“Ja-jag-oo-ars!” Brent said.
I’d loved tigers, lions, jaguars, cheetahs, leopards, panthers at Brent’s age. My mom would bring home small picture books for me, and we’d sometimes go to the library and search for more. We would both try to sketch the animals, and I’d color while she cleaned our tiny apartment. We’d plaster the kitchen and our bedroom walls with our creations. Our homemade wallpaper would hide the cracks in the walls, the old stains that she had desperately tried to wash off with bleach but would never come out.
“Mi cachorro, you are so good at coloring. You stay within the lines, and you make the colors so bold, so alive. Muy bueno.”
“Let’s find a jaguar.” I took out my cell phone, got online, and looked up pictures of jaguars for Brent. I clicked on one of a jaguar crouching, about to spring into action. “Here’s one.” I tilted my phone toward him. “What do you think?”
Brent leaned over my arm, his thirsty gaze gulping down the animal’s photo on my screen. He bobbed up and down on his toes, his fingers digging into my forearm. “Ja-goo-ar!”
“Ja-goo-ar!” I roared, and he laughed loudly, hopping on his toes.
“Mrs. Landon?” the nurse called through the glass window.
Brent’s mom slowly pushed up from her seat, a hand over her huge belly.
“Come on, Brent, honey, it’s our turn,” she said. She turned to me, her face softening. “Thank you. He doesn’t usually talk to strangers at all. You obviously made quite an impression. All the best to you.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said as Brent shuffled back over to her. “Bye, Brent.”
Brent took his mother’s hand, but his eyes remained on me as she pulled him through the open door.
I rubbed my thumb over the jaguar on my phone’s screen.
Mi cachorro.
My mother always had a variety of sweet names for me. She’d said she was going to use them all whenever she could because, one day, I’d be grown up, and I wasn’t going to let her say them anymore or let her hold my hand or kiss me on the cheek.
She was wrong.
What I wouldn’t give to hear her voice call me “my puppy” in that gorgeous Argentinian Spanish of hers once again.
“Mi flaco.”
I’d been her skinny boy all right.
I wiped a hand over my mouth and took in a short breath.
The door clicked open, and Grace and Jill swept into the waiting room, both of them beaming. I sprang to my feet.
“Super-baby is fine. We saw and heard the heartbeat. Here, look.” Jill handed me a photo of a mass of gray and black blobs. “She or he is doing great.”
“Great news.” I held her gaze. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, wait! I forgot to ask the doctor something.” She brushed past me and Grace and talked to the receptionist, who gestured her back through the open door again. I handed Grace the photo, and she studied it, probably for the hundredth time.
A few minutes later, Jill reappeared and slid her hand in mine. “All set. Let’s go. I’m starving.”
“What did you forget? Is everything okay?” asked Grace.
“You know me. I had a couple of questions about food and calorie intake. Now that I’m in the second trimester, I want to make sure I’m on the right track.”
“You’re so good about that.” Grace breezed through the front door and hit the elevator button. “Woman of steel.”
Jill squeezed my hand, her face pink.
We waved at Grace as she drove out of the parking lot, and I got Jill in the truck. I swung in and started her up.
“She said yes,” Jill said.
“Who?”
“My doctor, just now.”
I turned out onto the street. “Yes? About what?”
“She said yes about the sex.”
I tore my eyes away from the road and shot her a glance. “She did?”
“She did. Yes to everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yes!” She laughed. “I didn’t want to ask in front of Grace. It felt…weird. Is that silly?”
“No, sweetheart.”
I squeezed her thigh, and her hand clapped over mine.
“My first trimester went well, and now that I’m in the second, I’m good to go.” She waggled her eyebrows. “But we should use a condom and lots of lube—water-based lube only, she said—if we’re going to have anal sex.”
“Ah.” Images of Jill naked and on all fours in front of me, her luscious ass squirming back against my cock jumped in my head. I adjusted myself in my seat.
“I’m in the mood for a huge breakfast now—waffles with lots of butter and syrup, eggs, bacon, the works.”
“Oh, yeah? What about all those calories you were talking about before?”
She leaned back against the headrest, a relaxed smile on her face, both her hands pressing mine. “I think I can afford the indulgence. I’m going to need the extra calories now. Don’t you think?”
“Baby, I’m still stuck on the way you said ‘lots of lube.’”
“Boner, focus. I want waffles. Really good waffles.”
“There’s only one place then. It’s in Pine Needle.”