“Are you okay?” His words are staccato, punctuating between heavy breaths.
“Yes. Baby, don’t stop.” My words are sloppy in my mouth. I’m pillaged.
“I’m close . . . I’m gonna . . . dammit, Bris.”
His growl quakes through my back as he releases. I work my hips, struggling to keep up with the heavy, frenetic piston of his body until he stiffens behind me, rigid as pleasure conquers him. Our breaths fill the air in symphony, his and mine. We come down slowly, his possessive grip on my hip easing, our heartbeats pounding in unison, neither of us wanting to stop. Our bodies still rock as the tumult of the waves gradually gentle. By the time our breathing regulates, light fully intrudes, introducing another morning.
“I really did want to talk,” he says with a husky laugh, walking his fingers down my arm to caress my fingers.
“Hmmmm?” The day is fully lit, but my alarm must have another hour left. Our lovemaking has left me speechless and exhausted before the day has begun.
“I had something to ask you.”
“Ask,” I mutter, eyes half-closed.
“Are you nervous?” he asks. “About today, I mean? Finding out.”
“Are we finding out?” Even half-dead and listless, I manage a
wicked smile. Grip wouldn’t be able to hold out. He told me from the beginning, even if I didn’t want to know if we’re having a boy or girl, he would have to.
“Bris, we already talked about—”
“Just kidding,” I cut in with a wisp of a laugh. “No, I’m not nervous. Excited, but not nervous.”
He rests his hand on my hip, fingers twined with mine, and presses kisses between my shoulder blades.
“Dwell in possibility,” he says between kisses.
“Hmmmm?” I turn my head the slightest bit, not enough to see him, just enough to hear him better.
“That’s what I whisper to our baby, to your belly. It?
?s from a poem.”
“Neruda?”
“Dickinson. It’s a poem called ‘I Dwell in Possibility.’” He pauses, giving me space to ask questions that I don’t pose because I know he’ll keep going. “I want our kids to grow up believing in possibilities, not because we have money or the advantages that come with it, but because of themselves. They can chase possibilities with nothing stopping them. If my mom hadn’t made me feel that way, like if I could dream it and would work hard, it could be mine, there’s no telling where I’d be today. I don’t want other people’s biases and this country’s broken systems and roadblocks to get in their way.”
Passion, conviction, and cynicism mingle in his voice.
“Hell, it didn’t get in my way, and I had nothing. I want them to be waymakers, Bris, people who explore this world, never thinking it can’t be theirs. That’s what I tell him . . . or her.”
I close my eyes, not to sleep, but to relish this man, this wonderful man who is the epicenter of my world.
“You’re gonna be an amazing father.” I drop my head back to rest in the curve of his neck and shoulder.
“I want to be,” he says. “My dad sucked.”
I don’t hear any pain or bitterness. I’ve never seen holes in Grip that his father should have filled.
“When I was little, I did wonder sometimes why my father didn’t stick around,” he continues, as if answering a question he heard my mind forming. “But my mom didn’t give me time to personalize it. She didn’t keep it a secret or avoid talking about it. She just always made it about him, not a reflection of me. She used to say, ‘Poor thing. That damn fool is missing out on you. Oh well, his loss. More Marlon for me.’”
I lift our hands to my lips, smiling and kissing them.
“She’d say he was gonna look up one day and see a star in the sky that was so far out of his reach, and he’d know that was his son, that could have been his. She assumed from the beginning I’d be something great.”
His takes our hands, still linked, and rests them over the small protrusion of my belly.