The Night I Told Him He Was Going to Be a Father

The test has been sitting on the bathroom shelf for twenty minutes, but I can’t move. Two lines. Two clear, unmistakable lines that have rearranged the order of everything I thought I knew about my life.

I sit on the edge of the bathtub and count the floor tiles because I need to do something with my hands, with my eyes, with my mind, which still hasn’t finished taking in what that test means. I think about Marcos. I think about his face when I tell him. I think about the face I’ll make when I tell him.

I came home from work feeling off since midday: a kind of dull dizziness that wasn’t exactly tiredness but wasn’t anything else either. I’d been like that for days. Days of counting in my head and ruling out the possibility, because it couldn’t be, because we’d just come back from a trip, because we were still settling into the life we’d built together after the wedding.

And yet, two lines.

When I hear the key in the lock, I pick the test up from the shelf and squeeze it between my fingers. I don’t hide it. I don’t know exactly why, but I need him to see it.

***

Marcos walks into the living room taking off his jacket, with that look of slight exhaustion he gets on Tuesdays when meetings pile up. He sees me standing in the middle of the room and stops.

—What’s wrong? —he asks. Not with alarm. With that focused attention he has when he knows something matters.

I don’t say anything. I hold out the test.

He looks at it. Turns it over. Looks at it again. And then he does something I wasn’t expecting: he laughs. A short laugh, almost disbelieving, that ends in a long exhale.

—Lucía —he says, and my name in his mouth sounds different from how it always sounds.

He crosses the room in four strides. He takes me by the waist with both hands and lifts me off the floor for a second, just a second, before setting me down slowly and finding my mouth. The kiss is long and carries a kind of hunger I can’t quite name: relief, excitement, something older than either of us knows how to call.

When we pull apart, his hands are still on my waist.

—How long have you known? —he asks.

—Twenty minutes.

He laughs again. This time it’s bigger.

He takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom without saying anything else. I follow because I don’t need him to explain anything. I know that step, that way of guiding me.

***

The room is half-dark. The last light of the afternoon slips through the blinds and draws golden stripes on the floor. Marcos sits me on the edge of the bed and stands in front of me, looking at me as if he’s seeing something he hadn’t seen before, even though we’ve been together four years and know each other by heart.

—Are you okay? —he asks.

—I’m scared —I say—. And happy. Both at the same time.

—Me too. —He runs his tongue over his lip and lowers his voice—. And I’m horny, Lucía. Fuck, you have no idea how horny.

He leans down and kisses me again, this time with no slowness at all. He bites my lower lip, tugs on it, and his tongue pushes into my mouth with an insistence that makes me clamp my thighs together. His hands find the buttons of my shirt and start undoing them one by one, but halfway through he gets fed up and yanks the last two open. I hear them hit the parquet floor.

—Marcos —I whisper.

—I’ll buy you another one —he murmurs against my neck, and bites me right where he knows I get goose bumps.

The shirt falls to the floor, and his hands travel over my shoulders, my back, the line of my spine. There’s something different in that touch tonight. I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but it feels more deliberate, more attentive, and at the same time hungrier, as if knowing I’m pregnant has opened up something in him that had been sleeping.

He lays me back on the bed and stays over me for a moment, looking at me. He pulls his shirt over his head and throws it to the floor. He strips off his trousers without taking his eyes off me, and when he takes off his briefs, his cock is already hard, thick, with a swollen tip and a shining bead trembling at the head.

—What? —I ask, and I can hear my voice go thin as I look at it.

—Nothing —he says—. Just that it’s you. And I’m going to fuck you until you forget what your name is.

I don’t know exactly what that means, but at that moment I understand it perfectly.

His lips trail down my neck, the curve of my shoulder, the edge of my bra. He unhooks it with one hand, with that ease that still surprises me after years, and as soon as my tits are free he grabs both at once, with an open palm, squeezing. A moan slips out of me that I don’t manage to smother.

—They’re bigger already —he says, talking to my chest, not to me—. Look at them. And the nipples are darker. Fuck, Lucía.

His thumbs draw slow circles over my nipples, getting harder each time, while his mouth descends, and I close my eyes and let myself be carried by the heat of that contact. He sucks one, tugs on it with his teeth just enough to wrench a gasp from me, then the other. He alternates. Bites them softly. Licks them in circles. My fingers tangle in his hair and I push his head against me because I need more, more mouth, more tongue, more of everything.

When he reaches my stomach, he stops.

He lays his open palm over my belly, still flat, and the pressure of that gesture catches in my throat.

—Hi —he says, very quietly, speaking to something that doesn’t even have a size yet.

I have to bite my lip not to cry.

Then he lowers his lips to my belly and kisses it once, slowly, then again a little lower, and again, and again, leaving a wet trail through the soft hair to my hip bone. He hooks his fingers in my panties and slides them down my legs, kissing my skin as he uncovers it. When I’m finally naked, he pauses for a second staring at my pussy spread between my thighs, and I see him swallow.

—You’re soaked —he says, his voice rough.

—Shut up.

—No. —He laughs—. You’re soaked, Lucía. Look at yourself.

He runs two fingers through my slit, very slowly, from bottom to top, and pulls them out shining. He puts them in his mouth and sucks them while looking me in the eye, and I have to look away because I can’t take it.

—Open up —he says.

I spread my legs wider, embarrassed and desperate at the same time. His hands hold my inner thighs, pushing them against the mattress, and I feel his warm breath on the most sensitive skin before his mouth finds the center of everything.

What follows is unhurried. Marcos is like that when something truly matters to him: he doesn’t rush. He knows me by heart, and it shows in the way his tongue works, in the shifts of rhythm he reads on his own without me saying a word, in the way he grips my hips when he feels me slipping away. He starts by licking slowly from bottom to top, his whole tongue flat, covering my entire vulva in one pass, and ends on the clit with the tip, just barely brushing it. He repeats it three, four times, until I’m twisting against his mouth.

—Please —I pant.

—Please what.

—Suck it. Suck my clit, Marcos, please.

He smiles against my pussy. I can feel it. And then he closes his lips over my clit and sucks, hungrily, while two of his fingers sink into me and start pumping in a slow, deep rhythm. My back arches all at once. I tangle my fingers in his hair and I don’t tell him to stop because I don’t want him to stop.

—Like that —I tell him, not recognizing my own voice—. Oh fuck, like that.

His fingers curl inside me and find the spot, that spot, and massage it with the pad of his finger while his tongue keeps working me outside. I feel the orgasm gathering low in my belly, thick, hot, with that sensation that something inside you is about to break.

The orgasm arrives like a wave building before it breaks. When it breaks, it makes me grip the sheets with my fingers and say his name twice at the ceiling. I shove his head by accident, my thighs clamping around his ears, and he stays there, mouth pressed to me, sucking me through the last tremor.

When he lifts his face, his chin is shining and he has a smile that makes me embarrassed.

—Come here —I tell him, tugging at his arm.

He climbs up my body, kissing my skin as he goes, and when he reaches my mouth he kisses me with all his own taste on me, and I don’t pull away. On the contrary. I bite his tongue and slip my hand between our bodies and grab his cock, hard as stone, hot, with the foreskin already pulled back and the tip wet.

—Wait —I tell him—. Lie down.

—Lucía…

—Lie down.

He lets himself roll onto his back. I kneel between his legs and take his cock in both hands, one over the other, and lick from base to tip, following the thick vein running underneath. Marcos lets out a growl and throws his head back against the pillow.

—Fuck —he says.

I take him into my mouth slowly, closing my lips around the head, playing with my tongue on the frenulum as I slide down and up. Once he’s well coated with saliva, I start sucking him properly, all the way, until the tip hits the back of my throat and makes my eyes water. Marcos places a hand on the back of my neck, not pushing, just following the motion, and when I pull him out of my mouth for a second to breathe, there’s a thread of saliva hanging from my lip to the tip of his cock.

—Look at me —he says.

I lift my eyes. I take him in again. I do it looking into his eyes, up and down, helping myself with my hand at the base, and I can feel his thighs tightening beneath me.

—Stop —he says suddenly, carefully grabbing my hair—. Stop, Lucía, stop or I’m going to come.

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and smile.

—And?

—And I want to come inside you.

—You already came inside me —I tell him, pointing to my stomach—. Look at the consequences.

He laughs. He catches me by the waist and pulls me on top of him in one movement, and I end up astride his hips, with his cock resting against my slit, sliding up and down without entering yet. I move slowly to get it all wet with what I’m still dripping.

—Put it in —he tells me, voice rough—. Yourself. Put it in however you want.

I lift myself a little, grab him with my hand, and position him at my entrance. I sink down slowly, feeling him open me centimeter by centimeter, holding my breath at how full he makes me feel. When I have him all the way in I stay still, hands on his chest, letting my body adjust.

Marcos looks up at me with flushed cheeks. He takes my hips.

—Ride me —he says.

I start moving. At first in slow circles, then up and down, then faster. He meets me from below, thrusting up on every descent, and the sound of our bodies crashing together fills the half-dark room along with my moans and his grunts through clenched teeth. He sits up a little to suck one of my tits while I ride him, and that detail, the hot tongue on my nipple while he fucks me from below, nearly makes me come again.

—Wait —I moan—. Wait, I can’t hold out like this.

He lifts me as if I weighed nothing, never leaving me, and turns me onto my back against the mattress, him on top. He pries my legs apart with his knees, pushes them to my chest, and sinks into me again in one thrust that makes me cry out.

—Like this? —he asks, moving now with a firm, deep rhythm, each thrust hitting a place I didn’t know I had.

—Like this.

—Tell me.

—Fuck me, Marcos. Fuck me like this.

The rhythm he sets at first is deep and slow, but it speeds up. Every movement feels more intense than usual, or maybe it’s just that I’m more aware of everything. He holds my thighs open, his hips slam into mine with a wet, sharp smack, and every so often he stops with his cock buried to the hilt, moving only his pelvis in circles, pressing me down into the mattress. Every time he does it, it tears a new moan out of me.

Marcos rests his forehead against mine and mixes his breathing with mine, and that seemingly small detail is what finally overwhelms me. The second orgasm hits almost without warning, clenching around his cock in spasms he notices perfectly, because he lets out a curse and drives his hips harder.

—I’m going to come —he pants—. Lucía, I’m going to come.

—Inside —I tell him, though it no longer needs saying—. Come inside.

He sinks deep and goes still, trembling, and I feel the hot waves pouring out inside me, one after another, while he clenches his jaw and breathes out against my neck. I hold him with my legs, keeping him there, feeling every wave as if it were mine too.

For a few minutes we don’t move. His weight on top of me is familiar and I like it. I count his breaths. He’s still inside me, soft now, and I feel a warm trickle sliding between my thighs when he finally pulls out.

Then he rolls over, pulls me against his chest, and lays a hand over my belly. Neither of us says anything. But I know what he’s thinking because I’m thinking the same thing.

***

We decided to wait three weeks before telling anyone.

Those three weeks are strange and beautiful. We live as always, we work as always, but something has changed in the texture of the days. Marcos sends me voice notes at midday to ask how I’m doing. I answer with short audios because I’m embarrassed to hear myself say I’m fine, but coffee makes me dizzy and that isn’t living anymore.

One night, while we’re making dinner, he hugs me from behind for no reason and stays like that, chin on my shoulder, saying nothing. I keep peeling garlic. Sometimes love fits completely into a gesture like that. And other times, when his hand slides down from my waist, slips inside my pajama pants, and his fingers find me already wet from that alone, love gets rough and ends up bending me over the counter with the garlic half-peeled and his cock inside me before the onion even reaches the pan.

The nausea came in the second week. It wasn’t devastating, but it was persistent: an underlying sickness that settled in between eight and eleven in the morning with the punctuality of an alarm. Marcos started getting up ten minutes early so he could have tea ready for me when I came out of the bathroom. I never asked him to do it. He just did.

***

When the time came to tell them, we did it at home.

We invited both families over on a Saturday afternoon under the excuse that we had things to show them. My mother arrived suspicious from the moment she walked in, I know because I know her and because when she puts on that I-don’t-know-anything face, that’s exactly when she knows everything.

After tea, when everyone was sitting in the living room, Marcos looked at me. I nodded.

—We’re going to be parents —I said.

There was one second of absolute silence. And then the noise.

My mother was the first to stand up. She hugged me so tightly it took my breath away, and when she pulled back her eyes were shining and she made no effort to hide it.

—About time! —my mother-in-law said, which made everyone laugh, including me.

Marcos’s father put a hand on his son’s shoulder and looked at him for a long moment before saying something in his ear I couldn’t hear. Marcos nodded, and something in his face relaxed, as if he’d been waiting for that gesture for a long time without knowing it.

The rest of the afternoon was noisy and warm. Everyone talked at once about names, about whether it would be a boy or a girl, about whether babies these days slept better in cribs or bassinets. I sat on the sofa with a cup of chamomile tea and spent my time watching them all.

Marcos was standing by the window, talking to his brother. At some point he noticed me looking and gave me a small smile, just for me. I shrugged as if to say what? And he shook his head as if to say nothing, everything.

***

Carolina, my best friend, found out two days later by phone.

—Stop! —she screamed, and I had to pull the phone away from my ear—. Stop, stop, stop! Are you pregnant? Really?

—Really.

—Lucía! Oh my God! —And then she started laughing and crying at the same time, which is something only Carolina can do and which always moves me—. When are you due? How are you feeling? Does everyone know already?

I answered her questions in order, patiently, because that’s Carolina.

My friend Elena, quieter by nature, asked me to meet for a drink that same week. When I sat down in front of her, she already knew; I don’t know who told her.

—Congratulations —she said simply, and squeezed my hand across the table.

With Elena, you don’t need grand scenes. Sometimes that’s exactly what you need.

***

The months that followed were slow and fast at the same time, which is a contradiction that only makes sense when you live it. My body started changing in ways that surprised me every morning in the mirror. My tits got even bigger, my nipples more sensitive, and Marcos, who had already looked at me hungrily before, now looked directly at me with his mouth slightly open. We fucked more than ever, and in stranger ways than ever: against the hallway wall when he got home from work, in the shower with the water pouring over us, on all fours on the sofa with him holding me by the hip while he whispered filthy things in my ear about how hot it made him to feel me like that.

We bought a crib. We painted the nursery a color that on the sample looked sea green and on the wall turned out almost blue, but we decided we liked it anyway. We attended childbirth prep classes where Marcos took notes on his phone with a seriousness that made me hold back laughter.

One night, when the pregnancy was already visible and I was sleeping with a pillow between my knees because it was the only position I could stand, Marcos put his hand over my belly. The baby kicked against his palm. We both went still.

—Hi —he said, just like that first night. In the exact same tone.

I laid my hand over his.

Outside, it was raining. Inside, there were three of us.