Page 28

I stare at myself in the mirror, looking at the tiniest bump in the world protruding from my belly.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about my body changing during pregnancy.

I’ve still avoided looking at the scale during my doctor’s appointments and I’ve tried to ignore the way my small boobs have grown too big for all my bras and my once pleasantly round ass has seemed to flatten.

I know it’s supposed to be magical and women should feel lucky to grow another human, but as someone who grew up in a very toxic, body-shaming environment, I thought I might hate it.

But staring at that little bump in the mirror makes my throat close up, emotion I wasn’t expecting clogging it.

I didn’t know it would feel like this . That I would look at that tiny bump and realize I’ve made it this far.

I never got to see a bump with my last pregnancy, but right now, my baby is growing enough to show on my body, and I think that’s the coolest thing in the entire world.

I smooth my hand over it again, my heart a riot in my chest, and yell for Beau. A moment later, he comes barreling into my bedroom, his face creased with concern, his eyes wandering everywhere, checking me for injury.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. He stops when he sees me standing in front of the mirror, my leotard tight over my stomach, my hand pressed to the barely there bump.

He’s wearing his signature Wranglers, the ones that hug him in all the right places, and he must have just gotten out of the shower, because a lock of damp hair falls over his forehead, making him look even more disheveled.

My heart squeezes at the sight of him.

“I have a bump,” I tell him, and watch as his expression morphs from frantic worry to abstract awe. He moves forward as if on instinct, dropping his hand from the doorframe and closing the distance between us, his gaze trained on my stomach.

When he gets close enough, his eyes flick up to mine, unsure. “Can I touch it?”

I swallow hard and nod, just a barely there jerk of my chin, not trusting my voice when he’s this close and looking at me like I’m magic.

My stomach jumps when his palm covers it, large enough to span from one side to the other.

His hand is warm, and I can feel the heat of it through my thin leotard.

“Can you feel it?” I ask, voice the scratch of sandpaper, as he moves his hand over the slight swelling at the bottom of my stomach. I wouldn’t be surprised if he couldn’t, but I can.

He nods, his fingers lightly tracing the curve, and my skin burns at the feel of it, the path they take. “Mm-hmm.”

“I found a stretch mark too,” I manage to get out, needing to pull myself out of the trance his touch is lulling me into.

His eyes turn up to mine, warm brown flecked with gold, and I almost want to laugh at the awe I see in them. The reverence. “I want to see it.”

I do laugh then, the sound bouncing in the little space between us. “Why?”

He holds my gaze, expression serious, and I can’t help the way my eyes drop to his tongue as it darts out to wet his lips. “Because there’s a stretch mark on my wife’s skin from growing our baby.”

My breath hitches in my lungs. I hope he doesn’t notice, that he can’t somehow feel my heart pounding faster. Swallowing against the thickness in my throat, I say, “Okay.”

It’s only then that I remember that I’m wearing a leotard.

“I’ll need to—” I motion at the leotard straps and watch as Beau’s eyes change, the color darkening into something that reminds me of late nights, moonlight pouring through our curtains, our breath the only thing between us.

“Yeah, okay,” he responds.

I think his voice is thicker, huskier, that his memories are as relentless as mine. He removes his hands from my stomach, the touch seeming to burn me, and I feel his heavy gaze as I reach for the leotard straps and pull them down my shoulders.

There’s not a sexy way to remove a leotard.

They’re tight and require acrobatics to shimmy into, but Beau doesn’t seem to notice.

The air in the room seems to thin as his eyes follow the path of my fingers.

I slip my arms out and push the rest of the leotard down until it bunches around my waist at the band of my sweatpants.

I’m wearing a thin sports bra, but with the way he’s looking at me, I feel like I’m standing in front of him naked.

I have a distinct memory of him watching me the exact same way the last time I had my clothes off for him. It’s not lost on me that we’re just a few feet away from where it happened, that at one point that night, he told me to watch us in the very same mirror we’re standing in front of now.

“Where is it?” Beau asks, breaking the silence, snapping me out of my daydream.

I rip my gaze from his, forcing my eyes down to my stomach.

Just below my navel, there’s the tiniest stretch mark, a strip of skin paler than the rest. I point to it, and Beau moves closer.

He reaches out, his thumb smoothing along the strip of skin, and I swear I feel the roughness everywhere—in the backs of my knees and the hollow of my throat and the tips of my fingers.

“It’s perfect,” he breathes.

My lips tip up in the barest of smiles. “It’s a stretch mark.”

His eyes lift to mine, and I’m shocked by the sincerity I see there. There’s not an ounce of teasing in his expression. “It’s your stretch mark,” he says. “That’s what makes it perfect.”

My heart rises to my throat, and I try to think of something to say.

Last night, when I saw that lighter piece of skin, I got online and ordered stretch mark cream, determined to get ahead of the inevitable.

I didn’t want my skin to scar, and if it’s starting now, when my bump is barely noticeable, then it’ll only get worse.

But looking at Beau now, feeling the reverence in his touch as his thumb swipes absentmindedly over my skin, I don’t know what I was thinking.

I don’t know that I’ll ever look at the marks on my body and call them tiger stripes or battle scars or any other body positivity term the media tries to rebrand it as, but I do know that if I ever look down at my body and see another stretch mark, I’ll remember the look on Beau’s face, the sound of his voice calling that little piece of pale skin perfect.

And I don’t think I’ll be able to hate anything about it then.

I swallow against the lump rising in my throat, for some reason feeling the sting of tears at the backs of my eyes. “I better head to the studio,” I say, my voice hoarse.

Beau nods, and to my surprise, his hands move to the straps of my leotard.

I have to hold back a shiver as he puts my arms back through them and pulls it slowly back up, calluses scraping against my overheated skin.

He’s so gentle as he places the straps back in place, and I don’t think I imagine the way his hands linger, like he doesn’t want to pull them away.

His eyes finally tear away from my shoulders and settle on mine. “Can I come to the studio with you?”

I blink, confused. “Why?”

“I want to spend the day with you,” he says with a shrug, without a hint of bashfulness. “I haven’t seen you dance in ages.”

“I won’t be dancing, not really. I’ll be…

teaching.” The words stick in my throat.

I’ve been doing my new job for months now, and I’ve been surprised by how much I enjoy it, but I can’t help the pinch I always feel when I talk about it.

The lingering feelings of guilt and shame that were only hammered home after the lunch with my parents a few weeks ago.

I wasn’t supposed to be a ballet teacher, at least not yet.

I was supposed to keep dancing professionally until an appropriate retirement age.

This was never the plan, even if I have grown to love it.

A smile tugs up one corner of his mouth and then the other. “Well, I’ve never seen you teach either, and I’d really like to.”

Nervous butterflies take flight in my stomach.

No one has watched me teach besides Tonya, and even she is mostly hands off.

I’m not even sure if I’m good at it—if I’m too hard on the girls or if I’m not pushing them enough, if my technique is what they need—and I’ve never allowed people to see me be anything but my best at something.

Even Beau, when I would let him watch me at the studio when I was rehearsing.

I don’t like looking like a failure. I especially don’t like feeling like one.

“I don’t know…”

One of Beau’s brows lifts, and his eyes narrow in that way they’ve been doing recently, like he’s no longer taking anything I say at face value. It’s terrifying. “Why not?”

I grasp for an excuse, opening and closing my mouth several times.

The intensity of his stare never wavers. “You’ll hardly notice I’m there. Let’s go.”

And then he walks past me, out of the bedroom, not waiting for me to protest.

The studio is cold, as always, when we walk in.

Outside, the sun is shining, and it arcs through the huge windows at the front of the building, illuminating the creamy walls and the high ceilings that are broken up by exposed beams. There’s a couch and a desk in the lobby, but just beyond it is the main studio.

It’s empty, except, of course, for Maya.

She’s in her warm-ups, working at the barre. Beside me, Beau shakes his head, and when I look at him, he’s grinning.

“So she’s a mini you.”

I cross my arms over my chest, even though I feel no real agitation. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

His smile widens, taking over his face, and it hits me how good he looks like this.

I remember how he looked that night at the bar, with that new mustache that had drawn my attention away from the hollows under his eyes and the new wrinkles above his brows, like they’d been furrowed the entire two months we’d been apart.