I was pregnant.Actually pregnant, for real this time.
I was scared to become a mother, and I was terrified at how Michael would feel and react to this turn of events. I was also strangely happy and excited. Obviously, it wasn’t something that I had planned for and it was a complete shock. But this was something that had happened because of the love and passion that Michael and I had together. How could anything that was created from that be something bad?
I finished my shower and got dressed slowly. I needed to tell Michael and I needed to tell him today. I wasn’t going to hide anything from him ever again. So no matter what his reaction would be, I had to tell him.
When we uncorked the champagne and sat down on the couch together, Michael raised his glass to clink against mine.
“Cheers,” he said. “To all the good things that are going to come our way.”
I felt my lips press together as I tried to join him in a celebratory toast but couldn’t. I couldn’t toast our wonderful new future together without telling him about the newest and most important part of it.
“You okay?” he asked as he noticed my hand frozen mid-air, with the gold-colored champagne shaking in the glass.
I was so hesitant to tell him that I was pregnant. It could ruin everything. It could change everything, and once I told him, there was no way to take it back. He might completely freak out and be upset, and I was scared of that.
“Michael—” I choked on my own voice for a moment, but I forced myself to push through and do it anyway. “I’m pregnant.”
He looked at me with a blank stare. No reaction at all seemed even worse than an upset reaction.
“Michael?” I asked nervously.
“Are you being serious?” he asked.
“Yes.”
I stared motionless at his face, searching for any kind of reaction at all that I could read. He turned his head away from me for a moment while he set his champagne glass on the surface of the coffee table. When he turned back to face me, his eyes were wet.
“God Michael, I am so sorry,” I said as I started to cry. “I’m so sorry. I know this isn’t what you expected or what you wanted. It must have happened on the night in the woods.”
“Sorry?” he said as his voice cracked.
Tears started to pour down my face, and I could feel my lips start to tremble. I was on the verge of breaking down into sobs. This couldn’t ruin things—it just couldn’t, not after everything that we had been through together, and not now when things were finally starting to go so well for us.
“Lisette,” he said as he reached for my hands and placed them into his lap. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”
“Yes, I do,” I cried. “This isn’t what we need right now. You have a brand new position, and I have a good job at the shelter and so many projects that I want to do like the greenhouse on the roof. We are just getting started and this is going to ruin everything. This isn’t what you wanted.”
Michael lifted his hand to wipe the tears on my face with his fingertips. Then he pulled me closer toward him so that our faces were almost touching.
“How do you know that this isn’t what I wanted?” he asked.
“What? What are you saying? You’re crying,” I said. “I can tell that you’re upset.
“I’m not upset,” he said as he grabbed me into his arms and pressed me against his chest.
He held his hands against the back of my head and kissed the top of my hair. Then he let me go and there was something else there along with his tears—a smile.
“I’m not crying because I’m upset with you, or because I’m upset that you’re pregnant,” he said.
“You’re not?” I asked.
“No. Granted, it was a huge shock. But these tears are ones of happiness. Lisette, I couldn’t be more happy.”
I was so confused that it almost didn’t feel real.
“But you said that you didn’t want to have a child. You were terrified at the thought of being a parent the last time that we had a scare.”
“This isn’t a scare this time, right? You’re sure that you’re pregnant.”
“Positive,” I said with a nod. “I took a test this morning.”
“I know that the last time we talked about this I was really freaked out. But that was before now.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What has changed since then?”
“Me,” he said. “I’ve changed. We’ve been through everything together. We’ve nearly lost each other, nearly lost ourselves in the process. And yet each and every time, we’ve found our way back to each other. I can’t live without you, Lisette, and I don’t ever want to. We’re finally in a position where we can build a life for ourselves that we want to have together. And I’m not afraid of being a father anymore. You make me want to be a better man, and I know that I can be the kind of father that our child deserves.”
I was flabbergasted, and so happy at his reaction that I was speechless.
“Really? You’re not upset or freaked out?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “This is the probably the first thing in my life that I couldn’t be more certain about.”
I reached my hands up to his face and brought his lips to mine. This time when we kissed, it felt different. It felt like it meant even more. When we pulled our mouths away, and both wiped our eyes dry, Michael’s eyes looked deeply into mine with a new kind of passion.
“Do you remember when you asked me if I was happy?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”
