“It’s taken two days to finish,” I tell him. “My body feels like I ran a marathon and all I did was walk up and down a step ladder a few times.”
He glances over his shoulder and I can see the concern in his expression. He’s worried that I was here doing it all on my own. He shouldn’t worry. I’ve got this.
When we make it to the nursery, he stops in the doorway. On the opposite wall, I painted a garden. It’s complete with almost every fruit and vegetable I could think of that grows in a garden. I’m not a painter, but it’s amazing what you can do with a projector and transparent paper.
“Wow,” Ryle says.
I grin, because I recognize the surprise in his voice and I know it’s genuine. He walks into the room and looks around, shaking his head the whole time. “Lily. It’s . . . wow.”
If he were Allysa, I’d clap and jump up and down. But he’s Ryle and with the way things have been between us, that would be a little awkward.
He walks over to the window where I set up a swing. He gives it a little push and it begins moving from side to side.
“It also moves front to back,” I tell him. I don’t know if he even knows anything about baby swings, but I was pretty impressed by that feature.
He walks over to the changing table and pulls one of the diapers out of the holder. He unfolds it and holds it up in front of him. “It’s so tiny,” he says. “I don’t remember Rylee being this tiny.”
Hearing him mention Rylee makes me a little sad. We’ve been living apart since the night she was born, so I’ve never been able to see him interact with her.
Ryle folds up the diaper and puts it back in the holder. When he turns to face me, he smiles, lifting his hands to motion around the room. “It’s really great, Lily,” he says. “All of it. You’re really doing . . .” His hands drop to his hips and his smile falters. “You’re doing really well.”
A thickness seems to form in the air around me. It’s suddenly difficult to take in a full breath because for whatever reason, I feel like I need to cry. I just really like this moment and it saddens me that we couldn’t spend the entire pregnancy full of moments like these. It feels good sharing this with him, but I’m also scared I might be giving him false hope.
Now that he’s here and he saw the nursery, I’m not sure what to do next. It’s glaringly obvious that we need to discuss a lot of things, but I have no idea where to start. Or how.
I walk over to the rocking chair and take a seat. “Naked truth?” I say, looking up at him.
He exhales a huge breath and nods, then takes a seat on the sofa. “Please. Lily, please tell me you’re ready to talk about this.”
His reaction eases my nerves a little, knowing he’s ready to discuss everything. I wrap my arms around my stomach and lean forward in the rocking chair. “You go first.”
He clasps his hands together between his knees. He looks at me with so much sincerity, I have to glance away.
“I don’t know what you want from me, Lily. I don’t know what role you want me to have. I’m trying to give you all the space you need, but at the same time I want to help more than you possibly know. I want to be in our baby’s life. I want to be your husband and I want to be good at it. But I have no idea what’s going through your head.”
His words fill me with guilt. Despite what has happened between us in the past, he’s still this baby’s father. He has the legal right to be a father, no matter how I feel about it. And I want him to be a father. I want him to be a good father. But deep down, I’m still holding on to one of my biggest fears, and I know I need to talk to him about it.
“I would never keep you from your child, Ryle. I’m happy you want to be involved. But . . .”
He leans forward and buries his face in his hands with that last word.