Page 14 of The Baby
“Hey Ellie. Hey Cody.” Jake came in the barn, leading Wyatt. He’d already pulled the saddle off and he was going to want to rubhimdown.
“Hey, babe,”Isaid.
“Shoveled out the goat pen as much as I could,” Cody reported to Jake. “That ram only lets me in his space forsolong.”
Jake huffed out a laugh. “Don’t Iknowit.”
“Gary is misunderstood,” I told them. “You just need to talk to him a bit. Let him know he’swanted.”
Jake came over and planted a kiss on my lips. He wasn’t much for PDA, but he’d been long gone when I woke up this morning so this was the first time he was seeing me today. The first time Jake saw me each and every day he greeted me with a kiss. That had stopped because he never knew how my stomach was doing. I was happy to be back to our normalroutine.
“Babe, I hate to break it to you, but that goat is not wanted. Now that he’s knocked up all his does, I’m thinking we should sell him for meat and end this goat milk business once andforall.”
“Jake Talley, Gary isnotmeat!”
“Yet,” hemuttered.
“I heard that,” Igrumbled.
“I’ll let you two duke it out,” Cody said by way ofgoodbye.
Jake went about putting Wyatt in his stall and rubbing him down while I continued to chatter with Petunia. In many ways being married was a strange thing. I remembered thinking at the beginning how great it was. Like the happy ending was here and nothing would ever be awkward or weird between Jake and me for the rest of ourlives.
But that’s how these last few weeks had felt. Like we were stepping around each other without really talking to eachother.
Which sucked. I didn’t like there to be any distance between us, but in some ways I also didn’t see what there was to talk about. I was afraid for obvious reasons, which he knew. He thought I needed to come to terms with it better, whichIknew.
See? Any more conversation seemedpointless.
I needed to deal with things in my own way and he needed to dealwithme.
There was that other topic I wanted to bring up. The one that probably wasn’t going to be any fun, but I thought it was important. Maybe he would see it as a good sign I was at least thinking about thefuture.
Done with Wyatt, Jake made his way over to me and gave Petunia anoserub.
“How you feelingtoday?”
“Pretty good, but I don’t want tojinxit.”
“You and the jinxing,” he muttered. “How about this? In celebration of a few puke-free days, why don’t we head into town this Friday and get dinner at the diner. You haven’t been off this ranch in weeks. You must be going stircrazy.”
I was, but the reason I hadn’t been anxious to head in to town was because of the b-word bump that was now pretty obvious. So other than grocery store trips dressed in my baggiest clothes and my monthly checkup, I had stayedputhere.
“Okay. I… uh… well I’m going need to get some clothes too. Like today, because I can’t really fit into anything but these leggings anymore. We might have to go toJefferson.”
His eyes lit up and he smiled in that way he does when he’s really pleased with something. Me needing bigger clothes was enough to make Jake happy. He was such asentimentalsap.
Then he put on his serious face because was trying to be considerate of my scaryfeelings.
“Okay. I’ll tell Cody we’re taking off and we’ll go to Jefferson.Toshop.”
I nodded. I thought again about the conversation I wanted to have with him, but it could wait. I knew having it was going to make him angry, and there was no point in ruining his good mood when I had just made himhappy.
It could wait. Although not for long. I put my hand over the bump of my stomach and thought maybe, just maybe this was all really happening. Which meant we neededaplan.
5
Jake
