing the confines of my shirt to expose more of my hot skin. “Watch those hands there, mister.”
His tongue slides against mine. “Why? Do you not like it?”
I shake my head, my breathing growing shallow. “No, I like it. Just trying to put you in your place.”
My confession is snuffed by an even deeper kiss, one that involves James’s hands in my hair and mine on his waist. He grunts into my mouth, and I feel it all the way down to my toes.
“Is this okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” I ask through a laugh. “I was just giving you a hard time.”
His wandering finger grazes over my nipple, muscle memory in action while he asks for something so simple as permission. “I just thought since you’re…you know. And you might not want to…you know?”
His hesitancy and diffidence make me want to squish his cheeks together. “You have no idea how much I want you, do you?”
“You do?” His brow quirks in a dare. A challenge.
“Oh god,” I moan. “It’s like these hormones all went south, and I literally can’t get enough.”
“Well, in that case.” A sharp inhale and his lips are on mine again.
“I think our neighbors can see inside,” I remind him, glancing at the open blinds.
“They shouldn’t be looking in through people’s windows anyway,” he argues, ripping his shirt over his head.
I laugh, feeling his warm skin against mine. And the possibility of Peeping Toms falls into the far recesses of my mind.
My front door swings open just as I’m organizing a stack of books onto our freshly built bookshelf. James finished it just before he left. The last screw was barely turned before he realized he needed to head for the airport. That was over an hour ago.
“Mommy!” I screech, throwing the books back into the cardboard box sitting on the floor and running to my mom.
“Hi, honey,” she croons, rocking me in her arms. She pulls away, rushing to run her hand over my stomach. “Oh my goodness. You’ve gotten so big!”
“Mom!”
“I mean your belly,” she argues. “You look lovely.” She squishes my face in her hands, taking me in, before she’s distracted by the house. “Why didn’t you come with James?”
“I would’ve been the worst passenger,” I explain. “I get nauseous in the car now for some reason. My back is killing me, and my bladder can only hold for ten-minute increments.”
“I guess it’s good you stayed then,” she agrees. “Okay, show me the rest of the house. I want to see the baby’s room.”
She rushes up the stairs, making me wonder who’s giving whom a tour. James finally walks through the door, my mom’s oversized luggage dragging behind him. “I think she brought the whole house. Might’ve snuck some chickens in here too.”
“Well, you know she likes those fresh eggs.”
He scratches his temple. “She’s only staying a month, right?”
I nod. “I’m having this baby any day now. She’s just going to help me get settled after we get back from the hospital.”
James runs his hand over my covered stomach and bends down for a small kiss. “How you feeling?”
“Good,” I tell him. “I think I got a second wind or something. All I want to do is clean and cook and unpack.”
“I believe that is called the official nesting phase,” he comments, locking the door behind him.
“Huh,” I huff. “And here I thought that was some urban myth.”
I hear a gasp upstairs. James grips the handle on my mom’s suitcase and readies himself for the trek up the stairs. “You want to head up there before she starts rearranging all the furniture?”
“You got a rocking chair!” I hear in the distance.
James guides me upstairs. His free hand presses further into my back as we make our way, acting more like support rather than a gesture of affection. He manages to easily balance my mom’s luggage while helping me up the stairs, and for some reason, I’m the one who’s winded when we get to the top.
“You like the crib, Mom?” I ask as soon as I walk into the nursery.
“It’s perfect,” she croons, running her hand over the wood railing.