His key hit the door around 7:30. I heard him hang his jacket in the closet because I had trained that man out of throwing it over the couch within the first week of living together and I was proud of that accomplishment. He came around the corner and stopped when he saw the table. Candles. The good plates. Food that clearly took more than a random Wednesday level of effort.
“What’s the occasion?” he asked, pulling his tie loose.
“Can’t a woman just cook for her man?”
“You can. But you used the good plates. And lit candles. On a Wednesday. So either something really good happened or you backed into one of my whips and you’re buttering me up before you tell me.”
“Boy, sit down and eat.”
He let out a laugh and sat. “Aight, bossy.”
I fixed his plate and put it in front of him and poured him a glass of Banks Reserve and sat across from him and watched him take the first bite. His eyes closed and he did that slow nod he does when the food hits right. I lived for that nod. That nod meant I’d done my job.
“This is Rita’s recipe,” he said with his mouth half full.
“She finally told me I got it right.”
“She said that? Out loud? To your face? She ain’t never told Serenity that and she’s been trying for years.”
“Guess I’m just better than Serenity.”
“Don’t let her find out. We don’t need any more problems.”
We talked while he ate. Casino numbers, Freetown, Justice’s Q4 report, how Storie had started acting up again. Rita’s belt wore off. Regular couple stuff. Two people at a table talking about their lives like the world outside wasn’t wild. I loved these moments. The quiet ones where we were just us without all the other shit attached.
He cleaned his plate, pushed it back, and looked at me with those eyes that never missed a damn thing. “Aight. The foodwas delicious, Peach. The candles are nice. Now tell me what’s really going on because you’ve been fidgeting with that napkin for twenty minutes.”
“I’m pregnant, Quest.”
He stopped moving. Everything about him just froze. His eyes locked on me and his whole body went still and his jaw did that thing where it tightens so hard I could see the muscle flex. He wasn’t breathing. I literally watched this man stop breathing for about ten seconds and I almost panicked because I thought I broke him.
“Quest. Say something.”
He didn’t say something. He pushed his chair back and stood up and walked around the table and I braced myself for the hug but that’s not what happened. He dropped to his knees in front of my chair. Put both hands on my stomach over the apron. And pressed his forehead against my belly.
I put my hands on the back of his head and held him there and felt his shoulders shake once. Just once. One single tremor that he swallowed before it could become anything bigger because even in his most vulnerable moments this man had a limit on how much he’d let himself feel out loud. But that one shake said everything. Fourteen years of telling himself he’d never be a father. A vasectomy at twenty-four because Janelle destroyed him with a lie about Quindon. And now his face was pressed against my stomach and the wall was cracking.
He lifted his head and looked up at me and his eyes were glassy but clear and something behind them had shifted into a gear I’d never seen before. He untied the apron and pulled it over my head. Then his hands went to my waistband and he started pulling my dress up, kissing my stomach on the way, his lips warm on my skin.
“What are you doing?” I asked even though I already knew.
“Saying thank you.”
He yanked my dress off and spread my legs and put his mouth on me right there in the kitchen chair with the candles still going and the dirty plates still on the table and the pregnancy test sitting next to the salt shaker. And it was different from every other time. Slower. More deliberate. Like he was thanking every part of my body individually for giving him something he’d convinced himself he could never have. His tongue moved in slow circles and his hands held my thighs steady and I leaned my head back against the chair and closed my eyes and let him worship me because that’s what this was. Worship.
The orgasm came slow and deep like a wave rolling in from far away. I grabbed his head and held on and let it wash through me and when it passed I was crying. Not from the orgasm. From the moment. From the fact that the last time a man was between my legs while I was pregnant it was a doctor removing the remains of a baby that almost killed me. And now it was the man I loved on his knees in our kitchen thanking God through my body that we’d made something together.
He lifted his head and looked up at me. “I love you both.”
Both. He was already counting. Already including somebody who was smaller than a grape. Already being a father.
He stood up and pulled me out of the chair and held me in the middle of our kitchen surrounded by moving boxes and dirty dishes and candle wax dripping onto the good plates we’d have to hand-wash later. His hand was on my stomach and my head was against his chest and neither one of us said anything else because we didn’t need to.
Everything we’d been through led to this kitchen on this Wednesday night with two pink lines and oxtails and a man on his knees. And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid of what came next.
48
Vivica
