I rest my head on her stomach, listening to the faint, distant shift of life inside. Her hand settles over mine, a wordless tether, letting me know that she feels my worries and that I can lay them down when I’m with her.
For the night, I let the numbers go. No cuff, no chart, no metrics—just heartbeats, steady beneath my ear.
26
WILLOW
By the time Sean knocks,I’ve given up pretending to nap and surrendered to doom-scrolling baby name lists that feel like restaurant menus where everything is too dissimilar or too similar to even choose. The house hums with late afternoon heat; the box fan clicks on every eighth spin like it’s keeping time with my blood pressure cuff.
“Delivery for Miss Abel,” Sean calls through the door, voice dipped in a game-show flourish.
“Let yourself in!” I call back.
“I can’t. My hands are full!” he calls back, and I groan, hauling myself upright.
“Well, is the delivery central air at least?” I ask him, yanking the door open, disarmed again by his effortless charm and his easy smile. His hands are full of milkshakes, and I laugh as he waddles toward the table to set them down.
“Milkshakes. One vanilla, one strawberry, one chocolate, and one…experimental.”
I eye the fourth cup. “Experimental how?”
He winces cheerfully. “Banana-pistachio. The lad at the counter swore by it. I trust him—he had a good mustache.” When I don’t laugh and don’t walk toward the milkshakes immediately, he clocks it. “What’s wrong?” he asks me, taking my hands and walking me back to bed.
I flounce onto the edge of the bed and shake my head. “I’m just—I’m getting closer to my due date, and I still don’t have any names picked out. Everything online sounds like the name of a luxury apartment complex.” I look up at him to see him smiling, and I shriek, “What? What are you smiling at?”
“That’s all? That’s your big mysterious problem? You need help picking out names? That’s easy.” He looks around the room and grabs a pen and a sticky note pad. He uncaps the pen with his teeth and scrawls something down. The cap still between his lips, he slaps the note pad on the wall next to me.
I glance over, expecting him to have solved it, but instead I see the names “Moonpie,” “Captain,” and “Blarney.”
“Absolutely not,” I say, peeling them down and hiding my smile.
“Grand,tyrant. What kind of names do you like—Greek tragedy names? Medusa? Ophelia?”
“I like names that have exclusively belonged to devastating hurricanes.”
“Aye, that sounds like you.” He nods solemnly.
“I was just thinking maybe we pick some names that honor y’all’s heritage, you know? Something like Maeve or Nora.”
He smiles gently and looks up at the ceiling, reaching out and cupping my cheek affectionately. I get the feeling he’s holding back tears and I chuckle a little, letting him pull me into a hug against his stomach. “Okay then, how about Aoife—pronounced EE-fa,” he stage-whispers. “Sorcha. Saoirse. I can teach the grandmothers to pronounce them.”
“I can’t even pronounce them,” I say, and he shoots me a betrayed look before writing them phonetically on the note pad.
He asks about family names—mine and whoever’s—and I feel my chest hitch. He must sense it, because he nods like I’ve answered without speaking, and starts listing names that don’t belong to anyone but could belong to everyone. Clara. June.
“Okay,” he says lightly. “Working board achieved.” He caps the pen and leans back, satisfied. “Now we observe the names in their natural habitat.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Oh, like this. CLAAAARAAAAA! You’re going to be doing a lot of screaming their names, so you’ve got to make sure it feels natural.”
I burst out laughing and a pang shoots through my abdomen. Sean must see it because he surges forward and grabs me gently by the arm, easing me onto my back. He pulls a blanket over me and smooths my hair back, and for a second the chaos quiets. “Thank you,” I tell him.
“Don’t mention it,” he says warmly, his hand still on my forehead. He leans forward and kisses it. “I’ll put the milkshakes in the freezer for you. I’ll leave you the banana-pistachio.”
“My hero,” I grumble sarcastically, and when he turns to leave, I catch his arm, my heart pounding. Warmth and fear tangle under my ribs. The urge to lean in is sudden and greedy. But when he turns and looks at me, his lips stretched into a confused smile, something in me hesitates. I just had sex with Declan not a week ago. I don’t know if I’m betraying one or both of them if I kiss Sean.
He sees the change in me and doesn’t run from it. He sits on the edge of the bed and leans over me, his elbow on one side of me, closing me in, holding me to him. He smells like soap and salt and whatever cologne is barely there, the kind you notice only because you’re looking for excuses to notice.
