boredom starts to take over, I step in and pull her legs up to wrap around my hips. “Every time you smile; that’s me enjoying. Every time we make love; that’s me relaxing. Every time Bobby does the doodle dance and falls to the floor in a pile of giggles, that’s me justifying my hard work. I don’t resent working, Bert. As long as I get to come home to you every day, it’s worth it.”
“Bryan…” She sighs. “Five years has flown,” she clicks her fingers, “like that. So fast. I don’t want you to stop and breathe only on your birthdays, and realize you blinked, got another year older, and wonder what it was all for.”
“I never wonder. I know what I live for. Who I live for.” I press a kiss to her lips. “Let’s move home, Bert. We can share apartment expenses with Geo for a bit. He told me I’d be on fifteen dollars an hour there. I’m only on twelve, here. That’ll open things up for us. It’s cheaper to live there. We’d be better off. Then I can get one extra job on top and we’d be ballin’.”
She giggles through snotty tears. “Ballin’. I don’t think we’re the ballin’ type of people, Bry. We’re just us.”
“And I love us. Exactly the way we are. If you want to stay, then we stay and you’ll never hear another peep about it again, but if you’re not opposed to it, I’d really like to go home. We have a new baby on the way. Geo’s garage will pay us double what I’m on now–”
She rolls her eyes. “From twelve an hour to fifteen is not double. It’s more like…” She shrugs. “I don’t know. A quarter? I didn’t get nearly as many A’s in math as I told my daddy.”
I cup her face. “He’s gone now, Bert. Going home doesn’t mean going back to him. He can’t hurt you, and he can’t hurt B or the baby.” Her asshole daddy fucked her up bad. He beat her. Tormented her. Had her walking on eggshells her whole damn life.
He’s the only person I couldn’t protect her from… until I could.
“He’s gone, Bert. We could go back to be with our friends. Put down some roots. This place is just temporary for us.” I point to the bare wall. “There’s a reason why you haven’t put any pictures up. Five years, Bert. No photos.”
“Because we’re renting. Not allowed to put nails in the walls.”
With a raised brow and gentle hands, I stroke her cheek. “There are eleven nails in that wall alone. They were there before we moved in. There are three nails, and a hole where a nail was over there.” I point with my chin only. “You’re not settling in, because this isn’t your home. I want walls of photos. Millions of photos. I want memories on the walls and family to smile at me in every room. Tell me where to make a home for you. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything you want. You just have to tell me.”
“I want to make you happy.”
I smile. “You make me happy by existing. You don’t have to do anything else except make my babies and tell me how to make your life better.”
Her eyes flash with panic. “Jesus. I won’t have to have another eleven pound baby, will I? That hurt so bad.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m sorry. Truly I am. It’s the Kincaid genes. Broad shoulders. We’re fighters. You knew that going in.”
She sniffs and looks down. “We can move, Bry. I don’t mind.”
I pull her face up. “You don’t mind? Or it would make you happy? Because I don’t want you to settle. I want you to actively make choices that’ll make your life happier.”
Biting her lip, her hands come up to hold my forehead against hers. “I want to move. Let’s go home.”
“Yes!” I lift her from the table and bring her lips to mine. Her arms instinctively wrap around my neck. Her legs around my hips. “You make me happy, Bert. You said yes. You married me. You make my babies. This is happiness for me.”
Nodding, she rests her forehead against mine and scratches her nails against the back of my head. “Please lord, give us a calm baby. I love my son, Bry. But if we get two of them, they’ll kill us both.”
Turning, we stop and watch Bobby sitting on the table with fists full of cooled meatloaf.
“He’s yours,” I