Out On a Limb(79)

“Got it.”

“Bonjour!” Robert says, walking through the kitchen in an all-black ensemble, running a towel through his hair as he heads toward the living room.

“Bonjour,” I say, smiling at Bo shyly, as if we have a much more interesting secret than having spent the night cuddling.

I cut up some fruit as Bo finishes the waffles and brews a pot of coffee. We all eat breakfast together on the couch as Robert continues to berate Bo over his lack of dining table. Bo insists there’s not enough room in there between his record player and desk.

They bicker back and forth as I swallow bite after bite of delicious breakfast, only jumping in occasionally to agree with Robert, hoping to earn his favour.

Afterward, we all get ready to leave the house. Then, per his request, we drop Robert off at the local farmers’ market before Bo and I drive to the hospital for our ultrasound.

Bo holds every door open between the parking garage and the clinic. I wonder, if I pretended to be nervous, would he hold my hand too?

Not that I’d really have to pretend.

“You okay?” he asks, opening the clinic’s door.

“Yeah,” I answer reflexively, blowing my chance. We walk inside and walk up to the receptionist behind a glass partition.

“Ultrasound for two please,” I say to her, sliding my paperwork through the narrow slot. She blinks at me, her blank expression saying a whole lot as she sighs through her nose. “Fair,” I mumble, pulling out my ID. “I’m here for my twenty-week scan,” I say, placing my card down.

She takes it and begins typing silently.

“Tough crowd,” Bo whispers next to my ear. “You’ll get ’em next time.” He nods sarcastically, giving me a thumbs-up.

I whack him with the back of my hand.

“Waiting room is the third door on your left. Someone will come grab you from there. You’ll go in by yourself, and then they’ll bring your husband in when they’re done with the measurements.”

“Thank you,” I say, taking back my ID.

I turn over my shoulder and see Bo smiling broadly. “After you, wife.” He extends his arm out toward the waiting room.

I roll my eyes and lead the way.

We sit in the last two available seats next to one another in the otherwise crowded room. Bo plays peek-a-boo with a little girl standing on the chair across from us. Her mom thanks him with ogling, overly appreciative eyes.

In an attempt to thwart her, I place my hand on Bo’s arm, leaning in to speak to him. Except I did it without thinking of something to say first, and now he’s stuck still, waiting for me to speak with his head tilted toward me.

“I’m nervous,” I say. Partially because it’s true, and also because I’m not that quick on my feet.

“What can I do?” he asks. “Peek-a-boo?”

I smirk, shaking my head. “Tell me something. A story about you. A distracting one.”

He nods, crossing one leg over the other. “Okay…” he says, bending toward me. “Want to hear about my first kiss?”

“Was it embarrassing?”

“A little.”

“Then yes, definitely.”

He laughs, then licks his lips before he speaks. “I was sixteen and the only one out of my friends who hadn’t had their first kiss yet. I didn’t think to lie about it, but in hindsight I should have, because they teased me relentlessly. Anyway, a few months into grade eleven, there was a school fundraiser where all the juniors and seniors slept at the school overnight.”

I huff. Who would possibly think that’s a good idea?

“I know,” Bo says, “who could have possibly thought that was a good idea?”

Hey, that’s what I said.

“So I’m at the fundraiser, alone in the band room, because all my friends are drunk and wandering around elsewhere, and I didn’t know what else to do. Eventually, I started messing around with the instruments. I was hoping a nice young lady would wander past and be lulled in by my saxophone skills.”

“Naturally,” I interject.

He scoffs, brushing a hand over his face. “And a group of girls did come in. One of them I recognised from the senior band. But we’d never talked before. She sat in the corner with her friends, and they were pretty much ignoring me, but she kept looking over. So I kept playing. About an hour later, her friends left, and she stayed behind. She broke the silence by complimenting my technique. Sweet, right?” he asks, his obvious embarrassment as to whatever comes next causing a nervous laugh to break free.

“Yes…” I say cautiously. “Oh god, what did you say?”

Bo looks up to the sky, wincing. “I said… want to see what else these lips can do?”

I gasp. “No!”

“Yep,” he says, his eyes closed and nodding.

“And that… worked?”

“It did.” He leans back, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Before Halloween, that was my quickest close.”

“Oh, you closed me, huh?”

His eyes drift around the room, to my tilted smirk, then to my stomach with a quirked brow. “Sure as hell seems like it.”

“Well, you better rein it in, lover boy. No more unexpected pregnancies for you.”

He snorts from the back of his throat. “How about you? What was your first kiss like?”