She stretches her legs across your lap as she yawns and sinks deeper into the sofa.
You smile. Things are easier these days.
You watch her toes move a little against your thigh. The TV's on, but she's falling asleep and you're reading the paper. You turn it off and put a hand on her stomach, now five months pregnant. She smiles with her eyes closed at the feeling. She says, "Love you," in a sleepy voice and you lean over and kiss where you hand is.
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She cries over laundry detergent commercials and wants to have sex at the most inopportune times, but you get used to it. You become almost smitten with the way she gets angry with you over little things. You can do nothing but smile when she starts to yell and this, of course, only makes her yell louder.
She's been trying to think of a name. You like to watch her pour over baby name books before going to bed. You like the way she smiles softly when she finds a name she likes and highlights it carefully. Pink for girls' names, blue for boys' names. You tell her you want to name it Daisy or maybe Lola if it's a girl and she looks at you, "Yeah. I like those." And you're imagining a little girl with her mom's reddish brown hair, running around and laughing as you pick her up and throw her over your shoulder.
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You get the job in Scranton. It's strange being back there. Strange being superior to everyone. But you ease into it and soon it seems natural. You like being manager. You'd always laughed at Michael for how hard he tried to connect with the staff, but now you find that to be gratifying. Anyway, it's easier for you than it was for him. People like you and even though you're half the age of some of them, they come to respect you.
You move into a small split level just a few blocks away from your parents' house. It isn't anything fancy and it doesn't have a terrace. But you plant azaleas and rhododendrons in the front yard and this seems to be enough for her.
You paint the second bedroom green. She doesn't want it pink or blue. She just wants it to be a nice spring green. You think maybe it's too early to be setting up a nursery, but you like shopping for cribs and you like the way she looks with paint all over her clothes. You like drinking iced tea in the middle of a tarp covered floor on a sunny Sunday afternoon while she hums along to some oldies song on the radio.
You like kissing her in the middle of that floor. You like undressing her in the middle of that floor, watching the sunlight pool on her skin. You like the way she tastes a little like lemons and the way her hair fans out on the tarp. But more importantly, you like the way her laugh and her voice echo in the emptiness of the room like a meandering melody. How even when she just whispers, "I love you," it bounces off the walls and the ceiling with a cadence that is only hers.
Sometimes it hurts being this happy, this content with life. It aches a little to finally have what you wanted for so long. You try not to think anymore of those three years you spent without her. But sometimes you do and it makes you feel like maybe this is a dream and you'll wake up tomorrow and you won't have her anymore. You'll get up and go to work and she'll be married to Roy and you'll be miserable as always. But then you hear her in the bathroom and know that it's real, because you don't think your dreams would involve the sound of her throwing up at six in the morning.
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You remember proposing to her and how you thought you'd wait a year, but after eight months you couldn't wait any longer. So you just asked her at a stop light on the way home from work. (This was before the promises and the art classes and the job at the art gallery.) You turned to her as you eased on the brakes and said, "We should get married." She lifted her head from the window and smiled brightly at you and said, "We should. But you're going to propose to me again in a more romantic setting." You laughed too loudly then and said, "What if I draw a bath for you when we get home, light some candles, get the ring out of my dresser, and then ask you?" She put her hand on the back of your neck, her fingertips dancing through your hair. She said dreamily with her eyes closing slightly, "Mm…That sounds more like it."
You wondered how Roy had proposed. You wondered if she closed her eyes like that when he asked her. You thought about saying something like, "It won't take me three years until I'm drunk on an office cruise to set the date either." But you knew she'd get that look in her eye, because he was still a part of her. He would always be somewhere within her. You've learned not to let that bother you. You know ten years don't fade away completely.
And you looked at her as she kept her eyes closed and her hand on the back of your neck and you were filled with so much hope for the future that you felt anxious. You saw years and years of this and only this ahead of you. You saw everything you'd imagined in those three years without her, those three years when you thought all you'd ever do was imagine.
You didn't notice the light turn to green.
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She scrutinizes herself in the full length mirror some mornings while you're lying in bed. Her brow furrowing and her bottom lip being taken in between her teeth. She stands in every position possible, running her hands along her ever growing stomach. She fusses with her hair, with her clothes, sighs and turns to you. "I'm ugly now."
You reach out for her and pull her to you, her stomach is at eye level with you. You kiss it gently and look up at her. "That's ridiculous. You're always beautiful. Especially now."
She sits down on the bed next to you. She says, "Remember when we weren't- I mean, before the baby and everything?"
You're running your index finger along her thigh and you stop at the hem of her nightshirt, letting your hand drop onto the mattress. "Yeah."
"I just-" She looks at you, like she needs to be looking you in the eye. "I wanted to say that I'm sorry for-"
"No. Just- Let's not go back there." You take her hand and pull her down so she's lying next to you. "We're human, you know? We just hit a bad stretch. Neither of us could have stopped it from happening. It's stupid to think we're always going to be perfectly happy."
"Yeah, okay…I just wish- I didn't stop loving you then. I thought maybe it seemed like I didn't anymore…Like maybe you thought I regretted it, choosing you. But I didn't. I need you to know that."
You kiss her shoulder. You think of that period of time and it's just black. You hardly remember the details or what was said or how often she cried. (No, you remember that. You remember it was three or four times a week. Mostly on weekends.) You close your eyes, your eyelashes brushing against her skin. You'd be lying if you told her you never thought any of these things. You did. So you just say, "It's okay now." And it is.
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When you got the job back in Scranton, things seemed to slide back into place. She got her job back at the art gallery downtown and started taking art classes again. You came home to find balls of paper all over the living room, discarded and unfinished sketches of scenery. Some were of you, half of your face or maybe just an eye.
She was trying to build up her portfolio. The owner of the gallery had told her there might be room for a few of her own pieces. It wasn't much, the gallery was small, but it meant a step forward. It meant possibly getting paid for her art. It meant everything really. You started to think that you were both living proof that some horrible cliché about dreams and hope was actually true.
And you liked the way she looked when she had charcoal smudged on her chin and how oil pastels seemed to take over the coffee table.
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"Roy didn't really want kids," she says to you one night when your ear's pressed to her stomach and her hand is in your hair.
"Oh." You never know what to say when that name comes up. You don't move from your position. You keep listening intently for something, anything.
"He said we could have a couple, but he wasn't excited about it. He just seemed like he was doing it to make me happy."
You hear something that could be a heartbeat and you smile, but then you look up at her and she's looking out the bedroom window with a distracted look on her face.
You say, "Hey."
And she turns to you, biting the nail on her index finger a little. You kiss her softly and she responds by pulling you closer to her. You like these moments when she needs you.
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You call her on your lunch break one day, just to check in. Just to see how she's doing. Really, you need to hear her voice because the day is starting to seem endless.
She's eight months pregnant and the smile that creeps onto your face at the sound of her voice is instinctual.
Tomorrow you'll have been married for a year and a half.
"Hey," her voice is faint and soft and rings through the phone line.
"Hi. How are you?"
"Pregnant."
"Not for long."
"Ugh. That's not as comforting as you think."
She tells you what she's doing. Moans over the boredom of maternity leave. Talks about the neighbors and what's on TV. It's all so pointless, but her voice wraps around your heart in such a way that you start to believe that her words are pumping the blood through your veins.
You say, "I love you," and she makes a soft moaning noise that causes your eyes to immediately shut as she returns the sentiment.
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You have a son and you name him Adam. She smiles in the delivery room after thirty some hours of labor. She's covered in sweat and her eyes are circled in dark gray, but she's so beautiful that you're fighting tears when you kiss her temple gently.
She holds your hand and says, "He looks like you."
All you can do is nod and say, "Yeah," because it's overwhelming and you're surprised that your heart could get this full and still survive.
And you're so in love with everything that you can't remember a time when it was a fight just to get out of bed in the morning. You can't remember what it felt like to want to give up. That stretch of months when she felt like a stranger don't exist anymore. You've been put back together, all of your corresponding pieces locking back into place like they'd never been broken at all.