Page 54 of Blueline Baby

He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a folded airplane napkin, and holds it up like evidence. His handwriting is scrawled across the thin paper in big, frantic letters.

“Can I ask you a serious question, and you promise not to get upset?”

“Probably not,” he says. “But ask it anyway.”

“When you were making that list, at any point did you stop and think about what I would actually want?”

“That’s the only thing I thought about.” It comes out too fast, and he sounds a little hurt. “Chloe, that whole list is you. Every line of it. The house is close to campus so you don’t have to drive far when you’re tired. The nanny is for when I’m on the road. I’m not deciding things for you. I’m trying to make sure you get everything you want to be.”

“See, that’s exactly the problem.” I press the heels of my hands against my swollen eyes. “I don’t know what I want yet. I haven’t had five consecutive minutes to process this. Maybe staying in school full-time is the right call. Maybe I take a semester off. Maybe there’s a version of this I haven’t even thought of yet.”

He opens his mouth. I watch him decide against whatever was about to come out of it.

“Okay,” he says instead, and his voice comes down to something steadier. “Then I won’t fix it for you.”

He wraps his arms tighter around my waist and rests his chin on top of my head, and for the first time since I dialed his number, it feels almost normal.

“I’ll shut up,” he promises. “Can I stay tonight?”

“Of course you can stay.”

He is so weird about it while we’re getting ready for bed.

I catch him staring at my very flat stomach three separate times. He does it while I’m reaching into the refrigerator for a water bottle, again while I’m brushing my teeth, and again when I’m pulling my shirt over my head to change.

“You know there’s nothing to see yet, right?” I tell him from the bathroom doorway.

“I know that,” he says all defensive. “When’s the due date?”

“The end of April I think.”

He stops with his toothbrush halfway to his mouth. “Damn. It’s so real.”

We finally get into bed. I’m so tired my bones ache, and I’ve just gotten settled against his side when he shifts all the way down the mattress, pulls the blanket back, and speaks directly into my stomach.

“Hi. I’m your dad.”

“Jack, it’s the size of a blueberry. It can’t hear you. It doesn’t have ears yet.”

He ignores me. “I’m going to teach you to skate before you can walk. Your mom is going to have a lot of opinions about that. We’re going to overrule her.”

The laugh startles out of me hard enough that his head bounces against my stomach. “Jack, stop. This is ridiculous.”

He places his warm hand flat against my skin. “Let me talk to my son.”

I prop myself up on my elbows in the dark. “Your what?”

“My son.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I know.” He says it so confidently. “We’re having a boy.”

“There’s no way you can know that yet. There’s a fifty percent chance either way, and that’s before you account for⁠—”

“Chloe.” He lifts his head and looks at me, dead serious. “I’m a professional athlete. I have elite instincts.”

I laugh so hard I have to put both hands over my face. He grins at me in the dark, resting his cheek against my stomach. Then, slowly, he starts kissing his way back up my torso.