ard, using it to keep his hair from bothering him.
“Ready to see it?” he asks, his smile growing so dimples pop out in his cheeks.
I nod eagerly. “I can’t wait.” I shrug out of my coat and since there’s nowhere to hang it up I drape it over the back of the couch before following him to the spare room.
“We need a drumroll,” he declares, and before I can respond he raps his knuckles against the door. “Okay, here we go.”
He swings the door open and steps inside.
I follow.
Everything is perfect.
There are props and backdrops rolled up so we have plenty to use and change. There are professional lights and blackout curtains cover the windows. The room itself is painted a deep purple and the old hardwood floors are exposed. I spin around, imagining all the sets we can put together and the fun we can have.
I finally stop and look back at him. He watches me apprehensively, like he’s worried I might hate it.
“It’s perfect.”
He lights up. “Really?”
I nod. “You did great. Now we have to get clients.”
I sniffle and wipe a tear from my eye.
Joel chuckles. “You’re emotional when you’re pregnant.”
“Shut up.” I smack his arm lightly and he laughs.
“So, I guess it’s time we start advertising our services.”
I wrinkle my nose. “It sounds dirty when you put it that way.”
He gives me a look. “I am single.”
“Ew, can we just not?”
He suppresses another laugh. “Okay, fine. We need to come up with a business name too. Nothing we’ve talked about has ever stuck, but we don’t have much choice now. We can’t be nameless.”
“I’m going to need some coffee for this,” I tell him.
My doctor said it was okay to continue drinking a little coffee—halle-fucking-lujah for small miracles.
“Sure, sure,” Joel agrees.
We leave the room behind and I take a seat on his couch while he makes the coffee.
He pours two mugs and carries them over, handing one to me.
I curl my legs under me. “Do you have a pen and paper? Maybe it’ll help if we write them down.”
“Yeah, I have some around here somewhere. Give me a minute.”
He jumps up and scurries over to the kitchen rifling through the drawers.
He slams a drawer and curses. “Got my finger,” he mutters and resumes looking. “A-ha found it.” He pulls out a pad of paper. “Now pen,” he whispers to himself, looking around the kitchen with his hands on his hips. “There.” He grabs one from the counter and picks up the pad of paper, carrying both over to me. “You write them down, my handwriting sucks.”
He’s not lying. His chicken scratch is barely decipherable.