Chapter 26: Kiss It Better

The three days following one of the happiest days of my life, we showed our daughter off to everyone and it made me even more excited about having her here. That meant that the apartment had pretty much turned into Grand Central Station. Mom and Dad were running around in circles and jumping through hoops in order to get things together. Mom was slowly moving more and more decorations in for the baby shower and Dad was trying to get measurements for something he was planning to build but wouldn't tell me or Mom. I never really knew my dad to be the handy type. Sure, he could throw some shit together with some duct tape, but anything he ever tried to build with wood and nails usually ended up a mess and a trip to the emergency room.

I didn't stop him though or even try to bug him about it. He was taking this time to get more acquainted with Danny and I wasn't going to stand in the way of that. They were trying to pull things together as quickly as possible to take the load off of me and they didn't know how much I appreciated that. Everything was really starting to come together.

Everything except for a name and I was dreading that conversation with everyone who was involved. Rachel was excited that another girl would be there to play with and keep her daughter company as she grew up. Hopefully they would be as close as we were with a lot less trouble making. I was terrified of the hell I gave my parents coming back twice as hard on me. I was also anxious to begin planning for a baby shower and excited about spending more time with Mom before I would be stuck in the house with Danny and the baby for a while. She told me that all of that isolation would drive me to the point of finding a job out of boredom. I was having so much fun making up for lost time and I was beginning to realize that I didn't know if I would have survived a situation like this without my mom and her guidance. Our bond was growing stronger every single day.

I was still giving Danny the cold shoulder despite all of his efforts. It may have seemed like we'd made up, but he had a tendency to ignore the big picture, trying to fix little things around it, out of fear of a huge explosion and shit hitting the fan. I could read him like a book and I knew that that was exactly what he was doing. Simply dancing around the elephant in the room.

He had done everything from running me a nice hot bath and trying to undress me, only to get rejected, to waking me up with breakfast in bed thinking that I would be in the mood after

my stomach was full.

Yeah, I was in the mood all right. In the mood to take my ass back to bed. On a good day, I would have been all for hopping back into the sheets and pretending like nothing ever happened, but I wanted to know what was going on inside his head. I didn't want him to string me along and pretend to care about the problem just so I would stop bitching. We were going to have to sit down and actually have a full blown discussion. I never thought that it would turn into this. If my body disgusted him now because of something he did, how was he supposed to handle me when I was old, gray, and saggy?

Despite our differences, as always, we remained civil. He gave me my space so I could deal with my hormones without wanting to take his head off. We had even created somewhat of a routine. Saturdays were fantastic and they had been my days over the past month. I was actually glad that Danny had started distancing himself from me and not wanting to have sex. Saturday meant that I could catch up on my sleep and the laundry. I could sit down and plan out ideas that I wanted for the baby shower and the nursery, and I could get any homework done that I wanted to get out of the way for school. Graduation would be here before we knew it and I still hadn't tried on my cap and gown. Mom didn't even know that I had it and occasionally, Danny would bug me about it. I couldn't wait to meet our daughter, but I didn't want to fast forward to walking across that stage. With him being gone, I had time to think about what I was going to do once high school was over.

He would be gone to his brother’s house from at least eleven that morning until two that evening. I would see him off, take a shower, and curl up in bed to air dry before he came back home. He always said that it would give me time to miss him. I highly doubted that because at this point I could absolutely choke the shit out of him and get off from it because I was pregnant

and not in control of my hormones and emotions. I could always plead insanity, but who else could I trust to be a light enough sleeper to get up and make bottles in the middle of the night?

I held onto the body pillow tightly, feeling cozy as I laid naked across the bed. Finally! I had never been so excited in all my life to sleep. I’m pretty sure that I had spent the last ten years of my life fighting each and every moment that I had to sleep. My still wet hair cascaded down my back and I continued to fade in and out of consciousness with drool beginning to run down the cheek that was pressed against the pillow. Usually, I would have been disgusted, but I was finally able to have what I always craved the most. That was until I felt kisses and fingertips trailing up from the backs on my ankles, up my calves, and lingering around my thighs.

What the hell?

I rolled over on my back and propped myself up on my elbows. Danny crawled up between my legs and pressed his lips against mine before I had a chance to protest. “Just sit back and relax,” he growled at me with all seriousness in his eyes. I took a closer look at him to notice his skin looking pale with small red pimples popping up on the edge of his forehead and on his chin. He wore dark circles under his eyes and he looked exhausted. All of this hadn't just jumped on him over night and I realized that it had been a while since I actually allowed him to get this close to me.“I thought you were gone for the day,” I said sounding shocked. “Yeah, but I’ve let you go on being mad at me for long enough. Do you see my face? I look like I’m thirteen all over again. I'm stressed the fuck out and they gotta go,” he said aggressively. I was completely taken by surprise when his lips crashed against mine and he tangled his fingers in my hair.

Trying to regain control, I pushed my legs against him and removed his mouth from mine. “Hold up!” I shouted. “You still haven’t given me an explanation for why you’ve been treating me like the plague for almost a month now,” I said, trying to remain calm. “What the hell is the plague?”

he asked, sounding confused and still trying to touch me. “I don’t know. It’s some kind of shit that white people bought over here on the boats, but that’s beside the point! Answer me!” I grabbed both of his hands in hope that he would stop groping me long enough to actually speak on the subject.

He looked deeply into my eyes and hopefully he could see how badly I was hurting. Not just from avoiding me sexually, but keeping his distance from me all together. Sometimes I didn't mind, but there were times when I felt lonely and even though I had my mom and friends to turn to, he was the only person I wanted around. It killed me sometimes that he wasn't phased by the tension between us.“I actually thought we could get married some day, Danny and if at some point in time I get on your nerves, if you just want to walk around avoiding me, it won’t work. We’ll be living under the same roof, bound to each other and hopefully with our daughter,” my voice cracked when I talked about the baby. “What do you mean? Hopefully a daughter?” he asked. I had never stopped worrying about the possibility of losing another child.

Tears were streaming down my face and I was letting it show that I was actually still worried about not being out of the woods and worried about something happening to this baby. It wouldn’t be like the last time. It would be worse. I would have to deal with actually burying my child. I would have to carry her around inside of me, knowing she was there and have to go through the labor process just to hold my lifeless child in my arms. It was a terrifying realization, but after they ruled my miscarriage as being something wrong genetically, I wasn’t going to take any chances or let my guard down until I was holding a living, screaming human being that was half of me and half of the man that I loved. “Do you actually think that something would happen to the baby?” he

asked. I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t even look at him. I held my head in my hands and began to cry harder and harder.

It wasn’t like he cared about me in the first place. Even though this same routine of him leaving every Saturday gave me a chance to relax, I missed the way things were when we first got together. We could just sit inside and play video games all day long or cuddle or just watch old movies. Now I was lonely. During the week I would go to school all day and be too exhausted in the evenings to even be able to tell if he was in the house or not, so that meant that spending time together was definitely out of the question. Neither of us said anything though. We just stuck with it and went on about our business.

“I haven’t touched you because I feel like you’re so much more fragile now. I’m scared half to death just lying in bed next to you. I don’t want to say the wrong things to you because you’ll cry and I don’t want to be an insensitive asshole and just tell you that it’s just your hormones. It’s not just your hormones. You have so much to deal with and handle right now and I don’t want to add to the list of things you have on your plate. I don’t eat when you cook because I was hoping that you’d get the hint that you didn’t have to do that for me anymore. I see how exhausted you are after you come home from school and go right into the kitchen and work yourself to death. But I don’t say anything because you’ll cry. I don’t take showers with you because with my clumsy ass, I’ll slip and fall and

then you’ll get hurt and don’t think we don’t have sex because I don’t want to. I’ve spent quite a few nights in the bathroom because you’ve been too tired and you don’t think I notice. Plus, I don’t want to hurt you. By the way, I’ll be doing laundry for the next month,” he said with a chuckle.

I looked up and squinted my eyes at him, trying to contain my laughter as my heart grew warmer and warmer. He did care about me. He noticed all of the little things and was distancing himself from me to lighten the load I already had. I noticed him staring at me, practically holding his breath as he waited to see what my reply would be from his speech. I was doing cartwheels in my head. “You nasty bastard. I know you didn’t beat off into those new towels,” I said, biting my lip to his the grin that was slowly creeping up on my lips. He threw his arms around me and I felt home as I returned his embrace. I had felt so empty without him. “No more fights,” he whispered as he buried his face into my hair. “What did I say?!" I shouted. We laughed together for what seemed like the first time in forever.

We held each other, planting kisses on each others noses, lips, and cheeks and I knew that I had my Danny back. My Danny, just in daddy mode. He pulled back and eyed my still naked body like I was something to eat. He paid close attention to my breasts especially. “I don’t mean to be rude, but pregnancy sure is treating your fun bags right,” he said randomly. It was as if I knew what was exactly on his mind. “I know. They’re so sore and leaky,” I said, cupping both of my hands around them hoping to ease some of the aching that radiated around my nipples. “That’s gross, but I’m glad you’ve taken a liking to strolling around the house naked,” he said before he dove in to

devour my neck. “And why did you have to interrupt me earlier? You know that I like waking you up that way,” he said as he held my face, stroking my cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. “Danny, the way things have been in dreamland for the last six months, I would have come up swinging. The other night I had a Fifty Shades of Grey type thing going on. Weirdest shit ever,” I said with all

seriousness.

In a swift motion, he was on top of me with my arms pinned above my head and his tongue was trailing down the center of my chest and he was heading for my breasts. “Of course,” he mumbled against my skin and continued. It felt amazing to finally be touched again and I didn’t just feel like a blow-up doll. Danny actually had reasons for why he didn’t want to be all over me. He kept

his distance but he was just as afraid as I was. The tension being released when he was finally inside me was enough to drive someone to insanity and I wished that I could have lived in that moment forever. I could feel him become a little more relaxed. I even felt a change in the atmosphere and with the baby moving around quite a bit and scaring Danny half to death during sex, I knew that things were back on track.

I hated having this back and forth with him all the time and I hated it when he went so long without explaining what all he was feeling. He knew that I liked to know what was going on inside his head. At one point I even admitted that if I had a superpower, it would be to be able to read his mind. Danny was difficult to read at times, but the majority of the time, it was like he was my own personal book and I could read him without even opening the cover.

We lay there spent and I could hardly keep my eyes open. I was totally and completely against makeup sex and I always had been. With being pregnant, it was hard to fight your temptations. Especially with having a connection with the person you love. Danny was good and healthy for me. We had a friendship before our relationship and I was glad to have one during. He was so protective over me. Not jealous protective, but he always tried to look out for me and make sure that I was okay, even if that meant hurting himself in the process.

I wrapped my body around his and the baby kicked over and over again, causing me to giggle with every other kick. “She’s happy that Mommy and Daddy made up,” I said, rubbing my hand where Dr. Carter said her little butt was positioned. “I know. I was just so afraid of hurting you and the baby the whole time,” he said, still sounding a little disconnected. He stared up at the ceiling and I

knew that he was deep in thought. I contemplated making a joke when he said that he was afraid of hurting the baby, but decided against it because I knew that something must have been bothering him.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked wishing so badly that I could be able to read his mind. “A name for the baby.” Oh! With all of the commotion between us, it had completely slipped my

mind. I had thought about it one day and when I was completely defeated from all of the endless possibilities, I decided on Daniel Jr. for a boy and completely threw in the towel in regards to a girl.

“Well, have you come up with anything?” I asked after a few moments of silence passed. I hadn’t expected for Danny to be the one with the name situation weighing heavy on his mind. Especially

since we were having a girl. “Yes. But I don’t know if you’ll like it,” he said sounding unsure of what he was about to say next. “Well, you never know. Go for it.” He took a deep breath and brushed his fingers over my stomach. “Fauna Gabriella,” he whispered. It was as if I could picture her little face when hearing a name that sounded so beautiful. I believe he had proved himself wrong once he

looked at my face, reading my expression."Fauna is the Latin word for animal or wildlife. She's already proved to us that she's going to be wild. With you as her mom, that might be a tough act to follow," he said with a smirk. "Your wild side is what has had me wrapped around your fingers after all these years."

I smiled at his short stroll down memory lane, remaining silent as the name ran through my head. I thought about writing it on the birth certificate papers for the very first time. I pictured the way everyone's hearts would melt when they would ask if we'd picked out a name and I would let it roll right off of my lips with all of the pride in the world. I imagined how excited I was going to be as I wrote it on Christmas presents, addressing them "To: Fauna, From: Santa Claus". I thought about how I would shout it if she ever got in trouble or when and if I was cheering her on at sporting events. I smiled at the thought of teaching her those five little letters to be able to spell her name and I thought my heart would burst at the thought of introducing myself as "Fauna's mom," for the rest of my life. Suddenly, the future became even brighter.

“Do you like it?” he asked, not knowing if I liked it or if I was disgusted. I smiled and held

his hand where I felt her tiny kicks. “I love it.” He smiled back and kissed me, holding us in this moment. Maybe things were finally starting to turn around for us and hopefully they would stay that way.