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8
AARON WAS GONE by the time Becka crawled out of bed the next morning. She tried to tell herself that it was for the best, that she didn’t really need to see him every single morning before they both left for their respective jobs, but the truth was that she’d gotten used to their shared silence as they drank their daily cup of coffee in the kitchen. He never seemed to feel like he needed to fill the silence. It was nice.
She opened the fridge and stared. Three plates sat on the shelf at eye level, each with a yellow sticky note attached. Peanut butter and grape jelly. Peanut butter and strawberry jam. Peanut butter and sliced bananas. Becka smiled, shook her head and grabbed the peanut butter and banana sandwich. She turned to the coffeemaker and found another sticky note. Still smiling, she read his chicken-scratch handwriting. Have dinner with me tonight. No baby talk, promise.
“How can I resist an offer like that?” She checked the time and typed out a quick text promising to be home by six.
The day flew by. She had spin at nine, TRX at eleven. The first two classes were at Transcend.
After TRX, she got cleaned up and changed then headed to the elite gym where she coached. Half her clients were looking for weight loss, and the other half were hard-core training for various events. All four of her sessions that afternoon were of the extreme variety. She normally liked to switch up her schedule a little more—the intensity could wear on her after a while—but today she welcomed the requirement of extra concentration.
Anything to keep her from watching the clock and counting down the hours until dinner tonight.
She probably shouldn’t have agreed to go. It wouldn’t end well, and the whole point of this exercise was to create a stable foundation between her and Aaron so that the baby wouldn’t suffer. Dates were not part of the equation.
Still, she didn’t linger at the gym like she usually did after work. Becka took a cab back to Aaron’s apartment and, after arguing with herself for a solid five minutes, jumped in the shower and started her beautifying process. She didn’t have to pull out all the stops for dinner—it would look weird if she did—but that didn’t mean she had to go in fitness wear and without makeup.
Compromise. Jeans. Nice shirt. Decent makeup but not over the top. Blow out your hair.
She wasn’t overthinking this. She was just being reasonable.
I’m totally overthinking this.
Despite being out of practice, she was nearly ready well before the time Aaron had given her, but she ran into a problem when she pulled on her jeans.
They wouldn’t button.
Becka stared down at the offending button and the gap between it. She knew she’d been putting on weight—that happened in a pregnancy—but she’d mostly stuck to leggings and workout pants, so she hadn’t put too much thought into what that meant for her wardrobe. “No jeans for me, apparently.” She wiggled out of them and considered her options. It was early enough in the fall that New York hadn’t gotten totally frigid, so a dress would have to do—preferably something stretchy.
Except she hadn’t packed any dresses, because why would she? The only thing she’d needed when she was bullied into agreeing to these living arrangements were her workout clothes and...that was it. She sat on her bed and dropped her head into her hands. This is not something to get emotional about. They’re just clothes. You can run back to your apartment and...
But there wasn’t time.
She pressed her lips together. Hard. She was overreacting, turning this into something bigger than it should be. Yes, she wanted to dress nice for whatever this date entailed, but there were workarounds that didn’t involve dresses or trying to jury-rig her jeans into place. Becka took a steadying breath and went through her clothes again, more slowly this time. She finally settled on a pair of black leggings and a lightweight tunic-length sweater in her favorite color of pink. It was a little more laid-back than she would have preferred, but it would work.
She’d just pulled the sweater over her head and smoothed it down her hips when the front door opened and Aaron called out. “I’m late, I know, I’m sorry. Give me fifteen minutes and we can go.” Footsteps sounded past her door, and a few seconds later his shower started.
It was all too easy to picture Aaron in the shower, tilting his head back beneath the spray, letting the water sluice down his body. Becka mentally traced the path the droplets would take. Down his chest, over his cut abs, to his cock...
Down, girl.
Exactly fifteen minutes later, Aaron walked out of his bedroom in a pair of slacks and a button-down that looked indistinguishable from what he wore to work every day. He took one look at her and frowned. “More low-key date, then.”
She didn’t really want to admit that she couldn’t fit into her pants anymore. It wasn’t that she thought Aaron would be an asshole about it—actually, the opposite—but knowing what little she did about him, he’d do something like drag her out shopping for clothes she couldn’t afford. And then insist on paying for said clothes, which was a nice gesture, but she couldn’t take a wardrobe in addition to everything else he was providing and... Becka studied her thick gray wool socks. “Ah—”
“Say no more.” He walked back into his room and reappeared a few minutes later in a pair of dark jeans that hugged his thighs and a cable-knit sweater. When Aaron caught her looking, he ran his hands over the deep green wool. “My mother is a knitter, so for every Christmas, we all get sweaters.” He made a face. “I don’t wear mine often, though. Mostly when I go home to visit during the winter months.”
His mother loved her children so much, she spent hours upon hours knitting them sweaters. It took Becka two tries to speak. “That’s really, really nice.” She studied the fit of the sweater—perfect—and how the coloring complemented Aaron’s features perfectly. “Green is your favorite color, isn’t it?”
“Guilty as charged.” He chuckled. “Though she tends to lean more toward grays, since they’re staple pieces, according to her.”
“She’s right.” The amount of thought and love that went into that gift blew Becka way. She knew good parents existed. Of course they did. They weren’t magical unicorns that subsisted on mere myth. But she’d never had cause to come across them. Growing up, most of her friends’ parents were divorced, and there was an aura of benign neglect that everyone just sort of dealt with. No harm, no foul. There were always kids in her groups of friends that did have the happy life everyone was told to want, with loving parents who didn’t forget birthdays and showed up for every extracurricular activity and always had dinner on the table around the same time every night. It just hurt too much to spend time in those households and have her face rubbed in everything she was missing.
She’d had Lucy, though, and Becka thanked her lucky stars every single damn day for that. Who knew where she would have ended up without her strong older sister plotting their course? Their parents being flakes never seemed to affect Lucy. She just adapted and moved on, never letting their dropping the ball get in the way of her goals and aspirations. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, she just managed her expectations, and after a while, the disappointment and rejection lost its sting.
Becka had never quite mastered that trick.
“Minx, what’s wrong? What did I say?”
