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The First Trimester
“Hey.” She watched as Colt’s eyes narrowed in on an errant wrench, alone on the floor in the middle of the room. “Pick that up.”
Jamie slowly lifted his head from where he was texting on the ground beside it, shooting the pair of them a curious glance before picking up the wrench and spinning it around in his hand. “Okay? Sorry?”
“Someone could trip,” Colt said defensively, and Ellie turned her head to hide an amused smile in his shoulder when the arm he had slung around her waist tightened protectively.
Jamie still looked confused. There was a beat of silence, and then he said, “So?”
“So, what if they fell?” Colt glared harder at the now clear floor.
“It would be funny?” Jamie guessed, bouncing his gaze back and forth between Colt and Ellie in turn before finally catching her eye and mouthing Help?
“Oh my god, let’s just tell them,” Ellie laughed, squeezing Colt’s hand where it was resting on her side, “It’s fine.”
He sighed. The look on his face was one that she knew well; it said: I disagree with you completely, but we can argue about that later. She continued to smile beatifically back at him. “Ellie’s pregnant.”
Raven poked her head out from the driver’s side door of one of the cars in the garage. “Like, on purpose?” she asked, eyebrows arched at the both of them.
“Raven!” Jamie chided, standing and rushing over to pull Ellie into a hug, “Oh my god, that’s so cool! Congrats, you guys.”
“Careful,” Colt said, then rolled his eyes – seemingly at himself and his sudden protectiveness. Ellie watched him shove his hands in his pockets as Jamie squeezed her one last time and then pulled away.
She pulled the sonogram photo out of her purse and passed it around, beaming when each member of the crew cooed nonsensically over it in turn.
“Are you sure this is a baby?” Raven asked, turning the photo around in her hands and squinting down at it. “It just looks like a blob.”
“It could be the pizza from last night,” Delaney suggested, hooking her chin over Raven’s shoulder to look at it, too.
“It’s a baby,” Colt said, snatching the photo out of their hands and handing it back to her. “Let’s try to keep the stupid questions to a minimum. Ellie’s growing a human being.”
“You know we can’t make any promises,” Delaney said blithely, shooting Ellie one last wink before turning away to go back to work.
The Last Trimester
“Go home.”
“Oh my god, are you kidding?” Jamie’s voice was a low whine from where he was working on a set of tires in the middle of the garage, “I sneezed one time.”
Colt shrugged apathetically at him. “You know the rules. See you in two days.”
Jamie turned his indignant look on her, and Ellie held up her hands. “Sorry,” she said, pursing her lips to stifle the laugh that so desperately wanted to escape, “I’ve tried talking to him about it, like, a hundred times. He won’t budge.”
“He can hear you, you know,” Colt said, though he didn’t look up from his laptop and the spreadsheet open on the screen.
Jamie’s grumbles faded as he got his things and went home. Ellie nudged her shoulder against Colt’s. “You need to lighten up.”
“I’m not going to have you get sick a week before your due date,” he said, repeating the same rationale he’d used the last twelve times they’d had this argument. “Don’t you think the delivery’s going to be hard enough without the flu?”
“I seriously doubt Jamie has the flu,” she murmured, shifting to rest her head on Colt’s shoulder, instead.
It was difficult to find his dramatics anything but funny, and a little endearing, too. Though he’d never said as much, Ellie was pretty sure that exercising control – even out-of-control amounts of control – over whatever he could helped him feel a little less worried about what was ahead of them. And she couldn’t fault him for that. She was worried, too.
“Whatever,” Colt said, shifting to type one-handed so he could rub the other over her back. “I’m still not changing the sneezing rule. Same goes for coughers.”
Ellie yawned. “Okay. Whatever makes you happy.”
Her eyes unfocused when he turned his head to look at her, but even through the blurriness of her vision she could see his expression soften. “I’ll be a lot happier once the baby’s born.”
True, navigating the last nine months had been far from easy. Everyone seemed to grow a little more on-edge as they got closer to Ellie’s due date, which had crept up on her so suddenly. She could only imagine how Colt must be feeling about it, too.
“Me, too,” she agreed, finally letting her eyes slide shut.
The way Colt started shhh-ing the others and then, when that failed, barking at them to shut the fuck up was so comfortingly familiar it lulled her straight to sleep.