Page 93 of Everything But Mine

We go back and forth. Going over what would make the space work for us. There’s something unbearably healing about how we’re not pretending. We’re… fighting—quite often—and figuring out the domestic, messy part of preparing to welcome a baby.

As we step out of the building, she turns to me, flushed from the stairs with a smile full of joy. I could kiss her. I don’t. But the want is there, simmering every second more loudly and impatiently.

The sun is blazing with heat this early July afternoon. Amanda stretches her arms over her head, a little sigh slipping out as her top rides up a fraction, exposing the damp sheen of sweat along her stomach. The movement arches her back just enough to pull her chest forward, sunlight catching on the fine layer of perspiration at the base of her throat. It’s hot enough that strands of hair cling to the sides of her neck, and we haven’t even made it to the end of the block yet.

“Okay. Are you done browsing apartments for the day?”

“It’s still early,” I answer. “There’s a cute little promenade with small businesses not too far. Want to grab a bite? Gelato?” I ask while fishing my keys out of my pocket.

Her cheeks rise up on her face, a deeper crimson lighting them up. “You know me so well.”

I do.

“It’s so nice out. Could we just walk?”

I focus on the bead of sweat dripping from her neck and running down between her cleavage. I curl my fingers around the neck of my T-shirt and air it out, a breeze cooling the flash of heat down my chest. Too hot.

She wraps her fingers around mine, tugging on me before I hit the fob to unlock the car. “Please?”

This is a thing now; Amanda and I brushing, touching, holding. “Three or four blocks, you’ll be okay walking that much?”

She’s twenty-four weeks and five days along now. Her complaints about the heat come several times a day.

“Of course!” she says. “I feel like a million bucks.”

We walk hand in hand, her voice drifting melodically beside as she lists the pros and cons of each apartment. Sometimes, the third bedroom is an office. Sometimes, it’s her room and a nursery. And in either case, the longing that’s lived in me for years quiets because there’s no scenario where she’s leaving me out of the next step. I have a right to want. So I dare to let go of her hand and slip my arm around her shoulders. Amanda leans into me, wrapping her right arm around my waist and pulling me closer.

Amanda stops walking next to a shop with pale wooden siding and a glass door flanked by succulents. The window display swarms with pastel onesies and plush animals that look too expensive for a baby to drool on. I glance down and catch the look on her face, that soft-blooming smile that still knocks the breath out of me.

“Wanna go in?” I ask, surprised by how exhilarated I am to look at baby crap.

She nods, already pulling the door open. The inside smells faintly of lavender. Everything is ridiculously curated: nothing louder than oatmeal or sage. Amanda moves straight to a display of onesies, running her fingers along the fabric. She lifts one with a tiny mountain print and bold navy lettering: Future Climber.

“Fuck yeah,” I say. “The kid’s going to be unstoppable.”

She pulls her lips at the corners into an even bigger smile. Then she leans in, her belly against my middle, and pushes the onesie against my chest. “Ours, Eric. You can say it.”

Before I say it, I drag my gaze over her form, memorizing everything: the green dress clinging to her stomach, the way it matches her eyes, the sun catching the auburn in her hair.

“Our kid, Amanda.”

Her smile stretches wider than I thought possible, and something inside me shifts around it. Not just around the woman I’ve always wanted and been too chicken shit not to ruin it, but also around this tiny person who isn’t even here yet, and is already rearranging the shape of my entire life. I savor the way Amanda doesn’t flinch when I say our kid, the way she keeps proving me wrong at every turn by staying. I want to hold the moment in like a live photo, keep it breathing and warm forever—unforgettable and healing.

I take the onesie from her before she can put it back. We’re getting this.

We meander deeper into the store until she picks up a giraffe that rattles and presses it to her chest.

“Do you think any of these would work in his nursery?” she asks.

Not the or a nursery. And with each stuffed animal and blanket we grab, I start piecing together his nursery in my head, and that greedy, aching hope that we’ve made it out the other side together takes root and grows inside my chest.

Amanda turns around, her eyes shining and equally greedy. “We need a rocker.” She breathes out.

“There’s a secondhand furniture place up the street.”

“Let’s go pick one.”

I am greedily consumed by every we, every let’s and the hold of her fingers around my wrist.