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“You can tell.”
Hazel wore an unbuttoned flannel and she quickly pulled it shut to hide her stomach.
“That’s real nice to hear,” she said. “You wake me up in the middle of the night because you’re in jail. And then you stare at me and tell me I’m fat?”
“I never called you fat,” I growled. “I said you’re pregnant. You look pregnant.”
“And that’s different?”
I placed my right hand to her stomach.
It was hard.
With a gentle, small roundness to it.
“You’re pregnant with our baby, love,” I said. “I haven’t seen you in a week. You look different. In a good way. It’s like seeing… proof.”
“Proof? The pregnancy tests weren’t proof?”
“Hazel.”
“You know what? I’m not doing this. You needed to get bailed out. I bailed you out. We’re done here. You can pay me back in the morning. Deal?”
“No,” I said. “Don’t run off. Come home with me. Spend the night at my place.”
“Are you insane?”
“You can have my bed. My big, huge bed. All to yourself. I’ll sleep on the couch. Let me thank you for helping me tonight. I live closer to here than you do.”
“Are you begging me right now, Atlas?”
A small flirty flicker in her eyes…
“I’ll drop to my knees, love. Just for you.”
“You must be drunk,” she said.
“I can’t imagine you driving all the way back home by yourself. In the dark.”
“But it was okay for me to drive here by myself? In the dark?”
“I didn’t realize you were…”
“Fat?”
“Pregnant,” I said. “And, uh, showing.”
“That suddenly makes a difference?”
Yeah, it does, love. It makes a huge fucking difference to me. Your belly is showing. It’s pushed out. It’s rounder. It’s somehow proof to me that there’s a baby in there.
I didn’t know how to express what I felt.
I had this urge.
And it wasn’t even a sexual urge either.
It was a…protective… urge.
