Page 139 of Rapunzel Is Losing It

“Just try it.”

“This never would have happened without you, you know?”

“I know.”

I grabbed the cup and held the straw up to her lips. She huffed but finally gave in, taking a small sip. Then cautiously another one. Until her hands folded over mine and she greedily gulped down half the cup.

“Slow down,” I chuckled.

“It’s the mint. The mint is good,” she whispered, eyes closed.

“Good. Just give it a minute to settle.”

“I never really saw myself going on a honeymoon - but this has to be close to the worst case scenario. We’re not at the beach. I’m sick all the time. And we’re not even having crazy newlyweds sex.”

“We’ll go to the beach next year,” I promised.

“And then we still won’t be having crazy newlyweds sex, because we’ll be up all night feeding the baby. Plus, we won’t be newlyweds anymore.”

She’d spent weeks preparing for the private island honeymoon. It was going to be her first tripoutsidesince Paris last year. Instead, her first trip had been to the hospital because two weeks before the wedding, she’d been unable to stop throwing up.

We’d postponed the party, but we still got married on paper. Partially for the baby. Mostly because we just didn’t want to wait.

“You want to have crazy newlyweds sex? We can have sex right now.”

“I promise you, the second your dick presses against my insides, I’m throwing up again.”

“Come here.” I set aside the pink smoothie cup and pulled her back against my chest. One hand on her stomach, I used theother to massage her palm. I’d learned more about acupressure in the last few weeks than I ever thought possible. The constant discomfort had her on edge more often than not, but hit a few pressure points and Cordelia was humming and melting against me. “Feel better?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You won’t miss out on anything. We have time. This is just delaying us by few months. And then we’ll have a beautiful baby, with your gorgeous eyes, and my mother’s red hair, and tiny hands and tiny feet. And we’ll take them to the beach, let them dip their toes in the ocean, and we’ll build sandcastles. Or whatever it is families do at the beach.”

“We’re having ababy.” She tilted head, nudging my chin with her nose. “I mean, I knew that’s what was happening. Condom breaks, get knocked up, have a kid. But it’s an actual child, like, a little human person.”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to be afamily. We can play ball in the backyard, and read picture books, and have birthday parties. We can do watercolors at the kitchen table and hang pictures on the fridge and sing lullabies. We can do all of that.” Cordelia sat up straight and turned to me. When she sniffled, I brought my hand to her face just in time to catch a tear with my thumb. “Happy tears,” she quickly clarified.

I leaned in to kiss her, tasting the salt on her lips. “We’re going to be a boring married couple with a house, a cat and a baby.”

“We get to be boring now,” she whispered and kissed me again, smiling against my lips, “perfectly boring.”

“Perfectly boring,” I agreed.

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