I was waiting for him.
And he’s here now.
My stomach flutters and I have to press a hand on it to calm it down,herdown. She always does this.
Every day when he comes to pick me up from school or brings groceries over the weekend or asks me how I’m doing, she goes crazy inside my belly.
And yes, I still know that it’s scientifically impossible for those flutters to be her. But I’m a mom-to-be, I’m allowed my quirks.
So every day she wakes up at the sight of him, all happy and cheerful. Excited.
I, on the other hand, have tried to stay unaffected.
I have tried my best to deny the rush, the warmth, the goosebumps from invading my skin. I try to deny that my breaths scatter at the sight of him.
In fact, all I’ve done in the past weeks, aside from being sick and tired, is deny and remember.
Remember what he did.
How he used me and lied to me. How he made me fall in love with him only to cast me aside when it suited him.
I have tried to hold on to it, to the past and his crimes.
To the hands that broke my heart.
But these days when I see those very hands, I remember them holding my hair back, making me tea, rubbing my spine as he soothes me while being tired himself. Because of his work allday and my sickness all night. I remember them driving me to and from school.
I remember them bringing groceries, underlining things in the pregnancy books even though he thinks that books can go fuck themselves, noting down things when Dr. May talks about handling ballet and pregnancy, fixing a leaking tap in the bathroom so it doesn’t get worse later.
These days whenever I see his hands, I get tired. A different type of tired and exhausted.
The kind where holding on to the past has become increasingly difficult.
The loud sound of the car door shutting breaks my thoughts. That and Tempest’s squeals as she jumps up from the couch and runs to the front door, throwing it open.
Even though my ballerina heart is spinning in my chest at his arrival, I slowly rise from the couch and approach the door.
The winter sky has darkened early but it doesn’t matter.
It never does when it comes to him.
He burns so brightly that the night can’t hide him.
Wearing a white dress shirt that’s wrinkled after his day in the office and hair that’s long and messy, he glows as he emerges from his Mustang. Tempest is right there when he does and like two years ago at the party that changed my life forever, I see him envelop her in a big hug.
I see him chuckle at her as he asks her how her ride in was and if she was speeding. And what has she been doing to her car. Because it looks like shit and he’s going to take a look at it later, see if it needs a tune-up.
When Tempest answers all of his questions and asks some of her own, he looks up.
And I have to hold on to the edge of the door at the impact of his gaze on me.
His dark,darkpossessive gaze.
Like he’s looking at something that belongs to him.
I mean, technically the hoodie that I’m wearing, white and creamy and cozy, does belong to him, yes. Not to mention, the baby inside my body.
The body that has grown and swelled — only slightly but still — in the past weeks.
