“Me. Just now.” He dips his head toward my cup. “How’s the milkshake situation?”
“Dire,” I say, and hand it back for a sip he doesn’t take. Instead, he peels the lid, steals the cherry with his fingers, and drops it into my palm.
“Your prize,” he says.
“Chivalry isn’t dead. It just got sticky.” I pop the cherry in my mouth. It tastes like childhood and fluorescent lights. He wipes his fingers on a napkin he magicked from I-don’t-know-where. The same place he found the fan. Sun shines out of his ass, and maybe he keeps napkins and fans in there too.
Two teen girls in MUSC tees drift past, comparing nail polish. One glances at my belly, goes soft around the eyes, and looks away quick the way people do when they’re scared they were caught caring.
A breeze lifts the edge of my dress. I shiver and then melt again, the way you do when your internal thermostat is being run by a committee. “I hate this part,” I blurt. “Everything’s heavy. People tell me toenjoy itand I want to bite them.”
“Permission to not enjoy anything you don’t enjoy,” Sean says. “Third trimester’s no spa stay, right? ’Tis a marathon in a wool blanket.”
“Sexy.” I stare at my hands. The swelling makes them look like they belong to a different person. “I don’t feel…pretty. I feel like a parade float.”
“Oh, good,” he says. “Because I’ve always wanted to escort a parade float.” When I shoot him a look, he sobers, the showman tucking away. “You’re gorgeous, Willow.” He says it like he’s reading a vital sign off a monitor. Factual. Not up for debate. “People will want you to feel like you’re taking a break from gorgeous until you have kids. And then they want you to feel like you’re taking a break until the kids are older. No. You are gorgeous, inside and out, whether you’re pregnant or postpartum or dressed up on a cruise ship. Curly locks and green eyes and a button nose, that smile so wide ’tis your whole face. A girl after my own heart. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
Heat rises in my throat that has nothing to do with the weather. I wave him off because I can’t accept the compliment right now. Instead, I lean against his shoulder and hide my face in his sleeve. “Can I ask you something?” I mumble.
“You can ask me two somethings,” he says. “I’m feeling generous.”
“Were you scared the other night?” I don’t look at him. “When I came in for reduced movement?”
He doesn’t answer right away. When he does, it’s without a joke. His voice is somber and direct. “Terrified. I just knew it wouldn’t help to show that. I’m more worried about you than I am about me.”
I nod. “You’re allowed to be scared in front of me.”
He shakes his head. “No, telling you later is enough. What about you? How did you feel?”
“I was…blank,” I admit. “Like there was a pane of glass between me and everything. And then they moved and I felt stupid for being scared, which is also stupid.”
“Fear isn’t a test you pass or fail,” he says. “’Tis just a place you stand for a bit. Then you stand somewhere else.” He bumps my knee with his knuckles. “Standing with you is easy.”
I bite my lip. “You’re pretty good at this.”
“At what?”
“At making it…not awful.”
“Ah,” he says lightly, but there’s something serious under it. “Fair play, put that on my headstone.Sean Byrne: made it less awful.”
I roll my eyes, holding back tears and a smile simultaneously. It’s always been like that lately.
“Don’t you joke,” I say, but I’m smiling. The smile fades. “It’s getting real, isn’t it?”
“It’s been real all along, so it has,” he says softly. “But yes. This is the part where we do the boring, careful things over and over until it’s time to be brave. Boring saves lives.”
“Sounds like a poster in a DMV.”
“Right next toIndicators: Not Just For Fun.” He nudges the milkshake toward me for a final sip. “I can come tomorrow. To the appointment.”
“You don’t have to,” I say, because some part of me still tries to protect him from the parts that don’t sparkle.
“I know,” he says. “I want to.”
I look at him. At the smug mouth and the kind eyes and the way he’s somehow both show and shelter. “Okay,” I say. It feels like relief.
His phone chimes, and he glances at it, then says, “Cheyenne’s here.” He stands, offers me his hands like we’re about to dance. I let him lever me upright; everything in me sloshes into new positions. He steadies me with a palm at the base of my spine. Not proprietary, just present. “Slow walk?” he asks.
