"I thought we agreed that we were going to treat me as the baby's father?"
"I do!"
"Yes, you do—in the good ways," he stated. "You let me come along for the perks, Julie, but when it comes to the responsibility, you're still acting like I'm not the one responsible."
She was silent for a moment, trying to figure out how to say "Because you're not" without proving his point.
"You can't pick and choose, Julie," he stated when she came up with nothing. "You can't… try to give me the good and not the bad. It isn't fair in any respect. For one thing, it isn't fair to me, because every damn time you do it's like slapping a reminder in my face."
"Oh, but I don't mean to do that!"
"I know you don't, Julie. I know you mean well, but… you don’t understand. When you won't allow me to completely take the role—the perks and the responsibilities—you're as good as telling me, 'Stop trying to act like the baby's father, because you're not.'"
Her face fell and she felt instantly ashamed of herself. "That… is never how I wanted you to feel."
"I know," he said with a nod. "But that's what you're doing. That's how it feels. I feel very temporary when you do that, Julie. Yes, buying a place is permanent—but so is having a baby."
"Aaron, I don't think of you as temporary."
"Then stop trying to protect me from the more serious sides of fatherhood. I don't want you to. I want to be responsible for providing for you guys, I want you to yell at me when you're in labor, and when the baby throws up on me the first time I'm trying to burp her, I don't want you to rescue me."
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"You want me to point and laugh?" she questioned.
"Absolutely," he said with a small smile. "I want to be the father in every way. And I want you to stop trying to take that from me."
"Well, now that you've made me feel bad…"
"Don't feel bad," he said easily. "Just stop doing it."
"I'll try," she promised. "From now on I will keep you strictly on daddy duty, and when my feet are swollen and my back hurts, I am going to nag you and complain about it."
"Good," he said with a smile. "That's a start."
"And when Alyssa spits up all over you and wakes up in the middle of the night, I am going to ignore you and tell you to deal with it yourself."
Chuckling, he said, "That's the spirit. Now, as far as this place we're going to look at…?"
Putting on her best nag face, she said, "You better get me a bigger place, Aaron Turner, because I didn't come up with this baby idea on my own and we need more space."
Grinning, he wrapped his arm around her and said, "That's much better."
Smiling up at him angelically, she said, "If my being a nag makes you that happy, I will go above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that I live up to your expectations."
"I appreciate that," he stated.
Shaking her head, she said, "You're crazy though, I feel it's only fair that I tell you that. Most men would be happy if their pregnant girlfriend was being nice to them."
"Hey, if I only treated you like half a girlfriend, you wouldn't be very happy either."
"We'll see if you still think that when you're covered in baby vomit," she stated.
Chapter Twenty Five-
Julie was putting the framed picture up on the wall, straightening it and standing back, smiling at it as she looked at the pictures the scrapbook page.
She didn't know why she even bothered to hang the picture up in the apartment, because she and Aaron were going through the place he liked later, and if they liked it enough to buy it, the picture would have to be packed up with everything else.