Twelve Months

Sara stared beyond the darkness before her to where she was sure the ceiling was. Beside her on a short solid pine table the alarm clock’s red digital numbers blared into the night. It was 3:27 AM and she sighed. So far pregnancy was everything people had warned her about. Her back ached, people had mistaken her for fat when she was under showing and now, at the most ungodly of hours, she was hungry.

Michael was asleep beside her, his back to her and his torso slowly rising and falling with every inhaled breath that fuelled his dreams. He always slept in just pyjamas bottoms, never feeling the need to keep any warmer in their apartment. Sleeping with two people in the same bed was so different from prison and any extra layers would often keep him awake all night sweating, Sara often waking to find him cooling down on their balcony.

Sara rolled sideways and ran a hand over his coloured shoulders bringing it to a rest or his bare bicep. Michael inhaled hard as he was suddenly awake; his groggy face full of worry and his heart skipping a few beats in his chest. He rolled onto his back and his elbow collided with Sara’s protruding belly. He immediately pressed a protective hand to her abdomen and apologised with a raspy voice.

“Sara, what’s wrong?” he whispered quickly as he rubbed his eyes open even further. “Are you ok?” he mumbled incoherently into the darkness as he sat up propped on one elbow. It was a new moon and there was no welcoming silvery light illuminating their bedroom tonight.

“I’m fine,” Sara, told him resting a warm hand over his on their unborn child’s maternal chamber. Sara felt Michael relax under her hand and he audibly breathed into the darkness before flopping back onto the warm cotton sheets. Sara smiled and shuffling closer to him, pressing herself as close to Michael as her belly would allow and resting her head onto his tattooed arm.

“Why did you wake me?” Michael asked her while he rubbed his loose gripping hand over the fabric of her pyjamas. Sara pressed her hand to his naked chest and drew lazy circles across the ink she recognised so well, even in the shadows of early morning. Sara immediately felt guilty before she revealed her reasons for waking him. Michael was genuinely tired and his eyes had already pulled themselves closed once more once he knew Sara was all right.

Sara paused for a while, childlike in her approach for her prize. “I’m hungry,” she admitted with a pout that she turned into a soft kiss against Michael’s side. His skin prickled to life and the hairs on his arms reached up into the air, waiting for more.

Michael let out a light laugh, his body to tired to manage much else. “I’ll get you whatever you want,” he told her, turning to her in the darkness. Sara’s eyes were adjusted now and she could make out the shadowed outline of Michael’s features inches from hers. Michael reached up a hand and plucked Sara’s from his chest, pulled it to his lips and planted a kiss against the smooth skin of her hand.

Sara’s face wrinkled when her remorse hit her once more. “We don’t have any of what I want,” she confessed with a shy voice. Michael sighed and dropped their hands back to his chest where his left hers and rubbed against his forehead.

“What time is it?” he prodded with a whine. Sara rolled backwards and the burning red numbers invaded her eyes. When Sara rolled from his arm Michael threw his legs off the edge of the bed and sat up, his body still half asleep and lacking strength in its relaxed state.

“It’s 3:40,” Sara confessed with a grimace when Michael groaned softly. Sara crawled across their bed and wrapped her arms around Michael’s broad shoulders, pressing her rounded belly to his back. “I’m sorry,” she chimed nuzzling her head under his chin. Michael laid a flat palm over her arms and held her to him for a second before he patted her reassuringly.

“It’s ok,” he grunted in a drained voice. Sara pressed a kiss to his temple and he smiled when she clambered back under the covers on her side of the bed. With his eyes still half closed Michael pushed himself from the bed and reached for a pair of slacks hanging over a wicker chair. Sara squealed with joy into the room while he pulled them up and over his pyjama bottoms and then slid his sock less feet into a pair of sneakers. “What do you want?” he asked as he dressed himself.

“I really want a cheese and chicken pizza,” Sara rolled off her order rapidly. “Oh, and can you get them to add sweet corn too?” she pleaded. Michael screwed up his face and made a sound of disgust at her concoction, his own stomach rejecting the thought of the food item.

“Where am I going to get a pizza with…” he paused before realising that his words were wasted on the four months pregnant Sara tucked up in their warm bed. “Never mind. I’ll find somewhere,” he sighed.

“Thank you,” Sara beamed from the bed as he made his way around to her side. “Try to hurry,” she teased as he leant down for a quick kiss. Michael snorted at her remark but couldn’t help but smile at her words as their lips met and then were pulled apart as he left the bedroom.

Michael had trawled the entire city for a twenty-four hour pizza place that could fulfil his request and hadn’t thrown him out laughing. It was almost 5 AM when he returned home, his efforts to keep quite thwarted by the dim early morning lighting. It was a mixture of greys and reds as it invaded the apartment and spilled across the wooden flooring. Michael’s sneakers were kicked off by the front door and his sweaty feet stuck to the laminate with each step, leaving an outline of his feet on the surface.

Michael rested the pizza for one sized box on the back on the cushiony sofa while he pulled his jacket off, his knee holding the box up to stop it from falling onto the floor. His balance on one leg was poor at best and he hopped back and forth on the floor with tiny thuds. His keys hung from his mouth where his teeth gripped furiously at the key ring and they rattled gentle as he swayed.

Pulling the keys from his mouth, and with both feet now planted firmly onto the floor, Michael rested the bunch of metal next to the phone. He pushed the box further onto the couch cushions and on baited breath pulled his hands away slowly; ready to catch it should it fall. Michael popped the button on his pants and let them fall, the coinage in his pocket more then willing to drag the garments to the floor. They landed with a clink and he stepped from them. Exhausted and laden with the most disgusting pizza known to the human race, Michael padded down the heated flooring to their bedroom.

No sound came from the room when Michael pushed down the chrome door handle and the door swung open. Deep red rays of the rising sun peeked through the heavy drawn dark brown curtains and edged their way across the floor and onto the corner of the bedpost. Michael smiled to himself when he saw Sara. She was curled up on his side of the bed, face pressed lovingly into his pillow and her hands grasped at the scented material eagerly.

Michael set the pizza box down on a soft pink padded vanity stool Sara kept next to the door. It was square and velvety to touch and the pizza barely heated its surface, as it was almost cold. Michael tiptoed towards the bed, his feet barely making a sound on the floor, his heels raised into the air hidden by his dangling bottoms.

The smile never left his face as Michael slid under the covers of Sara’s side of the bed, the crisp sheets cold and unwelcoming. Sara had been asleep for at least an hour and her side of their luxurious king size bed had not felt the warmth of her body once. Michael’s body shivered slightly as it hit the cold fabric and he sucked in a small breath through his teeth making a hissing sound as he did so.

Sara didn’t stir and she was serene as she slept, her cheek pushed upwards against Michael’s pillow taking the corner of her mouth with it. She looked like she was smiling but her soft snoring and shallow breathing said otherwise. Michael pressed his body into hers, her warm back immediately radiating his body while he snaked a hand over her hip and rested his flat palm to her stomach.

“Sara?” he whispered into her ear, his hot breath tickling at her non-responsive skin. “I got your pizza,” he told her with a smile.

“Mmmm,” she breathed, her mouth never opening to let the sound out but instead it vibrating from her chest and out of her nose as she slept. Sara did not stir as Michael watched her, her body lying as still as it had when he first entered the bedroom. Michael yawned next to her, his exhaustion finally catching up to him and he laid his head down on the pillow behind her and did not protest when his eyes fell shut. Michael’s body felt heavy and seemed to fade away but his slumber did not last long.

When Michael opened his eyes, the Chicago daybreak was spilling across his face and he writhed in the bed to get away from it. His eyes peeled open on their second attempt and he smacked his lips together, slowly encouraging his saliva glands to moisturise his dry mouth. He let out a sleepy groan as he turned over, his arm thrown over his eyes to block out the sun and discovered his side of the bed empty.

Michael sat up and scanned the room. Sara was nowhere to be seen but her pyjamas had been folded into a neat pile and were sitting on the door side stool, the pizza box from last night having disappeared. As if on cue, Sara appeared in the door way, her voluptuous body leaning gently against the cream painted wood and dressed in her casual-smart wear.

“You’re up,” Sara observed pushing herself into the room with a slight arch of her back. “I was just coming to wake you,” she smiled setting herself on the edge of the bed with one leg tucked under herself. She wore black pants with an elastic waste and a light pink v-necked sweater that covered her bump nicely. Her hair was freshly washed and smelt of vanilla as it bounced sideways and landed on her shoulders with curled ends.

Michael gave her puzzled look before cupping her cheek with one hand and planting a soft, lingering kiss to her lips. “Good morning,” he breathed as they parted, Sara’s eyes flickering open seconds after her spoke. Sara’s hand rested on Michael’s thigh, the soft down blanket covering it enclosing her fingers in a feathery grip.

“I’m sorry about last night,” she said with a crooked smile. Michael laughed and absently brushed a hair from her face, watching his every move with an intense stare.

“It’s ok. I don’t mind,” he beamed back at her, his hand switching from a single strand to an entire handful of hand as he stroked the soft red locks lovingly. “Anything for you two,” he said to her stomach, bending his torso in half so he could baby talk the inanimate belly. Sara chuckled at his antics and pulled his face up to meet hers again. She planted a kiss to his smile that never faded beneath hers while she held his face firmly in her hands.

“Come on,” she ordered him with a playful bat on the arm. “Get dressed or we’ll be late for my ultrasound.” Michael groaned through his smile as he flopped back onto the warm, inviting bed. Sara lifted herself from the bed and made her way back into the hall whilst pointing a menacing finger towards him. It made Michael laugh but when she was out of sight, he sprung out of bed and was washed and dressed in no time.

“How can you tell it’s a baby?” Michael asked the nurse, cocking his head to one side and trying to make sense of the grey and white shaded blobs on the monitor. She smiled to herself and lifted an aged finger to the screen.

“This is the baby’s hand,” she told him, pointing to a star shaped object on the screen. Michael’s eyebrows pulled together as he concentrated on the image, his brain trying to process the blurry mass of greys before him. Michael leant forward in his bedside chair for a better view, his hands encasing Sara’s in a shielding cocoon.

The nurse moved the scanner over Sara’s lubricated and exposed belly and the sound of fluid moving filled the room. Sara’s eyes never left the screen beside her, her eyes being able to see the baby in the jumble of shades easily. A gush of emotion flowed through her and straight into Michael as the nurse picked up the soft thumping of the baby’s heart beat. “And there’s the heart sounding strong and healthy,” the nurse told them with a quick, well-practised smile.

Sara sighed relieved and turned to Michael with a huge smile, which he returned eagerly. “That’s our baby,” she told him proudly, her voice breaking slightly and her eyes welling with sudden tears of joy. Michael stood from his seat hard plastic chair and pressed his lips to her forehead before resting his own against it.

“Do you want to know the sex?” the nurse asked, shaking them both from their tender interactions. They looked at each other with indecision having never discussed the subject until now. The nurse’s gaze darted between Sara and Michael, one hand poised against Sara’s abdomen with the answer on the screen in front of her, and the other ready to take a screen shot of their baby.

“Do we?” Michael asked Sara, giving her hand a light squeeze of reassurance. Sara quickly wiped her eyes and turned to the nurse with a nod.

“Alright,” the nurse said, pressing a button to capture the baby’s images for them. “It’s a boy. Congratulations,” she chirped merrily with a smile.