Page 15 of For Her
“Okay. Better than I was, at least. So… it’s been six months,” I hint at her with a sneaky grin. “Any news for me yet?” Six months doesn’t sound long, but after what Melanie and Matt went through, they should be in the marriage hall of fame.
“Not yet,” she shrugs, knowing I’m grilling her about babies of their own. “We’re trying, but just casually, and we’ve taken the first steps towards fostering and adoption. We’ll be parents the way we’re meant to be.”
“I love that,” I say sincerely, tapping my glass to hers.
Jack
“So, Jack,” Josh snickers, bringing his glass to his lips. “How’s the morning sickness?”
His clever comment is met with roaring laughter from Chris and a small chuckle from Matt. In case you’re wondering, no, they have not stopped giving me shit since finding out about the sympathetic pregnancy. I set my jaw and roll my eyes, tilting my own drink back.
“Easy there,” Chris points at me with the hand holding his own beverage. “You’re drinking for two, remember?” He cackles at his own joke and Josh claps a hand on his shoulder as he cracks up. Matt takes a seat in a nearby arm chair, trying less to contain his own laughs.
“Shut the hell up!” I erupt before reining it in and lowering my voice. “Fucking assholes,” I mumble, polishing off my glass.
“Jack, relax,” Matt perks up from his seat with a tilt of his head. “It’s not good for… the baby to get worked up!” He barely gets his sentence out between sputters of laughter. I turn and rear on him.
“What the fuck?” I snarl at him. “You, too? The one who’s supposed to be the most mature, not to mention my best friend?” I ask. I’m seriously getting steamed. The first couple of days it was all good fun and I could laugh along with it, but this shit is seriously getting old. And here they are, still laughing like they’re back on the school yard.
I narrow my eyes at Matt. “Think you’re so funny now, fucker. Think you’ve got a deep connection with my sister, do ya?”
“You know I do,” he levels me with a no bullshit stare. “My connection with her beat time and distance, but where the hell are you going with this?”
“When you’re expecting my next niece or nephew with her, you better buckle the fuck up, because if you’re really as close with your wife as you say you are, you’re going to go through this too. And when you do, it’s no holds barred. Just you wait,” I menacingly hiss out between clenched teeth as I point at him.
Matt has the decency to press his lips into a thin line and offer me an apology through his eyes while Chris gulps.
“I’m, uh… I’m going to go find Mouse,” he mumbles, referring to his saint of a fiancée, Rebecca, as he steps between us on his way out of the room.
Josh isn’t as easily deterred as the others and puts his cocky smirk back in place.
“Let me guess, Mayzie’s having mood swings too?”
“Shut the hell up, Nolan,” a tenor voice I know well chastises from the other doorway. I turn to see my good friend, George, lead singer of The Shock Wave. “You’re a disgrace to the music industry when you can’t come up with new material,” he adds as he swaggers in the way only a musician of his stature can, carrying his own drink and lazily approaches us.
“Stockwell,” I grin and we greet each other with a manly hug and slap on the back.
“Krasinski,” he replies when we pull away. “I know I said it on the phone, but congratulations, man.”
“Thanks,” I tell him, feeling my heart warm and squeeze the way it does every time someone mentions that I’m going to be a father.
After George slaps hands with Matt, he straightens up to do the same with Josh who seems to have finally figured out how his mouth closes.
“You got a girl yet, Nolan?” George asks him, and I see Josh’s spine stiffen. When he just stares at George without answering, he gives him a pass and turns back to Matt and me. “Anyway, the whole sympathetic pregnancy? I’ve been there, too,” he informs me with a confident smirk.
“You’re serious?”
He shrugs a shoulder as he gets a nostalgic look in his eyes.
“Whenever Erin got sick, I had to run to the other bathroom at the same time. If she was craving key lime pie, I had to have it too. And you know what? I’d do it all over again.”
His exterior is all rugged, badass rock musician, but when it comes to his wife and child, George is a pile of mush, and I proudly stand beside him in that aspect. As I glance through the doorway to the other room, I catch a glimpse of my wife laughing with Melanie, George’s wife, Erin, and the other women, and all I can think about is the next time I get to love on her.
Mayzie
HAPPY NEW YEAR! The collective cheers and shouts of the thousands of people that occupy Times Square roar through my ears as Jack crouches down on the edge of the stage, his guitar slung behind him and reaches a hand down to cup my cheek as he gives me the best New Year’s kiss ever. It’s sweet, sexy, and lingering, and his midnight blue eyes give me a quick bedroom look before he straightens up and the clacking together of Chris’s drumsticks cue him to strum out the first few angsty notes of one of the band’s newest adrenalizing songs. They are really starting the New Year off with a bang as the pyrotechnics go off, perfectly timed with the heavy drum beats and Jack’s emphasized movements. After four and a half years together, I still get such a lady boner watching him play. The way his shaggy bangs fall in his face when he looks down while shredding away on his guitar, how he struts across the stage without breaking the rhythm, yanking his guitar around. Hell, even just nodding his head along with the music turns me on. He’s totally going to get some later.
Melanie and I gravitate to each other, both of us with eyes on the stage.