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G:

He feels good on top of her. The plush white duvet covers them both. He is inelegantly pumping in and out of her, his pelvis tilted at just the right angle. This is new for them, a perk or a peril, she’s not sure, of their COO and CEO partnership. Every late-night evening working has resulted in this. Inelegant, desperate sex, at least this time they made it to a bed. Her back couldn’t handle quick fucking on the sofa. It seemed like a good idea the first time. 

His arms are bracketed by her head and her mouth is attached to hers. He bites her bottom lip, a sign he is about to come. Three out of rhythm pumps and he is filling her up. He collapses on top of her, forehead resting against her. His sweaty chest sticks to her naked breasts as he holds her.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” she says, rubbing her hands down his back. This is new to him, he made it very clear. He was a thoughtful lover and honestly at her age she is happy to be able to have sex with a man who didn’t need a blue pill and a hail Mary before entering her bedroom. She doesn’t stop to think about it, outside of the physical sensations of his body on top of hers.

“I love you,” he murmurs into her hair. She just traces patterns on the back of his neck and down his back until his breathing evens out.

He always stays because he doesn’t really want sex, he wants intimacy and someone to hold him throughout the night. She is tired, a particularly gruelling day at work in her rear-view mirror, too tired to argue about him being there when she wakes up.

She has to clean up before she falls asleep. She covers her modesty with a beautiful orange silk kimono she had been gifted on their trip to Japan. They had fumbled into the room, lips entwined, with no concern for flattering mood lighting.

She looks at herself in the ensuite mirror with embarrassment, her hair curling at the ends and make-up streaked across her face. She wipes herself clean, learning the hard way about the benefits of post-sex cleanup.

When she opens up the bathroom door he is led on his back, using his arm as a pillow, waiting for her to emerge. He smiles at her, an authentic smile filled with fondness, and it makes her heart uncomfortably jolt.

She doesn’t know it but that is the night her third daughter is conceived.

R

He pumps into her, their lips locked together tightly. He wants to tell her she’s beautiful beneath him, wants her to reach up and link together their fingers. She closes her eyes when he comes, and he wishes he could please her. Wishes he could see her lose control and grab at the Egyptian cotton beneath her. Instead, all he can focus on not immediately spilling his load into her.

She makes little sighs as he moves inside of her, trying to find the right angle. She was everything he had dreamed of and more. She gave herself to him fully in ways he never expected. Trusted him more than anyone ever, foolishly perhaps.

Three forceful pumps and he’s spilling his seed into her. She is so beautiful, her skin smooth and her eyes piercingly blue. He sinks his chest down, squashing her full breasts and buries his head in her neck.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” she says, rubbing her hands down his back. He takes in her scent, she didn’t wear flowery, fruit Jo Malone like the other women in the office. She smells like musk, peaches, and coffee.

“I love you.”

She traces shapes into his back he couldn’t quite decipher. One day she would love him, one day say it back, probably so quietly he would barely hear it, but he would know. She kisses him gently on the side of the head, bringing him back to Earth.

He slowly removes himself from her, leaving a trail of mess beside him. He throws himself down next to her and tries to regain his breathing.

He runs his fingers through his sweaty hair and watches her. She doesn’t need comedown time, she’s Gerri Kellman. She sits up and slides into her silk kimono, elegantly tying it around her waist as she gets up. She slinks to the bathroom, collecting her pajamas from the back of the chair on the way.

“I’ve seen you naked Gerri,” he says too loudly for the quiet apartment.

“Some people prefer modesty,” she says before closing the bathroom door.

He takes tissues from her bedside table and wipes himself down. Sex really was disgusting. All sticky and wet and noisy. But Gerri wasn’t like the others. She felt good, she held him and let him choose his own pace. She told him it was okay when he couldn’t get it up (he made sure to eat her out on the dining room table instead) and didn’t make him feel gross for his unusual requests.

She appears again, her hair brushed out and the mascara smear at her temple wiped away. Her skin is shiny with skincare and her body is covered in lavender silk pajamas. “Do you sleep naked with Laurie?”

“Laurie has the decency to leave my space afterwards,” she snaps. “Now turn the side lamp on.” She turns the main bedroom light on and shuts the door, leaving them in the glow of a low lamp. She climbs into bed beside him, settling down to face him. He turns the light off, wondering if Baird ever slept in this bed, if the sheets had been changed since Laurie slept beside her.

“Is Laurie better than me?” he says before he realises what is coming out of his mouth.

“Roman, he’s 68,” she sighs.

“I guess he’ll gain a new skill when he hits the big six-nine.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” she scolds. He feels her scooting closer to him. He feels her breath on his shoulder. “He doesn’t stay, after we, he always goes, says he’s been alone so long he finds it difficult to sleep near other people. He’s a light sleeper, apparently.”

He wraps his arms around her body and pulls him into his arms where they will fall asleep together.

The next morning she tells him about Laurie coming to Italy and he storms off before she can call him a car.

I Poppy Seed

G

She sees his face when she closes his eyes. Those pink-rimmed eyes matched his salmon-colored shirt. The depth of his eyes as they peered up from the floor, as they begged her. Her hand shakes as she doodles on the legal pad on her knees. She can’t look at him, can’t see him sitting on the floor, can’t see everything they had built up over the last few months be burnt down in the Italian heat.

She throws up that night. She lies on the cold tiled bathroom floor and cries and then throws up and then cries again. Laurie tells her he warned her about the lobster and goes for his afternoon walk with his new best friend Karl. 

“You look like shit,” Logan tells her as she boards the jet.

She knows she looks like shit. La Mer, Chanel and Charlotte Tilbury failing her. It was like her 20 years at Waystar suddenly hit her overnight. She sleeps with her head on Karolina’s shoulder for the entire journey. The last time she had felt this exhausted she had just been through a 33-hour labor. Of course, she goes to work straight off the plane, her stomach cramping in anxiety.

She only throws up once that day. She learned she hated the smell of mint tea as her stomach churns during her 3 o’clock meeting.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” her assistant asks, placing the black coffee on her desk.

“Yes, Marianne,” she snaps, before softening. “These are the types of things we have to go through as older women. One bit of advice,” she looks up from her screen to the beautiful younger woman, “Never get old. Also, floss. And don’t let your husband die.”

R

Roman’s whole body feels weak. He hadn’t eaten since the wedding, pushing lobster around the plate, singing songs from The Little Mermaid to himself.

He curls up into himself on the flight back to New York.

“You doing, ok, buddy?” Connor asks.

“Dandy,” Roman says, wiping at his eyes.

“I know you have some intense feelings for Gerri, and I respond positively to the age difference but maybe she isn’t the right choice for you, Romey.”

“It’s disgusting,” Shiv chips in opposite him. She’s staring out the window, untethered without a husband by her side “She has probably fucked Dad, and she is ancient. It's so gross."

“Fuck you, just because your ventriloquist puppet of a husband had someone else’s hand up his ass working him.”

“And you can only get your dick hard for crusty vaginas that remind you of your mother,” Shiv snipes.

“Hey, hey,” Connor intervenes, his hands held out between the siblings. “It is a little unorthodox, but we have to acknowledge Roman’s feelings.”

“Did you talk to her? About business shit?” Kendall says, his first words uttered since they boarded the plane.

“Yes, we spoke. Gerri’s cool,” Roman snaps.

“Well, clearly she isn’t,” Shiv adds.

He hides away for days on end once they land stateside. Ignoring everyone’s calls and refusing to acknowledge anything scheduled on his calendar, he sleeps and he sleeps. He dreams of one day going to bed and not waking up again. He dreams of her in his arms, waking up to the confirmation that she was no longer there and breaking his heart again and again.

He lets Conchita clean around him, rolling onto the sofa so she can change his sheets. He has some standards.

When he finally goes back to Waystar, a cease-and-desist letter slid under his front door, he is almost relieved to see how bad she looks. She looks her age, however old she actually was. Skin sallow, dark rings under her eyes, middle age spread widening.

He starts to wonder if she had always looked like that. Dumpy, tired, wispy hair escaping her French twist. Had he been so in love that he had invented the rosy glow that lit up every room? He had gotten so caught up in his dick actually working that he hadn’t noticed the truth behind the fantasy.

II Raspberry

She is clearly not okay. A trip to ER with high blood pressure and an IV jammed into her arm proves that. All she can eat without feeling sick is bagels and cream cheese, which is doing nothing to her expanding middle-aged waistline.

“I’m fine, Logan just doesn’t want the lawsuit that would come with me keeling over and dying at work,” she tells her worried youngest daughter over Facetime from her hospital bed. “Your father used to say that. Let me die at Waystar, get the paycheck and never go back.”

“Mom, just relax please.”

“I’m just getting old, darling,” she says. She admires how beautiful her daughter is, with dark curly Kellman hair, her blue eyes and cheekbones from God knows where.

Gerri knows it is something else. She fears the worst. And best she was menopausal, but the bloody panties and sore breasts indicated something much darker.

65 tests later and she is jealous that her husband simply keeled over and never woke up again. He was dead the moment he hit the bathroom floor, the rest was simply admin. There is blood on her sheets, vomit on the pillow and too much saliva in her mouth. Her breasts hurt and she remembers her mother’s last days in hospice. The shell of a once bright primary school teacher whose body had been ravaged by the cancer.

She double-checks her will, her shares, her stock, the fact her funeral would be less than 20 people with nothing sung by Barbra Streisand played. When she has no one else left to call she cries. She curls up on her side and cries, probably for the first time since Baird’s funeral. She was never going to see her daughters get married, she was never going to be a grandmother, she was never going to watch her daughters live out their careers. They would be orphans in their early 20s, burying both of their parents before they can hit 30.

And what had she done in those years, sat behind a desk and ruined the lives of those not smart enough to play the game. She had broken that poor boy even more than his father had done. Walked out of that room and left him sobbing in the arms of his brother. She could have spent the last few years living her life, whether that be in the arms of a man 20 years younger or not.

“Mrs Kellman,” a voice interrupts her thoughts. “I have your test results.”

“Please explain it to be succinctly and thoroughly, none of the sugar coating of the truth.”

“You are pregnant.”

“Fuck off.”

R

“What do you mean she isn’t here?” he asks Karolina.

“Sick day. May we ask you respect her privacy,” she says looking down at her tablet.

“No, no, Gerri doesn’t have sick days,” he whines, following Karolina up the hall.

“I advise you to please respect Gerri’s privacy,” she says before adding, “This time.”

 “What happened? If she’s not okay, you have to like tell me, I need to know!”

“Look, Roman,” she says, stopping in her tracks and looking up from the tablet. “I don’t know anything. She said she had been feeling unwell and would be undergoing tests.”

“Tests? What tests?”

Her absence at the meeting had distracted him. Not even Mattson’s little idioms could keep his mind on the task. Her empty black chair causing a pit in his stomach.

III Lime

“It’s just a stomach virus, nothing to worry about. You don’t just bounce back like you do when you are younger,” she tells her youngest. “Now please tell me what is this I hear about a Barcelona trip.” Rachel was a bohemian, drifting through musician and artist boyfriends, through countries and hobbies. She was the result of being raised by two busy parents and given almost unlimited funds to keep them happy. She dropped in and out of schools, through horse riding and piano lessons, a career in photography, semi-professional swimming and nude modelling.

She feels bad for lying to her daughter but she’s not sure how to approach the subject. She had undergone every test possible, had every type of machine up every orifice and they could only find a healthy embryo that was growing into a healthy baby. It was a medical mystery. A little oddity in her very organized world.

She collects enough leaflets, she could pave an entire boulevard. She takes a thousand scans and tests for a thousand problems, yet the little cluster of cells inside her seemed very happy in their reluctant home. Every bathroom break she holds her breath to see the streak of blood, every twinge and pain she waits, but nothing happens.

She gets reminded on a weekly basis that she is too old to be pregnant. She is warned of the diabetes, the high blood pressure, the birth complications. She looks up, she knows every sliding doors moment and every worst-case scenario.

“You’re what?!” Karolina hisses at her in the women’s bathrooms on the executive floor.

“I know, the percentages are minuscule yet here we are,” she tells her, before reapplying her lipstick. The pink shade of Dior not enough to make her skin look any less sallow. 

“And you’re keeping it?”

“I don’t know,” she says, feeling her cheeks becoming red. “It just feels like it could be something positive amongst all this mess.” Karolina thinks she is talking about the takeover, the ousting of the kids, the demotion to legal counsel. She doesn’t know about the Roman-shaped mess in her life, and on her bedroom carpet. At least not to the complicated, entwined levels it had reached by the time she departed Italy.

“I’m just relieved it’s not a drinking problem. The juniors were starting to talk about all the throwing up and green tea. Thought the martini problem may have gotten out of hand.” That is how the conversations started

“Don’t mention martinis. I currently miss them more than I miss Baird.”

Gerri manages to lock it away in her internal filing cabinet, alongside the parties, the paperwork and those phone calls. It was easy for her to convince herself that it wasn’t real and that it was just a prolonged stomach flu. The symptoms were hard to ignore but the sentiments were easy. She had to acknowledge the permanent migraine, the sore breasts and constant nausea. The baggage that came with this little bundle of cells could be stuffed to the back of the drawer, just behind the time Karl walked in on her changing in the Hamptons.

She lets those thoughts creep in when she can’t sleep at 3am, her body heavy with tiredness yet her brain too busy to shut down. She stares at her naked body, noticing the protrusion of the belly, the darkening of the nipples, the roundness of her face. She had never regained the body after Hannah, the slim figure already ruined by 23.

“Fuck,” she murmurs to her reflection.

Her work calendar says she is meeting a Pearce associate at 2pm, her personal diary has a 12-week scan circled in blue pen.

Except for its parents, there is nothing wrong with the baby. It’s surprisingly healthy, the nurse says as the heartbeat echoes through the room. She’s not emotional, so’s barely empathetic. It was like it was happening to someone else. Any worries anyone has about her middle-aged uterus is wiped away with the gel on her stomach.

“A strong and healthy heartbeat,” echoes in her mind as she clutches two copies of the baby scan.

Three days later her red pencil skirt won’t zip up. This means the self-imposed rules she had given herself now comes to fruition. She draws up the contract, checking it more than she had ever done paperwork in her life. She then pays for him to be served as privately as possible

R

Someone has managed to get past his front desk to knock on his door. His first instinct is to hope it is her but knows it is more likely to be Kendall. It’s some Waystar assistant holding a thick folder of documents.

“Please sign these, Mr Roy,” he says, not even taking out his ear pods.

“Says who?”

“Waystar Legal counsel,” he adds with a shrug. Roman slams the door in his acne-riddled face and tears open the packet. A little black and white image falls to the floor in his haste. He throws himself back against the couch, eyes darting across the pages, trying to make sense of the words in front of him.

Parental responsibility

12-week scans

Duty of care

Healthy foetal heartbeat

He stares at it for what feels like hours. Then he notices the black and white image on his white carpet. He quickly gets up to fish it from the floor. It looks like the x-rays of his broken ribcage, his arm, his leg. It’s a baby, a blob of an unborn baby. The baby scan is entitled Mrs Kellman.

He reads the same words over and over, none of them sinking in.

“You’re pregnant!” he shouts across her office the next day. Same office, different title, new management. His feet walked into Waystar before he knew what he was doing that morning. He was welcome, Mattson made sure he knew he was wanted, he just didn’t enjoy the bitter taste that came with the building and those inside it.

“May I ask you engage with some level of discreetness. This is a private matter, I don’t think should be spoken about in this environment.”

“Is this some sick joke?” he asks, sitting down in front of her.

“Not here, Roman,” she urges him, looking around her glass Waystar cage.

“I’m not signing these,” he says, throwing the file down on the desk.

“Please don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be,” she sighs. She looks tired, the thick-rimmed glasses not doing a good job of hiding the bags, her skin thick with foundation and her hair escaping the twist, frizz standing up like a halo around her.

“Dinner? Let’s talk about it over dinner.”

“Don’t make this difficult, Rome.”

“I need to talk to you,” he begs. He needs to understand what he did to be betrayed like this, to have his impending fatherhood rejected so brutally.

“Fine,” she replies, desperate for him to leave the building. “But to talk over the details of the paperwork, nothing more.”

“Sure, Gerri. Nothing ever happened between us and you are New York’s answer to the fucking Virgin Mary.”

“No, Roman, I mean it. This isn’t a date.”

“Oh, you made that very clear that we are no longer dating.”

“Roman, we never dated.”

“8 O’clock at the usual Italian, I’ll try to find the least romantic table in the place, especially for you.”

He can’t hide the hurt in his eyes as he stomps out of her office. She had left a folder with a million ways to say she didn’t want him to be the father of her child. A child would exist in the world with his fucked up DNA but he wouldn’t be allowed to acknowledge them as his child, to hold them, to kiss them goodnight and protect them from the harsh world. He had given her nothing but love and she had begged him to sign that product of that back.

“What are you doing here?” Frank asks, terror written over his face.

“Gerri found one last knife to stab me in the back with.”

He waits in the restaurant, wearing her favorite tie like the obedient lap puppy he is. He rearranges the napkin, changes seats a hundred times, blows out the candle and then asks the waiter to light it again. Was it too romantic, what is the etiquette for trying to convince the mother of a child that you will make a good father?

She never arrives. Gerri is never late, well except for when she missed her periods and decided to have his baby, but it gets to nine and the seat opposite him stays empty.

He goes back to her apartment, remembering the address and the code word to tell the door staff.

“Peter Pan,” he utters, relieved she hadn’t updated her safety measures.

“Fuck,” she says when she opens the door.

“Love to darling, let me get my jacket off first,” he says, pushing past her and letting himself in.

“I apologize, I must have let time get the best of me. I came back to freshen up,” she closes the door behind him. “And then-.”

“You doing okay there, Ger?” he asks.

“Things are a little tense, but I am coping well, thank you.”

“You know you can’t bullshit me like that.”

“Let me at least make you some tea, you drink tea, right?” Before he can answer, she has rushed off to the kitchen.

“Can we talk? Like you just chill for a second and we can talk?” he asks, following her. She is banging up drawers and cupboards like it wasn’t her apartment, trying to find spoons and mugs.

“Yes, we need to address the paperwork.”

“Did you use me as a sperm donor? Was that the plan the whole time? Use me and Laurie, see which one’s swimmers one the sprint.”

“No, Roman. I can assure you this was truly accidental and Laurie had a vasectomy in the late 90s.”

“So why don’t you want me?”

“It is merely signing parental responsibility away. Your name will not be on the birth certificate, you won’t have to pay for anything, you don’t have to deal with this.”

“You don’t get to tell me this. You don’t get to tell me you are having my baby and then snatch it away from me in the same sentence.”

“I felt it would be better to be fully transparent about the situation. It is not something someone can hide. That is if the child gets here safely anyway.”

“What do you mean by that? Safely?” He can hear his heart pounding in his ribcage.

“They are healthy, but it is a high-risk pregnancy,” she explains, a quiver in her voice. He smiles softly as he sees her eyes well up with tears.

“Gerri, you’re having my baby,” he smiles. He reaches out and cups her jaw in his hands and smiles. “Gerri, you want to have my baby.”

“No, Roman. I want to have my baby.”

He kisses her gently, feeling her melt into his arms. He wraps himself around her, trying to prove his worth to her. He feels her tears as he cups her cheeks. Her arms curl around his neck and she presses her body against him. He tries to feel the new curves, the swollen breasts, the wider hips, he has never been hornier and more in love.

She kisses him hard back, something that would be incredibly unlikely a few weeks ago. He pushes her backwards, to the nearest comfortable surface. He skirts around the coffee table, grazing the shins of the timber legs and lands them on the couch. They are a mess of tangled limbs and tongues. She is on top of him, unbuttoning his Armani shirt, ignoring any buttons that don’t survive her fingers.

They fumble around, trying to get undressed as quickly as possible. He sits back on the couch, pants pooling around his ankles, and watches her eyes flicker as he enters her. She has never been a loud lover. She usually squeaks as he pumps into her, with little breathy sighs as he makes love or fucks or whatever he is allowed to call it. This time she is moaning loudly above him, head tipped back in agony or ecstasy, he can't quite tell.

He can’t quite get into the moment. All he can think about is that she is carrying his child. A child they had made all by themselves and in 6 months he would be able to hold them and love them and read them a bedtime story. He would make them feel loved and heard and understood and never alone.

He spreads his hand against her belly, her blouse and skirt riding up. It feels firm and rounder, round with his child and that thought brings tears to his eyes. Gerri is riding him, grunting with every movement of her hips, unaware that his thoughts are elsewhere. He is jolted out of his head when she starts to moan loudly and gripping onto his shoulders. He watches in fascination as she orgasms, a sight he has never seen before.

“Fuck, Roman,” she pants before pressing her lips hard against his, jolting him out of his head. He lifts his hips up three times and comes with a grunt. She is sweaty and panting above him, clutching his head to her breasts. He had never seen her come undone so obviously and so loudly.

G

She can’t help but cuddle into him, led behind her on the couch. She is dangerously close to falling off, but he pulls her back into his arms every time. He kisses the area between her neck and her shoulder, sucking on her pulse point and playing with the hair that never seemed to want to make it into the bun these days. Pregnancy always led to insane hair, at least in the 90s wild curls were semi-fashionable.

Her stomach is churning, and she bolts upright, feeling that new familiarity of bile in the back of her throat. She just about makes it to her on-suite, surprised she had any food left to throw up after skipping dinner.

“You know, you’re not the first woman to throw up after I try to kiss them,” he sits down beside her on the bathroom floor. She feels a mess, only Roman could make her feel this way, that she is certain of. Her skirt folded up over her ass, her blouse hanging under her tits, her panties on the lounge floor. “How long has this been going on?”

“Having orgasms? Since the late ’70s. Although it’s a rarer phenomenon than I would like, especially with company.” She hadn’t had an orgasm like that in some years and even longer with a partner, she was slicker and more swollen than she ever had been.

“Yeah, that was fucking hot, and we will circle round to it, but this throwing up thing.”

“Yes, it has been a challenging few months, I must admit.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Like a phone call, over a sandwich in a deli, even a text. Legal papers, Ger, that’s cold.”

“Can we have this conversation another time? Preferably when your dick isn’t hanging out and I’m about to vomit.”

“Oh you don’t want to see my dick, my powerful dick that has the power to impregnate New York’s coldest legal professionals?”

She uses the bath to lift herself up to her feet. She tries to arrange her clothing, pulling down her blouse and skirt. “Roman, please sign the papers,” she sighs.

“I don’t want to, Gerri. I’m not giving up on this baby. Gerri, it’s my baby, like it’s mine, something of mine,” he says, and she can’t ignore the begging tone of his voice.

“Roman, this isn’t a conversation. Please look through the papers, make any changes and return them to my legal team.

“You just rode me on your couch, like my jizz is on your upholstery.,” She wants to laugh, him stood there in nothing but his shirt, like Winnie the Pooh. He takes her jaw in his hands, cupping her face, and kisses her softly. “Please give me a chance.”

“Your jizz has probably been splattered across a great deal of upstate upholstery.”

She’s surprised he wants to fight this. She had never considered him the fatherly type. Never thought Roman would care much about a child, let alone hers, let alone theirs.

IV Avocado

She shifts on her feet nervously, slightly needing the bathroom. She is just about to turn around and leave, slightly annoyed the front door staff had misled her when the door opens.

“Gerri!” he says, surprise clear in the one word. “You doing okay?”

“Could use a little company, unless you are otherwise preoccupied?” She doesn’t know what she’s going to do when she sees his new girlfriend, an Amazonian goddess with long blonde hair and a 22-inch-waist.

“Come in!” he says, letting her into his thankfully empty apartment.

“I’m sorry if I woke you. I can leave if you want? I wasn’t sure if you would be out or with someone.”

“What has happened?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m not sure why I came here. It’s late and-,” she is looking around at his apartment, all picked out by someone else, all chosen to create the ideal playboy penthouse for a man who wanted to fight for a family.

“Ger,” he softly says, reaching out to take her hand. “Is this about the papers? I can’t,” he clears his throat. “I can’t sign them, I’ve told you,” She stops to think about how to best deal with it but instead of forming a sentence she just bursts into tears. “Fuck, is everything okay? Is the baby, okay because if it isn’t I can pay for the best doctors, I can sue the fuck out the hospital, tell me what to do Gerri.”

“Can you hold me?” she sniffles. He stops in his tracks, eyes wide with surprise. He nods and takes her in his surprisingly strong arms. “I’m okay, we’re good,” she reassures him.

“Yeah, because you’re crying in my hall at 11 o’clock at night over good shit. I'm not great with the ladies, but sobbing is not usually a sign everything is a-okay.”

“Can we sit?” she asks, her body tired with worry and pains. She follows him to the couch where they sit awkwardly side-by-side. Her body so desperately needed sleep, yet it seemed impossible to achieve.

“You want to talk about it or just sit here awkwardly thinking about the last time we saw each other you were bouncing on my penis?”

She laughs and rolls her eyes, but she needs his energy in her life, not worried doctors and nosy assistants side-eyeing her expanding waistline.

“I’m just a little emotional, I suppose. There is a lot going on.”

“And I want to be part of every second of it,” he begs, shuffling along his sofa to sit closer to her.

“You don’t Roman. I promise you. This child will come with so much burden, cause you more strife than you need. The choice to go through with this process was mine alone.”

“Why did you come here then? Isn’t it past your bedtime? I won’t sign your fucking papers. Take me to court, I don’t give a fuck. It doesn’t serve my cunting interests,” She bursts into tears, sobbing weeks of pent-up anguish. “Fuck, come here,” he says, pulling her back into his arms. “I’m sorry, I’m being a prick. Ignore me. I’m sorry. I forgive you Ger, I will always forgive you.”

“I’m so tired, Roman.”

“I got you, I got you, Ger-.” He rocks her back and forth and it feels good to be in someone’s arms. All day led in bed be prodded and poked, waiting alone, before being prodded and poked once more. She longed for someone to hold her hand, make a joke, tell her that every test will come back okay despite knowing as little as she did.

He claps his hands and jumps off the sofa. “Come with me,” he says, holding out his hand. She begrudged takes his hand and lets him lead her to the bedroom. “Stay the night with me.”

“Oh Roman, I’m not in the mood,” she sighs.

“No, fuck that. Stay with me. Let me hold you tonight, let me show you I can be who you want me to be.”

She’s too tired to say no, too worn down to reject him. She slides off her Mary Janes, the straps leaving marks on her swollen feet. He chucks the throw cushions left by his cleaner across the room. He’s already dressed in his sleep attire, soft cotton pants and a white tee. He looks so soft when he’s not worried in a boardroom meeting, dressed up in his Roy best, ready for war.

She lies down in his arms, fully dressed, and almost immediately falls asleep. They know the way the other one moves, limbs easily entwining. His bed is soft, uncomplicated, free from the baggage of daughters, deceased spouses and job titles.

When she wakes up again, he has drawn the curtain and is holding her tight against his chest. She slides out of his arms and goes to his bathroom. Her heart breaks at the lines of medication that live in his on-suite, she has to lock up the idea that half those bottles were caused by her.

“Are you leaving?” he asks from the doorway.

 “Do you want me to?” she asks, smoothing her hair down to try and mask her panic.

“Not really.”

“I’d like to stay.” She sounds like a nervous 17-year-old, always a head in a book, delayed in her exploration of boys, speaking to the coolest boy in her class.

She crawls back into bed, next to him, lying on her side in the hopes of easing some of the new pains. This time she strips off her skirt, leaving on her blouse. “You doing okay? Really, like really okay?” he is led on his back, looking up at her with long eyelashes and dark eyes.

“I think so. I had a lot of tests today and-,” she sighs.

“What tests? What happened?” he asks before she can finish the sentence.

“I’m 51, this is high risk, impossible really, and there are a lot of tests that need to be done. I had to know this was viable before making the decision to keep it.”

“Is having me in the picture any part of your plan or was I just the sperm donor?”

“You make it sound like it was planned. This is a worrying but happy accident, I can assure you.”

“Why do you want to keep my sordid, fucked up Roy DNA then?”

“That is a good question,” she sighs. She rearranges herself so she is resting her head against his chest. Her body itches to be near him, to have him wrap his arms around her. She supposes it was some nesting instinct. To have the father of her child, someone who had done more to protect her than most men have in her five decades of life, near her. “I guess I fucked it up the first time around. I made a lot of mistakes with my girls, I made all the wrong decisions and I suppose I thought this could be a good way to do it again, the right way.”

“Shitty parenting sponsored by Waystar.”

“I had a test today, amniocentesis and there is a small chance that it could cause a miscarriage and I was so scared. I didn’t think I would be this concerned. I just had all these visions of bleeding alone in my bed and no one knowing,” she feels his arms tighten around her. “And I would have to go to work and never acknowledge them again.”

“I am not going to let that happen to you Ger, I’m rich, bad things don’t happen to us.”

She gets her first night good night’s sleep in weeks, not noticing how in need of it her body was. She doesn’t feel queasy, the worry in the pit of her stomach eased. When she wakes up her body thanking her for the rest, he isn’t beside her.

“I’m your daddy,” she hears a little voice whisper. “I already love you, which I know isn’t worth much in this climate but apparently you have ears and shit and can hear all this crap. Probably should not swear,” Gerri tries to hold herself as still as possible, concentrating on regulating her breathing. His cheek is pressed softly against her belly, her blouse had ridden up in the night. “I’m going to be a good Dad, show your mommy I’m not a complete fucking idiot. Not sure how I’ll do it, Roy’s tend to make parenting look really difficult, but I’ll get there.”

“Roman,” she whispers.

“I’m sorry, was that creepy, like it seemed a bit weird, like I was chatting to your dinner.” He returns beside her on the pillow, and she smiles at him, hair sticking out in all directions.

“Don’t sign the papers yet, we will make an arrangement after they arrive.”

V Banana

R

He’s not sure what to expect but he’s just grateful Gerri lets him come to the 20-week scan. He is told to sit quietly in the corner and to hold her hand should go anything wrong. He’s too scared to ask her what could go wrong in that ultrasound office.

“A nice strong, healthy heartbeat.” He thought that was the sound of the machine firing up, but it was his tiny child, his little impossible child.

“Gerri, that is our kid,” he splutters, emotion caught in his throat.

“Yeah, it is,” she softly says. He clings to her, mesmerized by her soft belly and the way the wand moved over it. The technician is quiet, and he can feel Gerri’s worry. He grips her hand tighter

“Would you like to know the sex?”

“I always want to know about sex. Love the sex,” Roman awkwardly mutters.

“Yes, I would,” Gerri says, ignoring him.

“Is that a penis?” he asks, trying to make out the black blob on the screen. “That is an impressive schlong. I think he gets that from Gerri.”

“I do apologize for my -partner,” she says, hesitating at the final word of the sentence.

“The amount of comments about genitalia I have heard from fathers,” the technician says. Roman’s heart bounces at being called a father. “That is the arm of your daughter.”

“Another little girl,” she softly says.

“That’s good, right?” he asks, looking between the pair.

“Is she healthy?” Gerri asks. The technician’s face drops a little and he can see her trying to find the words.

“There is a slight concern about the position with the placenta. It’s still early and there is an 80-90% likelihood that it will move by itself but currently it is partially obscuring the cervix.”

“What do you mean move by itself? You are a fucking doctor, you should be able to do something not expect a 50-year-old uterus to do it by itself!”

“Roman!”

“No, how much are we fucking paying you, if there is a problem with the goddamn kid you fix it. You don’t just leave it to sort its fucking self out.”

“Get out!” Gerri shouts. The technician won’t make eye contact with him but Gerri fuming, lips pursed.

He knows he’s blown it, his one opportunity to prove himself to be the better person. He sulks out into the corridor. He sits and he cries, and he sits some more, and he cries. Finally, he hears her on the linoleum floor, loafer-clad feet heavy. He looks up and sees a pregnant lady, her face rounder and her belly obviously protruding. There was a softness he wasn’t accustomed to seeing around the office. 

“Roman,” she softly says. He looks up at her with blurry eyes. She sits down beside him, curling her hand around her stomach.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he croaks, still wiping his eyes. “I just freaked. I don’t know what any of those words meant and I was just scared.”

“I know.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m fine Roman,” she sighs. She reaches across and takes his hand in hers. “I’m fine. It’s going to be okay.” Her hand is on his back, rubbing slow circles.

“If something happens to you because I can’t put my disgusting little prick away.”

“Nothing is going to happen to me, Rome. The doctor said that there is a strong likelihood that the placenta will move before birth and if not, as long as I am not too far from the hospital, it will be manageable.”

“Manageable, Jesus Christ, Gerri!”

“Roman. This is happening and this is something I need to cope with. If you can’t, you need to let me know now.” She holds out the ultrasound picture. He takes it and stares at it for a while, like a Rorschach test judging his impending fatherhood. It looks like a real baby, a real small human inside the woman sitting next to him.

“What happens next?”

“We go home. I eat a lot of carbs and I nap.” She reaches out and takes his hand in hers and squeezes it reassuringly.

He feels embarrassed the entire ride to Gerri’s apartment. He heard the tone of the technician’s voice and felt Gerri’s clammy hands and panicked. Thought about the guilt he would forever feel if she died carrying his child.

“Hey,” she whispers to him as soon as her front door closes. “It’s going to be okay. If it’s like this at 32 weeks, we panic. Right?” He nods because he doesn’t know what he can say that doesn’t make him seem like a scared child. “I’m scared as well, but I trust the doctors and worrying about this will just make it worse.”

“So we sit back and wait?”

“They recommend no stress, no strenuous exercise and to not stand too long.”

“I hate to tell you this, but I think your NFL days are over. Fuck, Gerri,” he sighs.

“I’m 51, Rome, I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. I’m so tired,” she says, leaning forward to rest her forehead against his shoulder. She lifts her head up and kisses him deeply he wants her, he really wants her, but he feels her belly move against him, thinks about the delicate life in there and all those machines monitoring it. He pushes away from her, turning his back to her.

“Can we do that thing again where we like lay in bed and like hold each other and shit?”

“I would like that.”

He bats her hand away when she tries to unbutton her own blouse. He wants to see her new body, wants to explore new curves, the consequence of his actions. “Funny you unbutton me when I had to button you up at Argestes.”

“You just wanted to touch my sexy masculine body, suck up my youth.” He sees what people mean when they say pregnant women glow but then Gerri always sparkled to him. From the moment he sat across her in a disgusting deli to the moment they first made love on the death cruise, she had been everything he could ever want.

She is spectacular exposed. Her breasts larger and her belly smooth and round. He is fairly sure he is falling in love with her all over again. He lays her down and strips her down slowly, feeling every inch of new curve, every stretchmark and every scar. “These are spectacular,” he says, palming at her large breasts that had gone up at least two cup sizes.

“Is this okay?” he asks, waiting for her nod before he kisses her stomach. He can feel it fluttering under his fingertips, tries to picture the life beneath it. He kisses her pelvic bone, removing her panties on his way down.

“Hey baby,” he says, kissing her inner thigh. “I’m your daddy. I was a bit of a douche today, but I promise you, I will never do that to you. I was so scared for you but I will never talk to you like that. I’m going to look after you and keep you safe. The world is pretty mean, even when you’re really rich. Has your mommy told you, I am really rich which means you’re rich! But that shit doesn’t matter, rich dads don’t mean anything. I love you and your mommy loves you-.”

“Roman, why are you speaking to my vagina?” she asks, looking down at him.

“Well it comes out of there doesn’t it?” He crawls up and lies beside her. “Are you happy to have another daughter?”

He starts to undress feeling uncomfortable that she was naked, and he was in his slacks and shirt. When he is stripped down to his boxers, he spoons her, wrapping his arms around her belly. “I think you’ll be a good father, Roman.”

“You didn’t when you asked me to sign my kid away. Was I supposed to sit there at thanksgiving and watch you parade my kid around and not feel anything?”

“I didn’t think you’d want it, I was making the decision easier on you. After Italy, I imagined you wouldn’t look upon our liaisons with kind memories.”

“I know you have never believed me, but I did love you. I love you, more everyday if you will allow me.”

“Do you forgive me after Italy?”

“I’m not sure what you could do to make me not forgive you. The more Lady MacBeth you get, the wetter my dick gets. Shit, can the jellybean hear me?”

“Roman,” she says, cups his face in her hands. “Do you forgive me after Italy.”

“Of course, I do. I know why you did, I know I fucked it and I wish it had gone any other way but I forgive you. You’re having my baby, Ger-. I know you’re not going to forgive me for a long time, for not stopping the deal, for losing your CEO-,” he can’t finish his sentence, her lips glued to his.

When he wakes up she is getting ready to go to work, 6am obnoxiously flashing at him in red on her alarm clock. Gerri is in her walk-in wardrobe wearing nothing but a silky robe, which she had tried to wrap up over her belly but failed, the bump peeking between drawstrings. She is pulling out dresses and blouses, and tutting before placing them back in her wardrobe.

“Morning, baby,” he says, she glares at the nickname but doesn’t scold him, a small win for her.

“Nothing fits anymore. It’s all becoming too obvious.”

“Oh yes, the Logan issue. When are you going to tell dear dad about the, um, situation?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she snaps before pulling out a dark green wrap dress. It was usually something she wore to dinner, he thinks fondly of the way it made her eyes sparkles and her skin glow.

“You don’t know? Little Miss Contingency doesn’t have a plan of action.”

“I learnt to not make plans around you a long time ago.”

VI Mango

Roman was an hour ahead of her, a carefully planned schedule of coming and going from apartment to apartment. She carefully rearranges the shawl across her growing belly.

“Happy thanksgiving,” she says, handing Marcia the box of chocolates her assistant had carefully picked out.

“Don’t worry, I will make sure they serve you water,” Marcia says, patting her arm. “A woman knows,” she replies when Gerri shoots her an inquisitive look.

“Thank you for welcoming me into your home,” she replies with a courteous smile, ignoring the comment.

“Gerri!” Logan greets her. “You’re putting a little weight on you know. You’re not getting any younger, drop the pounds and get a decent second husband. Shame about that lawyer fella you had. My meathead of a son cocked that one up, which he has a habit of doing.”

“I am committed to Waystar,” she says through gritted teeth. “I don’t have the time to date, I’m sure you’re aware of that.” She sees Roman inspecting his shoes from the corner of her eye. She remembers how good Roman was with Sophie and Grace and Iverson, how loving that silly boy can be when not beaten down by a serious case of being a Roy.

“I don’t like this,” Roman whispers to her as they make their way to the table. “The doctors say no stress and this like the most stressful thing in the world, the Colosseum of stress.

They sit on opposites sides of the table, bodies between them. It’s not a family dinner, it’s a Mexican standoff. Guns are pointed under the table, each aimed at a different member of the extended Waystar family.

She has to be careful to not automatically wrap her hands around her burgeoning belly. She took a heartburn pill in preparation for the rich feast Roman will merely push around his plate.

“Are you feeling better now Gerri, I heard about your little fainting spell,” Tom says, dramatically unfolding his napkin.

“Did you now?” she says with gritted teeth. She can see Roman’s angry face, she hadn’t told him because he knew he would worry. “Just a little turn, nothing to worry about.”

“Are you sure you are feeling okay? I noticed you turned down the wine tonight,” Shiv pointedly says, delighted with herself.

“I am just on some new medication,” she adds before clearing her throat.

“If you’re ill then maybe it’s time to retire. Not worth working yourself to an early grave, is it Gerri?” Shiv continues. “I’m sure there is a little Florida timeshare with your name on it.”

“I’m pregnant, Siobhan, not an invalid!” she snaps. There was no good way to announce it. A Karolina co-written internal newsletter felt insensitive, open to cruel comments between colleagues over coffee.

“You’re pregnant?” Multiple people say at once, voices raised and directed from all ends of the tables.

“Yes, I am,” she says, shifting uncomfortably in her chair.

“Who wants to put a baby in there. I am surprised your dusty old uterus can even get up the duff,” Logan roars. “Modern medicine, eh?”

“I think it is wonderful news,” Marcia gently says. “A child is always a blessing.”

“Is Logan the father?” She hears Greg whisper to Tom.

“You were just going to carry on as legal counsel? Spurt it out over your lunch break? Splooge it out in a meeting?” Tom chuckles. “I mean, can a baby even survive in such an arid atmosphere.”

“That’s disgusting. Shiv your husband is disgusting. You kiss this man?” Roman says, hands clasped tight into fists on top of the table. “When his tongue isn’t down cousin Greg’s throat.” Shiv is looking between her and Roman, piecing everything together. Greg is stammering vowels that barely form cohesive words.

“Not sure you want to get into a conversation about where mouths go,” Shiv volleys back, crossing her arms across her emerald green turtleneck sweater.

“Would anyone like more cranberry sauce?” Marcia interjects.

“This is delicious, thank you,” Gerri says, with no appetite at all.

“Well congratulations Gerri,” Roman says with a gulp, avoiding eye contact with anyone at the table.

“Is it yours?” Kendall says with a stony face. “Roman. Is it your baby?”

“I mean, so what if it is? I mean-,”

“Romulus, did you put your penis in Gerri?” Logan asks. Gerri has to look down, completely mortified by the conversation. She feels her stomach rumble and she is not sure if it’s her nerves or her daughter. “Roman!” he bellows. “Did you knock up Gerri?”

“It’s, it’s not like that,” he stammers.

“This your smart idea to keep you in the job?” Logan stammers. “Get my daft son to knock you up? Seduce him into getting you up the duff so you can keep power. I admire it Gerri, at your age this could kill you, but you were always a power-hungry cunt.”

“Excuse me” she says, carefully removing the napkin from her lap. She feels tears in her eyes, the bitter taste of bile in her mouth, anger on the tip of her tongue.

“Not cool, Dad,” Kendall says.

“Gerri!” Roman says following her out the dining room. She moves as quick as she can to the nearest bathroom. She manages to get in the small room and lock the door before he can reach her. She feels her heart pounding, echoing around her ribcage. She places her hand over her belly and tries to calm down, closing her eyes and regulating her breathing.

“Ger, let me in,” Roman says, banging on the door. She opens the door, wiping at her eyes to find Roman, Connor and Kendall stood there.

“Congratulations, Gerri,” Kendall says. Roman wraps his arms around her and lets her sink into them. He’s crying into her shoulder, her body shaking in devastation.

“It’s going to be okay, Romey,” Connor says, rubbing her arm.

“Are you okay?” Roman asks between sobs.

“I’m okay, Roman, we’re okay,” She takes his hand and rests it against her belly. “We expected this, he’ll get over it.”

Her heart swells at the way his brothers rally around him, congratulating them. She doesn’t quite trust Kendall’s intentions, but she feels the love between them, recently reunited in their anguish against their father. Shiv was another problem for another day.

G

She doesn’t know if it’s the stress of Thanksgiving with the Roys or if it’s just bad timing but 3 days later her recent nightmares became true.

She has to sleep on her side, shirt between her legs to cushion the bump. She has to sleep naked, something Roman has no qualms over, New York feeling like it’s a thousand degrees despite still being in winter. She wakes up to reposition herself, only to find the shirt between her legs feels gooey and wet.

She gets up and takes 3 steps, she instinctively knows something is wrong. The toilet paper is dark red and her stomach drops. All the dreams for her future life erased in one trip to the bathroom. She calmly walks over to Roman, lucky he had decided to spend that night in her arms after a brutal day with Logan, and taps him on the shoulder. He mumbles and tries to roll over. “I’m bleeding.”

“From where?” he groggily replies. She turns on the light on the bedside table beside him in the hopes of waking him up. She simply points at her crotch, blood streaks down her thigh, turning her tan-colored panties dark red.

“Fuck!” he screams, jumping out of bed. He starts throwing clothes on his body like a mad man while she calmly holds her hand to her bleeding area and searches for an appropriate outfit. Thankfully she had shopped in pre-meditation and had purchased some maxi pads that were more like diapers than the pads she was accustomed to keeping in stock.

“We’re not taking a cab. I won’t have our baby die-,” he starts. “I’m not having you bleed out in a New York fucking cab.”

“It’s 3am, Rome, just get me there. He begrudgingly calls a cab while she rings up the OBs 24hr line. She fills up her maxi pad with blood in the cab, Roman gripping her hand so tight it goes blue.

“Everything is okay,” was all she needed go hear in triage. Roman had been pacing the room so much he had probably worn the bottom off his Gucci loafers off as they hooked her belly to all the required monitors. She appreciated how calm and methodical everyone was, especially when Roman was biting his nails and pulling at his own hair.

 He was too upset and scared to make a scene, something she was almost thankful of.

R

He spends the night curled up around her, his head parallel to her belly and his arm curled around his daughter. He had been told twice to not get on the bed, that he couldn’t stay the night, that he should stay outside and wait in the corridor. He just clings on even tighter to her.

“My little puppy,” she says, ruffling his hair when a nurse asks him to move so she could examine Gerri. He had seen the IV go into her, had seen the blood clots being pulled from her body, had watched swab after swab go up there. Gerri says nothing, just watches the monitor for changes. “She has passed every test with flying colors,” Gerri reassures him.

“They said you will need surgery Gerri,” he whines, eyes wet with a fresh set of tears. “They gave you a steroid shot so she can breathe if she comes early. She’s passing tests like Kendall fails drug searches.”

“I had my second by scheduled C-section and that was because your father was in his local TV station buying phase. Had her at 10am, went to an acquisition meeting at 3pm. C-sections are normal, she will be quite okay.”

“You will bleed again. Just come back,”, the nurse says like there was no reason to be concerned that she had bled through sheets, shirts and maxi pads. She is monitored until 5pm, Roman curled up around her like a small child, batting away any hands that came near her and his daughter.

Gerri was his and that was his baby. He was going to keep them safe.

The moment he gets home he tells Gerri to give up work. She was on bedrest until birth, no lifting, no exercising, no fucking. The only thing that gets her to oblige was the fact the office was 110 minutes away from the hospital.

“I haven’t done much good in my life, but I will make sure she gets here safely.”

VII Eggplant

G

The baby has moved so now she’s pushing on her bladder all the time. She gets up in the night and sees the light on. Roman had been sleeping in the guest bedroom, her body temperature too high in the night to want his body so close to him.

She feels tired yet can’t sleep, her body aching in all places all at once, from the inside and outside. She is on her way to the kitchen to get a cold glass of water when she sees the light in her third bedroom on. It was filled with unworn suits, heels too high that she didn’t want to get rid off, exercise equipment she brought with the best intention yet never used.

She hasn’t been in her in some time, scared at having to confront the reality of her situation. The whole bedroom is unrecognisable to her, now a pastel yellow colour with little blue, pink and green furniture. There is a teddy bear theme to the room with a baby bear print lampshade and a Paddington bear cushion in the armchair.

“Roman?” she asks, her voice croaky. He is leaning over a disassembled cot, screws and tools scattered across the floor.

“Hey, couldn’t sleep either?”

“You did all this?” she asks, and she can feel the tears welling up in her eyes.

“You hate it don’t you? I knew it was the yellow. You hate the yellow. I know the yellow was gross. What little girl wants a yellow bedroom?” he rants. “Looks like a Simpson vomited everywhere. I’m a dumbass.”

“No, Roman,” she replies, wiping tears away. “This is amazing. You did all this yourself?”

“I haven’t been able to sleep much, you know the old noggin going all night? Wallpapering is fucking difficult, especially when you’re trying to not wake anyone up.”

“You know we can pay someone to do all of this?” she asks. She takes a seat in the little armchair, leaning back against the plush cushion. She rubs circles on the heavy orb she was now carrying around.

“No, let me do something for my daughter. Parents are supposed to be things for their kids, not pay for people to do things.”

His hope for their baby kept her going through all the invasive scans, the heartburn, the sleepless nights, and the pains. When she looked at the statistics, the improbability that she could even become pregnant at her age, let alone carry the child to term she thought about Roman. He was pinning all his future plans and hopes on the little life inside her.

“You need any help there?” she asks, watching him struggle to get the Allen wrench into the head of the screw.

“I got it, I got,” he says, waving his hands. “You know she can blink now and dream. I wonder what she dreams about. Your tits probably, fucking banquet in there.”

“She also makes my gums bleeds, gives me a headache and gas.”

“I love it when you talk dirty Gerri.”

“You know,” she says looking up at him through loose strands of curls that were escaping the bun. “If you wanted to seek sexual gratification elsewhere, you know I would be okay with that. Not that the boundaries of this entanglement have been defined.”

“Sex gratification? Gerri, you are the only woman to give me a boner since I was eighteen, except that one hooker who looked like Helena Christensen. I thought about you when I fucked Tabitha, well tried, you know?” he pulls a face thinking of his ex-girlfriend. “So why would I want to find some rasher of bacon at a party when I have prime beef at home?”

“I understand you are a young man with needs, and I am an unable to fulfil those needs. I can create some kind of arrangement.”

“You’re telling me to go to a hooker?” he says with a smirk. “Gerri! You minx, you want to watch, is this it?”

“Oh shut up,” she says with a slight blush. “Pass the wrench, you’re doing it all wrong. She’ll be in pre-school the time it takes for you to finish this.”

It’s those nights when she can’t sleep that they really bond. She lets her guard down, her body heavy with pains as it grows around their daughter. She lets him rub her feet, kiss her bare belly, grip her hips as her body practices for a labor she will never go through. He sits beside her on the couch and counts kicks, he reads stories to her stomach when she naps (Winnie the Pooh was his favorite) and handles the mood swings that make Kendall look calm.

“I can’t feel her kick,” Gerri says, pacing the nursery in nothing but maternity bra and panties. “Should I call someone?”

Roman puts down the screwdriver on the still unmade cot and rushes to the kitchen. “Ice cold water, it should help,” he tells her, handing her the glass. “I’ve been reading,” he says. He had read everything he could, watched more videos than he probably should have, knew more about the female anatomy now than he ever needed to.

She kisses him deeply in appreciation and his puts one hand on her belly to feel the little kicks inside her. After this night he is allowed to sleep in bed with her, although usually not allowed to kiss or hold her, and it felt as good as he had always thought it would.

She spends a lot of nights on her hands and knees (Roman has worn out all his best and worst doggy style jokes), rocking through contractions and cramp, while he gripped her hips to help ease the pressure. She would fall back into his arms, the floor more comfortable than any of the over-soft furniture in her apartment.

“What was Baird like as a dad?” he asks, sitting behind her with his back resting against the sofa.

“He was a good dad, the girls liked him far more than they liked me. He wasn’t always there but when he was he would take them to the zoo, to toy stores, he was the fun one. My girls just thought of me as being the sensible one who made them go to school and not eat junk food all day.”

“You cared about them, Gerri.”

“Well I paid the nanny to care. So many moments I missed because of work trips and meetings, and bloody dinners.”

“They know you love them?” he can’t help but ask, unsure of her own feelings towards him.

“Sometimes I’m not sure,” she says, before wiping a tear away. “I don’t know if I love them sometimes. I don’t know them really, I don’t know what they like, or who they date or their hobbies anymore. Rachel is so, I don’t know, wild, I don’t know what to say that doesn’t make me sound like a prude. Hannah is so uptight, clearly bitter at my lack of motherhood. Was I supposed to sit around at the park and talk about washing machines and baby formula, that was never been my world. I worked really hard to be the best lawyer in New York, worked my ass off to get a seat at the toxic table, I couldn’t go and be a housewife. I ran away from the life of being someone’s mother, I guess I felt bitter at the idea of being pushed back into it.”

“You wanted them though, didn’t you?”

“I suppose we did. I think maybe Baird convinced me into a second and I thought I could do it all again, only I think I was worse. Baird was legal counsel, and I was head of-.” He can feel her getting upset with herself.”

“It’s okay, it’s going to be okay this time,” he says with no certainty. He rubs her bare belly under her shirt, feeling it pulse beneath his fingertips.

“You’re going to be a fantastic father, Roman.” He had read everything he could, watched more videos than he probably should have, knew more about the female anatomy now than he ever needed to.

“I’m not sure I know how to be. I’m not sure any of us know how to be real humans.”

Those papers were still unsigned in the bottom of the drawer in a flat Roman hadn’t lived in for weeks.

R

He doesn’t like to bring up her daughters. Despite their newly found trust and maybe even love, it was an area they weren’t allowed to talk about. Then an invite for Christmas at Hannah’s appears. It’s on perfectly printed paper, written in gold calligraphy with a cut out robin on the front.

 “They don’t know, do they?” he asks.

“No. As far as they are aware I had a stomach bug some weeks ago and recovered swiftly.”

They had unfortunately learnt about Roman in the most awkward way. Gerri was on a conference call when her phone rang. For some reason, Roman forgets that it doesn’t necessary belong to him and swipes it. A face pops up on the screen, wrestling a rottweiler puppy.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asks. He immediately recognizes her as Gerri daughter. Even without the photos in her lounge, she would recognize her. The same blue eyes, the mane of blonde curls Gerri had slowly revealed throughout her pregnancy, the lines on the nose.

“Who the fuck are you? Twit 1 or twit 2?”

“Why are you using my mom’s phone?”

“Oh, I live here now.”

“Roman Roy lives with my mother? Did she adopt you, did you need a new mommy, heard yours is a cunt.”

“With that mouth I should have knocked you up instead.”

And with that conversation Gerri’s daughter learnt about the Roman Roy shape in her life. Gerri loses it at him when he finds out. She is cooking dinner, something she hadn’t done in over two decades. He wraps his arms around her middle, caressing her stomach and avoiding the knife chopping peppers in her hand.

“What are you making?” he says, kissing her neck. The gesture has the opposite effect because Gerri ends up nicking herself with the knife.

“Fuck,” she cusses, inserting the cut finger into her mouth. He takes her hand and kisses the cut gently.

“So, your phone rung earlier,” he says. “And I accidentally answered it.”

“Who did you show your penis to?” she says, hands on her hips and her breasts jiggling.

“Um, no one, jeez Gerri. Anyway,” he says, scratching his head. “It was your daughter, you know the unwashed one in Italy?”

“Spain,” she corrects. “Did you show your penis to Rachel?”

“You should give yourself more credit, Ger,” he smirks. “I exclusively save my best dick pic for you.”

So that is how he gets invited to Christmas Eve dinner. Gerri doesn’t want to go, doesn’t want to phase the truth about their relationship and her pregnancy. Since he moved in, they had managed to live in their own bubble, create their own reality where he wasn’t Roman Roy and she wasn’t his father’s legal counsel. He has to help her up the stairs to her daughter’s apartment building, the waddle humorously noticeable. He kisses her forehead in the elevator ride up and tells her it will be okay, watching the way she fumbles to cover her belly with the shawl.

“Oh, it’s you,” Rachel says as she opens the door. “She brought the child!” She shouts down the corridor.

“Older than you,” he reminds them, hand around Gerri’s waist. She bats it away, rearranging the dark purple shawl. He stands back and watches them all greet each other, hugging and kissing like distant cousins. He notices the way she leans across to hug them, belly far away from their slim bodies.

Dinner is incredibly boring. He can barely tolerate his own family stories, let alone other people's. Hannah is hoping to be the youngest partner in her company’s history, is nagging her long-term partner for an engagement and is planning a trip to Finland. They talk about Gerri’s work, the acquisition, GoJo. Rachel tells them about some art exhibit she is looking to be part of, a band she saw live who spit on each other mid-performance, of the collective she currently resides in.

“So I found this stray dog on Las Ramblas, beautiful mongrel, pretty face, very caring but aggressive when afraid,” Rachel says, looking at Roman the entire time. “You ever taken one of those home?” she asks, turning to face Gerri.

“What are you thinking? I thought the mid-life crisis was all those tight skirts and expensive blowouts,” Hannah says and Roman gets the feeling this is pent-up anger from some time ago.

“Circumstances changed in my life that-,” she starts.

“That what the kids are calling it these days?” Rachel says.

“Oh, no I want to know the circumstances that would make you start dating Logan Roy’s son. You know the last time I saw you, you set fire to my doll’s hair, must have been one of those weekends at the Hamptons. You know, dad, remember him, mom? Yeah, he hated us going anywhere near you lot. He said you were poisonous brats that would drag everything down to your level just so you could enjoy a better view of your destruction.” Hannah was so stern and cold, sat upright in her art deco dining room chair.

“Don’t speak to him like that!”

“Well, I hope the sex is good enough. Bet it’s a fun way to test out your HRT,” Hannah spits before standing up, the meal barely finished.

“Sit down, please,” she begs, her voice thick with emotion. “I have something to say.”

“Is it a sex tape? Some new sideline in MILF porn.” Roman shifts uncomfortably in his chair, aware it wasn’t his place to get involved but devastated at seeing Gerri at the end of a flaming gun. All he can do is hold her hand, moving it to her leg to rub it in comfort.

“I’m pregnant.” There is a clatter, and all hell breaks loose. The three women start screaming over each other, fists clenched and hands banging the table. It ends with Hannah in the kitchen, aggressively washing up and Gerri crying, Rachel’s arms around her.

“You should give your mum a break,” he tells Hannah, who was taking her anger out on a glass tumbler she was washing.

“What would you know? You famously love your parents.”

“I do love my parents even if that’s not always reciprocated,” he shrugs. “Seriously, she loves you and whatever mistakes she made she thought they were the right thing at the time.”

“Oh, you know that?” she pointedly replies.

“You think I haven’t seen the stone-cold killer bitch in action? She hasn’t fucked me over and blinked as my heart was ripped into little fucking pieces in front of me?”

“So what do you get for this? The little sperm donor act?”

“Love. I know I’m such a pussy, but I love Gerri a fucking lot, and I love our daughter. I know she didn’t always get it right, she’s not perfect, I mean she is pretty close, but she will admit she fucked shit up. I’m sure you’ve made mistakes, right?”

“I guess you can afford a good nanny,” she softly replies, and he sees her shoulders drop.

“You know she’s been working at home, cutting down the hours so she can nap more, it’s like living with a cat. Like an emotional curly-haired cat.”

“Does she ever talk about us?” she quietly asks.

“All the time,” he lies. “She loves you and your sister so much, and your father, I know she misses him a lot.”

When he goes back to the dining room Gerri is sobbing at the table, her youngest with her arm around her. He crouches down in front of her, this time her above him sobbing. “It’s okay, I fixed it. No matter what happens, we fix it, we’re a team.” He stands up and holds Gerri against his chest, rubbing her frizzy hair and kissing her forehead.

“I’m sorry, it was just a shock,” Hannah says, re-joining the table.

“Roman, I didn’t know you had it in you,” Rachel laughs, easing the tension in the room.

“It was a shock for me,” Gerri says, laughing through her sobs.

X Coconut

R

She looks beautiful in the bath, yellow light bathing in golden curls. She looks like some fertility goddess, her round belly peeking up from the water.

“Fuck my day,” he says, ruining the tranquillity of her space. He quickly strips his suit down and leaves it in a pile on the floor of the on-suite. “Did I say fuck my day and my family and everything?”

He climbs into the warm water, tucking himself in behind her so she can lean against him.

“When do you have to go back?” she asks. He buries his head into her neck and kisses the space, thankful her hair is tied up.

“More fucking meetings next week. You’re taking my name off the door, why do I need to watch it in real-time?”

“It’s just procedural, dotting I’s, crossing T’s. Your bank account will appreciate it.”

They sit in silence for a bit, his hands caressing her belly, feeling the kicks inside her. The novelty of pregnancy now wearing off for Gerri.

“How are the leg cramps?” He kisses her neck again, feeling her firm belly under his fingertips.

“Horrible. It could be another late one.” It was already eight and they had spent every night that week dealing with cramps and Charley horses. Roman had been on his hands and knees, Gerri’s hands braced on the headboard and his hands gripping on her hips. She leans up and kisses him, cupping his jaw in her hand.

“Oh, you missed me?” he smirks.

“Don’t be so disgusting,” she scolds. “Be useful and help me out the bath,” He clambers over her and out of the bathroom. He then holds out his hand to help her safely climb out of the bath. He had never really thought of pregnant women as sexy, but Gerri was outstanding. He supposes she could have a wooden leg and false teeth and he would still think she was the sexy woman in the city. “Why would I miss such a useless waste of space like you? At least you finally did something useful and that was lying back and shooting your disgusting load into me.”

She waddles over to sit at the end of the bed, entirely naked with her legs open. “You don’t have to Ger-,” he starts, knowing doctors had forbidden her from an orgasm let alone anything entering her.

“You think looking at your pathetic penis will bring me to an orgasm?” she asks with a mocking laugh. “On your knees!” He obliges, looking up at her. She smells like vanilla and honey; he has seen how much her Laura Mercier bath solution costs, she smells like money. He wishes he could smell her, despite not being able to bury his head between her legs she had smelt so good in her pregnancy. “I know you masturbate in the bathroom. Do you think I can’t hear you tugging at it? Squeaky little boy playing with himself.”

“Fuck, Gerri,” he gulps, itching to touch his painfully hard length.

“Only you can’t,” she says with a smirk. She rubs her belly, drawing attention to her large breasts, her nipples darker and erect. He longs to put one between his teeth and suck it dry.

“Can I touch myself?” he begs. “I want to come for you.”

“Coming for me is how we got in this disgusting mess. Your inability to stop coming on me, in me, near me. God, your family must be so embarrassed by you.”

He is touching himself now, tugging at his erect penis, desperate for friction. They didn’t do this often, but it made it feel even better when he is allowed to come on her. He had hoped his semi-regular shower jerk-off sessions may have gone unnoticed, but he should have known better than that. She had jerked him off while sitting in the bath, attempted to blow him on the couch (her gag reflex not what it used to be) and berated him to a satisfying orgasm at least once a fortnight.

After he comes, he lies next to her, belly still sticky and lets her cry. He doesn’t know why she gets upset and neither does she, but he holds her and tells her he loves her.

G

She hates not going to work but is relieved she can still do most of it for him. She actually thinks she gets more done at home without buzzing assistants and in person meetings. She had known for years all the meetings she had to go for could be succinctly put into an email. Roman is banned from the room but like everything in her life, had made himself at home despite not being welcomed.

There is a knock on her door and she presumes Roman has locked himself out. Only, Roman is led on the sofa, playing on his phone with a violent show on in the background. He is staring at the door with a furrowed brow, like a Pomeranian acting as a guard dog.

“I’ve got it,” he tells her. To their surprise, they open the door to find Logan with Kerry in tow.

“Romulus!” he bellows.

“What are you doing here, Dad?” he says, expanding himself to block the doorway.

“Thought I’d come to see my favorite son and his partner, that’s what we’re calling you these days.”

“What do you want?”

“Aren’t you going to let me in, son?” he asks. “I need to speak to my favourite lawyer.” She wraps her cardigan around her body, knowing it wasn’t going to hide her huge belly.

“She is on bedrest,” he says. “You noticed that bit when she wasn’t in work? She wasn’t on vacation.”

“Romulus,” he says with a warning.

“Logan,” Gerri says from the hall. “How can I help?”

“Gerri, no fucking way.”

“I’m not on bed rest, I just need to not engage in strenuous activities and I’m sure Logan doesn’t have anything like that in mind.”

Roman steps aside, taking a deep breath and looking down. Logan makes himself at home in her apartment. She doesn’t remember him making a home visit before. The last time he had been to her property was Baird’s wake, but she had long moved from that townhouse. Maybe she would have kept it if she had known it would be filled with family and life again. Turns out she wasn’t destined to be a lonely, overworked widower her whole life.

“Gerri!” he greets her. “You look huge, I hope it’s not twins, we don’t need more of this moron’s genetics in the world.”

“I can assure you, just the one in there,” she says with a smile. “Please take a seat.” He places himself in the armchair, his team fussing around him. She sits down on the sofa diagonally, hand protectively placed over her bump.

“I want you to look at the paperwork and make sure this meatball fucker isn’t screwing me over. I don’t trust the other imbeciles I work with.”

“I don’t like this, Gerri,” Roman says, pacing around the lounge.

“Roman, make yourself useful and get me a drink. Kerry, go with him and make sure he doesn’t fuck it up,” Logan barks. “So Gerri,” he starts once he is sure they are alone. “What do you see in my son then?”

“There is more to him than you think.”

“Oh, it’s not about his bank balance or are you telling me it’s his witty conversation?”

“I have made quite enough of my own money, thank you. He’s a rather loving human when he is allowed to be.”

“Was this planned? I seemed to remember your first was ill-time?”

“I’m not sure a 51-year-old plans pregnancy. We are both healthy and happy.”

“Well, a healthy grandchild is always a blessing. Although don’t get surprised if he leaves, that boy can never commit himself to anything useful in his life.”

“I think it’s best we look at the paperwork now, I’m sure we are both too busy for small talk.”

IX Cantaloupe

G

It’s weirdly quiet with Roman out of the apartment. She had spent so long alone and yet in the short few months he had filled her space with noise and laughter and joy. It was strange him not being there, even when it was a few hours.

She sits down to pee and immediately knows something is wrong. She wipes and it’s bloody, her heart drops. She stands up and feels it pool out of her, down her legs and onto the bathroom floor. It’s like it’s happening to someone else, not her. Her poor cleaner, she thinks of leaving a note telling her that the tan carpet in the bedroom was ruined and to not waste time trying to remove the stain.

She sits on the toilet, a phone ringing Roman in one hand, her other on her belly begging her daughter to hold on. “Shit,” she keeps whispering to herself. Three times and it goes to voicemail. She calls an ambulance and waits. She won’t let them wheel her out, not when the neighbours could see. The maxi pad and toilet paper combination just about saving her lounge carpet, refusing to take the hand of the EMT. 

 “Do you have a doppler?” she asks the EMT, but they shake their heads and give her an IV drop.

“How do you not have a doppler?” she snaps. “How is that the correct practice?” She has to lie down but she can feel how wet and sticky the formally white sheet is beneath her. She is acutely aware only two people in the world cared about the well-being of her child, she was a statistic to an EMT. An elderly mother, no one would lose their job if either of their lives are lost. 

She spends the 45-minute ride not knowing if her daughter was alive or not. She would never quite get over that feeling of loss and shame. She goes in via the hospital's back door, meeting a nurse in the hallway. She quickly changes into a gown, refusing to take her underwear off with shame.

“How much blood loss?” the nurse asks. She looks down at her bloody legs, her red-stained feet, the wet slippers discarded on the floor. She feels numb, like a part of her was dying, until she hears her daughter’s heartbeat loud and clear over the monitors.

“You’re having contractions every 2 minutes,” she tells Gerri. “Do you feel them?” She shakes her head and the scene moves on quickly, all she can focus on is the little beating heart of the child she thought was dead less than an hour ago. She watches a nurse wipe the blood from her feet and legs. It was either biblical or tragic, she wonders what Roman would say. Her hand grips onto the side of the bed, wishing she could hold his hand.

“The nurse has told me enough, we’re not going to put you through another pelvic exam. The team is assembling at this moment. Looks like you’ll have a baby today.”

Before, the news was delivered with a smile and a light tone. Today it was not. This moment was serious and no planning could get Gerri out of this. She always had more respect for people who did not sugarcoat important bad news but that day she wished at least one person had lied to her.

Roman's phone goes to voicemail again.

The next set of events happen too fast, more nurses came in, IV in hand, IV lock in the other. They chat casually about the weather and The Bachelor as they test her blood, confident they will need it later. The tone changes too quickly. Now come the questions about where they cut, about the haemorrhage they expect to occur. She answers them as efficiently as she could, only realizing days later how serious the whole situation has been.

“We’ll do all we can to deliver your baby and save your life but there are no guarantees,” are the words that echo in her head. She doesn’t have time to call her daughters, doesn’t remember the last thing she said to Roman. She remembers she failed to properly acknowledge him that morning because she was annoyed over something so insignificant, that she could barely remember the reasoning now.

She needed to go fully under, something that hadn’t happened since she had her appendix out. It’s all a blur, blood still pooling underneath the white sheet. She’d have a tube shoved down her throat which would leave her voice hoarse, she would likely need to be given blood which is why she couldn’t have a spinal tap. A potion to drink and neutralize the stomach acid is shoved into her hand.

Everything was out of her control and she gets wheeled into the operating room before she can process the situation. She fears the last she told Roman was to call the dry cleaners, upset that he had failed to do the simple task the day before.

The antibiotic runs through the IV and into her. Then the oxygen mask is placed over her face and it feels like she is being suffocated. “You’ll have nice thoughts before you sleep,” the anaesthesiologist says. She goes to sleep worrying about Roman, about Roman learning the news she has died from a corporate email sent via Karolina, from her daughter being mother-less in the greedy world of the Roys.

R

Tom is talking and talking, jumping through metaphors about ducks and Star Trek and werewolves and honey badgers. Roman’s phone is buzzing in his pocket, and he wants to pick it up, but he knows he is walking a thin line in the room. He is the enemy, a human in a shark tank or maybe a shark on a beach of very dumb rich humans.

Karolina walks in and whispers in Frank’s ear. He looks at her, looks at Roman and says nothing. It’s not until after the meeting is finished that he hears the voicemail and runs faster than he has ever run in his life.

“Rome,” she says, and he can hear his words laced with fright. “There was a bleed. A really bad bleed. They’re delivering the baby today. I’m scheduled for a C-section in 45-minutes. They need to find blood before I can go in. I’m sorry, the bedroom carpet will need to be replaced. I love you, Roman. I love you and I love her.”

His car will come around in fifteen to twenty minutes. He needs to be there now. He jumps in a cab, not caring about the smell, the gum on the seat or the horrible music being played. He twitches, updating every app on his phone for a sign. He can’t be alone in his head anymore.

“Con,” he croaks down the phone line.

“Romey, daddy-to-be!” Connor cheers down the phone. “How is it bumping along?”

“She’s bleeding, Connor, she’s bleeding. What if she dies?” He sobs down the phone. He sobs his way up the hospital hall, through conversations with nurses and orderlies.

He finally finds a lone pink chair outside of the operating theatre. Now he sits and waits. He hears the sounds of women in pain, sees women walking slowly up the hall in labour, and hears the cries of new babies. He lies on the chair, he sits on the floor, he paces, but nothing makes the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach go away. He wishes she would have gone into labor so he could have sat there rubbing her back, gripping her hand through contractions, holding her knees in disgust. Once he got over the disgust of watching birth videos on YouTube, (seriously, people upload those for like the whole world to see) he became jealous.

He sees a man running at full speed with a bag of blood into her operating room. He sees a river of blood on the floor through those doors, he sees nurses quickly run to grab several towels and mop it up. Every person who leaves the room is stained with red. It’s a fucking massacre and he almost feels his heart stop with worry.

“Hey, buddy,” Kendall says, a hand on his shoulder. Roman looks up from his spot on the floor, Kendall looks like shit in his khaki hoodie and black baseball cap, but he has never been happier to see him.

“What happened?” he sits beside him, the chair creaking on the linoleum.

“I don’t know, I was in one of those fucking meetings listening to some crackhead and she was in here bleeding out. What if this is it?”

“It’ll be alright.”

“Ken, it’s fucking early like, what if Gerri dies? What do I do if Gerri dies and it’s my fault? What if Bella hates me because her mother is dead? What am I supposed to do about any of this? It’s too early and people die.”

“Modern medicine is good Roman.”

“I want to be in there with her?” he wraps his arms around his legs. “I want to be in there with her. She’s all alone and no one is holding her hand. What if she dies and no one is holding her hand? What if she doesn’t know she’s loved?” Kendall just places his hand on his shoulder. Roman looks at his hand, it looks small and empty, shaking in that corridor.

Connor and Willa arrive soon after. “Baby daddy!” he says, leaning down and hugging him tightly. “Why are there so many people here? Do you need to have a private room? You haven’t wasted all your money, have you? Let me get you a private room. This baby is presidential-adjacent after all.”

Roman just sinks back to the floor and lets Connor shout about things that no longer matter to anyone anymore. “You know women have been birthing babies out for years and years. It’s completely natural, beautiful really. Willa and I are looking into it actually,” he says when he returns, assured Gerri was in the right place and could not be moved mid-surgery.

“I mean, I’m not sure looking into it is the right word,” Willa nervously laughs. “But she really is in the best place.”

So more people join in the sitting and waiting. “I remember when you were born,” Connor says. “All of you guys really. Roman, you were especially ugly, looked like a malformed chimp but you improved with age. So if your kid is a little shrivelled, don’t worry, they fluff up with age. Honestly, Shiv looked Chinese at birth.”

“You have a name picked out?” Kendall asks.

“Isabella. Gerri’s late mother was called Elizabeth and Isabella is the Italian version. I think we thought an Italian name would be bloody hilarious. You know, after Italy went so well for us.” He laughs weakly but the room falls silent quickly again.

And finally, the bloody footprints make their way to their little group.

“Mr Roy,” he says. The three look up. “Are you the expectant father?” he asks Connor.

“No, it’s this little man,” Connor says, massaging his shoulders. He looks away, he can smell the mix of bleach and blood on the man. He doesn’t want to hear the answer.

“Congratulations, you have a healthy baby girl. Mother and baby are doing well.”

Roman lets out a guttural choke of relief. “See everything is okay,” Kendall says, rubbing his back.

“Would you like to meet your daughter?”

“Is Gerri okay? I need to make sure she’s okay?”

“There was some blood loss, but she will make a full recovery. Due to some clotting, we had to put your partner under general anaesthetic which means your baby is a little sleepy and had some issues breathing. We have placed her in the NICU to just watch her for a few hours until mom is out of recovery.”

“Go meet your daughter, Rome,” Connor encourages.

“Will you stay, in case anything happens with Gerri? I don’t want to be away from her if anything happens.”

“I got this,” Kendall says. Connor and Roman follow the nurse to the NICU. She is tiny and pink, with monitors attached to her chest. He immediately wants to pick her up and cradle her to his chest. She had bright blue eyes and a thatch of blonde hair. Babies were ugly but his was a pretty damn adorable one, thank god for Gerri’s genetics.

“Oh, see, you got one of the cute ones,” Connor says, patting Roman on the back.

“Why does she have the machines?” he asks. “You told me she was okay?”

“It’s just precautionary,” the nurse reminds them. “She had a bit of a tough time getting here, we just want to be 100% sure she is okay. Would you like to hold her?”

“Fuck my hands are shaking like Dennis Wilson at a crack house, I’m not sure I can.”

But he can and he does. He sits beside her cot and traces every inch of her face from her button nose to her round cheek and her fat belly. He feeds her and holds her tight against her chest. She sleeps most of the time, but she’s the most perfect thing he’d ever seen.

“You’re going to be a good Daddy, Romey. Always thought that about you.”

G

The next thing she knows is waking up in recovery, Roman in the armchair beside her holding their daughter. She wants to stay still and watch that sight for the rest of her life.

“Ger,” he says, pride written all over his face. “We made a pretty cute kid.”

All she wants to do is hold her daughter, to press her against her chest and smell her head. She was so tiny and pale in Roman’s arms. She has light blonde hair, unlike the thick black hair of her daughters, and Gerri’s nose. She is plopped inelegantly and naked on his naked chest, his hand slowly rubbing her back. He looks a natural with the tiny but healthy child.

“You’re here, finally, you’re here. I have wanted to meet you so much.”

Isabella Charlotte Roy was born at 35 weeks, 3 days at 6lbs 7oz.