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“Oh, God. It feels so good to laugh. I really needed this. All I want to do is move in again and never leave.”
Her words took him by surprise. What did she mean, exactly? “Do you mean as friends, like you and Rick?”
“No. I mean more than friends,” she said. “I’m not going to pretend. He’s been gone long enough that I can be honest with you without being disloyal to Mike. My question—are you interested?”
Devon didn’t answer right away, and then another contraction started. “Fifteen minutes on the nose,” he said, looking at his phone.
She nodded and then decided to keep talking. “I’m not going to let this thing rule me so early. It could be days.” But then the intensity took her breath away, so she took a deep, slow breath. When it was over, she laughed. “It’s ruling me.”
“I’m telling you this from my paramedic training days and not because I delivered a baby, but if you can talk through a contraction, it’s not real labor.”
They chorused, “This is real labor.”
“Now I’m scared,” she said. “I’m not ready at home.”
“If you’re moving here with me, you don’t need to be ready at home,” he said. “I’ll move the baby’s stuff here. How long will you be in the hospital?”
“They only keep you for twenty-four hours now unless you have a section.”
“Ugh. Maybe you should see your doctor if that’s a possibility,” he said.
“No, it’s Sunday. She’ll tell me to call her when they’re five minutes apart. Let’s play checkers. And I’m hungry for something salty. Do you have chips?”
For the next hour they played games and she snacked, licking the salt off her fingers and then moving checkers around until he laughed out loud.
“Forget about being a germaphobe when I’m around.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” he replied.
“You’ll have to clean them off with a bleach wipe.”
She had two more contractions and then a third, this one ten minutes after the second one. And then nothing for an hour.
“Let’s go to my place and get the baby stuff,” she said. “Do you mind?”
“No, if you think you’ll be okay. We’ll take the truck.”
They put the checkers away and locked the dogs in the house. The trip down the mountain with the windows open felt like a summer day. “I’ll never be young and carefree again,” she said. “I don’t care, but it’s a little sad, everything that’s changed in the past year. I never thought my life would be like this.”
“How is it?”
“I’ll be a single parent,” she said, looking over at him. “As a kid, our parents put the fear of God into us not to have premarital sex and not to get pregnant out of wedlock. I was so thrilled when I got married and could say to my dad, ‘Look! I’m not pregnant!’ Now look at me.”
“Aisling, I know we just talked about being together, but you aren’t going to be alone. I’ll help you raise Mike’s baby.” He took her hand.
“I don’t know what more to say right now,” she replied. “I’m grateful. I guess in a romance novel, we’d hop into bed.”
They both looked at her belly and laughed.
“It might bring on the birth,” he said, flushing. “Yikes, that was pretty risqué for me.”
“You’ve been hanging around me too long,” she replied. “Being pregnant forces you to lose all your modesty and decorum. I’m like a dirty little old lady now.”
They arrived at her condominium, and while she bagged up baby clothes and packed her own suitcase, Devon took the crib apart, putting the little pieces into a sandwich bag. He carried everything out to the truck, including the changing table and special rocking chair Aunt Booty had bought her.
In the middle of it, she had another contraction, this one a whopper, like a punch to the gut. Grunting, she stood still and breathed through it, leaning over the counter in the kitchen with her head down on her arms.
“Are you okay?”
