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“You don’t have to be sorry for that,” I told her. “I understand.”
“I’m being crazy,” she whispered.
“A little.” I smiled as she sighed and leaned against me. I slipped my hand under her shirt and ran it over her bare stomach. A little knee or elbow poked out at me. I rubbed the spot, and Tria relaxed further into me.
“I love you,” I reminded her, “even with all the hormones. It’s temporary, and after the baby is born, you’ll feel better.”
“After the baby is born, there will be night feedings and diapers and all that other shit,” Tria said. “What if it gets worse, not better?”
“It will be…different,” I said. “It might not be better
or worse, and it’s not like it’s bad now.”
“That’s because you aren’t carrying this thing around all the time!” Tria said. Her voice was getting louder again.
“I promise to carry her after she comes out, okay?”
“You have to carry her for the first nine months after she’s born!” Tria sniffed. “It’s only fair!”
I leaned over and kissed her on the nose.
“If you want, I can just carry both of you right now.”
I slipped my arms underneath her legs and behind her back, hoisted her up, and dragged her off to the bedroom. I lay her down on her side of the bed, leaned over, and kissed her again.
“Rest,” I said. “Just think about what you want to do in the baby’s room while you nap, and when I get back, I’ll rearrange it however you want and as many times as you want. You can also blame me for anything that doesn’t look right. In the meantime, I’ll get that shopping list and head to the store.”
Tria smiled as she reached up to caress the side of my face.
“Love you,” she said softly.
“Love you, too.”
She was half asleep before I even got out of the room. I found the list on the counter in the kitchen and shoved it into my gym bag before I headed out the door. I managed to get to the bus stop at just the right time, found a checkout lane with no line at all, and had the shopping done in record time.
After all that, I needed to throw some punches. Though my new trainer at the gym wasn’t really much of a challenge, he’d been pretty good about keeping up with me. He was fast and did a lot more dodging blows than actually hitting me, but it was okay.
“Hey, Al!” I called to him as I walked across the mat toward the ring. “You ready to go?”
“Liam!” Al called back. “Perfect timing! I want you to meet someone!”
I circled the ring to find a guy sitting in one of the referee’s chairs on the far side.
“Liam, this is Graham,” Al said. The dude stood up and shook my hand. “Graham does a lot of MMA stuff. I thought the two of you would get along well, and maybe I wouldn’t go home with so many bruises.”
He gave me a wry smile, and I shrugged an apology.
“Hey, Liam,” Graham said. He was a decent sized guy—right around two hundred pounds and maybe an inch or two shorter than me, so he looked a bit stockier. Dark, cropped hair and bright eyes gave him that rugged look readers find in sportsman’s magazines. “What’s your preference?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Girls,” I said, and Graham laughed.
“I told you he was an asshole,” Al said as he walked away.
“How about a fighting preference?”
“No gloves is what I’m used to,” I said. “I do a mix of Muay Thai and Aikido, mostly.”
