Where You Belong

130

"So, where do we start?"

Derek bit back a chuckle at the serious expression on his wife's face. She sat sideways on the couch facing him, leaning against the arm of the couch with her legs crossed in front of her. Her oversized pajama pants, pink tank top and mismatching socks were in total juxtaposition to the serious expression on her face.

"I don't think there's a specific place to start."

She huffed and scrunched her face in annoyance, which only served to make her look even more adorable. Not that he'd ever admit to viewing her as adorable. But she was. Adorable. All annoyed and serious and dressed like that.

When he didn't verbally respond to her huff, she huffed again and reached for the large, steaming mug of coffee that she'd placed on the coffee table. Unfortunately for Derek, the sight of her sipping from the I My Husband mug he had put in her stocking that Christmas pushed him over the edge. He laughed out loud before he could help it.

She glared at him over her mug. "Can you try to take this seriously?"

"I think you're taking this a little too seriously," he said lightly.

"No, I'm not," she argued flatly. "We were supposed to talk about this in the fall, but we didn't. and then we were supposed to talk about it at the beginning of the week, but we got paged in for that emergency. It's February, Derek. And we need to talk about this. We're not working today and we're not on call, so there's very little chance we'll get interrupted. So we are going to talk about this. Today." Still clutching the coffee near her chest, she narrowed her eyes as she stared him down.

He shifted on the couch so that he mirrored her position to show her he was taking this talk seriously. "You're right. We've put it off for a long time and today is the perfect time to talk about it."

She nodded, moving the mug so it was resting it in her lap, both hands still gripping tightly like a life line. "Thank you."

"But I think you're taking this a little too seriously, Mer." He added.

"How so?"

"People have kids all the time. We don't need a long and serious conversation about it-"

"Yes, we do," she cut in. "It's important."

"It's important," he agreed. "But it doesn't need to be so...structured." His gaze glanced towards the note pad she had set on the coffee table.

She clenched her jaw and glanced away from him, silent.

"What?"

She sighed and looked back to him. "This is the most important thing we're ever going to do, Derek."

"Have this conversation?" He joked.

"Have a baby," she countered, ignoring his attempt to lighten the mood.

Despite the tone of the room, he couldn't help the smile that came to his lips at his wife referring to their future child.

"We can't screw this up, Derek," she continued in his silence. "We need to make sure we don't screw it up."

"We won't."

"That's why we need to talk about this."

"People have kids all the time and figure things out and everything works out okay."

"And other people damage the crap out of their kids because they want different things."

His heart tugged at her tone as he realized where her seriousness was coming from.

"And those kids grow up to be resentful and damaged and incapable of so many things."

Derek leaned forward and tugged the coffee out of her hands. She allowed him to do so, but put her hand up when he tried to shift closer to her.