the world for them to do the thing they loved.
And I could feel that building up inside me with a zealot's fire as I watched Lia flip channels on the telly in my home.
Everything else might be going wrong in my life, branching off into directions that felt crooked and dangerously flimsy, except her.
"A girl is fine by me too," I murmured, sliding a hand up her leg, where it draped over my lap.
Lia rolled her eyes. "I'd hope so."
"It was fast, though, wasn't it?" I asked. "The heartbeat."
Funny, if I laid my hand over my chest, I got the strangest feeling I'd feel it pounding in that same rhythm. Whomp, whomp, whomp.
She hummed, moving her own hand over her stomach. When the doctor rolled the wand over it as Lia lay flat on the table, it was hardly detectable. "It was amazing." The graceful length of her fingers spread wide over her stomach, and she smiled softly. "I wish I could feel it."
There was no doubt in my mind she'd be a wonderful mother. If pressed, I might not even be able to articulate why, or not well, at least.
We'd talked about so little, she and I. And the things she did seem to want to talk about were the subjects I wanted to avoid like a kick to the balls. It was instinct, I supposed. The same way I could stand in front of a keeper for a penalty kick and know in my gut that he'd go left, so I should kick right. I knew she'd be the best kind of mum. Fierce and fearless and intelligent.
In Lia's lap was her notebook and a dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre that was always in her bag.
"How did your meeting go?"
She sighed, moving the notebook and novel to the side so she could burrow further into the couch. "I kinda ... argued with her. Or she argued with me. I don't even know."
I tilted my head. "What about?"
Lia's eyes, that deep midnight blue, hit me like a punch to the chest when she looked up at me. She'd looked at me for a lot of reasons, out of lust and out of fear and in anger, but this was something different. There was a hesitation that I couldn't make out.
My hand squeezed her leg. "What is it?"
"She said something, and it made me feel a little defensive, I guess."
Gently, I tapped her leg, so she stretched out. Taking a foot in hand, I dug my thumbs into the arch and listened to her groan, an indecent sound that shouldn't have been so sexy, considering I was rubbing her feet, yet it was.
"Was it your paper? I thought you were happy with your first draft?" For ten days, she buried herself on her computer, working on ... something important. The world of academia was hardly my comfort zone, but I was still trying to understand what it was she did. What she wanted to do.
"No, it wasn't my paper. She's still reviewing it, I think." Her back arched when I dug into a spot on her foot. "Oh, holy shit, that feels amazing."
At Lia's age, I'd been just taking the premier league by storm, one year after my transfer from the German team where I got my start. But maybe to her, that paper was the same type of thrill as hoisting a cup over my head was for me.
"What are you going to do with that fancy paper?" I asked. Groggily, she lifted her head, and I stifled a laugh at her expression. It reminded me of when my head was clenched tight between her thighs and she'd just about torn the hair from my head as she came to a screaming release a couple of days earlier. "When you finish, I mean. Take the Brontë world by storm, as it were?"
"If you want me to answer"—she hissed in a breath when I moved to the other foot—"you have to stop doing that." I held my hands up, and she exhaled heavily. "I don't know, really."
My eyebrows lifted. "Meaning ...?"
"Meaning," she drawled, "I don't know what I want to do with my degree just yet."
"Aren't you close to graduating?"
"Yup."
"With your master's degree."
She tapped a finger to her nose. "You got it."
The look I gave her was incredulous. "How do you not know?"
"Okay, judgy, a lot of people in this world go on and get their doctorate while they decide if they want to write or research or teach. It's