“What is it?”
“Chess.”
I lean back against him with his hard arms stretched at my sides. “Are you winning? Of course you are,” I answer myself.
I stare at the screen, at the white and black pieces, and he explains each piece and how it moves, the pawns being the most basic ones. We continue the game, and what I am enjoying is watching his brain work as he moves his pieces, and hearing his breath in my ear. And how every once in a while, he nibbles my earlobe and sets a kiss on me.
He tells me to pick which piece to move when he’s up next. I decide to go for the big guns.
He laughs softly. “You don’t want to move our queen.”
“Why not? She seems like the most versatile and powerful piece.”
He taps the queen and puts her back in her place. “The queen stays by the king.” He kisses my temple.
“Why?” I counter.
“To protect him.”
“From what?” I turn and stare into his laughing blue eyes, and he sets his iPad aside and cups my face, smiling, like I should know why the queen protects the king.
Then he kisses me, and just to play chess with him feels like I’ve learned something new about him. That I also love. Just like the rest.
God. He’s a living, breathing treasure, and he’s letting me discover him, and all I want is to get lost in the complex divine darkness and light in him.
Now, he’s miles and miles away, flying to Chicago, but I’ve found that if I log in at night, I can play chess with him and let him beat the hell out of me. And I can write little comments on the screen, like, I’m going to get you now!
He only answers with a move that eats up one of my pawns.
And I make a stupid move and go, You’re dead meat! Both your king and queen! But I’m gonna make your king watch while I kill his woman!
He types, Nobody touches my woman.
I go, But you?
Now you’re getting the idea.
And I laugh, and then he calls me, and we forget the game, and I get lost in his voice and in the things he says to me.
By week two, I’ve visited my gynecologist, and I’m able to hear the baby’s heartbeat. Melanie records the event on her phone and sends it to me, so I send it to Remy, and he answers with a ?
I dial his number and hear his rough voice. He always sounds a little impatient, like he’d rather do anything than talk on a damned phone, answering with a gruff “yeah.” I tell him, “That’s the baby’s heartbeat.”
We both fall quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Let me hang up so I can listen. I’ll call you in five.”
I laugh and then wait impatiently. . . .
By week two and a half, Nora has been stopping by less and less. She’s somehow angry at me about something, or maybe I’m angry at her? I’m not sure. But even Melanie wonders what’s up with her, and I sometimes wonder if she’s grumpy because of Pete, for she keeps asking me about the fights, about our schedules, and about the Underground.
By this time, I’ve played most of Remy’s songs. My favorites are Nickelback’s “Far Away” and 3 Doors Down’s “Here Without You”—which I listen to over and over at night.
Melanie is now on a first-name basis with the florist. I get red roses every day. Every day. She gets a call from Riley in the morning and in the evening, requesting a full report for Remington. If I liked the flowers? If I’m doing all right? I’ve been sending a text every day—okay, actually more than one—and Remy always answers me after training.
I’ve watched hundreds of movies and Internet shopped till I dropped, and I’ve been seeing my parents. Things may be tense with them, but it gets better every time they come for a visit. At least they now seem accepting of, and almost excited about, the baby.
By the third week, I have read the entire What to Expect When You’re Expecting pregnancy bible and I’ve learned that the heartburn I’m feeling is normal. The weepiness? The anger? The mood swings? Normal. In the online forums, we90r64mama and 4uwtforever call it “pregnant-mama drama.” I have laughed my head off with their anecdotes of feeling possessive of their baby daddies and doing a thousand and one crazy things like checking their receipts and their credit cards, and spying.
I really think I’ve been doing all right with the pregnant-mama drama, PMD, until the start of the fourth week, when the bed rest starts driving me up the wall. I’m trying to keep my mind busy, if not myself, but I miss running, I miss the sun, I miss the fights, and I miss him.
At midnight, I had insomnia—normal!—and texted him a long, detailed message that it had been raining in Seattle and I found a song I want to play him. Has he ever heard “Between the Raindrops” by Lifehouse? Oh, and has he gone running? I miss running—it’s so frustrating to stare at these four walls. . . .
Then I told him I planned to get permission from my gynecologist so I could come and see him fight when he comes to Seattle next week. The only answer I got to all my questions was the one he texted:
No Underground for you yet, LF. Stay home.
Of all the things I imagined him saying, I never, ever imagined Remington would say this. And thus, the PMD began when all my sister’s words came back to haunt me, about him being a sex god of the Underground . . . and suddenly the PMD worsened as I imagined whores pleasuring him while he was all alone without me. Who’s giving him all the sex this primal male needs? It seems that all my pregnancy hormones are hard at work, not only helping me hold this baby, but hard at work driving me crazy in my head.
I forced myself to text: Why? Why don’t you want me at the Underground?
He didn’t answer, and all my fears raged even more fiercely, as I truly wondered: Why?
Don’t you want to see me?
He answered: Just stay the f**k home and wait for me.
So he wasn’t anxious to see me then at all?
You want me home? So all your fans can scream at you and see you and not ME? Fuck you!
I added the red, fuming emoticon after that so he’d know he’d pissed me off, then I tossed the phone aside and stewed in my own juices until I wanted to explode. Stay home? Home is where he is. Motherfucker.
This morning my roses doubled in amount.
When Riley talked to Melanie this morning, he told her to tell me that Remington hoped I liked my flowers, and that he wants me to send the link of the song I told him about yesterday by text.
Ha.
I’m sorry, but I don’t feel like sending him shit.
Our baby is doing well, and I’m so excited the cream seems to be working. The spotting has stopped completely, but the hormones in me? They are raging. I am dying. To see him. I’ve defended him, me, and our baby to my parents daily, telling them that I have not been discarded or used, that he’s brought me here to be supported and taken care of, but to hear him say that he doesn’t want me at the Underground sucks balls.
All the misery I’ve been trying to keep at bay is coming at me from all sides now that I’m angry at him and don’t want to have reason to be angry at him, but, god, I can’t help it. Being on bed rest, you have nothing to do but let your head come up with a thousand and one stories about what is going on out there—in the world, without you—and none of these stories are pleasant.
“Stop sending reports, Melanie,” I say glumly that afternoon.
“Why? Riley asks, and Remington asked me to send daily reports before he left that day. He wants to know how you’re doing.”
“Stop giving detailed reports, period.”
She seems to be completely unable to keep the laughter from her voice. “Hey, you want them too! Your eyes bug out of your head when I’m listening to the other end of the line like you want supersonic ears to hear. I’ve heard you call Pete and ask how he is.”
I sigh and rub my temples. “I just worry about him.”
I’ve called Pete to ask if everything was okay and he said yes. Like a true guy, he was not very talkative on the phone except to say that they’re there if I need anything, and that Remington is training nonstop. I asked if he was speedy, and he said they were all focused on keeping that under control, and to relax, that he was trying very hard to stay blue.
What did that mean?
Pete called me a trigger once, and the thought that Remy might want to avoid me to stay blue eats me up like acid.
Mel stares at my forlorn face and shakes her head with a grin, as if she can’t believe I’ve been reduced to this. “You’re getting wrinkles as we speak; cut the frown already,” she lightly says as she brings a bowl of homemade organic popcorn for us to eat while we watch yet another movie. “Sweetie, the Underground comes through here in a week—you should be beaming!”
“I won’t even be able to go. Remington doesn’t f**king want me there.”
Taking a deep breath, I try to calm down as I wonder what would BBP—Brooke Before Pregnancy—do?
“Because he’s coming to see you after the fight. Riley told me your man plans to sleep here with you during their three-night stay.”
I cover my face. “That makes me feel even worse. Why is he arriving just in time to fight and not before, to see me?”
Melanie shrugs.
“What if Nora is right and he doesn’t want me anymore?” I continue.