"Lately? Eggs. The smell of coffee. Anything too sweet." I watch him select an onion and start peeling it. "The first trimester was worse. I couldn't keep anything down for weeks."
Carter's hands still on the cutting board. "I wish I'd been there."
"I know."
"I would have—" He stops. Shakes his head. "I don't know what I would have done. But I would have been there."
The silence stretches between us. He missed the first ultrasound, the first kick, the nights I lay awake terrified and alone, wondering if I was making the biggest mistake of my life.
"You're here now," I say finally.
He nods, not looking at me, and starts chopping the onion with more focus than the task requires.
I watch him cook. It's strange, sitting in this cabin where everything changed, doing something as mundane as watching a man prepare dinner. We've had sex. We've had screaming arguments. We've declared our relationship on national television. But we've not spent much time together that involved actual conversation.
"What is it?" Carter asks, glancing up.
"Nothing. Just... this is weird."
"Good weird or bad weird?"
"I don't know yet." I shift on the stool, trying to find a comfortable position. There isn't one anymore. "We're doing everything backwards."
"Are we?"
"Baby first. Moving in together second. Actually getting to know each other..." I gesture at the kitchen, at him, at the whole situation. "Third. Maybe fourth."
Carter sets down his knife and wipes his hands on a towel. He comes around the island to stand in front of me, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.
"What do you want to know?" he asks.
"Everything." The word comes out before I can stop it. "I'm having a baby with you. I'm supposedly building a life with you. And I don't know your favorite color, or what music you listen to, or whether you were happy as a kid."
"Blue. Classical, mostly, but I have a weakness for eighties rock that Kate would mock me relentlessly for if she knew. And..." He pauses. "I don't know if I was happy. I was busy. I was achieving. I'm not sure I knew the difference."
"That's sad."
"Maybe." He leans against the counter, arms crossed. "What about you?"
"Green. Anything I can sing along to, which drives Akari insane. And I was happy but it was hard." I look down at my hands, spread across the curve of my belly.
He pushes off from the counter and comes over to me, kissing my forehead. "Dinner will be ready in about forty minutes. Do you want to rest? The couch is comfortable."
"I've been sitting in a car for two hours. If I rest any more, I'll turn into furniture." I slide off the stool, one hand braced on the counter for balance. "You could take a bath. I seem to remember you liked the tub.”
I grin. “I did, but later. For now, I’m going to watch you cook.”
“Just watch?”
“Yup. I remember your cooking. I don’t think I should intervene.”
He grins and starts chopping again.
We eat at the small table by the window, candles lit against the darkness outside. It feels like a date. It might actually be a date, our first real one, if you don't count screaming at eachother on national television or fucking desperately through a heat or any of the other insane things we've done together.
"We should talk about practical things," Carter says, setting down his fork. "Where we're going to live. How we're going to handle the next few months."
"Your penthouse. That's what we decided, right?"
