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“I love you without reservation and without expectation and—”
“I love you too,” I say.
He grins and presses his lips to mine, and I’m undone.
“I’ll give you everything, princess,” he says.
“I just need you,” I say.
And then I laugh because it’s so damn cheesy. He laughs too. The baby kicks hard enough that he feels it against his rib.
He looks down, and I can see it. The moment he realizes this is all real. That it’s all going to happen. And then we’re laughing together, and our baby is kicking between us, and maybe, just maybe, when you give everything you’ve got, what you get in return is pretty damn fantastic.
CHAPTER50
DEREK
FOUR MONTHS LATER…
“Who’s a feminist?I said, who’s my sweet feminist baby boy?” Midge coos, bouncing Jude on her lap.
He laughs and squeals, flapping his arms for more.
“That’s right. Now, can you say Ruth Bader Ginsburg?”
“I was leaning towardMamafirst,” Megan says, slapping a label on the last box in her stack.
“Developmentally, babies usually sayDadafirst,” I say. Both women glare at me and I raise my palms defensively. “Just saying, don’t get upset if it’s just in his nature to say my name first.”
“We’ll see about that,” Midge says, continuing to bounce Jude in her lap. It’s crazy to think he’s already four months old. Megan and I had barely made up—well, actually, we’d ‘made up’ at least six times over two days—when he made a surprise arrival at just shy of thirty-nine weeks.
There were a few scary moments during the delivery, and in the end, she had to have a C-section. Neither of us were really prepared for it, but I think us both being scared helped us get through it. She let me hold her hand in the operating room, and when we heard his first throaty cry, we both cried happy tears. I still remember the awestruck look on both of their faces when the nurse put him on her chest. She’d looked at him, wonder in her eyes, and said, “Hey, Jude.” We’d never talked about names, but we both knew him the moment we saw him. It was love at first sight.
After a few minutes, she needed me to take him, and as soon as I held him, it hit me. I had to sit down. It was everything I’d ever thought it would be and everything I’d ever hoped for. It was exhilarating and exhausting and terrifying. I still can’t believe we made a person. He looks a lot like Megan, but he has my eyes and he’s long. When he was born, even two weeks early, he was twenty-two inches long. Which is like, massive for a baby. It’s no wonder she needed a C-section.
He’s still measuring in at the ninety-ninth percentile in height. Which is something I brag to others about. It doesn't even faze me when Freddy grins like he wants to make fun of me for talking about poopy diapers and formula spit-up versus breastmilk spit-up. Not that he has much room to talk about embarrassing himself. Not after his latest ‘career move.’
“That’s the last one,” Megan says, putting the packing tape back in the drawer where it belongs.
“Good,” Midge says, still in her baby voice. “Not to make you uncomfortable, but Jude has been giving you the stink eye for a while. And he just said his first words: get out of here Mommy and Daddy! Me and Gammy-Midge have to get our groove on!” Jude giggles as if he knows exactly what she’s talking about.
“That doesn’t sound right,” Megan says, crossing the room and kneeling next to the woman who has become more of a mother to her than she’s ever had.
When Jude was born, Midge was in the waiting room, and she was actually the first person to meet him. A couple months back, Megan started calling her Grammy, but Midge objected. She felt she hadn’t earned the ‘r’ and when Megan refused to call her ‘Glammy’ a compromise was brokered.
“Don’t you want to have a nice bottle and go to sleep so you’re not a mess tomorrow morning when we pick you up?” Megan asks in that adorable, excited baby voice she’s mastered.
“Oooooh,” Jude says, which sounds a lot likenoand makes us all laugh.
“Dude, you’re killing me,” I say.
He looks up at me, his eyes wide and bright, and he coos loudly as if to disagree.
“You heard the man,” Midge says, rising to her feet and holding him on her hip. “If he’s going to be a party animal tonight and John Belushi in the morning, you’d better get going.”
“Let me just change in the restroom first,” Megan says.
I press a kiss to her temple as she passes, and she gives me a flirty smile over her shoulder.
