The Carrero Heart - Beginning (Friends to Lovers)

“Take it easy” Arrick guides me from the car towards our building and towards home. We have been shopping, last minute nesting items as it gets crazy close to my due date and I am so done with being pregnant. I’m like New York’s answer to Free Willy and my feet are like long lost sisters I maybe will see one day again. A woman cuts in front of me aggressively as I reach for the door handle and knocks me over into him as Arrick almost takes her head off.

“Watch the fuck where you’re going.” He snaps at her and I look back at him in surprise at his non-typical response to another human. He’s been tetchy as hell since we got into my last month, antsy, nervous and overkill in protective mode. Today he is having a bad day, because I have been having a bad day and he is trying to not lose his shit with me over it.

Me… I’m suffering every day and absolutely despise this endless growing rounder and waiting. Whoever said pregnancy was beautiful, lied. It’s a nonstop cycle of peeing, starving, aching, peeing, crying, aching, and eating. I can’t sleep because nothing is comfortable and Arrick is against me using him as an acrobatic shaped comforter I can plump to fit around me anymore. So, I am tired all the time and napping in the day is worse.

I want to ram hard objects in everyone’s face who feel they have a right to walk up to me in the street and lay hands on my stomach. Strangers seem to think it’s highly appropriate to touch random pregnant women and I swear I have thought about ‘tasering and macing’ a lot of people in the last seven months. So much so I asked Arrick to buy me some sort of weapon for self-defense and he looked at me like ‘Yeah … Not a chance.’

Arrick too, has to resist the temptation to snap people’s wrists and we are both so fed up with the way complete strangers feel it’s okay to come and say how it’s good luck to caress my bump or want to guess the sex or how far on I am. It’s weird. People are weird and now I understand why Jake turns into a psycho who then bans Emma from coming to the city when she is full bump.

Arrick the normally laid-back people lover has turned into another Carrero Psycho, bristling for a fight with anyone who gets within ten feet of his future offspring. I have become a people hater too and every time someone asks me when I’m due, how far on, what sex it is… I eyeroll so hard my eyes might actually get stuck in the back of my head.

Arrick’s staff on his floor have been told that when I come to go for lunch with him, if they dare mention anything to do with my impending roundness in any way shape or form, he will fire them. Or well, I’ll make him fire them. That is how done with this I am and if I could will myself to push it out already, I would have done it.

One good thing about all of this though. After Amanda inadvertently walked in on Arrick and I having really awkward sex on his desk during one of my horny bouts of ‘I need sex right now’ during a lunchtime visit, she resigned. Well not right away. I guess she didn’t want to make it obvious she was doing it for that reason, but Emma told me the PA grapevine was that she realized her Boss crush was never going to improve and catching him screwing his pregnant wife at work drove it home that he really isn’t going to be single anytime soon.

I may have done a happy dance when he told me she quit and Arrick may have sighed, shook his head and tried to pretend he didn’t see me high fiving myself stupendously. I asked him if he felt bad that she caught us having sex, and his answer was…

“I was more annoyed that she interrupted us, and we had to stop.” Says it all really; he knows which woman he should be keeping happy.

Good riddance to bad smells.

His new PA is like fifty and could play Mrs. Doubtfire. in a remake. It’s kind of weird but she’s worked in Carrero Corp since Moses times apparently and does the job well. Although a part of me and well, maybe because Jake hinted at it, believe Arrick picked a PA that wouldn’t cause him anymore grief.

Good boy.

The ignorant woman doesn’t even look back and Arrick comes around me to open the door and guide me inside while carrying the three thousand bags of stuff I had to buy in the city. We don’t brave actual shopping much as we tend to order online so I went a little overboard when faced with rows of baby things I hadn’t seen before.

Emma calls it nesting… Jake calls it distraction, Arrick calls it impulse buying and killing his credit cards. My mom told him that marriages stay happy when men don’t make a fuss over credit card bills.

I happen to agree.

Personally, I also happen to think we need crystal baby bootee sun catchers hanging over the crib and little matching diaper bags for our diaper genie in pretty pastels, all twenty colors of them.

The vanity that is getting delivered might not actually fit in the baby’s room, but it would possibly work in the hall, or middle of the apartment if it doesn’t. I could disguise it with a plant or maybe add some chairs and tell him it’s a breakfast bar, but I just had to have it. It had unicorn handles.

The apartment is done… Baby room ready, baby proofed home; a lot of our ‘stuff’ has either gone into storage or been donated so we can remove anything ‘Ouchy’ for little tiny crawlers. I had to give up my sewing room for a nursery for the time being but Arrick has plans to move us in a year or two to Jake’s old apartment a few blocks away when I need my space back. It’s a lot bigger than ours and a straight swap makes more sense as he rarely uses it. We didn’t want to start off there though, we want to enjoy our new family in familiar surroundings.

I feel like we have got life together so much in the last few months and despite the fact my school, and career is on hold until … Well, until I decide to even think about it. Then we are doing pretty well.

I’ve read a million baby books this past few months and gone to so many classes in sheer anxiety that I am going to screw this all up. I can’t stop preparing and getting ready and worrying that we haven’t done something important or bought something we need. Arrick has been my constant shadow when he’s at home and now the last three weeks he’s on paternity leave too, never letting me down. He still goes to early morning training and was gone for a fight last week overnight but apart from that, he’s around pretty much all the time.

Every appointment, every weird class I impulsively want to go to, including water sports for natural birthing… Prenatal yoga and how to ease your unborn to sleep with the use of chimes… Pregnancy makes me crazy. Arrick is probably needing therapy after all this, but he’s doing it all with so much patience. Although he might need some crowns with the amount of teeth gritting he does every day.

He likes to take his aggression out on anyone that is not me and even Nathan was

nods to him as we pass, and he tries to usher me while holding all the bags

the heart to tell him babies don’t run to a schedule and he might not be on desk for the birth. He wants to be here, to be the one to open the door when we get Arrick’s car and be the first to know it’s happening. It’s cute really. Frank is our honorary

my husband a god damn break. Also, sex like this is pretty

smile, and I rush to take it, feeling Arry’s disapproving look as I immediately unwrap it. My love of junk food and sweet stuff has exploded beyond control this past two months and it’s a topic we bicker about constantly. He tried to ban any from the house, tried to put me on a healthy eating plan and that lasted all of five

we walk in the door, given that I lost the ability to see my feet weeks ago and I trip and stumble over something sticking out. Arrick drops everything with the speed of light and catches me,

his over dramatics and yet secretly love that he’s been a walking

end, I really feel like I might have some sort of emotional breakdown.” Swear

being the pregnant one is almost done.” I droll sarcastically and get the unamused frown thrown back at me

stick the lollipop in my mouth, and it tastes vile, pulling it out to stare at it, screwing up

ass pregnancy.” I toss it into one of the open bags and get another glare from him, obviously because it will stick to whatever I did chuck it on top of, but I don’t care. It tasted like vomit. My taste buds have been hell this week. Everything tastes like cardboard or metal and I can barely stomach most things

it required emptying, like right this

baby.” he answers, and I narrow

I can still beat you, even in this state.” I

over that expansion.” He rubs his hand over my stomach gently and

just called

slowly. Losing the will to live, little by little with every passing hour of the last seven months. Blowing out air dramatically before

point in repeating his rehearsed speech that he has to recite three dozen times a day for making me cry at the slightest thing and stares at the elevator ceiling—probably to remind himself for the zillionth time why

he is immune to them after consoling me every twenty minutes

I wail, like a crazy deranged weirdo, shoving him in the side. Broken hearted at my husband’s meanness as he stares

so you can fit our baby in there. Everything else is still slim and in proportion. You are not fat. I still find you crazy sexy and really attractive.” He pats me on the back, giving the rehearsed response to my ‘I’m so fat’ meltdowns, and I swear it lacks conviction this time. He

for him being an asshole. Opening the refrigerator and scouting for cold pizza, or take out, from last night when he had Nathan and Jason over. I pull out

yanks it out of my mouth before I even get a chance to bite it and gets a

his shoulder in a flash of fury that meets a complete dead pan expression, yanking my pizza out of his other hand and

between me

eating shit,

Don’t. Mess. With.

fat?” I gawp at him, previous upset hitting harder, and he flexes his hands in mid-air makes a ‘Gahhhh’ noise and starts unpacking the endless bags of stuff we bought, onto the kitchen counter. “Screw you.” I toss back at him and

would be great if I had the ability to lift my foot higher than my ankle. I miss being flexible enough to smother him

it’s not long… couple more weeks maybe… I love her, I do. I can do this.” Arrick is mumbling to himself through gritted teeth and a rigid posture as he continues pulling out baby things and ignore him. He gives up when he sees I have bought multiple of one outfit in four colors and drops it all back in the bag. I’ve heard this chant like a million times… He switched out his counting to

bring me a Pepsi when you’re done having your womanly moment.” I ask sweetly, and the glare thrown over his shoulder is not

one of two ways… Another all-out fight because he is being suffocating or I can let it go for once and focus on the fact we have less than a month of this

thing since sliced bread and will walk around beaming and looking enchanting and ethereal. Like a fairy-tale notion of what it’s like to push out a

we moan endlessly and make our men suffer as much as we are. Every day is like one long dragging reason to complain. Pregnancy sucks in every way, so we make it

shouldn’t we?

free and oblivious to how bad this shit is. A lesser

have when

whale as I try to get my legs up too, locating my fluffy cushion and trying to get it under my knees so I can prop them up. Smiling when he appears and lifts my feet up for me, so I can lay flat on the couch instead. He knows my movements are limited and even when we are being assholes to each other, he