Page 207 of The Moment We Know

“Peeing is different. It’s …” she trailed off, not knowing how to explain it. “I mean, I’ve never seen you pee.”

“Do you want to?”

She elbowed him again. “No. And you’re missing my point. Seeing someone else pee is really personal. I wouldn’t want you to see me pee—”

“I have, though.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Yes, I have.” He chuckled softly. “That night in the hospital, you didn’t want to wait for a nurse to help you, so you made me take you into the bathroom and help you pee.”

Searching her memory bank, she came up empty. “I don’t remember any of that. I must have been really out of it.”

“You were. And it was a little awkward at the time, given the circumstances,” he admitted. “But the part where I was in charge of pulling down your little black lace panties, then pulling them back up was the hardest thing to get through.”

Her eyes widened in the dark. “Please tell me you’re lying.”

This time his chuckle was a little louder. “I’m not lying. How else would I know what your panties looked like?”

“Oh, my God. I’m so embarrassed.”

“No need to be. It was kind of a pivotal moment for me.”

His voice had dropped and she could hear the subtle shift in his tone. So, mere seconds later, when he pressed against her a little more firmly, letting her feel his erection, she wasn’t surprised.

“Are you … hard?” she asked, as if unsure.

“Mm hmm. Blame it on those little black lace panties that I’m picturing in my head.” He shifted slightly so he could now murmur in her ear, “Do you think you can be quiet?”

She knew he was asking because of Jacob sleeping just down the hall and also because of her reluctance to even make-out on Thanksgiving when Jacob was napping. She’d felt weird then, but knew she’d have to get used to fooling around with a child in the picture (albeit when that child was asleep), so she decided now was as good a time as any to start.

“I can be quieter than Marshmallow,” she said. “Is that good enough?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

Chapter 82

As David was leaving the grocery store with Jacob, he stopped at the long row of small toy, trinket, and candy vending machines, his attention immediately captured by the one on the end. David sighed heavily. Usually, they could make a clean escape, but not this time.

Stopping next to Jacob, David saw that Jacob was transfixed by what appeared to be new merchandise in one of the machines—brightly colored, miniature rubber balls mixed in with little plastic, bubble-shaped capsule (David didn’t know what the hell they were called), containing everything from fake spiders to cheap rings.

“Can I get a bouncy ball?” Jacob pleaded, right on cue. “Please?”

David’s knee-jerk reaction was to say ‘No’, but decided to fork over the quarter, instead. His excitement off the charts, Jacob put the quarter in and cranked on the metal knob, then lifted the metal flap underneath. Instead of one of the bright bouncy balls, there was a plastic bubble capsule, with a ring inside it.

Jacob’s expression crumpled into such disbelief and disappointment as he stared down at the ring with a pink stone in his hand that David almost laughed. “You can give it to Paige,” he suggested, trying to put a positive spin on things. “She’ll really like it.”

“Okay. But can I try again?”

David handed him another quarter, and Jacob got another ring, this time with a purple stone.

While Jacob glared at the machine, David gazed at the two rings as a small shiver went up his spine. “I think the universe is trying to tell me something,” he murmured, a plan starting to take shape.

David dug out his last quarter and handed it to Jacob. “Last one, Little Man,” he warned. “Make it count.”

This time, when Jacob opened the metal flap, there was a bright yellow bouncy ball.

At home, David told Jacob he could give Paige his ring when she arrived, and David was going to wait until after dinner to give her the other one. With that part of the plan out of the way, David then took the engagement ring he’d gotten for Paige and switched it with the fake, purple-stone ring in the bubble capsule. Then, feeling more nervous than he thought he would, he started preparing a nice dinner to go along with the Tiramisu he’d bought at the store, as well as Paige’s favorite red wine. By the time she arrived, his nerves were rather frayed, not even helped by the two fingers of Knob Creek he’d thrown back.

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