Big Girls Do It Pregnant (3 page)

And then I exploded a second time, almost out of the blue. It washed over me like a tidal wave, rolling and rollicking and detonating, and forcing a scream out of me. Jeff’s hand went to my hips and pulled me hard against him. I wrapped my other leg around him, and now all that held me aloft was his arms under my ass and his shaft inside me, ramming deep in a pulsating series of short thrusts. I felt him tense, felt his buttocks clench under my legs, and knew his climax was imminent.
 

I clenched him with my inner muscles, clamping down as hard as I could. He groaned loudly, and I felt him release, liquid heat billowing through me, filling me. I cried out with him, not so much from my own orgasm, which was still rocking through me, but from the sheer joy of feeling Jeff come inside me, seeing the bliss on his rugged, handsome face.
 

I felt a second spasm rock his body, then a third smaller one, and then he was letting my legs down and pulling out of me. We crawled backward on the bed, and I curled into his side, his heart thumping under my ear, lulling me into a state of sated bliss.
 

As I was about to drift off to sleep, I heard him murmur, “Gonna be Caleb.”

I snorted sleepily. This was an ongoing debate with us. I was sure it was a girl, but he was convinced it was a boy. So we had this argument, and it always came up just like that, as one of us was falling asleep, or on the way out the door. We each tried to get the last word in, me as he was leaving to DJ a shift, he as I was about to drift off to sleep.
 

I let him get the last word in, knowing I’d get him back later. Of course, the main reason I let him get away with it was that I was too sleepy to summon speech, too limp from his loving to even grunt an “uh-uh.”

We still hadn’t decided if we were going to find out the gender at the next ultrasound, and that was the source of a less playful debate. He wanted it to be a surprise, and I wanted to get the nursery ready with gender-appropriate decorations. Of course, Jeff was all like, “just paint it green,” but that was cheating to me.
 

My last thought was of my own inability to decide whether I wanted it to be a girl or a boy more. I wavered from day to day. I would think of big, burly Jeff holding a little baby girl with blonde curls and Jeff’s brown eyes, a big pink bow in her hair, and I’d have a mini-emotional meltdown, and then I’d picture him with a little boy who’d be the spitting image of Daddy and I’d have a different kind of breakdown, and I just couldn’t decide.

I fell asleep with images of baby boys and baby girls dancing in my head. In the end, it didn’t matter, because girl or boy, they’d be
ours
, and that was the only important thing.

Chapter 2: JAMIE

I slid my palms flat over my belly, turning sideways to look at myself in profile. My red curls were longer than they’d ever been, hanging loose nearly to my waist. They were actually kind of out of control at this point. I’d been thinking about cutting my hair for weeks now but hadn’t done it. Chase would freak, for one thing. He loved my hair long. He liked to bury his fingers in it when he came inside me. If I cut it off, he’d absolutely shit his shorts.
 

I giggled as I pictured his reaction if I showed up at his show tonight with my hair chopped off. What if I actually, factually, shaved my head? We’d be matchers. It could be funny. Chase would probably have a heart attack. Maybe shaving my head wasn’t a great plan. I took a long sheaf of springy red curls in my hand, narrowing my eyes at myself. My belly was getting ridiculous. I wasn’t even twenty weeks along, and I was already getting mammoth. Stupid Anna was barely showing at all, the bitch. Here I was, big as houses, when she still could get away with most of her normal clothes. I was shopping in the maternity section already.
 

I sighed, smoothed my hand over my belly again, then returned to examining my hair. I held the bulk of it up at my nape, trying to picture myself with my hair at chin length. Just holding my hair up out of the way was a relief on my neck, and that was what decided me.
 

Time to cut my hair for the first time in my adult life. The last true haircut I’d had, not counting the odd inch or two trimmed off now and again, was before I’d moved out on my own at seventeen. I let my hair go and felt it bounce free at the small of my back, then reached for my cell phone on the bathroom counter. I got my stylist friend Lindsey to pencil me in at the last minute, called a cab, and then spent the next few minutes trying to figure out how I’d explain my sudden decision to Chase.
 

I’d have to seduce him, of course. As long as I left my hair long enough for him to have something to tangle his fingers in, we should be fine, I thought.
 

There I went, again, with the “we.” I’d been referring myself in the plural lately. Myself and the baby, I guess. We.
We’re gonna take a shower. We’re gonna get some breakfast. We’ll be fine. We’re feeling nauseous
. It wasn’t something I did intentionally; it just happened. It cracked Chase up to no end, which only irritated me further. I always corrected myself when I caught myself doing it, but it kept slipping out.
 

After putting on the sexiest bra and panties I could fit in, I put on my favorite outfit, the only thing I felt sexy in, a floor-length, high-waisted dress, scooped low in front and back to show off my ginormous preggo boobs, tucking in just right to give me some curves around my hips and ass without hugging my belly. It was ivory in color, soft against my skin, loose and comfortable, yet still let me feel attractive.
 

I wore it more frequently than I should, mainly because I’d never been able to find another dress like it.
 

The cab honked outside, and I snagged my purse and phone on the way out the door. Chase had paid a fortune for our house, but it was perfect, a brownstone walk-up in a hip but fairly quiet section of Manhattan. We had the entire first floor, and he’d let me furnish it to my heart’s desire. I loved our home. I’d love it even more when his tour was over and he could stay home with me every day. His label was giving the band a couple months off, since Chase and I were having our baby, and Gage, the bassist, claimed to need personal time. No one knew what his deal was, but Chase had made the hiatus happen since he’d noticed Gage was had been acting off lately, in a funk. I’d get Chase all to myself for six whole months before they went into the studio to start recording their first full-length album. They’d put out a couple EPs up that point, each recorded in whirlwind, marathon sessions between tour dates, but they hadn’t put out anything full-length yet.
 

Six Foot Tall had gone viral, in a way. Someone had recorded his performance and proposal to me and uploaded it to YouTube, and it had gotten well over a million hits, which spurred the sales of their music and sold out the rest of the shows on the tour. They’d played on Leno and
Late Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
, and had been on the cover of
Rolling Stone
and
Revolver
.
 

All of which, of course, translated into me not having seen my husband—even after more than year, I still got giddy thinking that—in more than three months. We FaceTimed and Skyped, of course, but it wasn’t the same. Skype sex wasn’t anywhere near as satisfying as having Chase in my bed. Not by several orders of magnitude.
 

I pushed the thoughts from my mind as I sat down in Lindsey’s chair and told her what I wanted, more or less. Which was, namely, shorter. Not so short Chase couldn’t grab into my hair, but shorter. Lindsey made quick work of my hair, keeping up a constant chatter in her thick New York accent, black bob nodding and ducking as she snipped and fluffed and snipped until she was satisfied. I had made her turn me around so I couldn’t see myself. When Lindsey finally stepped away and tucked her scissors in her apron, I felt nerves shoot through me.
 

What was I thinking? Cutting my hair? Shit! Chase was going to kill me. He’d hate it. I’d hate it.
 

“You seriously look amazing, Jamie,” Lindsey chirped, teasing my curls with her fingers before turning me around. She must have sensed my nerves. “Honest, Jamie. He’ll love it, I promise. You’ve got to, like, trust me.”

I had my hands over my eyes, refusing to look still. “What was I thinking, Linz? I don’t know why I just did this, I really don’t.”

Lindsey laughed and took my wrists in her dainty little fingers. “You’re pregnant. You know how many pregnant women I get in here who have had a sudden urge to cut their hair? It happens all the time. I’m not sure why, really, but it’s a fact. It’s kind of my specialty, actually. The other girls always send me the preggos, because I can usually tell when they really want to cut their hair and when they think they do but really just want it to look different. Sometimes that’s all it is. Part of the nesting phase, I’ve heard, where you go through and, like, change everything for the baby.”

I laughed. “Maybe that’s it. But I don’t think I’m nesting just yet. I just…wigged out, like, I all of a sudden
hated
my hair and wanted it gone, off my neck. But now? Oh, god, I’m scared to look. I haven’t had it noticeably shortened in, god, like fifteen years.”

Lindsey pried my hands away from my face. “Look at yourself, Jay. You’re beautiful.”
 

I sighed and opened my eyes, heart in my throat. I gasped. I looked totally different. Like, completely altered.
 

I interrupted my own thoughts to tell myself to stop talking like Lindsey, who, at twenty-two, had a tendency to still say “like” in every sentence.
 

I turned my head from side to side, marveling at how much lighter I felt. I shook my head, laughing as my hair bounced around, now hanging just above my shoulders. She’d cut away a good bit near the front so I had springs of curls as bangs that drifted across my cheekbones. It was a perfect cut for me, I realized, emphasizing my heart-shaped face and accentuating my eyes. It sharpened my jawline somehow, and brought out the curve of my throat.
 

Plus, there was still a good bit of hair left, so Chase could do his thing.

I pulled Lindsey into a hug, and felt my eyes prick. I cried at the drop of a hat these days. A Hallmark commercial had me bawling just the day before, and it was driving me nuts.
 

Lindsey pulled free and unsnapped the apron from around my neck. “So you like it?”

I nodded happily, sniffing back the traitorous tears. “I
love
it. I really do.”

“And you think Chase will like it?” She grabbed a nearby broom and started sweeping up the mess of hair on the floor.
 

I took a deep breath. “I hope so. I think so. He’ll be surprised, but once he gets over the shock, I think he’ll be happy. I’ll find out in a few hours, I guess.”

Lindsey’s gaze sharpened. “They’re in town? The whole band?”

I nodded, wondering what her angle was. “Yeah, they’re playing the Garden.”

Lindsey crouched to brush the hair into a dustpan. “Is it sold out?”

I laughed at the hopeful tone in her voice. “Who do you have a crush on?”

Lindsey blushed, her fair skin going pink across her cheeks and on her nose. “Gage.”

I nodded. “You and half the country—the half that isn’t in love with my husband.”

“I met him by accident the last time they played New York. He was being dragged around by some girl, a groupie, I think. She dragged him in here and got him to pay for a cut and color. I felt bad for him. She was, like, heinously obnoxious, and he was realizing it, I think. She was hot, in a bimbo sort of way. He was really nice to her, though, despite the fact that she was, like, clearly a gold-digging fame whore. He was really classy about it.”

I nodded, having gotten to know Gage pretty well by that point. “That’s Gage for you. He’s got some rough edges, but he has a great heart, if you can get him to show you his real personality. He’s got this whole hardass rocker persona that he puts on, but it’s not really him.”

Lindsey nodded. “I kinda got that same impression.” She blushed again. “I like both sides of him.”

I laughed. “The front and the back, you mean?”

Lindsey turned red. “That’s not what I meant!”

I elbowed her playfully. “Sure it’s not. You know you were checking out his ass.”

She rolled her eyes, then leaned in to whisper to me. “Actually, he
was
wearing these tight, ripped jeans that hugged him, like,
all
over. I couldn’t stop staring at him.” She dropped her voice to almost inaudible. “He sat so I had this crazy crotch-shot of him, and I swear, I nearly cut a chunk out of his bimbo friend’s ear because I was staring at his bulge the whole time.”

I laughed so hard I snorted. “Would’ve served her right. But, while he’s not my husband, Gage
is
pretty hot.”

“Yeah, he is,” she muttered, her tone wistful.

I waited for her to ask, but after a few moments, it became clear she wasn’t going to. “You want to come with me?”

She looked up, hope gleaming in her eyes. “Oh, god, really? You have an extra ticket?”

I laughed. “I’m married to the lead singer, honey. I don’t need tickets. I’ve got a box wherever he’s playing. He made sure of it.”

“That’s the coolest thing ever.” She clapped her hands. “I get off in an hour, and now that’s gonna be the longest hour of my life!”

I stood up slowly and walked with her to the register. “You know where I live, right? Drop by when you’re done, and we’ll go early to see the guys.”

As I left, Lindsey hugged me and thanked me about fifty times, and refused to let me pay her for the cut. I laughed as I hailed a cab, watching her pull out her phone and text furiously. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone so excited in all my life. Maybe she could pull Gage out of whatever funk he was lost in.

I ate a quick dinner at a bistro near Lindsey’s salon and then went to my standing weekly mani-pedi appointment. About a week after we got back from our honeymoon, Chase had insisted I make the appointment and set it for every week. He claimed I’d been beans-and-ricing it for too long, and it was time to let him take care of me. Apparently, now that money was rolling in for the band, that meant all sorts of lavish treatment I’d never imagined would be a part of my life, such as standing manicure appointments, shopping trips to Fifth Avenue, and even a car and driver if I wanted it. I’d drawn the line at being chauffeured. Chase was quickly becoming a rock star and a household name, and that meant lots of money, but I’d lived a relatively simple life, taking care of myself and using the occasional indulgence as a treat for meeting my responsibilities. I couldn’t take the swing in the complete opposite direction, not all at once at least. A new purse whenever I wanted it? Awesome. Louboutin pumps and Chanel pajamas? Hell, yes. Pretending like I’m some swanky celebrity, with an entourage and a driver and bodyguards everywhere I go? Hell, no. I may be married to a rock star, but I’m still Jamie Dunleavy—Jamie Delany, now—and I’m no poser.