Page 49 of Prayers for the Prickly

I wasn’t halfway up when I heard him on the staircase behind me. A warm, fluttery sensation filled my belly as I thought about how wonderful it would be to fall asleep clutching his arm, rather than a blanket I’d cursed every night for not being him.

Chapter 19

Gregor

“Your instincts were correct. You are, indeed, pregnant.”

Silence met the doctor’s announcement, as August and I stared into each other’s eyes, his voice in the back of my head crackling with a wide array of thoughts and emotions.

“I…” his voice began before trailing off.

We’re gonna be papas,I thought back, just to see the look on his face.

A soft grin lifted his lips and he nodded. “Papas, I like that. So, like Papa Gregor and Papa August.”

“Something tells me we we’ll end up with several evolutions of names before we get there. Gregor is going to wind up being Gre-Gre, you just mark my words, and August is going to become Auggie at some point and when it does I doubt I’ll be able to resist calling you that, too.”

“Papa Auggie will not happen, I hate being called Auggie,” he murmured out loud as the physician chuckled, and suggested we write down any questions that arose between now and our next visit so she could answer them for us when we came in.

Something told me we’d have a ton of them.

“We’ll love every evolution,” I said, squeezing his hand.

“As long as it’s not Auggie,” he replied as I slipped my arm around him.

“Just remember to take some time to process and read the pamphlets I’m sending home with you. There is some great information there that might provide the answers to a few things you might find yourself curious about,” he said.

I took them and tucked them in my backpack when August looked too dazed to hold out his hand. I felt like I was moving on autopilot as I guided him outside and down the boardwalk to the steps that led down to the sand.

With our arms around one another, we just walked for a little while and listened to the soft sound of the surf.

“We’re going to be papas,” he said, repeating my words from the office. “Do you think we should start telling people yet, or wait until I start showing?”

“I’m okay with telling people whenever you are,” I replied. “But I don’t think we have to rush into it just because we know. We can always take the time to process it before we’re faced with people who want to ask us about it.”

“That’s a good idea, let’s do that,” he replied as he pressed closer to my side. “You’re still going to make the furniture right, the way you were talking about when you were on the ship?”

“Yup, I plan to carve everything for their room, once we decide what features we’d like in the nursery. I can draw up our ideas, too, to give us a visual of what the nursery will look like before we start setting things up. That way we can tweak things and determine which space would be best to set up in.”

“Would you be willing to sacrifice your drafting space and move it to the second level so that we can have the babies on the third floor with us or will we need to move the bedroom down to the second level?”

His words came out fast, blurted and nearly tripped over in his rush to get them all out before I interrupted him. I almost had, swiftly and with the utmost firmness, to tell him that wasn’t going to happen.

I checked myself when I thought about how inconvenient it would be to have to go up and down the stairs to check on the babies. Our rooms needed to be on the same level of the house. I’d rather move my drafting space downstairs than the bedroom. The third floor was the perfect sleeping space and one of the major features that had contributed to me buying the place.

“We can do that,” I said. “I’ll get one of my brothers to come over and help me bring them down and get them set up in that room with all the shelves with nothing on them. It’s got good natural light and enough space for each of the tables. I might as well turn that into my office.”

“It might be good for you, to not sleep in the same space as you work anymore,” August said. “You don’t even hesitate to head straight for one of your drawing tables and slip in at least a half hour of work every time you get up to go to the bathroom.”

“It always takes me a little time to fall back to sleep anyway,” I explained. “I hadn’t realized you’d noticed. You always look out of it when I wake up.”

“More like I wake a little, notice, and roll over grumbling,” August informed me. “And it still takes you a little time to wind down once you’re in bed. All going over to a drafting board does is add additional time before you get to the wind down time and keeps you up longer.”

“I stand chastised and rebuked and will try to refrain from slipping a bit of work in when I’m supposed to be sleeping.”

“Thank you, otherwise you’ll start finding me down in the kitchen mixing up candy jewelry boxes and filling them with little candy rings, necklaces and bracelets.”

He froze the moment the words left his mouth, which meant I stopped walking and turned to face him as he blinked and cocked his head.

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