HAZEL

For the past twenty-four hours, I’ve carried around the most precious piece of paper I’ve ever held. In the pocket of my jeans, it’s sure to bend in a thousand places. My purse is a Mary Poppins rabbit hole, so if I put it there, I’m likely to never see it again. In my sweaty palm, I can feel the thin photo paper turning tacky and limp from the handling, but I simply cannot put it down.

I’m obsessing about this ultrasound photo. The moment I put it on the table, or nightstand, or counter, I want to pick it back up and look one more time at the white text on the black borders:

Bradford, Hazel

November 12

9w3d

And then my eyes drop to the object of greatest interest: my tiny sweet blob, a nebulous white figure in a sea of speckled black. Nine weeks and three days and it’s already the love of my life.

I press my hand to my stomach, and my pulse lurches to a thundering stampede. The embryo in the photo looks like a gummy bear, curled into a delicate C. My little monster, I think. My sweet little monster, with a fluttering heartbeat, little buds for limbs, and who is half me, half Josh Im.

Not my preferred reaction, but nausea rolls up from my stomach. I have just enough time to set down my precious piece of paper and bolt into the bathroom before I’m losing the cracker and three sips of water I’ve had today. Guess it wasn’t a bug after all.

After brushing my teeth—and almost throwing up again—I come back to the kitchen. I’ve got a text from Josh.

If I hadn’t just tossed my cookies—or crackers, rather—I might have tossed them now. With a trembling hand, I type out a

I stare at the photo again, and my heart feels too full.

After getting a last-minute appointment with my doctor yesterday and doing a blood test, then an in-office ultrasound—where Emily held my clammy hand, and we both cried our faces off when the monster came into clear view—I gave myself twenty-four hours to digest the news, and swore Emily to absolute secrecy.

Her response? “I already texted Dave, and I’m sorry for that. But if you think I’m going to be the one to tell my brother that he knocked up our best friend, you’re high.”

Today, I called in for a sub at work, and have spent the entire day walking around my neighborhood, staring intermittently at the photo. I’m in love with him.

I’m in love with Josh.

And I’m pregnant.

Yesterday, when I got home I was sweaty and panicky and eventually threw up. Now when I look at the photo, I feel jubilant.

Well, jubilant through whatever weird and exhausting things are going on in my body right now. Dr. Sanders told me not to Google pregnancy—said it’s a minefield of panic—and instead she gave me a few pamphlets and recommendations for books to read. But I’m sure every single person she’s given that advice to has ignored it similarly. Alas, the internet tells me that it’s normal to be tired in the first trimester.

So when Josh knocks on my door, I’m prone on the couch, one leg thrown over the back. All I can manage to do is moan out a zombified “It’s open.”

Josh steps in, kicking off his shoes. He greets Winnie as she races for him. And just the sight of him in my apartment is such a relief I have to swallow down a sob.

He’s carrying flowers and wearing my favorite purple shirt. Pushing to sit up, I become aware that I wasn’t expecting Fancy Josh. I’m Dumpy Hazel right now, wearing an old Lewis & Clark T-shirt and paint-splattered cutoffs, with my hair stuffed in a bun under my CHEESY hat.

For some reason—Some reason, ha! Pregnancy—I feel my throat go tight again. “Well, you look nice.”

Frowning, Josh walks around the couch, sitting next to me, reaching under the hat’s brim to put his free hand on my forehead. “You feel okay?”

Now that is a million-dollar question. “Yeah.”

“You look …”

Pregnant? “Dumpy?”

He smiles. “I was going to say ‘flushed.’ ”

If I’m going to tell him I’m carrying his child, it should be easy to start with the smaller admissions. But my words come out hoarse: “It’s probably because I’m absurdly happy to see you.”

His eyes dip to my lips, and in turn, my gaze shifts down his face, over his nose, to his jaw, cheekbones, and then back to his eyes.

“I’m happy to see you, too.” Josh leans forward—he’s a little breathless—and presses a kiss to my cheek. I’ve brushed my teeth but God I hope I don’t still smell like barf. “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

He has? A crack of lightning bolts through my chest.

“Um. Same.”

He laughs at this like I might be kidding, and stands, moving to the kitchen to find a vase for the flowers.

“In the oven,” I tell him … which could mean so, so many things right now.

Sound falls away—no doubt Josh has frozen and is silently taking this in—but then the creak of the oven door breaks through the quiet, and I hear a soft “Huh.”

“If I put them on top of the fridge,” I explain, “Vodka lands on the rims and knocks them over.”

He turns on the tap, and I hear water filling the vase. “Makes sense.”

But does it? Does it make sense that I put my vases in the oven when it’s not in use, so that my parrot doesn’t knock them over? These are the things other people might question—but not Josh.

He has never, not once, asked me to be someone I’m not.

When he returns, his hands are free, and he resumes his spot next to me on the couch, pulling my legs into his lap. For the first time in our friendship, as his hands come over my legs, I am intensely conscious of how not-sexy I appear.

I blurt, “I didn’t shave today.”

His hand runs up my shin anyway. “I don’t care.”

“I showered, but then …” I point to my head, and the hat perched there. “Sort of let it go to seed.”

“I don’t care what you look like.” His hands drift back down, and strong thumbs dig into the arch of my foot. My eyes cross a little in pleasure.

This is new. This kind of touching, and the tentative awkward smiles. I know why I’m being a bumbling idiot—I’m pregnant and in love—but why is he?

“What’s up with you?” I ask quietly. “Why are you massaging me and bringing me flowers and looking particularly adorable?”

Clearing his throat, he stares down at where his hands work on my feet. “Yeah, about that.” He looks up at me. “Are you going out with Tyler again?”

I bark out a laugh. “Negatory.”

He nods, and nods, and keeps nodding as his gaze slowly moves back to my legs, up to my hips, torso, chest, and face. “Well, then would you go out with me sometime?”

All my life I assumed I had one heart inside my chest. But the force slamming me from the inside can’t be only a single organ. I knew he was sufficiently attracted to me to have sex—twice—but to want to go out with me?

“Like a date?”

“Like a date.” His hand moves up my shin, over my knee, around to the inside of my thigh, where he strokes maddening circles with his thumb. “But only me and you this time.”

And just like that, I’m liquid heat. My heart has vaulted into my throat. “Do you want to stay over tonight?”

Without hesitation, he answers, “Yes.”

“I mean, like a naked sleepover.”

He leans in until his breath mixes with mine, and he gently pulls off my baseball cap, tossing it to the floor. “I knew what you meant.”

His fingers work my hair free from the bun, and he meets my eyes for just a breath before he leans the rest of the way and kisses the wide-eyed shock right off my face.

It’s not our first kiss, but in a way it feels like it is. Yes, I know his mouth, but I’ve never known this emotion before, the careful press, the way his hands come up to my face so he can tilt me how he wants, so he can lean forward while I lean back until he’s hovering over me on the couch, his dress pants smooth against the insides of my thighs.

“I need to tell you some things,” I say against his lips.

“Me too.”

“Big things,” I emphasize.

He nods. “Let’s say all our big things afterward, okay? There’s no rush.”

I have a pulse of anxiety—I really need to tell him—but the I’m carrying your baby talk is a fairly intense conversation and his body seems to agree with the lower half of mine that sex can come first, no problem. Besides, it’s not like I can get more pregnant.

My clothes seem to dissolve away as soon as he touches them. I don’t actually remember taking my shirt off. My shorts are dragged down my legs.

Our eyes meet and I’m sure he can see the mania in mine because he smiles and then it turns into a laugh when my mouth falls open as he unbuttons his shirt—too slowly. I start from the bottom, meeting his hands in the middle, and together we push it off his shoulders. They’re warm and hard under my hands when I try to tug him back down over me, but he resists, sliding his pants off and kicking them into a puddle on the floor.

“Josh?”

He bends, kissing my neck, humming. “Hazel?”

“Is this a ‘Ha ha, we’ll just do it three times’ sort of thing?”

“Not for me,” he says, and when his mouth finds my collarbone he scrapes his teeth across it. “For me it’s a ‘We’ll do this again and again’ sort of thing.” He kisses me once, lightly on the mouth. “I want us to be together. Not just friends. Okay?”

Inside me, there is a fist curling around my heart, squeezing. “Yes.”

“But I don’t want to do it on the couch.”

“Like, ever?”

He presses small kisses to my jaw, my neck, my ear. “Sure, over time we’ll christen each piece of furniture, but right now—” He pulls back, lifting his chin toward the bedroom.

I imagine a cartoon dust cloud behind me as I practically sprint there. Josh, of course, takes a calmer approach, and strolls in a few seconds after I’ve launched myself onto the center of the mattress. My energy level has miraculously recovered.

“I don’t want to feel like I’m dragging you here,” he jokes.

But my smile is only a flash, because it all turns very intense as soon as he puts a knee on the mattress and climbs up my bed, between my legs.

Josh Im.

Josh Im is in my bed, about to get naked, and—from the looks of things—about to fuck me very, very thoroughly.

“I’m worried I might make a lot of noise tonight,” I babble, breathless.

“That wouldn’t be a bad thing.” His hands reduce my focus down to just this: The feel of his fingers dragging my underwear down my legs. The way he stares at me. The warm slide of his palms up over my knees, spreading them as he kneels.

The knotted rope inside begins unfurling, loosening as I wonder whether this pregnancy isn’t even a little bit bad. It might be the best thing. I imagine tomorrow morning, how he might shuffle out of my bed, still naked, hair standing straight up like a silken forest. I imagine kissing him, getting distracted and forgetting what I was supposed to be doing before I remember again.

The rest of the thought is cut off as his hands slide up and down my legs, tormenting me, pulling that heavy weight low in my belly, making me so hungry for him to touch me that I ache. I push up on an elbow, wanting to retaliate the teasing, and he laughs in a tight, incredulous breath when my fingers come over him, above his boxers. He is hot in my hand, pulsing steel.

“You’re so hard.” I am a master at stating the obvious.

He watches my hands as I coax the elastic down, but he doesn’t do what I expect after he kicks the boxers off. He doesn’t rise over me and settle between my legs. He ducks lower, kissing the inside of each knee, up my thigh and then down the other. His breath is hot when he comes up again—only inches away now from where my heartbeat has settled—and he stares up at my face from between my legs.

“This okay?”

“What? Yeah. Of course. Yes.” Frankly it’s a struggle to not grab his hair and pull him down.

He smiles, but it’s not a smile I’ve ever seen before. It’s a dangerous smile; he’s a movie villain, the seductive one, the one who robs you but fucks you real good first.

And then he ducks, and kisses me between my legs, and my body becomes a bomb.

He places tiny kisses—from lower, where I am wet and aching, up to the fuse that lights under the sweet press of his mouth. I can feel when it opens, feel the heat of his exhale across that most sensitive place when he moans. His tongue swipes away my sanity but misses the place where I need it—intentionally—sliding around and around, dipping inside me and then arcing high, teasing, narrowing in on his target. Slowly, seductively circling.

The tension in my body is so tight, and I ache so deeply it’s nearly painful. I need his tongue there, and I want him inside me, and I feel like I want to climb out of my skin I’m so desperate to feel him.

“Please.”

He pulls away just slightly and I whimper in torment when he kisses my thighs again, speaking into them. “Hmm?”

“Josh.” My hand goes into his hair, pressing silent radio commands to the brain beneath: Suck on me. Suck on me.

“I could lose my mind down here.”

My other hand dives into my own hair, pulling to keep me from screaming. I let out a tight “I mean, that would be okay.”

His mouth presses warm against the very top of my thigh, and I feel my legs shaking against his hands as he whispers, “Isn’t it nice when I take my time?”

“Oh. Oh my God, yes it is nice.” I sound like I’ve just run a mile.

“You feel like silk in my mouth.” My brain melts inside my cranium at his words and the heat of them across my skin, and Josh—the beast—sucks a small hickey into my inner thigh. I swear he’s smiling when he says, “You’re shaking.”

“I know … because I want …” A sob seems to rise in my throat at the force of this want, and my heartbeat is everywhere, slamming up against my skin.

“You want?” He comes back over me then, mouth open, eyes closed, and the suction pulls any coherence out of me.

I’ve had oral sex before, but never like this. Never with such focus, such precision. His mouth fixes over me, gently sucking as he hums. He doesn’t play or bite or lick around, doesn’t roughly push his fingers in me. He remains just there, but it seems to be only a matter of seconds before I feel a shift inside me, a tide rolling in and a wave that builds. When he moans—a spontaneous, encouraging sound—I tip over, falling with my head pressed back into the pillow and my entire body curling in pleasure.

I’m nonverbal for a good thirty seconds afterward, lying on the bed in a pose that I really hope looks more Sated Goddess than Deflated Hobo, but I can’t be bothered regardless. “That was the most mind-numbing sexual experience of my life.”

He laughs into a kiss to my thigh. “Good.”

“I don’t want to know where you learned that particular technique.”

Josh doesn’t bother to argue, he just kisses his way up my navel to my breasts, where he stops and plays for a bit while my brain returns from orbit. My breasts are tender and wildly sensitive, but the gentle assault of his tongue and hands seems to make my body forget that I just came not two minutes ago. I tug at his shoulders, impatient.

“Up here.”

“I like being here,” he says from between my breasts, but he comes over me anyway, kneeling between my legs. He hesitates for a breath, then, “We could use condoms, too, if you want? I don’t want you to feel it’s all your responsibility.”

It’s an effort not to let a tiny, hysterical laugh burst free, followed by a Well, now that you mention it … “It’s okay,” I say instead.

“You sure?”

I swallow. Tomorrow. “Yeah.”

He remains kneeling there, eyes roaming over my body, hands sweeping up and down my thighs. “I’ve wanted this for a while now.” Pausing, he adds, “I mean, this kind of sex.”

The gentle fist around my heart tightens. “Me too.”

His voice is hoarse with frustration, maybe over all the time wasted. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I thought you wanted Tyler.”

“I thought you’d be well suited with … someone else.”

His brows pull in. “Who?”

“Just someone less Hazel.”

Josh frowns down at me. “Can we address that?”

“We can’t do it after sex?” Because his hands haven’t stopped their slow circuit up and down my thighs, up and down, and over my hips and I’m melting into the sheets.

“No. Are you listening?”

“Barely.”

“You are perfect for me.”

A star is born inside my rib cage. “I am?”

He nods, pinning me with his attention. “You are.”

He stares at my face for another few breaths before resuming his visual perusal of my naked body. Hovering above me, he’s a statue: broad shoulders, smooth bulky chest. Soft black hair low on his navel, and his cock—perfect, jutting straight up. It brings to mind steel rods, I-beams, precision engineering, and—

His words come out quiet: “You’re staring.”

“Because you’re perfect there.”

I love the way his smile comes out in his voice. “ ‘There’?”

“Everywhere, but … there, in particular.” I point, and he catches my hand, lifting it over my head and trapping it on the pillow as he leans over me. His cock brushes the inside of my thigh. “I was thinking you’re shaped like my favorite dildo.”

“That’s a compliment I haven’t heard before.”

I open my mouth to say more but he bends, kissing me once. “Haze, I love you, but I’m going to lose my mind if I don’t get closer to you soon.”

We both go still and his words bounce around the space between us.

He loves me?

I stare up at him, and the rolling bubble of thrill works its way up from my belly, through my chest, and into my throat. I bite my lip, but not even my teeth can trap this smile. It breaks free and he sees it, and his answering smile is at first relieved, but then it falls into earnest focus.

“I do, you know,” he says.

Raw emotion paints his expression. I’ve honestly never seen anyone look at me this way … it’s more than desire. It’s need.

My hand comes up to cup the back of his neck, to pull him down just as he’s falling over me and his mouth covers mine with a quiet moan. With a shift of his hips forward, he’s pressing into me, and we both cry out as he slides in, deep.

It’s not gentle or slow, not even to start. His hips rock into mine, and soon they’re slapping as he grunts with every pass. Josh rises with a groan, hooking my legs over his arms and spreading me wide. His sounds are rhythmic and hoarse, and something about them—the grate and vibration of Josh’s pleasure—makes my body even wilder. He grinds into me, fucking fast—

“Jimin.”

His rhythm falters, and his laugh comes out as a burst of air against my neck. “That was,” he pants, “the first time you got my name right.”

I’d be celebrating, but my orgasm is right there

right here

and my back arches away from the mattress as I start to come. Josh grunts out these soft, encouraging words as pleasure bursts through me, rippling on, and on, and on and finally I feel him go tight everywhere—inside me and under my hands and against my thighs. I hear the catch in his throat, his relieved “Yes,” and then he’s shaking through a long groan, pressed so deep inside.

Carefully, he unhooks my legs and lowers his body so we’re chest to sweaty chest. Josh kisses me through sharp, jagged pants. “I’d planned for that to be more lovemaking and less … desperate fucking.”

A tiny thrill works its way through me at the rare curse word from his lips. “You will hear no complaints from me.”

Carefully he pulls back, watching his body’s retreat while I watch his face. I love his little frown, his tiny grunt as he slips from me.

His frown deepens and he reaches down, touching me. “Did I hurt you?”

“No?”

He looks up. “Okay. You sure?” He holds up his fingers. “You’re bleeding.”

..........

Don’t panic.

Don’t panic.

I grabbed my phone on my sprint into the bathroom, and am now sitting on the toilet, madly Googling bleeding in pregnancy.

The results are reassuring. Apparently it’s common. Apparently it happens in about one-third of all pregnancies. And especially early.

But it can also be a sign that something is wrong,

and it wasn’t a little bit of blood,

it was all over my sheets,

and I can’t breathe.

I dial my doctor’s after-hours number, and speak as softly into the phone as I can.

Yes, nine weeks.

Yes, I saw the doctor yesterday.

No, there isn’t any cramping.

After a few words of quiet reassurance, I’m told to do my best not to worry, to rest, and am scheduled to come into the office tomorrow morning.

I end the call just as Josh’s voice comes through the closed door. “Haze?”

I look up and try to sound as calm as possible. “Hey. Yeah, I’m okay.”

Oh my God, what do I do? He loves me. I mean, I don’t think he’ll be angry that I’m pregnant. Instinct and my intricate knowledge of Josh Im’s brain tell me he’s actually going to be really happy. He wants a family. But what if I lose it? I know this sort of thing happens all the time, so is it worth telling him and getting his hopes up that everything might be okay if I’m going to lose my monster? Oh God, I want to shred the walls just thinking it. What if I lose it what if I lose—

I close my eyes. Take a deep breath.

“Hazel.” I hear his head thunk against the door. “I’m so sorry.”

I take a deep breath, standing to splash some water on my face. “It wasn’t you,” I croak.

Silence. And then, “I mean, I’m pretty sure it was me and the hard sex we just had.” He pauses. “Can I come in and, um …?”

Oh crap, that’s right. He’s got blood on him. I open the door and he slips in, kissing me. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m totally fine!”

“Okay, good.” With one more kiss, he leans past me to turn on the shower.

I stand and press my face to his back, between the bulk of his shoulders. “Sorry.”

Josh turns, tilts my face up to look at him. “For what?”

“Bleeding on you. Sprinting out of bed.”

His brows pull down. “I don’t mind that. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

Tell him.

Tell him.

Talk to Dr. Sanders first.

“I’m okay.”

He bends, kissing me slowly, and then steps into the shower, pulling me in after him.

Steam fills the room as he lathers the soap in his hands, rubbing it first over my shoulders and breasts, and then gently between my legs and along my thighs before washing his own body.

Staring up at him as he washes his stomach, cock, and chest, I note the way the drops of water build on his eyelashes and then fall, like rain. “You said you love me.”

He looks up, blinking away the water. His lashes are long, and clumped together. He is so beautiful.

Josh leans forward, kissing my nose. “I did.”

I stretch, and his mouth is slippery against mine, his tongue tastes like water. His hand slides over my backside, slipping between, stroking, feeling, and then slides up my back, down between my breasts, like he’s acquainting himself with every tiny curve.

Josh Im loves me.

“I love you too, you know.”

His kiss turns into a smile. “Yeah?”

“I’ve probably loved you longer.”

A trickster grin. “Probably.”

I pinch his splendid ass for that and he growls, pressing into me.

“We don’t have to make love again,” he says quietly into my neck. “You just feel so good, all wet and soft.”

After wanting him for so long, I can’t quite wrap my brain around the fact that he’s here, using words like love. Having Josh naked against me isn’t for tonight only. This could be a very, very addicting problem because my desire for Josh is a clawing, impatient, frantic energy: I want him again and again and again.

I push the panic into a tiny room in my brain, and narrow that down to a closet and a shoe box and a tiny drop of throbbing light in the background. There’s nothing I can do tonight. I just need to breathe.

His hand makes a slow journey over my breasts and down my navel, drawing little swirls and circles with the soap. I’m so full of emotion that I’m not surprised when a single tear slips down my cheek, lost in the spray from the shower. I take the soap and do the same for him, savoring every second of this until we’re all clean and the water has started to run cold.

“Okay, Haze.” He leans in to kiss me, eyes shining as he shifts away to turn off the taps. “Let’s go to bed.”