Big Girls Do It Pregnant (11 page)

“I’m not making fun of you, baby. I promise. It’s just…it’s funny.” Chase pulled out the scarf next and wrapped it around his neck, posing and batting his eyelashes. “Does it go with my outfit?”

“Now you’re just being a dick.” I took the bag from him and dug in it until I found the one sock I’d finished. “I did make you something, but you probably don’t want it now, since I’m such a crappy knitter.”

Chase laughed and kissed the nape of my neck, knowing how that melted me. “I do want it, baby. I’m just teasing. I’m sorry.”

I handed him the sock. “It’s a sock. I’ve only finished one.”

Chase’s face twisted in his effort to not laugh. “Um. It’s a sock?” He coughed, trying gamely to keep a straight face. “A sock for me?”

He unlaced his boot and tugged it off, then held the sock up to his foot. I had to hold back a snicker myself as I saw the thing I’d made against his foot. The sock was a cylindrical tube, and it was clear he wouldn’t be able to get even part of his foot into it. It was too narrow across the opening and wouldn’t even cover his heel, even if he could get it on.
 

I bit my lip as Chase nonetheless tried to lever his foot into the “sock.” He managed his big toe and the one next to it.

Then genius struck.

“It’s not a sock for your foot, honey.” I kept a straight face, miraculously.
 

“It’s not?” He peered at me in confusion.

“Nope.”

“Then what—” He broke off as I glanced at his crotch, a smirk on my lips. “No. No way.”

“Yep. It’s a cock sock.” I choked on my laughter.

“You’re full of shit,” Chase said. “You did
not
make me a cock sock.”

“I did, too. Look at it. It’s just big enough to fit on that third leg of yours.” I reached for his pants. “Try it on. Come on, baby, model that cock sock for me.”

Chase buried his face in his hands. “No. Uh-uh. No way.”

“Yes! You have to! I want to see how it fits.” I fought his hands away and managed to unzip him, freeing his cock.

Chase sighed theatrically and stood up, his pants open and hanging loose. He snatched the sock from me with a glare and slid it onto his cock, but it didn’t quite fit yet. “It’s too big, honey.”

“It’ll fit when you’re hard,” I said, taking his yarn-clad cock in my hands and caressing him into erection. When he was fully hard, the sock fit perfectly. “See?”

Chase waggled his hips so his shaft waved side to side, the green, orange, and white sock tight around his turgid cock. “The latest in men’s fashion…the cock sock!” He strutted from one side of the living room, hands on his hips, mimicking a catwalk sway until his pants fell around his ankles.
 

I laughed so hard I stopped breathing, gasping and snorting. “Stop, stop, oh, god!”
 

“It’s quite comfortable,” he remarked, waving his cock in my face. “I think it’ll be great for keeping my cock warm when I get morning wood.”

“What the
fuck
is going on?” Kelly’s voice screeched from the kitchen doorway. “Oh, my god. I’m scarred for life. Chase Michael Delany, put some goddamned pants on before I have to rip out my eyeballs!”

I had just calmed down, but Kelly’s surprise appearance into our little fashion show and Chase’s mortified reaction sent me into paroxysms of laughter once more. I watched Chase tug his pants on and button them hurriedly, the cock sock still on.
 

“Don’t you work until four, Mom?” Chase said, tugging the sock out of his pants.

Kelly made a grimace of disgust. “Oh, my god. I’m going to have nightmares for the rest of my life.” She turned away from us both, scrubbing her face with her hands. “There was a scheduling mess-up, so I got sent home early. Jesus, seriously, what were you two doing? Jamie can’t have sex, Chase, surely you know that.”

“Yes, Mom, I know that.” He lifted the sock. “Jamie knitted a sock for me, but it didn’t fit my foot—”

“La-la-la! Not listening!” Kelly yelled, covering her ears. “Forget I asked. I don’t want to know. I really,
really
don’t want to know.”

“I’m sorry you saw that, Mom.”

“I’ll just have that image burned into my brain forever, no big deal.” She pinched the bridge of her nose while Chase and I exchanged glances and tried not to laugh. “It’s good you’re here, though, Chase. Jamie has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning. You can come.”

He nodded. “My flight out isn’t until the day after tomorrow, so that’ll work.”

*
 
*
 
*

I woke up the next day with a headache so bad I didn’t want to get out of bed. The sunlight streaming in through the window was too bright, piercing my closed eyes and making my head throb even worse. I heard the door squeak open, and smelled coffee and toast.

“I brought you breakfast, baby,” Chase said, settling onto the bed next to me.

“My head hurts so bad, Chase. Can you close the blinds for me?” My voice sounded tiny, hesitant and weak. I hurt too bad to care.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, getting up to slide the blinds closed. “You want some Tylenol?”

“Please. Regular extra-strength Tylenol.”

He came back, and I heard Kelly’s light tread behind his. “Your head hurts, Jamie?”

“Yeah. Really, really bad. A migraine, I think. I get them sometimes. I haven’t had one in a long time, though.”

Kelly didn’t answer right away, which worried me. “Why don’t you let Chase help you get dressed? We should head to Dr. Rayburn’s office.”

I peered from beneath the blanket at the clock, which read eight-fifteen in the morning. “I thought the appointment was at eleven?”

“It is,” Kelly said, “but the headache isn’t a good sign. I’d rather get you checked out earlier.”

I was almost twenty-eight weeks at that point, and looked like someone had stuffed a beach ball under my skin. I let Chase help me dress, which was awkward and embarrassing, and then rode in the back seat of Kelly’s car to the doctor’s office. Tests, pee in a cup (so incredibly fun
that
is), more tests…oh, and Mrs. Delany, can you please collect your urine every time you pee for the next twenty-four hours?

Um, I pee every six seconds. I’ll need a fucking vat to put all the pee in at that rate. But it’s for the baby’s wellness and my own, so in a cup I pee…every six seconds. It’s every bit as exciting as it sounds, and infinitely more messy than you can possibly believe.
 

Chase pushed his flight back till the afternoon and went back in to see Dr. Rayburn with me in the morning. Marcia Rayburn was a short, svelte, older woman with steel-gray hair, quick-witted and no-nonsense.
 

“I think I’m going to admit you to the hospital, Jamie. Your protein levels are really high. That, combined with the headaches and the back and shoulder pain? I’m going to need to observe you for a few days. If your levels don’t go down, we might need to look at an induction earlier than I’d originally planned.” Dr. Rayburn offered me a reassuring smile that seemed at odds with her foreboding words.
 

“For a few days?” I said, my voice catching at the end. “Like, how many days?”

“Three or four? It depends on how things go.” Dr. Rayburn clicked her pen in and out.

“Worst-case scenario,” Chase said. “How early would you need to deliver the baby?”

Dr. Rayburn didn’t answer right away. “I can’t say with any degree of accuracy. It all depends. Jamie has reported some changes in her vision, which, along with the headache today, could mean she’s at risk for eclampsia, or seizures, or at the least severe preeclampsia. If her symptoms worsen to any significant degree, we would need to deliver immediately. Obviously we want her to go closer to full term, or at least thirty-two or thirty-four weeks. Thirty-six would be best, but I don’t really see that happening, honestly.”

“If you have to deliver this soon, what would happen?” Chase’s voice was heavy with worry.

“Well, it would be a premature birth, obviously. At twenty-eight or twenty-nine weeks, the baby would require an extended stay in the NICU, as her lungs would likely not be totally viable yet. There are a lot of factors, and honestly, I don’t want to worry you with them needlessly until we’re sure it’s going to come to that, and it very well may not.” Dr. Rayburn tucked the pen into the pocket of her lab coat and stood up. “I’d like you to pick up a home blood pressure cuff and monitor your blood pressure as well. If you notice any increase at all, and I mean at
all
, call the emergency line for my office and have them page me. If the increase is significant, go straight to the hospital. Same thing for the other symptoms. If your headache worsens, if your vision changes at all, or if the back or shoulder pain worsens, go to the hospital. Don’t dismiss it or try to tough it out. Okay?”

I nodded and tried to swallow my panic. “Sure, whatever you say.”
 

She patted my knee. “It’s going to be okay, Jamie. I promise. We’ll take care of you and the baby. Don’t stress yourself out with games of what-if, okay? That’s important. You need to rest and relax and be calm.”

I laughed, somewhat mirthlessly. “I’ll try, Doc, but this is stressful. I’m worried. The what-ifs are running rampant already, and I’m not even alone yet.”

 
Dr. Rayburn just nodded and opened the door, pausing to look over her shoulder. “Mr. Delany, I understand your band requires constant travel, but I must stress how vital to her well-being—and that of your baby—your presence is. Call her, text her, Skype her, visit her as often as possible. You simply cannot know how much your mere presence will help her. I implore you to make every effort to see her as much as possible.”

Chase nodded, his expression unreadable, which meant to me that he was seriously stressed. “I understand, Doctor. Thank you.”

We left the office in silence and drove home in silence, the radio off for once. We pulled into Kelly’s driveway and Chase turned off the car, but didn’t move to get out.

“I love my job,” he said, staring out the window. “I love being in a band. I love making music. I love the crowds, I love the attention. The guys…they’re my brothers, you know? There’s nothing else I’d rather spend my life doing. But this? God, it’s impossible. It’s fucking…fucking impossible. I need to be here with you. I
need
to. I can’t sleep at night worrying about you. I lie in the bunk on the bus and stare at the ceiling, wondering if you’re okay, if Samantha’s okay. I play the set, I sing my goddamn heart out every night, but I’m not there on stage. I’m on autopilot—the rest of me is here. With you.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing me breaking down was not what he needed right then. “You’re doing what you have to do, babe. I know that. It’s hard without you—I’m not gonna lie about that. It’s fucking hard, and I miss you. But don’t think for one second that I regret anything, that I hold it against you or resent you, or your job.”

Chase finally looked at me. His eyes were a study in complexity, at once tender and hurting and loving and molten and determined. “Thank you, Jamie. That’s…you don’t know how bad I needed to hear that.” He took my hand in his and simply held it, threading his fingers through mine. “I’m not sure I can stay away. I’m going crazy. I’m burning out. I haven’t—haven’t really talked to anyone about this, and I hate that I’m adding to your stress, but I have to vent. I’m starting to hate the tour. I’m cranky. I’m snapping. I’m—I’m drinking alone in my room after shows, just to dull the edge of my worry. I just have this pit of fear in my stomach that something’s going to happen while I’m on the fucking tour and I won’t be able to get there in—in time.”

I had never seen Chase so distraught. He scrubbed his hand through his hair again and again until it was wild. His hands squeezed around the steering wheel so hard I heard the material squeaking under his grip. I touched his shoulder, hesitantly at first, and then, when he flinched before leaning toward me, I leaned across the console to pull him into a hug. I put my lips to the shell of his ear, nuzzling him.

“You only have a few more shows, honey. Call me every night, okay? Fall asleep on the phone with me. Don’t drink, please? Don’t go there. Call me. Even if we don’t talk, just be with me on the phone. I know it’s hard, and I—I won’t lie and say I don’t wish you were able to just cut the tour short, but that has to be the absolute last resort. But it won’t come to that. I’ll get to thirty-two weeks, at least. You have to finish the tour. I know it, and you know it. The guys are counting on you.”

Chase nodded, his face buried in my shoulder. “I know. I just hate it.” He pulled away and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Thank god for Mom, huh? I’d be out of a job for sure if you were stuck alone in New York for all this.”

I laughed. “No shit.”

Chase glanced at his phone, then slammed his hand into the steering wheel. “Fuck. I have to go. My flight out is in less than three hours.” Chase leaned in and kissed me, slowly and thoroughly. It was a farewell kiss, and I was crying by the end of it. “If you cry, I won’t be able to leave.”

I sniffled and wiped my eyes, summoned the dregs of my courage and shoved the selfish sadness down, ran my hand through his soft black hair and kissed his cheekbone. “Go. I love you. Call me.” I got out of Chase’s rental car and backed away. “Go be a rock star, baby.”

He smiled sadly. “I’d rather be here being a husband and daddy.”

“Soon. Go.” I waved at him, one hand on my belly.

What I hadn’t told him was that I had the same sense of foreboding, a feeling that my three or four days in the hospital would turn in to an emergency C-section and Chase would miss it, and I’d be alone in the O.R., trying not to cry.

I rubbed my belly. “Stay in there for me, Sam. Okay?” I felt a flutter, and then a foot or elbow pushed against my hand, eliciting a laugh. “Be a good girl for me and stay in there until Daddy can be with us. Please?”

Chapter 5: ANNA

Our OB, Dr. Michaela Irving, paused for a terrifyingly long moment before delivering the news. “You’re measuring a little over three weeks behind where you should be, Anna. Both twins are small, worrisomely so.” She glanced at the papers in the file folder, more to gather her thoughts, I guessed, than for any actual information.