“You’re having too much sex,” Vince says to me as I walk into the gym and start racking weights.

All motion halts. Someone drops a bar. The whuff of a boxing glove on a bag is the last sound.

“What?” I ask, sure I didn’t hear that.

“You are having way too much sex. It’s depleting you.”

“Depleting me?”

“Your energy force. You’re letting all your power leak out of your dick.”

“Vince, I’ve heard some weird-ass shit come out of your mouth over the last few years,” Andrew interrupts, “but this is definitely the weirdest.” He turns to me. “Are you having lots of sex?”

I shrug. “Define lots.”

I just walked into that one, didn’t I? Before I can backpedal, my brother goes in for the kill.

“You define lots of sex,” Andrew replies, chin going up, arms crossing over his chest.

I remember Dave’s words when we were negotiating his salary: first person to mention a number loses.

But this is my brother.

I lie.

“Ten times a day.”

“Liar,” he says, shaking his head slowly.

“His wife’s pregnant. Second trimester. I believe it,” Vince says solemnly.

“How would you know? You don’t have a wife. Or do you?”

“No. But I’ve studied this. Guy knocks his woman up. Woman abandons him for the first trimester. Second trimester all the hormones kick in and she turns him into a human vibrator.”

“I assure you, I am way more than a–”

“She wants quickies suddenly?”

“Yeah.”

“She just uses your meat stick and walks away? No cuddling?”

“Uhh...”

“It’s all when she wants it, where she wants it?”

“Right.”

Vince snaps his fingers. “Comes like that?”

“I don’t want to talk about the specifics of my–”

“She’s sucking your soul out through your semen, dude. The woman has to grow a vampire inside her. So she’s got to get her energy from somewhere. Only so much ice cream and tiramisu a pregnant woman can eat. You become a source of power for her to suck off.”

“You get lots of blow jobs, too?” Andrew asks, incredulous.

“Actually, no...”

Vince shakes his head. “No, man, that’s not how this works. She uses Declan here like a flesh pogo stick.”

“I am way more than a–”

Vince grabs my arm and pulls me close to Andrew. “See the sunken eyes?”

“Huh. Yeah.”

“Dark circles?” Vince traces a line along my eye socket. I’m two seconds away from punching him.

Andrew nods.

“How he’s got the broad shoulders?”

Okay, maybe I won’t hit him.

“And the cocky, confident stance?”

I’m liking this more.

“But notice a slight change in his walk. Walk for us, Dec.”

“Hell no, I won’t walk for you.”

“When a guy’s balls get emptied out nine, ten times a day, it changes the tilt of the pelvis.”

“I thought you were joking about the ten times a day!” Andrew chokes. “Jesus! Seven’s my record.”

“This is how guys end up with saggy sacs. The hornier the pregnant wife, the more it ends up looking like a dropped sail by the time they’re fifty.”

Andrew does a double take and walks over to the juice bar to grab his drink.

“You are totally screwing with him again, aren’t you?” I hiss to Vince.

“With him? Yeah. How often are you really getting it?”

“Four, five times a day.”

“Good man, but make sure to up your protein intake.”

“Will do.”

Andrew comes back, looking at me with admiration I haven’t seen since we were nine and seven and I climbed on top of the roof of the house to rescue his remote-control helicopter. “You’re getting sex ten times a day?”

“Yes.”

“From Shannon?”

“Who else would I be sleeping with?”

“I really need to get Amanda pregnant.”

“Not having enough sex?”

“No, no, we get plenty. Plenty. But–ten times a day?”

“Every. Single. Day.”

“I’ve never had that much sex,” he admits. That makes two of us. “What’s it like to fill your cup?”

“I’m emptying myself. Not filling anything,” I remind him. “Basic biology. You can’t get Amanda pregnant if you don’t understand that.”

“No, Dec, I mean... that much sex? It’s like going to a buffet. All you can eat. At first, it’s amazing. After a while, you figure out your saturation point. But the only way to know is to gorge.”

“Huh. Never thought of it that way.”

“What’s your optimal amount?”

“Of what?”

“Of sex! How many times a day is perfect?”

“All of them.”

“You really would be happy having sex ten times a day? You’d need a penis transplant after awhile. Our circulatory systems aren’t designed for that,” Vince interrupts. “Plus, the average couple takes about twenty minutes to make love. Multiply that by ten and you’re losing more than three hours a day. Each time takes longer than the one before. Simple biology.”

“With the right time management skills and good organizational apps, that’s not an issue,” Andrew says wistfully. “Plus, some of those have to be quickies.” He gives me a hopeful look. “Right?”

“If you have sex ten times a day, by the time you’re fifty your balls will be so low, they can double as a Zamboni,” Vince tells him. I hold back a laugh.

“That’s what plastic surgery is for,” Andrew shoots back, smirking. Ah. He’s not buying any of this, is he? Vince isn’t as clever as he thinks.

“Evolutionarily, though, the second trimester horny period makes sense,” Vince declares.

“It does? Why?” I ask.

“She’s doing this to keep you home.” Vince shrugs.

“To keep me what?”

“To prevent you from looking for sex elsewhere.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You already got her pregnant. Basic instinct tells men to spread their seed far and wide. So the more she offers you sex, the more likely you are to stay with her and help raise the baby.”

“I’m not leaving my wife and child to go screw other women!”

“Of course not. But from a deep biological perspective, the function of a horny second trimester is to bond you to her.”

“I thought it was to make up for the lack of sex coming down the pike when she gets too big, and after the baby is born,” Andrew interrupts.

“That, too,” Vince agrees.

“You make this sound so sexy, guys.”

“I’m not trying to make it sound sexy. I’m giving you facts,” Vince says.

“Bullshit is not facts.”

“Look it up for yourself.”

Andrew grins. “So all this sex Declan is getting is Shannon’s way of making sure he doesn’t get it somewhere else?”

“You two are gross. Quit talking about my sex life.”

“It’s not a sex life when your pregnant woman is just using you for quickies to get off,” Vince announces.

“Then what is it?”

“You’re a dildo service. Nothing more.”

“I’m way more than that.”

“Are you?”

“This conversation is over.”

“Did someone’s feeeeewings get hurt?” Andrew mocks me.

“More like his meat stick got hurt. Bet you’re chafing.” Vince hands me a can of powder.

“WE ARE DONE!” I bellow, going for the squat cage, shoving earbuds in and turning on death metal.

Except Shannon borrowed my phone the other day, and when I turn on my music app, all I hear are mantras for giving birth under hypnosis. Being reminded to let the interconnected muscle fibers of my uterus pull like driftwood on the ocean is the last damn thing I need to hear now.

Switching over to sandbags and kettlebells, I lift until I can’t feel my balls.

And to my surprise, I don’t mind.

Not one bit.

---

Shannon’s on the couch, curled up with an eReader, methodically making her way through a bowl of salt’n’vinegar potato chips dipped in Nutella as I get home from the gym. If there’s any time to bring up a sensitive subject, it’s now, when she is in her comfortable habitat, surrounded by safety objects.

“Am I just a meat stick to you?” I ask. Better to be direct and get it over with.

“A what?”

“A meat stick.”

“Like, a Slim Jim?”

“No, no, better than that. Much thicker.”

“Dec, you aren’t making any sense.”

“Are you just using me for sex?”

“Yes.” Brushing her hands of crumbs, she grabs the Nutella jar lid and closes it. “But you said it was okay.”

“It was. I’m not sure it’s okay... now.”

“I thought you liked it!” A little dot of chocolate on the edge of her lips makes her look like she has a beauty mark.

“I do. I did. But maybe we should put the romance back in our love life.”

“Sex is romantic. It’s always romantic.”

“I was eating toast at the breakfast table this morning when you climbed on top of me, finished in under a minute, then told me to tell Dave to pick up my dry cleaning,” I remind her.

“I was thinking about you the entire time.”

“Pretty sure you were on your phone for the last orgasm there, Shannon.”

“Only to water my crops in Farmville! Just that once!”

“Maybe, um... we could take our time with sex?” I ask, ready to end this conversation via ice pick lobotomy.

“Declan! You used to complain I wasn’t into quickies.” She’s hurt. I can tell. I’m teetering on the edge of a really nasty argument here, the kind where she’ll cry and I’ll feel bad but shut down because I don’t know how to be wrong and stay connected to her emotionally.

“I... I love the quickies. But maybe... never mind.” Cut your losses, Dec.

“Say it.”

“I don’t...” I give up. “I don’t know.”

Shocked, she looks at me with concern. “You don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

“You never admit to ambiguity.”

“I am now. I feel like I wandered along a sturdy path and took one step off it into quicksand.”

“That is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“Admitting I’m a mess inside is romantic?”

“Hell, yes.”

She gives me a look that says my pogo stick is three seconds from being engaged.

“Look,” I try to explain. “I love all the sex. I do. Trust me–I do. But I’ve been thinking.”

Her eyes cast down to my crotch. “Thinking?”

“Are you so revved up because you’re worried I’ll stray?”

She’s drinking from a glass of water and starts coughing out of surprise. “WHAT?”

“Are you worried I’ll cheat on you?” There. Clarity engaged.

“SHOULD I BE WORRIED? Why would you bring this up?”

“Blame Vince. And Andrew,” I add quickly. Never miss out on a chance to throw my little brother under the bus.

“What are they saying to you now?”

“Vince says you’re horny all the time because evolutionarily, I’ve already impregnated you and my seed wants to find other women to breed with. Genetic diversity.”

“Is that true?”

“No! But he says you’re horny all the time to keep me at home, screwing you and no one else.”

“Let me get this straight,” she says slowly. Here it comes. She is about to blast Andrew and Vince out of this world for their idiotic ideas.

“You talk about our sex life at the gym? With Vince and Andrew?”

Oh, shit.

“Not–no, not like that.”

“Then like what?”

“Vince saw me and said all this sex is sucking my energy out through my penis.”

“No one’s sucking anything out through your penis. Not lately, and for damn sure not in the near future!”

“I tried to explain that we’re just having intercourse, but–”

“DECLAN!” she screeches. “You talk about my being horny and our private sex acts with people at the gym?”

“Not people! Just my brother and his trainer.” I frown. “And Gerald.”

“Gerald? Our former chauffeur?”

“He wasn’t there today, though, so he didn’t hear the newest part.”

“The newest part?”

“Where Vince claims you’re using me as a flesh pogo stick.”

“I’m pretty close to ripping that flesh pogo stick off and beating you to death with it. I can’t believe what you’re saying!”

“And I can’t believe you’re joking about... that.”

“Parts of me are about to be ripped open by this baby. It’s not a joke. You’re standing here asking me if I’m eager to have so much sex because I’m afraid you’ll cheat on me otherwise. You’re also telling me you talk about our sex life with friends at the gym. I have every right to metaphorically–”

“Stop, Shannon. Just stop. We’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Arguing. I don’t want to argue. I want to talk. I want to reveal. I want to be close to you. I want you to want to be close to me. I want to open my mouth and know that whatever I say won’t be an emotional landmine. I love you. I need you. I want to be connected to you.”

“Quickies connect us,” she mutters.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“Is there a reason you want to be less connected?”

I can tell she’s about to come out with a pat answer. We haven’t rehearsed this, but there’s a quality to the conversation that feels the same.

“No. Of course not.”

I wait.

And wait.

And, with patience that comes from being with someone for a few years, I wait some more.

Until a tiny voice rises up from her and says, “I can’t believe you want that.”

“Want what?”

“Sex the way we used to have it.”

“Of course I do. Don’t you?”

She nods. A tear drops straight down out of her eye onto the back of her hand.

“Shannon, what’s going on?”

Pulling up her shirt, she shows off a wide, shining expanse of stretched, naked skin. “Look.”

“I’m looking. Our baby is beautiful inside you.”

She rolls her eyes. “No. Really look.” A pink line on her skin stands out, going down to her mons. “See that?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a stretch mark.”

“So?”

She pulls her pants down, panties as well, the line disappearing into her short thatch of pubic hair. “Look at me! It’s like a pink, overstretched ski trail system in there! I look like Attitash on skin!”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s so gross! My skin is itchy and it’s got these lines that go all the way to places I didn’t know skin could change and it’s ugly and why would you want to have sex with the lights on fully naked with me?” Drop. Drop. Her head faces down and tears plunk, plunk on her hand, each one an indictment.

Of me.

“Shannon. Look at me.”

She won’t.

On my knees, I make her meet my eyes. Her belly presses against my hand as I twist to get into her line of sight. “Lay back.”

“What?”

“Lay. Back.” My hands go to her hips and she listens, but pulls the blanket over her bare skin.

I pull it back off.

“No, no, Declan, please don’t look.”

“Please. Please let me.”

“Why?”

“Because this is hurting you and keeping us apart. I don’t want you to hurt and I don’t want to feel apart from you. Shannon, is this why you’ve been having sex with me when you’re wearing a dress? Or in a rush, half-clothed, at work?”

“Maybe.” Her small, breathy voice makes my heart hurt. “Sometimes.”

“Then let’s see how we can fix this.”

“We can’t! It’s done! My body is–”

“Beautiful,” I say firmly.

She closes her eyes and leans back, her grip on the blanket loosening. I can see how much emotional effort this is for her.

Taking pains to be tender and slow, I let the blanket drop and run my fingers down the slopes of the marks she’s so worried about. They point up and down in crooked lines, like trail markers.

I bend down and kiss one, feeling the smooth, shiny skin against my lips.

“They’re never going away,” she whispers. “I have other stretch marks. They’re light and silvery, but these are wide and thick, pink and purple and the books say they don’t really fade. A little, but they’ll always be there, and–”

“And a reminder that your body made this body,” I interrupt, pressing gently on the baby, who kicks me back as if to say Humph. Thanks for that, Dad. “It’s a monument to the power of what you did.”

“Now you’re going way over the top,” she huffs.

“Am I? I don’t think so.”

“It’s just going to get worse. My belly will sag and my breasts will leak milk and Carol says no matter how elastic your skin is, you always have a big pouch under your navel that no amount of Spanx will hold in.”

“So?”

“So? So? You’re a man, Declan. A fit man. A very fit man. I see how women look at you.”

“I only see how you look at me.”

“Guys like you aren’t supposed to be with women like me.”

“That’s bullshit.” I crawl up her body, brushing against her skin, and hover over her, mouth to mouth. Trembling, she stays in place, a timid woodland creature, my proud wife turned into this because something deep is telling her she isn’t worthy.

Anger rises up in me, a flashpoint, a sunburst. “This is why you’ve been distant? This? Because some internalized body perfection issue is coming out now that the pregnancy is changing your body so much? You’re making an entire human being with your body, Shannon. And not just any human being. My human being. Our human being. I don’t care what we’re supposed to think or feel. I care about what I do feel, and what I most certainly do feel is that if you just want quickies from me because that’s all you want, then that is perfectly fine.”

I’m breathing so hard. I can see her bangs moving with each breath, her pupils dilated, eyes rapt with attention.

“But if you’re avoiding sexual intimacy with me because you’re worried I won’t like your changed body, then ditch that idea right now. Kick it to the curb, toss it out of the board room, do whatever you need to do to get rid of it, because it’s wrong.”

“Dec.”

“It is wrong, and it has no place in our lives. I want you. I want your body. I want you writhing beneath me, your face filled with pleasure. I want you between my legs, on your knees, eyes tipped up in that maddening way you have when I’m in your mouth. I want to be over you, looking down as you bring me home inside, clamped down so hard as we come together. I want every inch of you to know that every inch of me is interchangeably yours and mine. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you sit here,” I say, choking up, “feeling disconnected from me because you’re hurting over something I find hauntingly beautiful.”

“I think–I think it’s that. All of that. But it’s also, oh–it’s never going back.”

“Your skin?” I’m trying to understand this.

“Everything! It’s all changing. Forever. My skin, my breasts, our life, the time we spend together, how we spend it, my career–it’s all going to be different. And we made the decision already. The control is gone. It’s happening no matter what, and I feel like I’m sitting in a wagon I can’t steer, perched on top of a ski slope.”

“We,” I say.

“We what?”

“We’re perched there. I’m in the wagon with you. And it’s scary as hell, but I’m in there with you. Forever.”

That’s when she kisses me, a full and salty reply that means more than all the sex we’ve had in the last month combined.

And as she opens to me, on the sofa, crumbs dotting her perfect body, she lets me do more than make love to her.

She lets me be love to her.