But I tell her and the other two that it’s the pregnancy.
That’s my excuse for everything.
I’m crying because I’m hormonal.
And I am.
The only good thing is that I can eat meat now; as soon as I entered my twenty-third week, something shifted and I started craving meat again. So peanut butter ice cream with beef jerky bits on top? That’s the food of the gods. That’s like my pregnancy anthem.
Other people don’t think so though.
Especially the guy who got me pregnant in the first place.
Scooping a spoonful of my ice cream, I put it in my mouth and look up to find him watching me. With my mouth full, I ask, “What?”
As he stands by the door, his wolf eyes rove over my face, my ballooned-up cheeks, my propped-up form on the bed, surrounded by pillows. It’s only late March but I get so hot these days that I’ve ditched his hoodies — though I keep them close if I want to smell him and he’s not around to lend me his sexy body — and started to wear all the maternity stuff that people have gotten for me.
So I’m wearing a white, frilly, sleeveless nightie that goes down to the middle of my calves.
He spends a lot of time on that, on studying my nightie and my baby bump.
When he comes back to my face, I swallow the ice cream and glare at him. “You think it’s weird, isn’t it? That I’m eating this. You think peanut butter and beef jerky is weird.” I stab my spoon at him when all he does is stare at me with amused eyes and lips that are on the verge of smiling at me. “But let me tell you something: you are weird.You, Roman. For not liking it. For thinking that my ice cream is weird. And it’s not as if it’s my fault that I like it, okay? Halo likes it. She wants it all the time and everybody thinks I’m crazy. And it’s all your fault. Your fault, yes. You’re the one who got me pregnant and now I’m eating weird ice cream and I’m fat and my ankles are always swollen and my…”
I trail off because he’s moved.
He was leaning against the door, his arms folded. But now he’s straightened up, his hands at his sides, his eyes on my verge-of-crying face as he approaches the bed.
He still has his work clothes on, white shirt and dark dress pants, and suddenly I don’t want to cry anymore.
I want to kiss him.
I want him to kiss me because God, he’s so sexy. All masculine and strong and tall. And pretty.
So pretty that I’m breathless by the time he reaches me, which only takes him about three seconds, but still. And when he does, he bends over and grabs my face. “And what?”
I lean up to his touch. “What?”
“Your ankles are swollen and what?”
“My fingers. They’re swollen too.”
He glances down at my hands. One is holding my ice cream tub with the spoon in it but the other’s free and he grabs it. “These fingers?”
Sniffling, I nod. “Yes.”
And without taking his eyes off me, he goes on to kiss every single one of them, making me curl my toes and squirm. “Roman…”
That’s all I can say. His name.
I’ve been saying that a lot these days. Ever since I realized he missed it, missed me calling him that.
So now I call him that all the time. Without occasion, without reason. Just like that.
“And your ice cream is weird, huh?” he rasps, still bending over me.
I nod. “Poe laughed at me.”
“Yeah?”
