*Before…

“Decaf green tea? Something hot for my throat please.”

“Alright I’ll be back.”

He comes over and he kisses me and I kiss him back and it’s my first kiss as a woman, my first kiss with Josh and it’s a short kiss. And I know it’s different than hers I can feel him notice. He shivers a little as his nerves are at their breaking point and I kiss him again just breathing me, myself into it as I cup the side of his face and he kisses me back and this one was better?

He gives me a look before heading out and I’m sort of tasting my lips as he’s doing that and I blush.

He ducks out and I watch him leaving taking out his phone and texting.

I can do this, please let me have this chance.

*And Now…

Breast pumping is freaking me out.

It feels like it sounds, it feels sort of pinchy and relieving and I’m expressing the breast milk I’ve built up and that just feels….there is liquid coming from my chest. Milk...real milk...to feed children. My children...her but my babies.

I start crying as the emotions just overwhelm me inside like the milk.

They’re happy tears and frankly they’re tears of shock too that this is really happening, that this is finally happening.

I can kinda get that a lot of this could be hormonal driven too because it feels that strong and sudden when it sweeps me up.

And I let it too.

I used to hold things in so much, so tightly, so much that it felt like infection.

And I don’t have to do that anymore.

So I let it out.

And I’m crying really good when Josh comes back with a coffee for him and what looks like a tea for me.

“Taylor? Taylor? What’s wrong, are you hurt? Is something…”

He honestly looks scared and he sounds like he’s trying to dodge asking questions about my mental state.

Which I can totally get.

If I was him I’d be worried about me too.

(Sniffle)... “I’m fine, I’m okay it’s just that there’s a lot going on and I can’t really get stuff like me or you or us and then it suddenly hit me as I was doing the breast pumping thing that... that... I’m a mom.” (Sniffle.)

He gets the wheelie table and set the drinks on it and takes my hand. “Yeah we have twin boys. Tucker and Thomas.”

I smile at him as I’m wiping at tears trying to dry my eyes and he gets some tissue and he helps. (Sniffle.) “I love those names.”

He literally helps dry away my tears.

Oh my god, his eyes are so full of caring.

And they’re nice eyes too this deep warm brown that goes with his hair.

I have wanted something like this all of my life.

I’ve wanted to be a woman and just feeling right in being myself.

I’ve always wanted to be a mother.

And I’ve always wanted someone to look at me the way that Josh is looking at me right now.

I can’t look away from him at all either.

Which has never happened in my life or the giant lump in my throat right now too.

Then he gives me this really hopeful look. “So those are happy tears?”

(Sniffle.) “Y...yes...god yes, definitely happy tears.”

“Good…” he leans back in the chair and he sighs and rubs his face.

“I’m sorry.”

Josh looks at me and he’s like searching my face for something or it feels that way and his face sort of gets this expression like happy confusion and he says. “I...I believe you.”

“You sound like that wasn’t what you expected.”

He looks down and sighs again. “It hasn’t been easy Taylor. When I didn’t go to work for your dad’s firm you sort of thought that I’d be doing some kind of high end law out here.”

“Oh...well we’re not all that close to any of that are we?”

“No but I think that’s sort of what you wanted and you had been is such a huge fight over moving out here with your folks and everything that you’ve been trying to tough it out.”

“Oh...sorry...I don’t remember any of that.”

He nods. “I’m getting that more and more.”

“So I didn’t ask for help?”

Josh looks at me. “God no….you are too damned stubborn to admit that you need help or couldn’t do something.”

Oh…

Oh I’m seeing why she was breaking.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, some damage from you and your mother.”

He sounded a little bitter.

“You don’t like my mother?”

Josh chuckled and there was some dark there in it. “No...I really don’t. She pretty much tried to make you into what she wanted and what she wanted was perfect.”

“Ouch...really?”

Josh made a face with his lips.

“Tell me.”

“You had a nose job and dental stuff done before you even hit sixteen. Your mom was that intense.”

“Oh shit.”

He looks at me and he laughs. “Wow you just swore.”

“Sorry.”

“No, hell Taylor it’s fine it’s just you never used to. It was like you wouldn’t say shit even if you had a mouthful.”

“Eeeew Josh that’s an image that I don’t need. I was that tightly wound?”

He nods. “Though I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“Sorry.”

“No it’s….it’s nothing you had control over I guess?”

I sip my tea and adjust the pump and blanket and start on the other one.

Yes I’m covered.

“So I guess life was not what I thought that I signed up for then?”

He chuckles taking a sip of his coffee. “You were not expecting Sacramento.”

“Sorry.”

He smiles. “Well sure now but add in two newborns and a husband that’s not running high cost high profile law and you might change your mind.”

I smile at him. “I’m actually looking forward to it.”

He stares at me again like I shocked him again.

I shrug. “It’s true...I want this, I want to be a mom and that thing that you did just now when I was crying with the tissue...I think I married a good man.”

And I made him blush. “Well good doesn’t mean rich.”

“I think good is rich and that I just might be a case of how money or coming from it doesn’t equal being happy.”

He’s staring at me again.

Then he’s off the chair and he’s sitting on the edge of the bed and he’s kissing me.

He’s kissing me.

And it’s better this time and it’s so very, very different as he’s the one touching my head, my face cradling my head like that as he kisses me and then he puts his forehead against mine.

“This isn’t going to be easy Taylor, you’re in here for tests and….”

“And…?”

“I had you signed in for psych evaluation. You’re here for thirty days.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“I need it, and you need to know that I’m okay and that I’ll be okay around our boys.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Well I’m not angry as for mad I think we have to wait on the doctors for that.”

He laughs, he chokes on his laugh actually like he wasn’t expecting that at all and he stares at me again like he’s searching for something. “You made a joke.”

“I made a bad joke.”

“And you don’t do that, not jokes like that.”

“What kind of jokes did I make?”

He’s quiet.

“Ouch… so I didn’t have a sense of humor either?”

“Yes, yes you did. It’s just you were really kind of….”

“Wound too tight.”

He nods. “Yeah…”

“So if I was all of these things why did we even get together? I mean the babies are still breastfeeding right?”

He nods. “You were different in college. I mean you were still you but you didn’t want to date or be with the sweater vest and polo shirt guys anymore.”

“So we started dating.”

“We started as friends first. You and a couple of friends went drinking and we ended up at the same pool bar and we ended up talking and dancing some and I showed you how to play pool.”

“We didn’t hook up?”

“Not at first. You checked me out online and found out that I was going to law school so that sort of made me pass the grade as it were and made up for the fact that I was a leather jacket wearing, pool playing guy with a motorcycle.”

“So you were a bad boy in a group of stodgy guys.”

“I wasn’t from money is all. We like I said started as friends hanging out and things first. I was just as leary of you as you were of me.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah really. I’m pretty firmly middle classed hon. And when I got into law school the first thing that happened was all these women that I knew that would have never talked to me before started to. I even dated some of them and found out that they were some pretty shitty people.”

“And I was different?”

“Yeah you were, you were just like all of them but hundreds of miles different too because you actually liked and wanted to try new things.”

“So we started dating?”

“Half way through law school. It actually happened after we went to see a concert.”

“What did we go see?’

“Black-eyed-peas.”

I laugh. “Okay wow, glad I’m missing that now.”

He chuckles. “Really.”

“Do I listen to them now?”

“No...wait how do you know that?”

“Because they’re just one of those trend bands.”

He smiles at me and it’s so sweet. “This…” he stroked my hair again. “This is the girl that I’ve been missing.”

He kisses me again.

I’m not her but he’s seeing her in me? Or me in her?

Oh this is messed up and I just might need my thirty days of therapy.