Page 4 of The Baby
He was grumbling something under his breath, and I heard another goat cheese comment and smiled. Jake was without a doubt the hottest man I knew. Yes, even hotter than Cody, but that was probably because I loved him. But when he was all riled up, that just made my heartflutter.
I made my way toward him and started to snuggle into him. He resisted at first—because I could tell he wanted to be mad at me because we had four does, one devilish ram, and no goat cheese—but at the end of the day Jake didn’t have it in him to hold a grudge. Notagainstme.
I kissed his chin, then hischeek.
“Don’t think this argument is over,” he saidgruffly.
“Not even a little bit. I promise, I’ll read up on it again. At least the milk isn’t going towaste.”
“Yeah, you know why? Because Frank at the diner is making goatcheese.”
I smiled as soon as his arms came around me. For a second I just basked in the glow of thinking how lucky we were. It was him andmeand…
Maybe I should have told him then. That he was going to be a dad. He’d been so excited thelasttime…
Which of course made me freeze up. Because as excited as he’d been was as devastated he’d been when welostit.
“Ellie? Whatisit?”
“Nothing,” I said tightly. Of course it was something, but not something I was ready toshare.
“Ellie…” Jake said in the way he did when he knew I was stuck inmyhead.
I shook him off. “Really, I’m good. Just a bad thought is all. I’m going to round upsomeeggs.”
Jake nodded. One of the five thousand things I loved about him was that he knew when to push me and when tobackoff.
“Hey, put some together for Rich and Cody. We’ve already got more than we can eat in thefridge.”
“Yep.” I gave him another kiss on the cheek and stopped by the goat pen to say hello to my cuties. Then I went about my chores, the whole time wondering how exactly I was going totellhim.
2
Jake
Ellie was acting funny.I knew it, and for a few days I backed off and gave her space, but now she was officiallyworryingme.
“Are you mad?” she asked me as we lay togetherinbed.
“Am I mad because you don’t want to have sex with me? No, Ellie. Ofcoursenot.”
It was late, we had gone to bed at our normal time. I usually went up first because I got up earlier than she did. But not long after me, she’d come upstairs and had changed into her pajama bottoms and yoga tank. I was still up, in more ways then one, but then she’d turned her back on me and said she wasn’t feeling ittonight.
Then she asked me if I was mad about that, which was ridiculous. That wasn’t something a man should ever get madabout.
No, I wasn’t mad so much as I was… confused. A little-known fact I do not share with anyone… my wife is a horn dog. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but not by much. She liked sex and she liked itoften.
Yes. I realized this classified me as the luckiest manalive.
However, for the past few nights she’d been putting me off. If it was her period, she would usually tell me, but these past few nights it was more of anI don’t feel likeitvibe.
The idea of Ellie suddenly no longer being into me like that was a little jarring and quite frankly worrying. This was our marriage. This was for life. What if I was the one who had stopped pleasing her? What if I was boring her in bed? I thought our sex life was hotter than a volcano, but what if she…didn’t?
I had been doing this married stuff for three years, and I can tell you it does not get any easier. Because no matter how much you know someone, no matter how much you think you can predict what they are going to do and say in any given moment, you can’t actually readtheirmind.
Fortunately I didn’t have to read Ellie’s mind. Because this was something we could talk about. Ellie and I weretalkers.
“Ellie… if something is wrong with… I mean if I’m not doing somethingyou…need…”
