CARTER
“Are you ready?”I ask Harley as she reclines back on the exam table, her anxious eyes already on the black screen.
She moves her gaze to me and the smile she offers lights up her whole face. Her head bobs up and down, and I can tell she’s barely holding on to her excitement. “Yes.”
Taking the small tube of gel, I hover it over her lower stomach and warn, “It might be a little cold,” before I squirt a glob just above her lowered waistband.
I grab the transducer and use it to smear the gel around. Almost immediately, a whooshing sound fills the room. Harley and I both look at the monitor as I move the transducer around, pinpointing in where our baby is growing inside her. A smile breaks out across my face when I find the little nugget.
Since Harley and I had only had sex once when she became pregnant, we know exactly how far along she is. Seven weeks. We’ve known for almost five of those weeks, and it’s still hard to believe I’m going to be a father soon. Seeing the bean-shaped fetus on the screen makes it all the more real. I’ve done hundreds of ultrasounds, but it’s different when you see one of your own baby.
“There she is,” I tell her, turning to look at her expression.
She has tears in her eyes as she stares at the screen.
“She? You can already tell?” she asks, her voice hopeful.
I chuckle. “Not yet. We’ve probably still got about nine more weeks or so before we’ll know.” I move the transducer to a better angle before I look back at Harley. “But I already think of her as a girl. A little girl with your gorgeous green eyes and beautiful, long, black hair.”
She smiles softly at me. “Do you know what I see when I think about what our baby will look like?”
“What?”
“A boy with amber eyes and dark-brown hair. He’ll be sweet and handsome, but have a devious side, like his daddy.”
“Who knows.” I toss her a wink. “Maybe we’ll have both one day.”
She laughs.
I move the transducer again and a steady thump, thump mixes in with the whooshing sound.
“Is that the heartbeat?”
“Yep. It’s a guessing game on whether you’ll hear one this early, so we’re lucky.” I point to the screen to a tiny dot. “That’s her heart right there.”
“Wow,” she breathes. “It’s amazing to think that’s inside me. How that little blob will grow into a baby.”
After I take a few measurements, I push a few buttons and a couple of shiny, black and white pictures pop out of the machine. I grab them and hand them to Harley. She takes them, only briefly glancing at them before looking back at the monitor.
I give her a few more minutes, moving the transducer so we can see our baby at different angles, before I remove the wand. Harley pouts when I turn the machine off, making me laugh.
“We’ll take another look in a few more weeks. Maybe we’ll get lucky and be able to detect the sex early.”
Grabbing a tissue, I wipe her belly, then toss it in the trash. Going back to her, and before she fixes the waistband on her leggings, I bend over and kiss the spot on her stomach where our baby is safely tucked inside. When I lift my head, Harley grabs the side of it and pulls me down to her. Our kiss is slow and sweet.
“My place or yours?” I ask when we break apart.
Since we started officially dating, most nights we alternate between my house and hers. If it were up to me, I would have already moved her into my place, but I don’t want to come on too strong. We’ve already skipped several steps in a typical relationship by getting pregnant. I want to give Harley a bit more time to get used to the idea of becoming a mom before I spring the idea of moving in together. I have no doubt I want to spend the rest of my life with the woman—the ring I have hidden in my closet is proof of that—but I don’t know how strong Harley’s feelings are for me.
“Yours,” she answers.
“I have a few more appointments before I can leave. Do you have any yoga sessions this afternoon?”
I help her sit up and swing her legs around to hang over the side of the exam table.
“Just a couple. I should be done by the time you get off.”
I nod, holding my hand out to help her down from the bed. She slips her flats on and grabs her purse from the chair in the corner.