He wants to know what I’ve been going through these past days. Doesn’t he?
“Uh, I just get dizzy sometimes,” I say hesitantly and I’m proven correct when his eyes flare with curiosity. “And I throw up a lot.”
At this he frowns though. “What’s a lot?”
I tuck my wayward hair behind my ears. “Like in the mornings. And also at night.”
“Fucking morning sickness,” he mutters angrily.
I can’t believe he knows that.
I mean, morning sickness is the most common symptom of pregnancy and he has been reading books but I just… it’s surreal.
Sosurrealthat this is happening.
That I’m pregnant. With his baby.
And he wants to be a part of this. Not only that, I’mtalkingto him about my morning sickness. In all my planning, I never planned this.
I never planned that I would want to tell him. That I’d be talking to him like a girl who’s pregnant by a guy she loves and so she wants to share every little detail, every little complaint, every tiny change that she’s experiencing.
And I definitely never ever planned that he’d want to know, that he’d getupsetover these changes and look so helpless standing there with his fists clenched and his angry frown. Like he’s really a guy who loves that girl back and he wants to do everything that he can to make things easier for her.
And like always when he gets upset about something, I want to put him at ease. “But it’s fine. I mean, saltines help. Also tea. Ginger tea if I can find it in the cafeteria.”
“I’ve got saltines,” he bursts out. “I don’t have ginger tea though. But I’m going —”
“It’s okay,” I cut him off, assuring him. “Just tea helps too.”
“What else?” he asks again.
I bring my hands on my lap and wring them as I share. “I hate meat now. Can’t stand it. And coffee.”
“Not fucking Peanut Butter Blossoms though.”
“No, not Peanut Butter Blossoms. Not so far at least.”
“Good.”
“And I cry a lot these days.”
“What’s a lot?” he asks again with the same concern and anger on my behalf.
“I don’t know. A lot. The other day Poe, one of my friends at school, stole peanut butter for me from the kitchen and I was so overwhelmed by it that I started crying.”
His lips twitch. “And what else?”
“And then my other friend, Wyn, she drew a picture of me and a cute little baby and gave it to me during English lit and I literally started sobbing. In the middle of class. My teacher had to send me away.”
His frown comes back then. “Who’s —”
“And I feel her.” I speak over him because if history is any indication, he might do the same thing he did with my ballet teacher, give her a piece of his mind or blackmail her.
“What?”
“I mean, all the books say that I really can’t feel her right now because she’s only a collection of cells but I don’t care. I do.”
His gaze drops down to my flat stomach before he says, “Books can go fuck themselves.”
