I didn’t even scream when I saw him there.
That’s the part I still think about.
Thirty-seven weeks pregnant. Barely sleeping. Ankles swollen so bad I couldn’t wear my wedding ring anymore. And there was my husband laughing outside some rooftop brunch place while his mother adjusted the collar of his shirt like he was a teenager going to prom.
No panic.
No guilt.
Nothing.
Just annoyed when he spotted me standing across the street.
His mother saw me first. Of course she did.
Her face twisted immediately and she actually rolled her eyes before saying, “Oh my God, Nicole, you tracked us here?”
Tracked them.
Like I was the problem.
Ryan walked over finally, holding a mimosa in one hand, and started talking to me in that fake calm voice people use when they already know they’re wrong.
He kept saying stuff like,
“You weren’t supposed to stress yourself out.”
“We just needed a short break.”
“You know how emotional you get.”
Meanwhile I was having contractions hard enough to stop me mid-sentence.
Not Braxton Hicks either.
Real ones.
I remember grabbing the side of a parked car because my legs suddenly felt weak. Ryan’s expression changed for maybe half a second before his mother snapped,
“She’s obviously exaggerating because she’s angry.”
Then my water broke right there on the sidewalk outside the restaurant.
People started staring instantly.
And the part that still makes me sick is Ryan didn’t reach for me first.
He reached for his mother.
Because she’d started crying.
At the hospital later, after sixteen hours of labor and an emergency C-section, Ryan finally showed up around midnight smelling like hotel cologne and airport whiskey.
He walked into recovery holding flowers like that erased everything.
Then quietly asked if I’d “calmed down enough to talk rationally now.”
I handed him my phone without saying a word.
On the screen was the charge confirmation his mother accidentally sent to my email.
Two first-class return tickets.
Only one hotel reservation.
King bed.