Page 85 of My Kind of Trouble
‘Sorry,’ the sonographer smiled. ‘I should have prewarned you it was cold.’
Alex took Noa’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze of reassurance as they sat in the small, dark room, waiting to see their baby on the screen.
He glanced around at the photos of cute, squishy babies that he could just make out on the wall, a reminder that he would have his very own soon. Awhooshing sound swept throughout the room as the sonographer began her checks, and Alex couldn’t stop his knee from bouncing with both nerves and excitement.
They were at the hospital for their anatomy scan. Unlike the previous scan, this one would tell them a lot more about the wellbeing of their baby. They’d also been told they’d get a much clearer picture than the first one they’d attended at around twelve weeks.
So much had changed since then. At twenty-one weeks, Noa’s little bump was showing now. He stared at it in utter bewilderment, unable to deny that there was a whole tiny human growing there, one that might have her eyes—he hoped—and his nose and be the perfect blend of them both. Though if he were honest with himself, he couldn’t really care less if this baby had only her features. Then he knew that they would only have the best part of the two of them, because she was his better half. She always had been, but it just took them a while to figure it out. As Noa stared enraptured by the screen, he watched her. She glowed from the inside out, and pregnancy had only magnified that.
How did he get so lucky? He still got this surreal feeling like this was all too good to be true, like he would wake up and it would’ve all be a dream. But, when she kissed the back of the hand that he held hers with and he stared into those beautiful blue eyes, he was brought back to his reality, and he felt like the luckiest son of a bitch alive.
As he was starting to get lost in just staring at her, the sound of galloping hooves filled the room. Both of their heads whipped to the screen in front of them. A monochrome, changing picture filled it. Alex squinted at what looked like a large peanut, just like it did last time, hence their new nickname for baby. This time however, they could make out long legs,feet and toes, two arms, hands and fingers. The flickering of something on the screen. They were told that was baby’s heart beating steadily.
Alex felt his own grow five sizes at the sight. Next to him, Noa sniffled. He looked down at her as she smiled at the screen. She had a fierce look of love and adoration in her eyes. Probably the same look he was wearing, because he knew that neither of them had felt anything quite this strong, especially not for someone they’d never met. He leant down and peppered little kisses across her forehead before brushing her lips with his.
‘I love you,’ he whispered.
‘I love you, too.’
After the scan they walked through the hospital heading toward his car. Noa gripped an envelope in her hand that felt like a hot potato. Towards the end of the scan, the sonographer had asked if they wanted to find out the sex of the baby. Alex had wanted to, and Noa had not. Not that it mattered what they were having, but Alex liked to prepare and had never been a fan of surprises. So, to him, it felt like a logical thing to do.
He knew, however, that Noa was working hard to give up an element of control in many ways over the last few months so as not to feed her anxious habits. And, despite all the life changes, she’d been in a good place lately, even after the awful pregnancy sickness she’d experienced, which seemed to have settled now. Keeping the sex a secret seemed to be one of the ways that she was demonstrating this, so as was always the way, he would give her what she wanted, because he never could say no to her.
Now that she was carrying his child, it had gotten worse. He was deluded if he thought he would ever say no to her or get his own way again. Just the other morning, he’d been due into work, but as he moved to get out of bed, she had pouted in that sexy way she did, and demanded that his ‘baby mama’, as she put it, needed an orgasm or two. She’d even batted her eyelashes, just to seal the deal. And how could he deny that? So, he’d gotten to work giving her exactly what she wanted, and the bar had ended up ‘closed for maintenance’ that day as they’d been unable to take their hands off each other. It was a hard life he lived.
As they reached the car, Noa tucked away the envelope in her bag, shooting him a playful smile. They’d come to the ‘compromise’ that the sonographer could write down their baby’s sex, and they would keep it hidden in case they changed their minds later.
And, if Alex knew his girl, she wouldn’t be able to keep a secret like that for long.
Finishing up with some last-minute paperwork in the office, Alex glared at the clock like it had caused him physical harm. It had only been four hours since he’d left Noa in what was now their flat to have a meeting with her new editor. She’d sat at the dinner table, a mug of decaf coffee in hand—to her dismay—with Tinks curled up in her lap as she spoke animatedly with a woman named Vanessa about her near-completed book.
The shoe was now on the other foot and, instead of helping other writers with their books, Noa was finally getting her own time to shine like she had always deserved.
These four hours of invoicing and spreadsheets, however, had felt more like fifteen, and not because of the mundane tasks, but because Alex was counting down every rotation of the clock until he’d be tucked up in bed beside her. He balanced his pen between his thumb and forefinger, impatiently tapping it against the mahogany wood of his desk. Time had been a bizarre construct ever since he and Noa found out they were having a baby. Five months had never been known to go by so slow and, yet, so fast in equal measure.
Noa still hadn’t broken when it came to finding out the sex, despite his various persuasion methods. And every moment seemed to have been filled with some sort of planning, whether that be implementing the insane amount of baby-proofing the internet recommended in the flat, or needing some kind of instruction manual to navigate the baby aisle in the shops they now regularly visited.
Luckily for him, his baby mama was in her element when it came to planning, and though she’d let go of control in many ways since their travels, this was a time they both welcomed that side of her personality. And when they’d been talking about everything they needed, Alex suggested ‘making a list’, and Noa’s response had very quickly been ‘don’t threaten me with a good time’. To which Alex had almost definitely shown her a very good time.
But, after picking up practically two of everything anyone could everpotentiallyneed when having a baby, Alex was tasked with preparing The Brew for his planned paternity leave.
He sat, scrolling through all the ‘how to’ guides he’d developed for Bella when she agreed to take over running the place. He’d included everything he could think of, despite thefact that she’d been working for him long enough now and could probably do his job better than him.
Maybe Noa was rubbing off on him, but The Brew was his first baby and, despite knowing it was in good hands, he wanted to be prepared. Because there was one life-changing event that he knew nothing could prepare him for. And that was stepping into the role of ‘Dad’.
Alex’s initial fears of becoming a father had ebbed recently, proving the cliché that time really did heal old wounds. Every day that he was the receiver of Noa’s beautiful smile showed him that he deserved to be. And every day he made her laugh, or held her whilst she cried, every way he showed up for her, had gradually began to silence the voice that for too long had convinced him he would one day step into his father’s shoes.
He knew now that he would never become him, because there was nothing in this world he wouldn’t do for Noa or their child growing inside her. Noa had helped heal that part of him, and he would forever be grateful to the strong, tenacious woman he now got to share his life with. She loved him in a way he never knew he needed.
The hinges of his office door squeaked as they opened and closed, followed by hurried footsteps. Alex glanced up from his laptop to see Bella leaning against a bookshelf, biting her lip in that way Noa did when she was nervous about something.
But he’d never seen Bella nervous about anything. She usually wore cold indifference on her face more than anything else. Occasionally irritation. Or exasperation.
Never worry.
Alex had employed her because he’d connected to this woman who wore a front for the world to see. Who hid heremotions in a locked box after a lifetime of feeling like there was no other way.
She’d never directly told him that, but he’d recognised it, as someone one and the same. The guarded look in her eyes had told him everything he needed to know, and he’d wanted to give her a place to fall. After all, before Noa, The Brew had been that for him, too, for a while.
