Griffin
“I want to show you something,” I said.
Jake struggled to lift his head off the back of the leather couch to look at me. All around us, movers escorted Jake’s belongings into the house. He had moved out of his shared apartment with Skylar and into my home during the past few days, since he was due in a couple weeks. Jake waited until Skylar had a new roommate to cover half the rent before he felt comfortable leaving. It ended up being Kaden, his co-worker and Trouble’s owner.
Though Jake wasn’t doing any physical labor because of his heavily pregnant belly, he still looked exhausted. Carrying around that much weight put strain on his back and caused him to be frequently sore, no matter how many massages I gave him.
“Is it worth getting off the couch for?” Jake grumbled.
I chuckled and offered him my arm. “Yes, I hope so.”
After a bit of a struggle for Jake to get up, I helped him walk towards the room with the closed door. Though Jake had been to my home plenty of times now, that door was always shut. At first it was because it had been my home office, and therefore nothing of consequence aside from messy papers and documents.
But now, it held a surprise.
We stopped outside the room.
“Wow, a door,” Jake said sarcastically. “It’s beautiful, Griffin. I love it. Thank you.”
“Maybe you should take a look inside the door, Jake,” I said with a smirk.
He obviously had no grand ideas in mind as he reached for the handle. “Okay…”
When he pushed the door open, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Before us was a nursery I had finished just for the baby. The walls were painted a warm, soft shade of yellow. A beautiful crib stood on the side of the room and light spilled in through the window on to a large rocking chair. Behind the chair, children’s books and stuffed animals lined a shelf in easy reach.
“Oh. Wow,” Jake whispered. “Griffin, I…”
“Are you glad you stood up?” I teased.
“Shut up. Yes.” He entered the room with awe in his expression. “When - how did you do all this?”
“Before you moved in. I knew the baby would need a place like this, and I had a spare office, so why not?” I said. “You hadn’t seen it yet, so I wanted to surprise you.”
“Well, it worked.” Jake laughed. “This is beautiful. I want the baby to hurry up and come out so it can see this.”
I put one arm around Jake and touched his belly with the other. “Don’t rush our baby. He’ll come out when he’s ready.”
“He?” Jake asked with a raised brow.
I winked at him. “I just have a feeling. And there’s a good chance I’ll be right.”
“That reminds me,” he murmured. “We haven’t sat down to talk about names, have we?”
“You’re right, we haven’t,” I agreed. “Do you have any ideas?”
“Some. I haven’t been searching baby names all day long like some people I could mention, if that’s what you’re asking,” he teased.
I blushed. “Hey, what can I say? I’m excited to be a father.”
Jake rested his head on my chest. “You tell me the names you like, then. And I’ll tell you if I like them or not.”
“All right.” I pulled out my phone, which contained a document of all my preferred names in a neatly organized list. I handed it to Jake. “Here.”
“Damn, you really thought this through,” he mumbled. He thumbed through the names until his eyes lit up. “Oh, these two are cute.”
“Which ones?” I asked excitedly.
Jake smiled and turned the phone towards me. “Finn for a boy, and Emily for a girl.”
