Chapter 174: Becoming real
The store was small and wedged between a flower store and a used bookstore, the kind of store we'd have passed a thousand times without noticing. But today we did. Caspian stepped in front of me and pushed open the door, his hand brushing against me lightly at the small of my back as he always did when he wasn't concentrating. I stepped in, and the smell of lavender and cotton closed in around me like a gentle tide.
I had no idea what to expect—blanks of shiny plastic toys, perhaps. Colorful noises, mayhem. But this place seemed. gentle. Gentle in texture, in voice, in purpose. As though it were constructed for the delicate foundations of something enormous.
Caspian was silent next to me. I watched him take it in—the tiers of impossibly tiny clothes, the stack of hand-knit booties, the tiny display of pacifiers star-shaped and cloud-shaped. His closed-off face, impenetrable to the outside world, altered in those infinitesimal ways only I could see. Wonder. Terror. Awe.
We had not gone there for that purpose. Not yet. Not necessarily. But the moment the word pregnant had left the doctor's lips and landed in my ears, I experienced this soft pressure to put hands on something tangible. I needed an icon, something I could hold in my hands which informed me, this is real.
Caspian led the way. He approached a row of onesies cautiously, his fingers tracing over the hangers as if they were delicate glass. I followed him, and the two of us stood together in silence, letting the moment close in.
He stopped in front of one of them—cream-colored, softly looking, with an embroidered little fox near the collar. He pulled it out, held it up between us.
"This one," he whispered, as though he were speaking in church. "It's soft."
I reached out to feel it. It was soft. It was also impossibly tiny.
"Do you think they'll be this tiny?" I gasped, unwittingly.
His eyes held mine—those turbulent eyes that used to frighten me so with all that they could hold. Now they just looked filled.
"They'll grow," he said. "But yeah. Initially… this tiny."
I couldn't look away from him. He was still there, holding the onesie in front of us, but it was the way he was looking at me that broke me—the way he just looked at the start of something holy.
"We don't even know if it's a boy or a girl," I attempted to keep things light, like I wasn't breaking apart in the best way possible.
He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. They'll wear this anyway. Daringly bold choice," he added with a tiny smile, "fox embroidered and all."
I laughed. Gently. Because that's what the moment called for. I took the onesie from him and folded it neatly over my arm. he.
We didn't linger. A couple of final glances around the shop, a brief exchange at the till, and we were out on the road again. Sky had altered in our absence—clouds lifting, light pouring across the dashboard like an invitation to exhale.
I sat back in my chair, cradling the little bag in my lap. Caspian shot a look at me, and then picked up his hand and fit our fingers together.
"Do you need me to take you somewhere?" he asked. Not polite asking—real asking, the kind that resided in his chest and had no escape unless he voiced it out loud.
"I think so," I replied. "I don't know what I'm supposed to be feeling. Is it weird?
He shook his head. "Not strange. You've never done this before."
"And you have?" I teased, brushing my knee against his.
He grinned, then looked at our clasped hands, his thumb trailing over my knuckle once, then again.
"No," he whispered. "But I've never wanted to, until you."
My chest constricted. In that brutal, beautiful way that it always did when he caught me off guard with how real he was.
Silence fell again, not stifling but reflective. I gazed down at the bag, at the bit of onesie protruding. My other hand snuck to rest on my abdomen, instinctive, guarding.
"I know there isn't a bump," I breathed, "but it doesn't feel empty. It feels… like something's here. Like I'm no longer alone in my own skin."
He gazed at me then, all around, the car rumbling beneath us. I kept his gaze and did not look away.
"You're not," he said. "Not anymore."
There it was again—that look. That mixture of awe and disbelief, as though he couldn't quite believe this was his life. That I was his. That this was ours.
We sat like that for a moment, sharing only the air. The weight of what was happening rested on us gently—not smothering, but anchoring. Real.
"Do you want to talk about names?" I burst out rudely. The enormity of the question was too much for a moment so quiet, but it came out anyway.
His lips twisted. "Names?"
"For the baby.".
He leaned back against the headrest and slowly breathed out. "God, no. I don't mean, like, traditional names. Would you even think of us with a Margaret or a Gerald?"
I laughed, amazed at how easy it felt. "We'd have to name them Geri and Margie just to make it through."
"Right," he said, his eyes sparkling. "I mean no disrespect to all the Margies and Geris everywhere, but… I want something that sounds like them. Like us."
"Something bold," I answered.
He nodded. "Something ours."
We didn't give him that name that day. But we said the things that mattered—that this baby was not an accident. That this was something that already felt like home. That even in our terror, even in all the unsaid what ifs, we were doing it together.
Caspian leaned in and placed his hand gently on top of mine on my abdomen, and for a moment, the two of us just held still. I could sense the heat of him through my skin, the gentle promise in his touch.
He didn't say the words I'm going to protect you to me, but he didn't have to. He already did.