Kimber

I’m standing in the middle of my new living room in Jewel Falls, North Carolina, alone, with an enormous puddle of water under my feet. I’m assuming that I still have feet. I haven’t exactly seen them in a couple of months.

Today I was supposed to be putting my professional interior decorating skills to work. Change of plans, now I’m going to have a baby.

I don’t even have time to set up the nursery or wash baby clothes. The furniture, including this kid’s crib, won’t be delivered until Friday and it is currently Monday. On the upside, we just arrived yesterday and my suitcase is still packed.

I reach into my bra, where I keep my phone tucked away so I won’t lose it in this mess, and dial my soon-to-be-husband Julián, better known as Garcia. He’s on the base today filling out paperwork and getting things settled… twenty minutes away.

The hospital is also twenty minutes away. Julián is closer to it than I am. Even my pregnant brain can do the math, forty minutes until I see a doctor. That should be okay, right? Labor can’t possibly set in faster than that with a first baby. That’s what all the books and classes say, first babies take a while.

The line rings four times while I chant to myself over and over, everything is going to be fine, everything is going to be fine.

Julián picks up out of breath and smiling. I know he is smiling because I can hear it in his voice every time he speaks to me. The man is unmitigated happiness, which in turn has made me a happy woman.

“Hey, baby, how’s my beautiful mami this fine afternoon?”

“Um, closer to being a mami for real, I’m pretty sure.”

He was breathing hard into the phone when he answered. Now he’s silent and I can’t tell if he’s breathing at all? “What?”

“My water just broke, can you come home?”

“You’re not due for a week, are you sure?”

I hold the phone out and take a picture of the puddle on the beautiful hardwood floor and press send. I hear the phone ding when it’s finished.

“Check for yourself.”

I hear him shift the phone in his hands to see what I’ve sent him.

“Holy shit, that’s a mess. You’re going to clean that up before we leave, right?”

“Julián! This isn’t the time to be goofing around. I’m having a baby.”

He laughs for a moment and then I hear him yell, “We’re having a baby today!”

“Okay, now that everyone on the base knows, can you come get me?”

“Sure, baby, I’m on my way to the car now. I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“Don’t speed, it’s going to be a while. I’m going to take a quick shower and change my clothes.”

“And toss a towel on that puddle, right?”

Even though he can’t see me, I roll my eyes. “Yes, slave master, I will clean up my mess.”

“I’m kidding, you know that. Leave it, somebody will clean it up… eventually.”

“Yeah, probably me in three days when we come home from the hospital.”

“Nah, I love you more than that. I love you more than pudding, remember?” Pudding was Julián’s favorite thing in the world, until he met me. The first time he pledged his love he compared his feelings to his love of pudding. That was how I was supposed to know how much he loved me and he’s never let me forget it.

“Yes, I remember, now hurry up, come home.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m all over it like bees on honey.”

“Julián?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re corny, you know that, right?”

“Yeah I know. Kimber?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you, you know that, right?”

“I do, more than fuzzy socks.” Fuzzy socks were my favorite thing before Julián.

“Can’t wait to hear you say those words soon, minus the fuzzy socks.”

“Me either.”

We hang up and I tiptoe across the room weaving in and out of boxes until I reach the stairs where I stop when a slow cramp spreads across my belly. Contractions, yep, this is it.

When I’ve showered and cleaned up the trail of amniotic fluid I left through the house, I’m thinking about calling ahead to the hospital and asking to have an epidural ready the moment I arrive.

This contracting shit is for the birds. I was feeling mild period like cramps but now I want to throw things and it’s only been thirty minutes. Where the hell is Julián?

I hear the front door open and close, “Baby? You still pregnant?” he calls up the stairs. Thank God. I grip my pillow and try not to moan.

“Up here,” I call out and pull my knees up as far as my belly will allow. My black maxi dress is tangled around my feet from all the wiggling around I’ve been doing trying to escape the pain.

He takes the stairs at least two at a time, maybe three with his long legs and finds me in my pathetic state. He crawls onto the bed and lies down facing me in his Marine uniform. God, I love how he looks all perfectly pressed and put together. Even laboring and gushing fluid every five minutes with contractions I can appreciate his whisky brown eyes, bronze skin and chiseled jawline. He’s my Latin lover, a ray of warm sunshine. He rescued me from a dark, bleak time in my life when I felt abandoned and very much alone.

He reaches over and tucks a stray piece of my dark hair behind my ear tenderly and cups my cheek. Concern replaces the laughter in his eyes and he scoots a little closer. “You don’t look so good, trooper. This is really it, huh?”

I nod and close my eyes pressing my face into his hand.

“Does it hurt?”

As soon as the words are spoken another contractions starts and I grab his wrist and squeeze it tight.

“Wow, I’ll take that as a yes. Okay, we know what to do. We took a class. Try to relax and breathe, find something to focus on and blow the pain away.”

Garcia is probably the only man on the planet who took notes during Lamaze class. He has taken everything about my pregnancy seriously and assumed complete responsibility for my unborn child who is not even biologically his.

“Fuck Lamaze, I want drugs.”

A that’s my girl smile spreads across his face and he sits up and gathers me into his arms.

“You gonna leak stuff all over me?”

“You gotta problem with that?”

“No, Ma’am, not at all, leak away.”

He stands and carries me down the stairs and outside to deposit me into his Range Rover. He opens the door and pauses before he places me in the seat. “Do I need a garbage bag?”

“No, Julián I’m wearing a pad, your seats are safe.”

Relief washes over him and if I weren’t starting to have another contraction I would have given him shit about loving his Rover more than me.

“In ya go. I’ll go get our bags, don’t go anywhere.”

I look up at him through my eyelashes and lift my top lip in a snarl when the pain peaks. Where the hell does he think I’m going to go?

“Oh yeah right, you’re not going anywhere until I take you to the hospital, huh? You’re having a baby, shit. Sorry, my brain kind of short-circuited. This is so exciting,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. He’s talking a mile a minute and switching his weight from foot to foot.

Yeah, exciting for him, painful for me. “Garcia, stop rambling and get our stuff.” His mouth pops open and he stops and stares at me.

I don’t snap, ever, and I certainly don’t make it a habit of telling him what to do. It’s what makes our relationship work, a sort of unspoken understanding. But, he’s freaking out and since I can’t give him a slap across the face to snap him out of it I use my voice instead.

It’s actually adorable that this resilient man who risked his life for his country in a war killing people and leading troops of men around in the desert, is nervous about me giving birth. It’s sweet but that’s my Julián. He’s the best man I’ve ever known - he’s honorable, tender, supportive, sexy, he adores children and he’s surprisingly complicated in the best ways. He is everything my baby’s biological father is not.

Garcia fell into my life when it was a torn up disaster and made things good for me, better than good, he made my life damn near perfect. We met at my friend’s wedding when I was five months pregnant, swept me off of my swollen feet and asked me to marry him six weeks later.

I’d only been divorced for two months. Some people said he was my rebound guy, others said I was using him, but every one of them is wrong. My wounds were deep but Garcia healed me faster than the Wolverine with his honest smile and his corny jokes. I love him like I’ve never loved anyone before, including my ex-husband Caleb.

Garcia closes the car door and springs into action bounding up the porch stairs and into the house to get my suitcase and lock the doors. When he returns he settles in behind the wheel and I reach out to take his hand.

“Sorry.”

“Sorry? For what?”

“For snapping like that…” My words trail off when a contraction hits again and I squeeze his hand so hard he grunts in pain.

“No apologizing about anything today, you have a big fat get out of jail free card for the next three days.”

When the pain subsides I look at him sideways and correct him. “You mean for the next eighteen years, don’t you?”

“You’re gonna be crabby and snappy for eighteen years?”

“If things continue to be this painful, yes, maybe.”

He shakes his head, “No way, baby, I’m going to work my ass off to make the rest of your life pain free. You’ll be as happy as a clam at high tide.”

“Juliàn?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re nutty.”

“You love it.”

“I do. Now step on it, I want an epidural.”