Everything is so beautiful. I feel like I’m high. But it’s not a marijuana, drowsy, dopey high. It’s more like Extasy-all the colors are brighter. All the touches are deeper. All the smells are stronger. And my thoughts are totally and completely clear.
Don’t remember waking up, really. Just that she was awake and my arms were around her. I kissed her lips softly, felt the tingle of tears behind my eyes right away, and was shocked because…I don’t cry. I just don’t. And since that jack…Since Jesse died…Since I almost finished me and Letty forever…
I put my head on her chest so I could get control again. Touched her because I still couldn’t believe she was real, that she’d forgiven me again. Her skin is lighter than mine, this delicious golden color. I touched her breasts, lightly, not sexually, getting to know her again, touched her ribs and ran my fingertips over the rough gauze and medical tape, down to her belly button.
I know her body better than I know my own. I know what hurts her and what makes her crazy and everything in between. And something is different. I noticed it then, since the insanity of the first time was over. She lost weight in her legs and arms and hips, but her breasts are bigger, kind of hard and heavy, and although you can’t see it, below her belly button was no longer soft. I pressed softly there with my fingertips, and there was something firm…Like muscle, almost.
My brain hitched on that, and suddenly everything shut down. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I turned to face Letty, and it was like she could hardly look at me, like she was afraid of me.
“Dom, I’m pregnant.”
And the power of those three words hit me like a Louie Slugger to the chest. Shot me into motion. My whole body was humming, my heart was pounding. And suddenly, I couldn’t keep still. I turned my face away from hers, staring at the pretty bronze belly, and it was strange, like Letty was sacred, like something so incredible could not be human. I put my lips between her belly button and her pantyline and closed my eyes and just inhaled her, and then I remembered.
Past two weeks. She’s been sleeping in the same bed as Vince. She’s fucked him, before that, and…My brain starts flying. How many times? How long ago? How pregnant is she? And just whose kid is inside of her?
She knows me. God, she knows me so well. I just looked at her, she saw the dread, the fear, the question in my face, knew exactly what I was thinking. And she started to talk and her voice moved over me like it was alive.
“It was three years ago, Dom,” she said, and relief spread through me in a warm wave, like morphine, or an orgasm. She lost me for a minute after that, not really listening to her words, basking in the relief, but I listened to her voice. The baby’s mine. The baby is mine. And whatever she said wouldn’t matter. And whatever she did wouldn’t matter. This baby is mine.
And I don’t deserve any of it. I know she was apologizing, talking about Trisha. And my brain went to Trisha…How I’d found out about Junior when he was two months old, how I’d missed everything. And now Letty…a couple of months pregnant. I’m not going to miss a thing. Going to be there to watch Letty’s belly get big and round and heavy, hold her hand and watch this baby come into the world, wake up at night and hold its little body against me, rock it, feed it, hold it whenever I want to, and do it all with the only person I’ve ever loved more than myself.
I couldn’t stop. The tears came and poured out of my eyes and I was so happy and so scared it all could be grabbed away in an instant and so sorry for every mindless instant gratification that has hurt her so much.
"I'm sorry, Letty." It was all I could say for a minute. All I could feel. She was giving me everything and how many times I have I destroyed her? With a few thrust of my hips, taken everything away?
"God, I'm so sorry." And she smeared my tears across my face with her thumbs, kissed at them. Her tenderness pushed me over the edge and cried into the plane of her stomach, cried like a baby in front of her for probably the second time in six years, until my head was pounding and I was exhausted and I physically had to stop. "I can't say I'm sorry," I said, after a long time, "For sleeping with Trisha. Because of my son. But I'm sorry for every other thing that came out of it besides Junior."
"I know," she said. "God, Dom, I know." And she put her hands under my arms and pulled up, my cue to get on top of her.
I kissed her mouth, my face feeling hot and swollen from crying, my eyes dry and sore, so I closed them. Just lost myself in her, felt her fingers close around me and I felt like she held my whole life in her hands as she tugged gently up, put me where I was supposed to be.
Pushed forward into her body and couldn't move, my heart pounding, shaking...I felt so weak and so powerful at once, buried my face in her throat and just laid there inside of her for the longest time, until she gripped my ass in her hands and spoke.
"Come on, Dom."
My God, I could make love to her forever..
And then I fall asleep and I wake up and can't open my stupid eyes and...this day goes on forever, and I have to write about all of it.
I'm lying there with my head on the small of her back, my arm pressed close to her body, and she's writing, and I don't know how long I was awake, dozing in and out. But I could feel the little movements as she wrote, pen and paper, oldschool style. She must have been writing about me, because all of a sudden I felt the muscles in her back move, she turned and looked over her shoulder at me, said softly, "I love you, bendejo."
I smiled and turned my face, buried it in her and kissed her loudly, kissed up along her back, and she kept writing. Funny how I can't share attention, not even with a notebook...I took it out of her hand and tossed it, flipped her over, kissing her all over, messy, wet kisses, and she laughed, and I tickled her until tears ran down her face, laughing almost as hard as she was. Laughter. What a strange feeling...to be laughing again.
It caught me off-guard, how long it's been since I've laughed. Really laughed. And I stopped tickling her, took her ribcage in my hands, the smile frozen on my face but the laughter gone. Just stared down at her, loving her completely for making me fucking LAUGH again.
And suddenly, I was just so full of...just so full of her. Bent and kissed her softly, again and again, along her ribs, her belly, the soft skin that covered the life I created. And she asked me a question that broke my heart.
"Are you pissed I'm pregnant, Dom? Cuz I'm pretty sure I could..."
Before she could even finish verbalizing the horrible thought, I stopped the words with a hard kiss to her lips.
Told her I'm so happy about it, that there's nothing I ever wanted more than this baby. Told her I wish it was only ever her, the mother of my children, that I wanted everything that came along with this baby. And I realized that, for the first time in way too fucking long, every word that came out of my mouth to her was true. Told her I want Us. Told her that's all I want. And meant it.
She was so relieved. The relief there killed me, twisted a guilty knife in me. I hate myself for giving her reason to think she's not the goddess of my fucking life, the ruler of everything I do, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, ever will seen, to think I wouldn't want our baby...and even if it were just HER baby...But it's not. It's our baby.
She rolled me over and climbed on, rocked fast and hard, and I could barely keep up, my hands on her waist, my eyes on hers, watching her as she came, almost immediately, almost violently it was so powerful, and I couldn't breathe.
Only the fact that I wanted to see her come again kept me from going off right away, and I waited until she could breathe again before dropping one hand down between us and touching her, slow but firm, guiding another one, watching her get close, all that black hair swinging around her face as she rode me, watched her come again and couldn't hold back, bit a fuckin hole in my lip as I shot off deep inside of her and she collapsed on my chest, panting against my throat.
And my hands were shaking on her back as I held her. I wanted to ask her to marry me. It's all I could think...Will you marry me? I have to bite my tongue, literally, to keep the words from spilling out. But I have to wait...If I ask her now, she'll think it's all about the baby, and it's not. It's all about her. My Letty.
