I lie back on the table and push my ass to the edge, doing my best to relax. The speculum is excruciatingly cold against my skin, the stirrups are awkward, and there’s an uncomfortable draft breezing through my lady garden down below.

“Henley, I need you to drop your knees out to the sides and take a deep breath.” Doctor Highman, whose ironic name is not at all lost on me, pulls a latex glove onto her hand and covers it with a lubricating gel.

I take a deep breath and slowly ease my knees out to the side, doing my best to try and keep everything south of the equator relaxed. I turn my head toward Jeff, who has grown pale and has an obvious sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead.

“You okay?” I ask him soberly.

He swallows hard and shifts in his seat. “Yeah. I just don’t do well with doctors or any medical type things, really.”

I smile reassuringly, finding humor in the fact that I’m the one on the table about to get to third base with her obstetrician and he looks like he's about to toss cookies. In the entire time I've known him, he's never once been sick, but the one time he nicked his finger slicing a zucchini, he couldn't even look at the cut. I had to put the Band-Aid on him … with the reaction he had, you'd think I was giving him a tourniquet.

He’s a big ole’ baby.

“Okay now, Henley. The internal should only take a moment. When we’re done, we’ll be able to get to the fun stuff — the sonogram to see how your baby is progressing.” Doctor Highman gives me a warm smile, and then I feel the violation of her hand.

I wince at the pressure, and I’m glad that Jeff doesn’t have a front row view on the other side of my gown because as much as any man has a fantasy of seeing their girlfriend be touched intimately by another woman, this moment hardly constitutes as erotic foreplay.

“What are you doing to her? You’re going to hurt the baby!” he demands protectively. He still looks ill, but I'm glad he's at least acting spritely.

Doctor Highman stops mid-exam and smiles at him, brows knit with amusement. “You've got nothing to worry about, Jeff. This is all routine. I'm not touching anywhere near your baby,” she chirps cheerfully as she's elbow deep in my lady bits.

She goes on to simply explain that she’s doing the standard pelvic exam and wants to ensure that both my vagina and cervix are healthy.

But his expression doesn't waver.

“Calm down, hon. It’s all right.” I instantly question if he actually passed his junior high sex-ed classes. Or maybe he just permanently blocked those graphic memories from his mind? Because that seventies birth video we were forced to watch left emotional scars that I still haven’t been able to shake.

“Everything seems good,” Doctor Highman says as she takes off the latex gloves and wheels over the sonogram machine to the side of the bed. “Ready for the fun stuff?”

I squeeze Jeff’s hand, and his face finally lights up. It sends flutters through my body. He's just as excited as I am to share this moment.

First, we listen to the beautiful whooshing sound of the heartbeat. It is, singlehandedly, the most magnificent sound in the entire world. It nearly causes my heart to burst.

“It’s still too early in the pregnancy for a traditional sonogram over the stomach, but we can get some pretty clear pictures using this guy.” Doctor Highman grabs the internal sonogram wand and gets down to business quickly. I don’t care that my modesty has gone out the window because I’m so excited about what’s to come for the pair of us.

Slowly, but surely, a fuzzy image comes into focus on the screen next to the bed. “Huh,” Jeff says, confused by the indiscernible black and white picture on the screen in front of him.

Doctor Highman moves the wand around, searching for a better angle, then clicks a few buttons on the computer. “There we go. There's a bit more detail now than you had before, Henley,” she says with a smile.

The last sonogram she’d spent fifteen minutes pointing out a shapeless blob, trying to convince me that this thing was, in fact, a baby. Now I can actually begin to see the head and limbs taking shape … sorta.

Jeff tilts his head and narrows his eyes, looking at the screen. “That’s it?” he asks, unimpressed. Jeff didn't accompany me to my previous doctor appointment, so the cluelessness he’s feeling now is what I felt the last time I was here.

“See this right here?” Doctor Highman points to the screen. “That is your baby’s head.”

“It’s so … big,” Jeff observes.

“And these little things here and here? Those are the arm and leg buds starting to grow. Right now your child is about the size of a jelly bean or raspberry.”

My stomach rumbles at the sheer mention of food.

“Wow,” he whispers, positioning himself closer to the screen.

“And you’re measuring right on schedule. I’m showing eight weeks, three days right now which gives us a due date of October thirty-first.”

Visions of a Halloween baby swell my head. I love the idea of birthday celebrations filled with pumpkins and candy and tiny kids in costume. If I wasn’t over the moon excited two minutes ago, I am now.

“He’s so perfect,” Jeff says in awe, almost inaudibly, hands touching the screen.

Dr. Highman eyes Jeff suspiciously. “Well, it’s too early to tell if it’s a girl or a boy just yet.”

“No … it’s a boy.” He’s confident, and I don’t have it in me to argue or ruin this moment for him.

When we make it back to the car, Jeff is holding onto the sonogram photos like a talisman. He hasn’t looked up from the images once, and I realize I’m witnessing him fall in love first hand. Most women would be jealous watching their man fall in love with someone else, but this is truly something special. The sheer adoration across his face, and the soft, proud smile playing at his lips, makes me a believer.

He really is here to stay.

This really is it.

This feeling of love is so overwhelming, I almost don’t know what to do with it. Well, I know what I want to do with it, but that breaks some kind of social protocol for daylight and public places. And with our track record, we’d probably get arrested.

As I’m driving back home, Jeff reaches over and lovingly puts his hand on my leg, softly rubbing my knee. And he must be some goddamned magician because this simple, innocent, loving touch sets my mind ablaze and wild images of me having my way with him here and now flood my mind. Damn. Tara was right, again. I didn’t believe her when she said I’d either want it all the time like a sex-starved nymphomaniac or be permanently closed for business like Sister Mary Prudence.

I turn onto an empty side street in an undeveloped part of town and park the car. We’re surrounded by nothing but abandoned construction machinery and piles of dirt and rock. So I do what any dignified, revved up woman would do. I crank up the volume on the MP3 player, set it to Justin Timberlake’s FutureSex LoveSound album and unbuckle my seatbelt.

Jeff finally looks up from the photo and takes in his surroundings. “What are you doing, Henley?”

“Shh …” I command, as I quickly reach over to undo his seat belt and crawl into his lap.

“Hen—”

My mouth is on his before he can finish my name, and the tiny ember I previously felt with his hand on my knee has ignited into a five alarm fire that I need put out immediately.

What the fuck is happening to me?

I’m pawing at the buttons on his shirt with my left hand and bringing his hands to my breasts with the right. And when I finally break the kiss his eyes are full of surprise. Okay, then. We’re doing this! his look tells me in unspoken words. I reach down and pull the lever on the side of his seat, reclining us back unexpectedly. I fall onto his chest, and a small laugh escapes my lips.

“You’re crazy,” he says into my mouth just as he swallows me whole with a passionate kiss, turning the car into an inferno of lust.

And I know I am. Crazy, that is.

Because there are only two things in life that can make someone this crazy and this damn stupid.

Pregnancy.

And love.