Chapter Thirteen

 

Cherry

 

"How are you feeling?"

Dr. Larkin smiled warmly at me as she walked into the room. At least, I imagined that she was. The tone of her voice sounded like she could be smiling, but in all honesty, I was laying on my back on the examination table and couldn't see her face over my belly. Finally, she came around the side of the table and smiled down at me.

Nailed it.

"Like I've run out of space," I said.

"I hear that a lot," she said. "Which makes sense because that's basically what's happening inside you right now. All that nice space the baby had up to a few weeks ago is gone up now and she doesn't have much wiggle room anymore. She's pretty crowded in there at this point, which is fine because it is just about time for her to come out."

"Is it normal that I haven't felt her moving around as much as before?" Gabriel asked.

He had been spending a lot of his free time with either his hands or head resting on my belly. Sometimes he would whisper to the baby and when I asked him what he was saying, he would reply that it was for her ears only. I loved thinking about all the secrets they would share by the time she was born. She was so lucky to have a daddy like Gabriel. I knew he was going to be amazing with her and I couldn’t wait to see the two of them together.

"That is perfectly normal," Dr. Larkin said. "Are you feeling her move at all?"

"Some," I said. "Little wiggles. Some hiccups. Just not big movements like before."

She nodded.

"As long as you feel some movement each day, you're fine. But if you’re ever concerned, or something just doesn’t feel right with you, don’t hesitate and come on in. It's better to get checked out a hundred times and have it all turn out to be nothing than to ignore something one time that could end up being serious." I let out a slow breath at the sobering thought and Dr. Larkin patted my thigh comfortingly. "Don't worry. This baby girl is strong and healthy. She'll be here before you know it. Speaking of which. Have you started getting ready for her arrival?"

She took her place at my feet and measured my belly, then felt it to check the baby's position.

"Yes," I said.

"Good," she said. "So, the nursery is ready, and you have her car seat in the car?"

She checked my cervix before walking around to my head to reposition the bed into a more upright position. I felt like I could breathe again, and made a mental note to ask the nurse to not lay me so flat during my next appointment. Suddenly what Dr. Larkin asked me earlier registered in my brain.

"The car seat?" I asked.

She paused.

"Yes," she said. "You have to have a newborn car seat in your car to bring the baby home. It's best to have it in place well before you come to deliver so that it's one less thing you have to worry about during labor or before discharge. You haven't installed your seat yet?"

We haven't even bought a seat yet.

How could we not have bought a seat yet?

"No."

"Well, add that to your to-do list for this week. That and packing your hospital bag. At this point, your baby could make her appearance at any time. People always say that your first baby ends up late, but it doesn't always happen that way. If there's one thing I do know about childbirth, is that you can't expect anything. That baby will come on their own time. She might just surprise you."

"Sounds just like her mama," Gabriel said.

I walked out of the doctor's office feeling slightly dazed.

"How do we not have a car seat yet?" I asked.

"What?" Gabriel asked as he pushed the elevator button.

"You heard Dr. Larkin. A car seat is one of the most important things we need. It's a necessity. And we don't have one. What kind of mother am I that I don't even have a car seat for my baby who's due any time now?"

I was starting to panic. Now that we were out of the office, my anxiety grew out of control. I could feel tears forming in my eyes. As the elevator doors opened, Gabriel took me by the waist and guided me inside. Once we were in, he wrapped his arms around me and stepped back so that he leaned against the wall, bringing me in closer to him so that he could look into my eyes.

"You are the kind of mother who has never had a baby before. You might not have a car seat yet, but you have been taking care of our daughter with every breath, with every decision you make. You are ready to love and protect her, and that is the most important thing you can do for her. The rest will fall into place. We still have time." He ducked his head down and gently kissed me. "You are going to be the most amazing mother. There is no one in this world who I would want to carry my child. And I want you to know how much I look forward learning how to be parents with you."

It turned out that dating my husband was exactly what I needed during the last few weeks of pregnancy. Even though I knew our baby was coming soon, I didn’t realize just how imminent the birth was until Doctor Larkin asked about the nursery and car seat. I knew there was a tremendous amount to do before we would be ready to welcome her home, but Gabriel was going to be right there with me every step of the way. The remaining time we had together as a family of two was precious to both of us. He took me on dates that almost always ended with us wandering around the clothing store to buy a few more outfits for the baby or sitting together in the nursery and making sure that everything was ready. It soon occurred to us that just one nursery wasn't enough for our unique situation. She was going to need one in the home Gabriel and I now shared, as well as my house in case we were ever over there. I had moved back in with Gabriel but was still sleeping in a separate bedroom as we worked on taking things slow and building our relationship again. But she was also going to need one in my mother's house for when she was spending time with her grandmother, as well as Monroe's house. He had become increasingly excited about the thought of having a granddaughter as the weeks progressed and I knew that he was going to want to spend plenty of time with her.

Gabriel and I were drawing closer to one another than I would have ever thought possible. Although we were technically married, I finally felt like we were a real couple. We were dating and getting to know each other as adults on an even deeper level than before. We were building our relationship around the family we would soon share. One night as we were putting the final touches on the nursery in my house, I stopped and took a good look at my husband. Gabriel was building the crib and I was suddenly struck by how sexy he was, even while doing such a menial task. Removed from his tailored suits and loafers that (thankfully) never quite recovered from the mud, Gabriel was rugged and charmed. He reminded me so much of the boy I fell in love with all those years ago. He seemed to finally notice I was staring at him and looked up at me.

"What is it?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"It’s nothing," I said. "I was just looking at you."

He smiled and walked over to me on his knees.

"Well, looking at you is one of my favorite things to do in the world, so I can understand."

He kissed me, smiled, and kissed me again.

"Look," I said. "It's finally finished."

I put down my needle and showed him the blanket I had just completed. I had been working on it the last few months but had finished the final and most challenging part. It was pink and white with flourishes of lavender and baby blue. In the center our baby's name was embroidered in delicate scroll.

"It's beautiful," he said. "It will keep her toasty and warm."

"When we hold her," I said. "She's not supposed to sleep with a blanket until she's older."

"I know," he said. "I've been at the doctor, too. You know, you never told me why you chose her name. I love it. I think it's perfect, but why did you choose Georgia?"

I had chosen our daughter's name after our honeymoon, right after I found out I was having a girl. Our relationship was strained then, and I would often try to turn my thoughts away from missing Gabriel by focusing even more on the baby growing inside of me. Choosing a name for her had been a way for me to affirm to myself that this was my child, too. And that the decision I made at the very beginning to be a part of her life was the right one, and that no matter what, I would always be there for her. When I told Gabriel that I had picked out a name, part of me felt guilty. I told him I had been calling her Georgia for weeks, but if he didn't like it, we could choose something else, but he said no. If that was what I had been calling her, then it was already her name. He would choose her middle name, but from that moment on, our daughter's name was Georgia.

"I've always loved the name," I said. "But I think there was a subconscious part of me that chose it because it perfectly fit our relationship. I missed you so much when I named her. I was thinking about you all the time. Giving her that name must have been my brain's way of dealing with it."

He made his way back over to the crib and gave me a quizzical look.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "We've never been to Georgia together."

"I know," I said. "But I had gone to Georgia the week before I was supposed to meet Anthony’s parents for our pre-wedding tea. "

"Ah, yes. The peaches."

I nodded.

"The peaches. If I hadn't gone down to Georgia for that baby shower for my friend from college, then I never would have stopped at the orchard and picked the peaches to bring Anthony's parents. And if I had never done that, then Jess never would have tried to force that annoying wedding planner to eat one even though he was apparently deathly afraid of fruit that comes with its own fur. And if that had never happened, I never would have gotten angry at her and seen the opportunity to use said fur-covered fruit as a weapon. Which means that I never would have thrown the peach at stupid Anthony's head."

"And Edna never would have felt so bad for you and given you the job if you didn’t chuck the official fruit of Georgia at that asshole’s head.”

"Exactly," I said. "Basically, I never would have ended up working with you."

"And we wouldn't be here."

"Yeah. We wouldn’t be here."

 

I had to give it to Jess. Procrastination had always been her go-to move, but when my best friend pulled through with something, she really pulled through. That was definitely the case with the baby shower she threw me a week before I was due. I hadn't even thought about having a baby shower. It just wasn’t something I had thought about doing, considering the unusual circumstances. The closer that I got to her being born, though, the more I realized just how much I wanted to celebrate her and welcome my baby into the world. Regardless of the circumstances that triggered her conception, she was my baby. She was the child I had always wanted, and I was blissfully happy to be having her with the only man I ever truly, deeply loved. I wanted to celebrate that with the world, but especially with the people who are closest to me. Even if they didn't know it, they had all helped me through some of the hard times, and I wanted to let them know how much I appreciated them.

Even though Gabriel and I had suggested that we plan a co-ed baby shower together, she had her heart set on a traditional baby shower and all its prissy details. She wanted to play all the ridiculous games and decorate the space with as much pastel pink, ruffles, and lace as possible. None of the food served at the shower could be larger than two square inches. It was an absolute must. I wasn't exactly sure where she had gotten that number from, but it seemed non-negotiable, so I ended up letting it go. And even with all her whirlwind planning, Jess threw a baby shower for me that was everything I could have ever hoped for, even if I never realized I wanted to feel like I was sitting in a field of pink cotton candy, eating food that could have come out of a Gumball machine.

I thought we had almost anything a baby could ever need, but by the end of the shower I was positive that whatever supplies might have been left in the baby supply store certainly belonged to us now. When Gabriel got home from his night out with his father, cousins, and a few friends, I heard him call out to me from the door.

"I don't think that we are ever going to need to buy a package of diapers ourselves," he said. "This baby is going to have all the diapers she could ever need. Look at this haul."

He came into the living room and stopped in his tracks when he saw me sitting on the couch surrounded by the piles of gifts that I had received at the shower. He was holding two large boxes of diapers under each arm and balanced another tenuously between his fingers in front of him.

"I think you won," he said.

I nodded.

"And I think that you are woefully, hilariously underestimating the number of diapers a baby goes through."

"Remember that car seat we bought when we left the doctor's office?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"How many more do you think we need?"

"Well, I guess there should be one in each of the cars that we ride in regularly and it would be nice to have one at my father's house. Maybe one for Jess if you think that she will ever babysit. So... a few."

"Okay, good, because I think we have like seven now."

I tried to sit up from the reclined position I had somehow slid into on the couch, but It didn't work. I groaned and picked up my feet to rest them on the table. Gabriel put down the diapers and came over to the couch, sitting beside me.

"You look exhausted," he said.

I wanted to make some kind of witty comeback, but I was too tired.

"I am exhausted," I said. "Who would have thought that growing another human being and sharing your food with it would take so much out of you?"

He laughed and took hold of my ankles, turning me around carefully so that my head rested on the throw pillows at the end of the couch and my legs laid across his lap. He took one of my feet and began to massage it. I moaned and felt my body relax instantly. He pressed deeper into the sore, tired muscles of my feet and I groaned again. I opened my eyes and saw him staring at me. Those were sounds I hadn't made in a long time, and we were both very aware of that fact. I craved him, even now. I ached for Gabriel and longed for him to touch me. But we had agreed to keep that aspect of our relationship on hiatus until after the baby was born. Honestly though, the more we got to know each other, and the deeper that we fell in love, the hungrier that we were for one another. We both wanted more distance from the contract and everything we had gone through before being intimate again. When it was time, we wanted to be able to introduce ourselves to one another again with no strings attached and freely explore that aspect of our lives.

Telling ourselves that didn't make the lonely nights any easier, though. Sometimes it felt like we had been waiting for forever and the days before Georgia’s due date stretched longer than I ever thought possible.

Less than a week later, my water broke, and with the car seat firmly strapped in, we rushed to the hospital. After seven hours of labor, Georgia had finally arrived. Even though we had waited all those months for her, when I finally held her in my arms, it felt like I had blinked, and my pregnancy was suddenly over. I could still remember the first time I saw her, the tiny little speck on the screen that shouldn't have been there. I knew then that this was going to be one of the most important experiences of my life. If not the most important. I looked down into the beautiful, perfect little face of my newborn daughter and ran my finger along her soft cheek.

"You certainly have changed from when you were a happy little Tic-Tac," I whispered to her. "I love you so much."

Gabriel perched himself on the side of the bed, sitting next to me, and reached for her. I settled her into his arms and he cradled her close to his chest. She had been fussing slightly, but as soon as he brought her up against him, Georgia settled down and her little eyes slowly closed. Soon she was breathing slowly and deeply, completely content to be tucked away against her daddy's heart. I knew exactly how she felt. It seemed like we drifted through the first two days of her life as we stayed in the luxurious, private birthing suite at the hospital, welcoming a steady stream of visitors that had come to meet our little princess. Then it was time to go home and reality truly sank in. We were parents. We had brought a precious life into the world and now we were tasked with raising her. I had never felt such an incredible sense of responsibility before, but I also never felt so honored.

Even as we enjoyed the happy daze of new parenthood and contended with sleepless nights, we both knew the countdown had begun. We were busy trying to get a hang of all those parenting skills you know must be so easy yet totally defy you, like attempting to change a diaper while also breastfeeding in the middle of the night, but there was one thing constantly in the back of my mind.

Just before I was discharged, Doctor Larkin visited me and gave me some parting words of wisdom. She told me things that I never wanted to hear about my body and reassured me that even when I felt like something was wrong, it was most likely perfectly normal. She handed me a few prescriptions to fill at the hospital pharmacy, before leaving her final words of instruction.

"Remember. No sexual activity for six weeks. You need to heal."

That was going to be a challenge.

 

I had a mental countdown of how many days were left until I could be in Gabriel’s arms again, but I tried not to fixate on it too much. It only made it harder to think about how long we had left. I concentrated all my time and energy on Georgia, lost myself in what a wondrous creature my tiny daughter really was. Just as I had noticed that I changed so quickly during the last part of my pregnancy, I noticed new things about her every single day. She quickly changed from a delicate newborn to a strong, chubby baby. She was only a few weeks old, and yet she was growing so fast and changing so much that I wanted it to slow down. And yet, as her little personality developed more, and I began to imagine the type of person she was going to be, I fell even more in love with her. It was amazing to see how she discovered the world around her and learned to interact with it. While before she had spent most of the day either sleeping or eating, as time passed she was awake for longer and discovering new things every minute. She began to smile and to gurgle, and her face lit up when she heard Gabriel's voice.

I began to imagine what she would be like as she got older and what kind of person she would become.

"What do you think she'll want to be when she grows up?" I asked Gabriel one afternoon as I placed her in her bouncy seat.

She stared with fascination at the mirror above her face.

"Well, I hope that she wants to come work with me," he said.

His words sank in and I realized that had been the point all along. We had her in the first place so that he had someone to give the company to when he retired someday.

"Oh," I said. "I guess that would be fine."

"Is there something wrong with that?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I guess I figured that would only be the plan if she was a boy. The company has only been passed down through the men in your family, so I just envisioned that you would pass it down to your son."

"I would have wanted to pass it down to my son—"

"See?" I interrupted.

"If I had one. But I didn't. I had a daughter, and I believe that she will be just as capable of taking over as a boy would have been."

"Yes, she will be," I said, leaning down to kiss her sweet face. "She's lucky that she has a daddy who thinks of her that way."

"I have to," he said. "If I didn’t, her mama would probably throw fruit at my head."

 

Five weeks after Georgia was born, I started preparing myself for Gabriel. Just one more week before my body would be ready for him again, and I couldn't wait. I was dying with anticipation, actually. We already asked Monroe to watch Georgia for the evening and while I was dreading the thought of leaving my baby for the first time since she was born, I was excited about the prospect of spending time alone with Gabriel again. We’d been waiting for so long I knew there was a distinct possibility that the second she was safely in her grandfather’s arms, we would be headed straight for our bedroom. I wanted to make sure I was ready for that.

For the last two days leading up to the date we had circled on the calendar in bright red marker, I spent far more time than usual grooming and primping myself. I wasn't exactly sure what was behind the compulsion I felt to preen so extensively. I hadn't gone through all this effort before our first time together, and Gabriel had been more than happy with what he had found in that shower that night. But that had been in the heat of passion. That night was the result of a long simmering desire that finally erupted when neither of us could contain it anymore.

This was deliberate. This was planned and anticipated. And after six long weeks, I wanted it to be incredible.

The day before the six-week mark, I was making dinner, having claimed the kitchen from Emma that night, when Gabriel came into the room. He stepped up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, kissing the side of my neck. I giggled and leaned into the kiss, then turned around and kissed him back.

"Dinner is going to be ready in about twenty minutes," I said.

"Is Georgia asleep?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "I gave her a bath earlier and she drifted right off."

"She's a good girl," he said.

"I hope she continues that pattern tomorrow night when she's with your father. Are you sure that you don't want me to ask my mother to help?"

"He’ll be fine," he said. "Besides, your mom has come over and gotten to spend a lot more time with Georgia than he has. He wants a chance to bond with her too. And he might just want a chance to have her alone, so he can start telling her all of the company secrets."

"Corporate espionage?"

Gabriel laughed.

"I think he hopes that if he starts now, she'll be able to usurp me and take over the company when she's twelve."

"That might be pushing it."

"Alright. Fourteen then."

I laughed and gave him a spoonful of the leftover filling from the pot pie I was making. He groaned and opened his mouth for another bite.

"You're going to have to wait," I said. "The actual pie is in the oven. It'll be ready soon."

"How about you?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you ready for tomorrow night?"

A shiver ran through me and settled between my thighs. I bit my bottom lip as my nipples tensed in anticipation from thinking about peeling his clothes away and feeling his thick, hard length inside me again.

"Yes," I said. "I can't wait. I go to the doctor at ten. Georgia has her checkup at eleven."

"I'll have Harlan here to pick you up at eight."

"Harlan?" I asked. "Pick me up? What?"

"For our date."

"But I thought…"

"I have something planned," he said. He kissed me again before heading out of the room. "It's a surprise! Don’t ruin it."