Page 85 of Everything But Mine

It’s a gentle grip. Her thumb strokes the inside of my hand, raising goose bumps, but neither of us looks away from the screen. We’re sharing a first. Last time we saw the baby, it was all light and shadows. Abstract. Now, it’s a person in there. It makes all the firsts we’ve missed a bit more tolerable.

Melisa smiles at the monitor. “This one’s a mover,” she says, her voice full of wonder. “Mom, have you felt the baby move yet?”

Amanda shakes her head. “Little flutters here and there.”

“That’s perfectly normal,” Melisa says, nodding reassuringly. “Especially for first-time moms. Soon enough, it’ll be kicking with a purpose.”

I squeeze Amanda’s hand, and when she meets my eyes, I ask, “Will you tell me?”

She tilts her head slightly.

“When he or she moves, will you let me know? Maybe let me feel it?”

Melisa glances between us, eyebrows drawn slightly inward.

“Sure,” Amanda says, her tone soft but pleased.

I want to ask her to come into my room at night if it happens. I want to ask her to share a bed with me so I don’t miss it. I have a right to want. I don’t say it, but I savor the fact that I could. That maybe, soon, I will.

“Let’s see if we can get a look between the legs,” Melisa says, returning our attention to the screen. “Babies don’t always cooperate, but I’ve got a good feeling about today.”

My chest tightens. The fear returns, as foolish as it is real. I close my eyes, just for a moment, and listen to the soft clicking of the machine, the hush of gel shifting under pressure. I beg the universe a little.

Let me be ready. Let me not screw this up.

When I open my eyes again, the screen tells me everything I need to know. No training required to figure out what I’m looking at.

“Well,” the technician says with a gentle smile, “he’s not shy.”

Amanda lets out a tiny laugh—nervous, disbelieving—and turns to me. My brain stalls. There’s a beat where the word doesn’t land, but when she turns her head to me, smile as wide as I’ve ever seen it, it registers. He. A boy.

The walls fold inward, and my chest cinches tightly. Can I really do this with a boy? My own father couldn’t—or wouldn’t—love me. But I am not my father.

I nod and smile because I know I should do both.

What if I’m not enough to look at a boy who looks just like Daray and move past the hurt? Maybe Amanda and her baby should find their way without the ticking time bomb that is my self-worth.

Then she squeezes my hand. Her green eyes meet mine, shining with something that cuts through the static in my head. They touch parts of myself I’ve tried to ignore and neglect. Every doubt sharpens, spiraling through me, a storm of inadequacy without shape or center. I hold her gaze, and I breathe. I am not my father, or my failures, and I love without conditions.

My boy. My privilege. I want both him and the woman I’m holding. I want us to move past all this pain between us. I deserve to want. I breathe again, and the spiral softens. It’s still there, but it’s no longer controlling me.

Amanda hasn’t looked away. Her green eyes wide and witness to every thought I’m sure played on my face. And her gaze isn’t cautious. Instead, it’s full of wonder. She saw I’m teaching myself to come back without fucking it up.

I swallow hard and nod again. “A boy,” I say aloud with reverence.

The fear isn’t the loudest thing in the room anymore. It’s pride.

Melisa moves the wand one last time and freezes the image on the screen—a still frame of our son, his profile soft and perfect in grainy gray. Then she wipes down the equipment and smiles.

I reach for the rag the technician left behind, and clean the gel from Amanda’s belly, even when it’s all gone, I can’t stop touching her.

“Is it okay if we stay a few minutes?” she asks, turning to Melisa.

Melisa nods, already halfway to the door. “Take your time,” she says, “Just grab your printouts from the main desk. They’ll have your name.”

Then, it’s just the two of us, and the image of our boy still glowing on the screen. Her shirt’s bunched just below her chest, her stomach still bare. I’m out of excuses to keep touching her. She gently takes the rag from me, sets it aside, and threads her fingers through mine. Then she guides my hand back to her lower belly and presses it in.

“That’s where I feel him the most,” she explains. “I was reading that it’s still too early for others to feel him move. We’re about a month from that.”