She's Having My Baby

The Artist

36 weeks pregnant

LUCAS POV

It's so close. I can't believe how close it is. I'm gonna be a father. A father. This is weird and scary and I don't really know how I'm gonna handle it. She's not even gonna have her own bedroom. She has to sleep in Maya's room. Maya says it's only temporary, but I have no idea what that means. I can't let her know I'm scared, because she seems to have it all together.

Mom says I'm ruining my life. Dad hinted that I should run. I can't do that, though. I love her too much. I don't wanna miss this. It's my responsibility now.

I'm going to Maya's to help "decorate" the room. I don't know how much there could possibly be to "decorate", but I'm just going along with it. I get more nervous every day now. It's what I think about when I wake up, when I go to sleep, and all the time in between.

But then I see her. She's wearing a loose button down shirt and sweatpants. Her face is flushed and her hair is in a high ponytail. Her bump always looks so big to me, like it gets bigger by the minute. I thought it was big three months ago. I had no idea.

She's so beautiful. She tilts a little on her crutches (which she still hasn't learned to use properly) as she tells me to come in. She quickly hobbles over to her bedroom as I follow her. Inside her bedroom, everything is covered roughly with plastic. She has a can of baby pink paint open on the floor and two dry paintbrushes next to it.

She tells me she wants to paint one wall so that that can be "the baby's wall". She tells me to grab a paintbrush and start. I hesitate, but pick one up. I can immediately feel how comfortable she is with this. She dips the paintbrush in one swift motion and seems to get just the right amount on it. I watch her for a minute until she tells me to get a move on.

I can't do it nearly as well as she can. When she said we were painting, I imagined it like in the movies. We'd start off strong, but we'd keep laughing and eventually give up and start painting each other instead. We'd dance around the room covered in paint and then sit back and look at the positively dreadful paint job we just did.

But no, this is serious business to Maya. She's doing it, and she's going to do it perfectly. She caresses the wall with her brush again and again, and I try to either copy her or stay out of her way.

When she finishes painting the wall, she tells me we need to let it dry and then she wants to paint something else. We wait for hours and hours until it's well into the night. I wonder why her mother isn't home, but don't ask.

We go back into her room and she lights a few candles. She tells me its to save electricity. Then she picks up a smaller, thinner brush and dips it in a small can of black paint. She begins to paint decorations on the wall. Small swirls and flowers and patterns I can't describe.

Her bump looks bigger in her shadow.She stands on one foot and I watch her as the candlelight illuminates her concentrated, but content, face. This is better than any movie. This is me getting to watch Maya produce actual art on her own bedroom wall.

I sit, held in a trance by her gentle hand movements. God, I love her. She steps back and tilts her head to view the final product. Then she breaks her concentration face and is back to every-day-regular Maya. She casually asks me what I think as if it's nothing.

"It's unbelievable, Maya. It's a masterpiece," I say, looking at the beauty she's just created.

She smiles briefly and then flops onto her bed next to me. I want to kiss her. I really want to kiss her. But I can't kiss her. We're just friends and that's the agreement. I bet she wouldn't stop me if I kissed her, though. No, I really can't kiss her. I sit up and tell her it's late and I have to go. I kiss her bump and take one last look at the new wall as I walk away.

On my home I realize something. I'm not nervous all the time like I thought. All my fears and doubts melt away when I'm with her.

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A/N: This is the first and last Lucas POV in this book. Idk, I think it's kind of interesting. Hope you enjoyed!