Page 123 of Own the Eights Maybe Baby
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Jordan
“You should try calling your mom,” Jordan said, then took a sip of his chocolate-flavored protein shake as Georgie entered the kitchen.
He took the pineapple muffins out of the oven, then poured her a glass of pineapple juice as she headed for the table.
She blew out a weary breath. “That was quite a feat.”
“What was?” he asked, returning the juice to the fridge.
“Crossing the room,” she deadpanned.
He met her at their compact kitchen table, then pulled out a chair for her. She sank into it, her charm bracelet jangling as she settled in, then kicked her bare feet up onto an adjacent chair. With the morning sun streaming in through the kitchen window, the rays highlighted the copper and chestnut in the tendrils that fell from her messy bun. He stared at this remarkable woman. Clocking in at thirty-eight weeks pregnant, she couldn’t have been more beautiful. That pregnancy glow was the real deal. With her hair piled on top of her head and her hands resting on her belly, he could make a sport out of admiring his wife.
The soon-to-be mother of his child.
He’d understood the biology of having a baby, but bearing witness to the changes in his wife’s body had made him sure of one thing.
Women were a hell of a lot stronger than men.
By a mile.
Probably more.
Sure, he could flip a six-hundred-pound tractor tire. But that lasted seconds. Georgie was saddled with the weight of making a baby twenty-four seven. That took balls—no, not balls—a damn powerful uterus. If, in some far-off dimension, a pair of balls challenged a uterus to a fight, his money would be on the uterus, hands down.
Jesus! People always say it’s the pregnant women who have strange, vivid dreams, but he was living proof fathers-to-be could have some whack-a-do observations of their own.
On the baby front, after the gender reveal debacle, they’d stuck to their—well, mostly Georgie’s choice—and decided not to learn the baby’s gender.
Yeah, he was good with it.
Okay, maybe good was a misleading characterization.
Now, mere days before he was due to become a father, he understood the plight of the men he’d met in the noisy part of the waiting room at the obstetrician’s office.
In a strange daze a few nights ago, he’d crept out of the bedroom, after Georgie had fallen asleep, and worked a little obsessive pre-parent baby magic on the computer.
Had he broken down and possibly added their unborn child to the wait-list for the Denver baby NFL?
Yes, yes, he did.
Had he also gone down another strange rabbit hole after a few clicks and descended upon the world of toddler trombone lessons?
Was their child on the wait-list for that, as well?
Yes, but only because he had to list a gender on the baby NFL registration page. He’d ticked the boy box and then felt like an absolute asshat because, of course, a baby girl should have an equal shot at the baby NFL. What kind of father wouldn’t want the same for his daughter? So, he’d switched the baby NFL to girl, and then chose boy for the trombone classes.
It was completely illogical, but it gave him a strange sense of security.
Very strange.
At least he was doing something—even if thissomethingcould be considered a prerequisite for admittance into a psychiatric facility.
If Georgie freaked out and put the kibosh on the idea, they’d only be out the deposits. And even though he knew Thad and Briana, two doctors he trusted, weren’t on board with all the baby-this and baby-that classes, a drive inside him implored him to do more. Here, Georgie was carrying the baby and working and blogging and doing a damn good job pretending like she wasn’t upset about the fallout with her mom. Sure, he’d taken over doing the laundry, cooking, and cleaning, but that seemed a far cry from the full-time job of growing a human.
Georgie stared at the muffin and the glass of pineapple juice he’d set in front of her and sighed.
