CHAPTER652
“Take it easy” Arrick guides me from the car towards our building and towards home. We have been shopping, last minute nesting items as it gets crazy close to my due date and I am so done with being pregnant. I’m like New York’s answer to Free Willy and my feet are like long lost sisters I maybe will see one day again. A woman cuts in front of me aggressively as I reach for the door handle and knocks me over into him as Arrick almost takes her head off.
“Watch the fuck where you’re going.” He snaps at her and I look back at him in surprise at his non-typical response to another human. He’s been tetchy as hell since we got into my last month, antsy, nervous and overkill in protective mode. Today he is having a bad day, because I have been having a bad day and he is trying to not lose his shit with me over it.
Me… I’m suffering every day and absolutely despise this endless growing rounder and waiting. Whoever said pregnancy was beautiful, lied. It’s a nonstop cycle of peeing, starving, aching, peeing, crying, aching, and eating. I can’t sleep because nothing is comfortable and Arrick is against me using him as an acrobatic shaped comforter I can plump to fit around me anymore. So, I am tired all the time and napping in the day is worse.
I want to ram hard objects in everyone’s face who feel they have a right to walk up to me in the street and lay hands on my stomach. Strangers seem to think it’s highly appropriate to touch random pregnant women and I swear I have thought about ‘tasering and macing’ a lot of people in the last seven months. So much so I asked Arrick to buy me some sort of weapon for self-defense and he looked at me like ‘Yeah … Not a chance.’
Arrick too, has to resist the temptation to snap people’s wrists and we are both so fed up with the way complete strangers feel it’s okay to come and say how it’s good luck to caress my bump or want to guess the sex or how far on I am. It’s weird. People are weird and now I understand why Jake turns into a psycho who then bans Emma from coming to the city when she is full bump.
Arrick the normally laid-back people lover has turned into another Carrero Psycho, bristling for a fight with anyone who gets within ten feet of his future offspring. I have become a people hater too and every time someone asks me when I’m due, how far on, what sex it is… I eyeroll so hard my eyes might actually get stuck in the back of my head.
Arrick’s staff on his floor have been told that when I come to go for lunch with him, if they dare mention anything to do with my impending roundness in any way shape or form, he will fire them. Or well, I’ll make him fire them. That is how done with this I am and if I could will myself to push it out already, I would have done it.
One good thing about all of this though. After Amanda inadvertently walked in on Arrick and I having really awkward sex on his desk during one of my horny bouts of ‘I need sex right now’ during a lunchtime visit, she resigned. Well not right away. I guess she didn’t want to make it obvious she was doing it for that reason, but Emma told me the PA grapevine was that she realized her Boss crush was never going to improve and catching him screwing his pregnant wife at work drove it home that he really isn’t going to be single anytime soon.
I may have done a happy dance when he told me she quit and Arrick may have sighed, shook his head and tried to pretend he didn’t see me high fiving myself stupendously. I asked him if he felt bad that she caught us having sex, and his answer was…
“I was more annoyed that she interrupted us, and we had to stop.” Says it all really; he knows which woman he should be keeping happy.
Good riddance to bad smells.
His new PA is like fifty and could play Mrs. Doubtfire. in a remake. It’s kind of weird but she’s worked in Carrero Corp since Moses times apparently and does the job well. Although a part of me and well, maybe because Jake hinted at it, believe Arrick picked a PA that wouldn’t cause him anymore grief.
Good boy.
The ignorant woman doesn’t even look back and Arrick comes around me to open the door and guide me inside while carrying the three thousand bags of stuff I had to buy in the city. We don’t brave actual shopping much as we tend to order online so I went a little overboard when faced with rows of baby things I hadn’t seen before.
Emma calls it nesting… Jake calls it distraction, Arrick calls it impulse buying and killing his credit cards. My mom told him that marriages stay happy when men don’t make a fuss over credit card bills.
I happen to agree.
Personally, I also happen to think we need crystal baby bootee sun catchers hanging over the crib and little matching diaper bags for our diaper genie in pretty pastels, all twenty colors of them.
The vanity that is getting delivered might not actually fit in the baby’s room, but it would possibly work in the hall, or middle of the apartment if it doesn’t. I could disguise it with a plant or maybe add some chairs and tell him it’s a breakfast bar, but I just had to have it. It had unicorn handles.
The apartment is done… Baby room ready, baby proofed home; a lot of our ‘stuff’ has either gone into storage or been donated so we can remove anything ‘Ouchy’ for little tiny crawlers. I had to give up my sewing room for a nursery for the time being but Arrick has plans to move us in a year or two to Jake’s old apartment a few blocks away when I need my space back. It’s a lot bigger than ours and a straight swap makes more sense as he rarely uses it. We didn’t want to start off there though, we want to enjoy our new family in familiar surroundings.
I feel like we have got life together so much in the last few months and despite the fact my school, and career is on hold until … Well, until I decide to even think about it. Then we are doing pretty well.
I’ve read a million baby books this past few months and gone to so many classes in sheer anxiety that I am going to screw this all up. I can’t stop preparing and getting ready and worrying that we haven’t done something important or bought something we need. Arrick has been my constant shadow when he’s at home and now the last three weeks he’s on paternity leave too, never letting me down. He still goes to early morning training and was gone for a fight last week overnight but apart from that, he’s around pretty much all the time.
Every appointment, every weird class I impulsively want to go to, including water sports for natural birthing… Prenatal yoga and how to ease your unborn to sleep with the use of chimes… Pregnancy makes me crazy. Arrick is probably needing therapy after all this, but he’s doing it all with so much patience. Although he might need some crowns with the amount of teeth gritting he does every day.
He is trying not to lose his mind with the depths of crazy I am capable of and sometimes, like today, he’s moody as hell with anyone who gets within ten feet of me. He likes to take his aggression out on anyone that is not me and even Nathan was complaining that sparring partners are a little thin on the ground lately. He’s wiping the floor with them when he shows up to train. All I can do is hope this is over soon and he can reduce his blood pressure and come back to the land where sane Sophie lives.
“Afternoon, Frank.” Arrick nods to him as we pass, and he tries to usher me while holding all the bags in one hand.
“Afternoon… Looking well, Miss. Sophie, not long now. I have it on my calendar.” He beams and points at the wall chart behind him with my due date circled. Frank asked to work both shifts that day and I haven’t the heart to tell him babies don’t run to a schedule and he might not be on desk for the birth. He wants to be here, to be the one to open the door when we get Arrick’s car and be the first to know it’s happening. It’s cute really. Frank is our honorary Grandpa.
“Just can’t wait for it to be over and out.” Arrick smiles and I nod. I am way too over this as well. Sooner it’s out, the sooner I can be normal again and maybe give my husband a god damn break. Also, sex like this is pretty lame. It’s either me on all fours or me on top and maneuvering requires forward planning, crane hire and scaffold erecting. I miss sexy time in weird positions with my handsy boy who can be rough without overthinking he’s hurting our baby. I miss our kinky.
“Here… Your lollipop” Frank holds it out with a huge smile, and I rush to take it, feeling Arry’s disapproving look as I immediately unwrap it. My love of junk food and sweet stuff has exploded beyond control this past two months and it’s a topic we bicker about constantly. He tried to ban any from the house, tried to put me on a healthy eating plan and that lasted all of five seconds before he met hormonal momma Sophie and a craving for Cheeto’s. He barely escaped with his life. He hasn’t intervened much on my food requests since."
