Leo kisses my cheek. “You’re a champ, Pumpkin.” He’s always Team Me, but the pride in his voice, like he’s watching me scale Everest, is doing funny and lovely things to my insides. Then he kisses my stomach, and I melt like butter in a skillet. “You, too, kiddo. Great job in there. Keep at it. Oh, and if you could work it so that you have Mummy’s eyes, that’d be swell.” He smiles, running a finger from between my ribs to my belly button. “Get it?Swell.”
I sigh tolerantly, and the technician rolls her eyes. “Never heard that joke before, not even once,” she deadpans.
Leo laughs. “I’ll come up with something better for next time.”
I look at him thoughtfully as we leave, still holding hands. He immediately reaches for my hand if I’m in his immediate vicinity, whether out and about or at work or at either of our homes, and I can’t deny that I love it. He still wants me tomove in with him, and to be honest, I’m struggling to think of any reason not to anymore. He’s seen me throw up before, so the morning sickness is not gonna be a gross-out issue for him. For god’s sake, any time it’s happened while he’s been around, he’s held my hair back, given me a towel for my sweaty face and a glass of water to rinse my mouth out, and insisted that I’m beautiful and no amount of chundering can convince him otherwise. Cute, but I’m still beyond relieved that the nausea has died right back.
And he sure is a gorgeous sight when he steps out of the shower, water droplets running over that hard, inked up body like little caresses. How could anyone not want that to be something they see every day, if that was on offer? We spend all our outside time together anyway. And Gary loves him.
Gary’s not the only one.
“I have one condition,” he says to me, and I wonder if I said everything I’ve been thinking out loud.
“For?”
“For not finding out the sex of the baby.” He gives me a cheeky grin. “If it’s a boy, you name him. But if it’s a girl…Inameher.”
“Deal,” I say without hesitating. I have a boy’s name in mind, but I can’t settle on anything for a daughter.
Judging by the huge beam on his face, Leo can.
“But I get to veto anything terrible,” I insist.
He twists his mouth. “Define ‘terrible’.”
“Leopoldina, Leopoldetta, Leop - ”
He laughs, cutting me off with a kiss. His mouth is always so soft and warm, and I don’t know if pregnancy is making me more sentimental and gooey, but it has me damn near swooning, the way he’s so gentle and content. “Would I do such a thing,” he teases me, his lips brushing mine as he talks, and I sigh happily as he runs his hand affectionately over my abdomen.
“Yes.”
He laughs. “It won’t begin with L.”
I raise my eyebrows, surprised, and study his face further. I was right. “You’ve already picked it,” I say. It’s not a question. I can read him like a book, and his grin says it all. “What is it?”
“It’s…not Leopoldetta,” he snorts, before kissing my fingers one at a time. And no matter how much I plead and cajole, he won’t give me anything even approaching a hint.
Click greetsme exuberantly when we get back to the parlour, doing the adorable little hoppity hop thing he does because jumping up on three legs isn’t easy for the little dude. Dean clicks his fingers to get his attention so that he stops, because everyone is very conscious of keeping my teeny baby bump safe, and when the fluffball looks towards the sound, he obeys immediately, sitting in front of Dean’s feet and waiting intently for further instructions.
Good boy,Dean signs to him, tenderly ruffling his ears, and Click wags his tail so hard at being praised that his bum goes from side to side like a pendulum. It’s so adorable.
“He’s OK,” I tell Dean, “he wasn’t doing me any harm.”
Yeah, but I was worried he’d jump on your stomach and the baby would go -he points his fingertip rapidly in several directions -like a pinball machine.
I laugh, and Leo gets down on the floor with Click, rolling around with him like a kid. “He wouldn’t do that, because he’s the bestest boy ever, isn’t he? Arntcha, boy?” Leo coos as he roughhouses. Click makes cute woofy noises, and I can’t helpbeaming all over my face at the scene. Now that I’ve opened up to Leo, everything he does just makes me smile.
Dean rolls his eyes expressively, and turns back to me.How did it go?
“All A-OK. The baby is a good size, the heartbeat was strong - ”
“Oh,dude.” Leo pauses with the puppy play to place his hand on his chest as he lies on the floor and gives Dean a soft look, his eyes crinkling with it. “That sound…it’s all I can hear. It just slayed me.”
Dean grins.Congratulations, papa.He looks at me again.Did you find out if it’s a boy or a girl?
“Nope,” I reply, laughing at the twin looks of exaggerated frustration on his and Leo’s faces. They don’t look very much alike, just every now and again in certain expressions; the way their eyes crease when something is funny, or their comic grimaces when they’re denied something they want.
“I know, man,” Leo says to him, “but it’s cool. We’ll have a wow moment at delivery, and then the kid will be wrapped up in love, whatever their gender identity ends up being.”
