That Baby (36 page)

He kisses me. “I think you’re right. I’ll try to keep you happy. You try to keep me happy. And we’ll be fine.”

I nod. “I love you, Phillip.”

“I love you too. Speaking of that, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Like what?”

He grabs my hand. “Let’s walk home and we can talk.”

“Okay,” I say as we head back to the path.

“So, I was thinking about getting you a new car.”

“Why? My car is only a few years old.”

Phillip looks up at the sky. “Um, I was just thinking a bigger car would be nice. You take the dog everywhere. We’ll have a baby seat and all that stuff soon.”

“If you’re trying to talk me into a minivan, it’s not going to happen. I’m only twenty-three. I’m not ready for that.”

“I was thinking of a SUV. You seemed to like driving Mr. D’s when you had it, didn’t you?”

“Are you saying you want to buy me a Mercedes? Um, okay. But what if I got a convertible instead?”

“That sort of defeats the purpose of a bigger car.”

“I like my car, Phillip. Maybe you should get an SUV.”

“Fine. I looked up the crash ratings on your car. It’s not as safe as it could be.”

“Is this about my dream the other night?”

“Maybe. Kind of. It just got me thinking. What if it was a premonition, Jadyn?”

His calling me Jadyn stops me in my tracks. “You told me all my wedding disaster dreams didn’t mean anything.”

“You weren’t pregnant then.”

“You’re being silly,” I tell him. “I’ll be fine. It was just a stupid dream.” God forbid I tell him about the river of blood. He’d probably buy me an ark.

“Princess, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t argue with me about this. Would you just come look at the Audi and the Mercedes? Surely, you want to keep our baby as safe as possible, don’t you?”

“Can we even afford it?”

“Sometimes it’s not about the money, Jadyn.”

I guess I can’t argue with that.

July 14th

Kicked out of the neighborhood.

Two days later, on Saturday morning, there’s a shiny new black SUV sitting in my driveway.

Danny comes wandering over to check it out. “Nice,” he whistles. “You trade in the Beemer?”
 

“No, Phillip got to keep his sports car. I got the mom car.”

“This is hardly a mom car,” Danny says. “Horsepower of three twenty-nine. It’s got some get up and go.”

“And one of the highest crash test ratings,” I tell Danny.
 

“That’s smart,” Danny says. “You’ll have some precious cargo in there pretty soon.”

Phillip comes up behind me, wraps his arms around my shoulders, and kisses the side of my face. “I already have precious cargo.”

And, yeah, that makes me melt. I lean my head back into his chest. “I’m teasing about it being a mom car. I think it’s beautiful.”

“Plus, you look hot driving it,” Phillip whispers. “Course, you’d look hot driving anything.”

“Okay, you two.” Danny rolls his eyes. “No sex in the driveway. We don’t want you getting kicked out of the neighborhood already.”

Phillip and I laugh.
 

“How’s Devaney doing today?” I ask.
 

“She’s asleep,” Lori says, sneaking up from behind us, baby monitor in hand. “Phillip, did you get a new car?”

“I got this for JJ,” he says to her. “I knew it would take something really nice to get her to trade her car in.”

“A Mercedes. Well, aren’t you a spoiled brat?” Lori says to me. She says it in a way that’s supposed to be funny, but there’s a bite to her voice.

“I got it because it’s one of the safest SUVs on the market,” Phillip tells Lori. “Not because of the brand.”
 

“That’s so sweet of you,” she says. “Danny, have you ever checked the safety rating for my car?”

“Uh . . .” Danny stutters.

“Your Altima has a good rating,” Phillip interjects.
 

She purses her lips and nods her head. “Lucky me.”

“Plus, I just bought a boat,” Danny announces.

“You did what?!” Lori says. It’s obvious she knew nothing about it.

“I bought a boat. I was just coming over here to see if Phillip could go to the dealership with me. Then I thought I would surprise you with it, Lori. It’s a gorgeous day. We can get out and enjoy it.”

“You want to take our newborn on a
boat
?” Lori asks incredulously.

“She’s almost three months old. The couple up the street have a two-month old and they take him on their boat. They say that he sleeps—well, like a baby. I thought it might be a way for us to get out of the house.”

“I’ll have to do some research on whether or not it’s even safe,” Lori says. Devaney makes a little sniffle noise over the monitor, and Lori rushes into the house.

Danny shakes his head. “I can’t win.”

“Danny, if you make a big purchase, it’s probably a good idea to tell your wife about it,” Phillip suggests.

“It was supposed to be a fun surprise.” He runs his hand across the hood of my car. “You know, she commented the other day about how all the other players’ wives have luxury cars. Couldn’t you have gotten Jay a nice safe Toyota or something? Although, I’ll be damned if I’m getting her one until she starts leaving the house. You know she’s started ordering groceries online. She’s paranoid the baby will catch a germ.”

“Maybe you should take her out on a date,” Phillip suggests.

“That’s why I bought the boat, people. It was supposed to be the best of both worlds. Baby sleeps. We can relax, talk, and reconnect.”

“Maybe we could all go out in it,” I suggest. “That would be fun. Or we could watch the baby while you go out.”

“Let’s all go,” Danny says.

Danny and Phillip pick up the boat, get it pulled up to the dock in front of their house and, by some miracle, Lori has agreed to go out. Devaney is safely strapped into her baby carrier, which is set on the floor of the pontoon in the shade. Danny wrapped a life jacket around the top of the handle, so in the unlikely event that the carrier gets knocked into the water, it won’t sink to the bottom.

Danny cruises around in the boat for a bit and once Devaney is lulled to sleep, he stops in a calm cove, drops the anchor, and pops open a couple beers, tossing one to Phillip.
 

I strip off my tee and shorts. “Let’s get in the water!”
 

Phillip grabs my hand and together we jump off the swim deck. “Ahhh! That’s cold!”

Danny dive bombs right in between us. “This is awesome,” he says. “Come on, Lori. Get in.”

“I’ll pass,” she says. “I’m afraid my body is not swimsuit ready yet.”

“Who cares,” Danny says. “It’s just us.”

“I care, Danny,” she says in a snotty tone.

As I get back into the boat, she looks me up and down. “I never would have worn a bikini when I was pregnant.”

“I think she’s beautiful,” Phillip says, rubbing his hand across my belly.

“I don’t mean this in a bad way,” Danny says, “But your stomach doesn’t seem that big.”

Lori rolls her eyes.

“The doctor says because I’m tall the baby has more room lengthwise. We just had a third ultrasound and the baby’s right on target.”

“I like how you’ve been posting pictures of your bump with the chalkboard that shows how far along you are,” Danny says. “We’ll have to do that for the next one, Lori.”

“Do you want to wait a while to have another or have them close together?” Phillip asks them.

“I can’t even think about that right now,” Lori says.

“That makes sense,” I say, trying to be nice. “I think I’d like our kids fairly close together, but that’s all just a theory at this point. Babies are obviously a lot of work. I can’t even believe how much Devaney has grown already though. She’s beautiful.”

“She’s really developing a little personality too,” Danny says. “That’s the fun part. When she smiles, she just melts my heart. My new goal in life is to make her laugh.”

“When do they start doing that?” I ask.

“Three to four months,” Lori says. “And Devaney is very advanced, so I’m sure it will be very soon.”

Danny tosses Phillip another beer. “Lori, you want one?”

“I’m nursing,” she says, like he’s an idiot.

“I thought you could pump and dump?” Danny counters.

“Do we even want to know what that means?” Phillip asks with a laugh.

“It’s when you pump breast milk out and throw it away. Lots of women do it when they want to drink, but don’t want to pass alcohol along to the baby,” Danny replies, holding out a beer for Lori, who declines.

“That’s awesome,” I say. “I’m totally doing that. I can’t wait to drink again.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

`

Dear Baby Mac,
 

You’re 17 inches tall and weighing in at around 3 lbs. You’re not going to grow that much more in length (only a few inches), but as we get closer to your birth you’re going to pack on the pounds at a rate of a half a pound per week.
 

Since your dad can feel you kick all the time now, he’s starting to freak out a little.
 

The good news is, I got a really gorgeous new car out of the deal. I’ve been complaining a little about
losing
my two-door sports car, but I freaking love this SUV. It’s luxurious, sleek, and even has heated seats, which I can’t wait to use this winter.
 

Your dad bought us the safest car he could find, because he says we are his most precious cargo.

Which is really pretty sweet.
 

He’s also having our home security system redone. We used to have basic door alarms but he’s adding glass break detectors to all the windows and something that detects if they are opened.
 

(Poor child, you’ll never be able to sneak out at night.)
 

He also made them add a cellular uplink, so in case someone ever cut our phone lines the alarm would still go off.
 

He also has baby-proofed the house.
 

This is something you typically don’t do until your little bundle of joy starts to become mobile.
 

But we now have covers over all the outlets and annoying little latches on the cabinets. I guess the good news is when you do start moving around, we’ll be ahead of the curve.
 

Angel is getting bigger and bigger. I can’t believe how fast she is growing. She doesn’t look like my little baby puppy anymore. She loves to go jogging with us and whines and sits by the garage door when it’s time to go to work.
 

Mostly, she likes to go to work because Peggy brings her
Chick-fil-A
biscuits every morning. The other day, it was pretty funny. Angel puked the biscuits up all over Peggy’s purse. I thought she’d get upset, but she wiped it off, called her a little minx, and then gave her a cookie.