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The digital clock on the nightstand spells out 3:48 AM in glowing red letters. Moonlight trickles in through the blinds above his bed, casting lines across the blankets.
The room is quiet and still – except for the almost constant rustling of the sheets beside him where Laurel lays, tossing and turning, or kicking the covers off and then yanking them back on.
“Jesus, Laurel,” Frank mutters, after almost ten consecutive minutes of this.
“Sorry,” she sighs, settling onto her back with a frown. “I just – I’m having hot flashes, and the baby won’t stop kicking – and you know what? You don’t get to complain. Last I checked, you don’t have to deal with any of this.”
Groggily, he sits up, rubs his eyes, and rolls over toward her, coming face-to-face with her belly almost before Laurel herself, peeking out from underneath her tank top as it is. It’s almost comical how much it dwarfs her in all of its eight-month glory, though he’s not about to laugh at her now, when she’s cranky and hormonal as all hell. He’d learned that lesson months ago – the hard way.
“Maybe he is nocturnal,” Frank says, settling himself down so that he’s eye-level with her dome of a stomach.
She rolls her eyes. “We’re not having this fight at 3 AM.”
He ignores that, and turns his attention to her belly instead. “Hey. Keep it down in there, bud. Your mom needs sleep – and so do I. We’re not gonna be getting any once you’re here, so give us a break for now, huh?”
Laurel scoffs, but smiles. “You do realize you’re trying to reason with a fetus, right?”
All at once, her mouth falls shut. The flurry of movement inside her dies down, and she peers over her stomach at him, astonished.
“He stop?”
“Yeah,” she breathes. “She did. She knows your voice.”
He looks up at her. “You think?”
Laurel smiles, reaching down to take his hand. “Mmm hmm. She always stops to listen when you talk to her.”
“He does, doesn’t he?”
That earns him another eye roll. “I still don’t get why you’re so convinced it’s a boy.”
“Boys run in my family,” he explains. “I got two brothers. My pops had four.”
“Well, I think it’s a girl. I know, actually.”
“Y’know, we wouldn’t be having this debate if you hadn’t ripped up the ultrasound results to begin with.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Laurel tells him with a yawn. “It makes it more exciting.”
“Maybe you can settle this for us. Once and for all,” he murmurs to her stomach. “One kick if you’re a boy. Two if you’re a girl.”
“Not this again.”
They wait a second. Then, a moment later, there’re three short kicks quick in succession – bam, bam, bam.
Laurel chuckles. Frank feigns disappointment. “You’re not being very helpful, kid.”
“Oh, stop,” she chides, reaching out to him. “Come up here.”
He does as she says, nestling himself back down next to her and placing a kiss on her neck.
“You look beautiful, y’know,” he murmurs into her throat, voice full of sincerity.
She gives him a look of disbelief.
“Please. I weigh like five hundred pounds, I have stretch marks everywhere, I’m constantly peeing, and my boobs are enormous – which, yeah, you might appreciate, but this does not look normal. Plus… they say once you have a baby you’re never as thin as you used to be – not to mention down there, which is never supposed to be the same either-“
“You think I care about all that stuff?” Frank asks pointedly. “You’re my baby mama. ‘Course I think you’re beautiful.”
Laurel tries not to smile, and fails. “How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?”
“My baby mama,” he repeats with a grin, moving in closer to kiss her jawline.
“Frank, stop-”
“My little baby mama.”
She smacks him lightly on the arm, laughing despite herself. “I’m gonna kill you, I swear.”
They share a laugh at that, and he pulls back, lying his head down on the pillow next to her.
“But hey. In like a month, we’re gonna have a kid. A real kid, and with both our DNA combined? They’re gonna be crazy cute.”
“But what if…” she drifts off, sobering up. “What if this is all a huge mistake? I mean, I-I’m not done with law school, and I don’t think I’m ready to be a mom, and what if we mess her up and she hates us?”
“We won’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do. You’re gonna be a kickass mom. For real.”
“Shh,” she shushes him, setting a hand on her belly. “You shouldn’t swear around her.”
He reaches over and rests his hand over hers, feeling a series of kicks and jabs beneath their palms.
“See?” Laurel looks over at him. “She agrees with me.”
“Well, I guess if there’s gonna be two girls in the house from now on, I’m gonna have to get used to being out-voted.”
Laurel blinks. Then, she breaks into a smile, her eyes shining. “Two girls?”
He shrugs. “What can I say? The idea’s kinda been growing on me.”
“You really think we can do it, though? Be… good parents?”
“I mean, maybe we won’t be the best ever. But we’re gonna love her so fucking much, babe. That’s gotta count for something.”
“Yeah,” Laurel murmurs, reaching down and lacing her fingers through his on top of her belly. “I know it will.”
She rolls over onto her side and falls back asleep a few minutes later, her breathing deep and even. Slowly, so as not to wake her, Frank settles himself down next to Laurel, curling an arm around her and placing a protective hand over her swollen stomach. And he thinks to himself, briefly, of all the times he’d thought he’d been happy before; all the different places he’d been, women he’d had, things he’d done.
He’d thought he had been happy, back then. Now, here with Laurel, he knows he is.