Page 59 of Blueline Baby

I don’t move a muscle. “Yeah?”

“I’m going to stay enrolled for the spring semester.” She says it slowly, like she’s still deciding. “If I take six hours, and maybe one summer class, I’ll still be right on schedule for my vet school applications the year after. It’s not even a big deal. I’ve been making myself sick over it for a month, and it turns out it’s not even a big deal.”

“Okay. That’s your call, and it’s a good one.” I turn my head so I can see her face. “I’m proud of you, Chlo.”

She blushes the way she always does when I compliment her and she looks back at her notes to hide it.

Then, without looking up from her textbook, she says, “I’m still not naming him Russell.”

“You said him.”

“I said him as a grammatical placeholder.”

“You’ve been saying it for two weeks.”

“Because you say it constantly, and now it’s stuck in my head like a horrible commercial jingle.” She shoves at my shoulder with her knee. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Sure.” I put my head back down on her belly. “Hear that? She’s coming around.”

“I am not.”

“Russell Anderson.”

“I will break up with you.”

“You couldn’t,” I tell her stomach. “She’s crazy about me.”

As we’re getting ready for bed she comes out of the bathroom wearing one of my t-shirts, her hair pulled up into a messy knot on the top of her head. I reach out and catch her hand as she walks past the bed.

She lets me pull her in between my knees. I take the hem of the shirt and lift it up over her head, and she puts her arms up to help me, then folds them across her chest. Even now, she’s shy for the first minute.

I put both hands on her bare hips and look down at her stomach.

There’s a small, soft roundness where there was nothing at all a month ago. I know every inch of her and that curve is new.

“Look,” I tell her.

She glances down. “That’s pizza. That’s the half a pizza you just forced me to eat.”

“That’s not pizza.”

“Jack, it’s pizza⁠—”

“Chloe.” I put my hand flat over it, and my palm covers the whole thing. “That’s our baby.”

I slide off the edge of the mattress and onto my knees on the floor in front of her. I put both hands back on her hips, lean in, and press my mouth against that little curve.

“I love you,” I say against her warm skin. “I love you so much, Chloe. You have no idea.”

She looks down at me for a second too long and for a moment I think she might actually answer me this time, then she blinks it away and pats me on top of the head.

“Okay, big guy.” She’s already stepping backward out of my hands, reaching for the discarded shirt on the bed.

“I just said something meaningful to you.”

“You said something meaningful to my stomach.” She pulls the shirt back on, yanks the hem down, climbs under her blankets, and says, “Come to bed, Jack.”

She clicks the bedside lamp off before I’ve even managed to stand up.