A Bump in the Road -- Watty Awards 2011 --

Chapter 15: Damage Control

The next few days passed thankfully without much event, other than the riverboat trip down the Seine Joseph had taken her on their second week in Paris. She felt bad about scaring Joseph so badly on that trip. Some water had gotten into the rowboat and had run to the back where Nicole was sitting.

Not really considering the consequences or circumstances, Nicole had grabbed her belly and shrieked that her water had broken. She had burst into laughter at her own joke but the fear and pain and anger she had seen in Joseph’s eyes had turned her back to solemnity. She had felt wretched and it was more than the boat’s rocking that made her feel that way. “Joe I’m sorry, honey: – she stopped giggling – and leaned in to kiss the vein that throbbed in his neck and up his shadowed jumping tense jawline that had tensed like it did whenever he was furious.

“I am sorry really, it’s just that everything has been so tense lately, you know that, I just miss the us that we were before the baby. I feel like you think you lost the brusque, sarcastic on the ball and ready for anything woman you fell in love with and I’m just trying to get us back to that a little. It’s still me in here behind this ginormous belly Joe, I never left”.

Looking completely and somewhat comically exasperated Joe threw his hands up in the air theatrically almost losing the oars. “Jeez Nic you almost put me in the hospital”. She felt her breath catch and her heart release, he wasn’t going to stay mad.

“But really”, he said jokingly snaking his hand up the bottom of her sundress playfully once they were back at the hotel, “are you sure the real Nicole is still behind all this?” Nicole’s full laugh turned into a gasp as Joe, still underneath her dress, made sure she realized he still thought of her as the same desirable woman as before by doing all the things to her he hadn’t done since they had found out about the pregnancy.

Instead of feeling sickly faint like the other times she felt a good rush of blood and oxygen surge through her veins, flowing through all her tight cramped swollen and sore muscles.

Nicole was perched on the bed by this time and Joseph had come up for air leaving her skirts piled around her waist and her huge tummy. The pair stared contemplatively at it for a moment, it looked like the skin stretched over her tight stomach had blushed. Leaving a pink glow washing over the pale skin tickling as it receded to the normal creamy colour of her skin

Nicole laughed & her stomach bounced up and down as well with her laughter and she gave it an affectionate pat. She rested her hand against the bump, “I feel like my hands belong to my stomach now, as well as every other part of my body”.

“Well let me take over” Joseph said climbing over the mound of his wife’s belly and kneeling around her legs. Nicole let her hands fall away and closed her eyes as Joseph’s warm, strong capable hands ran down her skin, gently kneading their way around her body as she felt all the aches and strains in her body shimmer and disappear as Joseph’s fingers worked at the small of her back and the nape of her neck.

Looking up into Joseph’s face Nicole thought she was the happiest she had ever been, not needing her job as a surrogate family but having flesh against flesh against flesh. Her body carrying the baby she felt on the inside and Joe feeling from the outside in.

Joseph picked up her hands with his and placed her hands palm down on her stomach and then covered them with his, guiding her hands down the curve of her belly. “You are amazing my love”, he said not stopping the rhythmic movement of their hands across her belly that Nicole could tell was putting the baby to sleep. Nicole felt as the gentle swishes and kicks subsided until she knew that the baby was asleep.

Desperate to take advantage of he fact that the baby inside her was actually sleeping when she wanted to be sleeping Nicole rolled over on her side and grabbed one of the fluffy pillows in her toes, shimmying it up between her legs to help her sleep. As Joseph watched as his wife dropped to sleep, his hands did not stop the steady motion.