Page 50 of Not Our First Rodeo
I pause for a moment, trying to think of how to explain it. “Butterfly wings.”
At the description, his eyes focus on my stomach. “Hey, little butterfly. It’s me, your daddy.”
My heart pitches in my chest, like I just jumped off a cliff. I think I can actually feel my ovaries sighing right now.
“Can you move for daddy, please?”
I swear the baby moves at the sound of his voice, and tears prick at my eyes at the feeling of it. “They moved,” I breathe.
A smile brighter than the sun breaks across his face. “Really?”
I nod, and I swear I see a sheen behind his eyes, but before I can get a good look, he presses his lips to the spot on my stomach. I can feel the heat of them through the thin fabric of my shirt.
“That’s my baby,” he says, like he’s cheering them on at a baseball game. “You’re perfect, just like your mom.”
My chest feels full enough to burst when he finally backs up, the feeling of his kiss still lingering on my stomach.
“Come on, let’s go see our baby.”
An hour and a half later, we’re climbing back into the truck with a clean bill of health and an envelope containing the gender of our baby in hand. I’m still in awe after watching our little baby move around on the screen during the ultrasound, knowing they were finally big enough for me to feel just a fraction of the movement.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
When the doctor asked if we wanted to know the baby’s gender in the office, take the results home, or stay in the dark altogether, Beau and I agreed that we wanted to know. But he surprised me by saying he wanted to take the results with us because he knew where he wanted to open them.
His smile is wide. “It’s a secret.”
He backs out of the parking spot and pulls onto the street, heading in the opposite direction of home. When we hit the open road, driving into the mountains, Beau rolls down the windows, letting the summer air in. Nineties country plays on the stereo. The smell of pine and wildflowers dances on the breeze. My little butterfly flutters in my stomach, as if they, too, are enjoying this perfect day as much as I am.
When Beau turns down a nondescript dirt road, I know exactly where he’s headed. A place we haven’t been to in years. A smile creeps onto my lips as he avoids rough patches in the dirt, narrowly avoiding the dense pine trees on either side. It’s a drive he probably could have made blindfolded at one point. It makes me both happy and sad to see that there are no longer any tire tracks in the dirt. Happy because that means that this place isstill just ours. Sad because it just goes to show how long it’s been since we were here. We’ve been back in Montana for a year now. This dirt road should show the wear of the visits we’ve made, but we haven’t, and the absence of it feels particularly acute.
Finally, Beau pulls the truck to a stop and backs up so the bed is facing the valley. There’s not even a designated spot, just a break in the trees that’s perfect to stop and look out at the wide valley below. Beyond, the mountains rise, tall and jagged. Trees surround us on every side and wildflowers that carry the scent of earth crop up beneath our tires.
The place feels like magic. It always has.
“Wait there,” Beau says, and hops out, coming to my side to help me down. My heart hammers in my chest at his touch, my throat thick with emotion.
When we round to the back of the truck, Beau releases the hatch, and then his hands find my hips and lift until I’m seated on the edge. Our eyes connect, and for a moment, it’s like time stills.
We’ve been here a thousand times before, and he’s always lifted me just like this. The first time we came here as teenagers, when he told me he’d found a place he wanted to show me. Dozens of times after, when we were dying to get away from our parents and the town, when we’d park and barely make it out of the truck before our hands and lips were on each other. The last time we were here, a few months before my injury, on a rare trip home during my off-season.
His hands flex on my hips, fingers digging in, and a part of me wants to pull him close, drag him up until he’s laying me down in the bed of this truck, covering me, erasing all the bad memories of the last year.
But I think we’re too far past that. I don’t think we can go anywhere but forward. And maybe I’m starting to realize I don’twantto forget it all. I want to remember every aching moment ofit, remember how good it feels now, knowing how painful it was then.
Beau backs up before I can move, pulling the envelope the doctor gave me out of his back pocket, and climbs up into the bed next to me. Our feet dangle, knocking together as we stare at the crinkled envelope.
“What do you want it to be?” I ask, my palm finding my bump, pressing the place where the baby is moving.
Beau slides his thumbnail beneath the lip of the envelope, flipping it up and down. “I’d be happy with either,” he says, and then his brown eyes lock on mine, the same color as the dirt beneath our feet. “But if I’m being totally honest, I want a girl. One just like you.”
My throat feels thick, and I want to cry at the sincerity in his eyes. His hair catches in the wind, blowing over his cheek, and before I can stop myself, I reach up and push it back.
His breath fans across my palm at the touch, his eyes closing, and his body seems to go both pliant and tight, like he’s sinking into the feeling, but ready to react to it at the slightest provocation. He’s always been like that, and it’s always fascinated me. I have visions of him, head tilted back, eyes closed, bottom lip caught between his teeth. I always thought I had him right where I wanted him, and then he’d flip, pin me down and show me I was never in as much control as I thought I was.
I want to tell him that I don’t want to have a girl like me. That I don’t want my child to be broken like me, to be incapable of being honest with the people they love, to isolate herself when she should let people in.
“I hope they’re like you, boy or girl,” I say, and it’s the truth. The world needs more Beaus.
