The drive to their place was only about twenty minutes, but I’d reached my upper limits of travel via ancient truck one hundred miles ago. I couldn’t stop shifting and wiggling, trying to get comfortable. It was about as futile an endeavor as my efforts to disguise the small planet projecting from my stomach.
“Black, you were a loyal friend in the truest of ways.” I ran my hands down the dark shift dress I’d slipped into. Instead of making my tummy look less out-there, it succeeded at the opposite. “You betray me in my darkest hour. I thought we were more than that.”
Jesse chuckled and turned down the volume on Cash crooning through the cab. “What are you talking about? You look amazing.”
Keeping one eye on the road, he managed to inspect me with the other in a way that made my throat run dry. I wasn’t sure if that urge swelling inside me was more due to my hormones, that glimmer in his eye, or how he looked. It was probably some deadly combination of all three that was making my fists ball at my sides when they wanted to be ravaging my insanely hot husband. Teenage boys had nothing on pregnant women when it came to thinking about sex every two seconds. Nothing on us.
“What? I mean it,” Jesse continued when he guessed I wasn’t buying his “you look amazing” compliment. “How could you come out looking like that after ten minutes when I can barely manage to get my other boot on in the same amount of time?”
I smiled at him still checking me out like my stomach wasn’t about to pop. He was convincing me, more with his face than his words, and really, I’d take any compliment anyone wanted to throw me these days. I wasn’t picky.
“I was trained in the ways of the Jedi, that’s how.” I gave up trying to pull and stretch my dress to tone down my stomach because that just wasn’t going to happen. The upside to my selection was that the material was light, which meant I’d stay cool when the dancing and music got crazy later on, as I knew it would with Garth and Josie at the party helm, and the neckline was cut low enough to just hint at my expanding chest. Maybe that would distract people from my stomach. It seemed to be working with my husband at least.
“How are you doing over there?” he asked when I shifted for the who-knows-how-many’th time. That glimmer dimmed from his eyes as I continued to adjust, and he helped me slide the pillow behind my lower back in an attempt to get comfortable.
“I’m doing so fabulous over here I can’t sit still.” I drew my leg up behind my lap and, surprisingly, found a comfortable position that way. In two minutes I’d be in agony again, but for right now, it was working.
“That’s it. I can’t do this again.” Jesse thumped the steering wheel with his palm as he made the turn to Garth and Josie’s. “We’re buying a new car before we leave. I won’t let you make another trip being so uncomfortable.”
He’d been saying that since month four, when the fidgeting and squirming started, and I’d managed to steer him away from the idea with reassurances that I was okay, that it wasn’t that bad, that I just needed to get out and stretch. After this trip though? I was close to agreeing with him.
I was just about to reply that maybe we could check out a few dealerships in town when I felt another one. A small, sharp exhale escaped my mouth as my arms wound around my stomach. I wasn’t sure what they were, but it felt as if someone had wrapped a thick rubber band around my stomach, stretched it out, then let it snap back into place. The sensation was sharp and sudden, and that one seemed to be more persistent that the ones I’d started feeling after downing my third taquito outside of Spokane. I hadn’t mentioned anything to Jesse about it because he probably would have whipped the truck around and sped right back to my doctor’s office, and that seemed like a lot of effort for something that was likely indigestion.
This one, though . . . this one felt as though there might have been more at work than just indigestion. Probably gas. I tried to shake it off, but Jesse wouldn’t let it go quite so easily.
“What’s the matter?” He parked Old Bessie at the front of a line of cars and twisted in his seat after cutting the engine.
“Too many taquitos.” I thumped my chest with my fist and tried to work up a burp to make it convincing. Of course when I really needed one, nada, but they sure didn’t mind plaguing me the minute I laid my head down at night.
“Rowen, I know that eyebrow twitch. Something’s wrong.” Jesse’s thumb tapped the center of my eyebrow, where I guessed the eyebrow was giving me away.
“The only something that’s wrong is that I really want to throw myself on your lap and ravage you until you’re a cross-eyed, stuttering mess, but that’s become a physical impossibility.” My hand patted my stomach. There was no way I could fit on his lap in my condition unless I wanted to wear a steering wheel dent in my back for the next couple of days.
“Rowen—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. The doctor says I shouldn’t do anything that would tax my heart too much, which you interpret to be anything and everything from lifting a fork to getting it on like Donkey Kong with my husband.” I unbuckled and reached for the door handle because I’d been de-nied so many times I didn’t know why I kept trying. Jesse would give me anything . . . as long as he wasn’t under the impression it would threaten my life.
“Hey, don’t go. You know I want to. I would if we could.” His hand dropped to my thigh as he scooted closer. “We just . . . can’t.”