“Maybe a little,” Emily said, trying to let go of the anxiety her sister’s questions raised.
Ari stopped walking and looked into a store window at a green sleeveless top. It was a cowl neck and seemed like it was made of silk. “How about that shirt?” she asked, pointing.
Emily turned around. “It’s my color!” she said. “Nice find. Let’s go check it out.”
A little while later, Emily was alone in a dressing room, putting on a pair of tight leather pants and the hunter green cowl neck. There was no way to know if she was pregnant yet; still, she was glad the leather pants had a little stretch to the waistband. Just in case. She slipped on a pair of black heels that were in the dressing room, but they didn’t look right. She’d figure out shoes later.
“What do you think?” she asked Ari when she stepped out of the dressing room.
“Simple, cool, not trying too hard—and stunning,” her sister said. “You look like you’re ready to bring down the house.”
“I am,” Emily said with a smile. “I am.”
* * *
—
Emily was supposed to get her period two days later. But she didn’t. She told Ezra, but she refused to talk any more about it. She was too afraid of what might come next.
67
A couple of weeks after her date in SoHo with Ari, Emily was going over her schedule from Diana. It was D-Day. Or maybe C-Day. The feeling of anticipation had been coursing through her veins since she woke up that morning.
“What should I wear?” Ezra asked, looking at Emily in a pair of boxer briefs and nothing else. He’d told her the night before that he was worried about looking the part, about being cool enough to be a musician’s husband. She’d reassured him with a kiss and told him that she’d help him pick his outfit.
She walked over and kissed him again, the scent of his aftershave assaulting her as she did it.
He ran his hands down her body. All she had on was a pair of underwear and a bra. Her period still hadn’t come, her breasts felt swollen, but she told him she wasn’t going to take a pregnancy test. Not yet. She didn’t want to know, to get attached, until she was sure the baby was there—and would stay. Schr?dinger’s baby, they called it.
“Do we have time?” he said, running his fingers around her nipples, making them stiffen.
A thrill shivered through her body. Emily glanced at the clock on her bedside table. She knew she was supposed to be at the venue in an hour. “If we’re fast,” she answered.
Emily had barely finished the sentence when Ezra scooped her up and brought her to their bed. He ran his fingers over the crotch of her underwear, and Emily could feel the silk sticking to her, making her want him even more than she already did.
“Please,” she breathed, and he knew what she meant.
He stripped off his underwear as she stripped off hers, and when he slid inside her, she felt the familiar sensation of completion. Her body felt made for this, for him, and he slid even deeper, pressing against whatever it was inside her that changed the pitch of her breathing, made her buck against him. “It’s your Skene’s gland,” Ezra had once told her, but Emily didn’t care what it was called or why it felt so good. She just wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in tighter.
The two of them rocked together until Emily felt her back arching and an orgasm rippling through her body. Then Ezra braced his knees on either side of her and brought himself to a climax, too.
He rolled off her, both of them breathing hard.
Emily reached out and grabbed his hand in bed. “Man do I love you, Dr. Gold,” she said.
“I love you, too, Dr. Gold,” he replied, smiling at her. Then his eyes widened as he saw the clock behind her head. “We’ve got to get dressed!”
She sat up. “Your dark-wash jeans,” she said, answering the question he’d asked ages ago, “and your cranberry sweater. And those suede chukka boots Ari and Jack got you for Hanukkah.”
She put on her hunter green cowl neck—Priya had told her it made her hair look fiery—the leather pants, and the shoes she’d finally settled on: the cowboy boots she’d worn to perform in Mexico. She was Rob’s inspiration, but in a way, he had been hers, and she wanted to pay homage to that. She did her stage makeup quickly and left her hair loose, in its natural waves.
“Ready?” she said, as she tamed a few flyaways with hair spray and flipped her head over to spray it upside down for extra volume.
“Ready,” he said, appearing behind her in the bathroom. “I’m so, so proud of you. Have I mentioned that?”