“Girl, you are most definitely starting to show now,” Neesh commented as they took their seats next to each other at the patio table.
Laura smiled at the comment. She was dressed in a pair of white shorts and a green sleeveless top that was a bit tight on her. It was something she had owned pre-pregnancy and had worn frequently because it preserved her puritanical sense of public modesty by not allowing much of a view of her cleavage thanks to a high neckline and her small breasts. But now she was thinking it was time to put it away until after her post-delivery lactation period. Her breasts had swollen quite noticeably now that she was well into the second trimester, lowering that neckline and raising her cleavage border. She also had an unmistakable baby bump in her belly, which caused the hem of the shirt to occasionally ride up a bit, revealing the flesh of her midriff—another part of her body that she generally did not show in front of anyone but Jake.
“Yeah,” she said shyly. “Soon I’m going to be as big as a house. I really need to start shopping for maternity clothes soon.”
“You look good,” Neesh said, reaching over and placing her hand directly on the baby bump. She began to rub it. “You’re going to be one of those women that looks hot all throughout the pregnancy. You know? The kind of bitch that other women hate.”
Laura chuckled, enjoying the feel of Neesh’s hand on her quite a bit and knowing that Neesh was enjoying it in more than a friendly way as well.
“You’d better stop that soon,” Laura told her, an impish smile on her face, “or I just might start begging.”
“You won’t have to beg very hard,” Neesh told her, her eyes shining. “I’d love to get them boobies of yours in my mouth just as an appetizer. Look at them things.”
“Yeah,” Laura said. “They’ve never been this big before. And they are incredibly sensitive now. There’s a lot to be said about this whole second trimester horniness thing. Jake is barely able to keep up with me.”
“Is that the beginning of a beg?” Neesh asked hopefully.
Laura chuckled again. “Maybe,” she said. “But you know the rules. I would have to clear it with Jake first, which would necessitate G being briefed in.”
The look of hope fell flat. G did not know about Neesh’s bisexual dalliances and she intended to keep it that way. It was something that she believed he would not understand or approve of. “Spoilsport,” she said with a pout.
“Sorry,” Laura said, with complete sincerity. Even though she and Jake had done it that morning just before taking their showers before their flight in, she already wanted, needed some more. She had always been more than a little amorous since she and Jake had done it that first time in Coos Bay, but the hormones surging in her now had upped that by a factor of ten or more. She was constantly horny now, every minute of every day, and never satisfied. And that was just for Jake. She was craving the touch of a female almost obsessively these days but had not enjoyed such a touch since she and Celia had fooled around a little that one fateful night out on tour.
Neesh reluctantly took her hand away, noting with keen interest that her gentle caress of Laura’s soft belly had made the redhead’s nipples hard. She picked up her wine and had a quick slug of it in a vain attempt to drown her frustration. “It’s just as well,” she said with a sigh. “There probably some sea lion out there that would find a way to interrupt us.”
That gave both girls the giggles as they remembered Laura’s naked encounter with the snoozing pinniped out on that very beach a few years back.
“So ... anyway,” Neesh said. “You said you had your ultrasound a few days ago, right?” Laura had mentioned that at dinner.
“That’s right, on Monday,” she said. “That was the very day I turned sixteen weeks.”
“And you said everything was good?”
Laura nodded. “A perfectly normal sixteen-week fetus with the placenta implanted exactly where it is supposed to be. All the identifiable internal organs intact and developing normally. All the identifiable bones developing normally. Everything in proper proportion. Everything perfectly on track.”
“That’s good to hear,” Neesh said.
“It was a relief,” Laura agreed.
“But did you find out what it was?” Neesh asked.
Laura smiled. “Dr. Niven did the exam herself,” she said. “She told us that she was about ninety percent certain that Ziggy is a little girl.”
Neesh smiled. “A little girl, huh? That’s awesome, Teach. But only ninety percent?”
“In the ultrasound at sixteen weeks they determine sex by the absence or presence of external genitalia. With a boy, it’s usually pretty clear what they’re looking at so it’s easier to be one hundred percent certain. She got a good look right between Ziggy’s legs and couldn’t see little balls or a little pee-pee. So, we either have a girl cooking in there, or a boy who is going to have some hangups as he goes through life.”
Neesh laughed. “How does Jake feel about that?” she asked.
“He’s very excited,” she said. “He’s not one of those men who would be disappointed if he didn’t get a boy. He just wants a healthy baby. That’s all I want too.”
“You two are going to make great parents,” Neesh said. “Have you started thinking about names yet? Or have you already decided on Ziggy?”
Laura giggled. “Ziggy is just her nickname while she’s a fetus,” she said. “That came from Dr. Vargo explaining that a baby starts her existence as a zygote right after fertilization. We would never actually name her that any more than Pauline and Obie would have named their baby Clump.”
“Ziggy is a much cuter name than Clump,” Neesh pointed out. “And it would go along with some of those other baby names that celebrities are hanging on their kids—like your friend Mindy Snow, for instance.”
“We wouldn’t do that to little Zig,” she said. “We have talked a little about names and have decided that it should be something musical in nature—we are musicians after all, and music is what brought us together—but Jake absolutely insisted, and I agree, that we will not give our child a ‘fucked-up name’, as he puts it.”
“Musical, huh?” she asked. “Any examples?”
“Nothing but rejects so far, and not even very many of those. I suggested Leslie, you know, after Jake’s favorite guitar, the Les Paul, but he did not like that at all. He said all the girls in school would call her Lez.”
“Hey now,” Neesh said. “Nothing wrong with a little Lez every now and then.”
“True,” Laura agreed (and how, she thought, eyeing the swell of Neesh’s breasts and wishing they were in her mouth), but there is no sense in setting up someone for ridicule. Jake says you have to make the high school bullies at least work a bit to come up with something.
“He may have a point there,” Neesh said after a moment’s thought.
“Jake suggested Harmony, but ... I don’t know, I don’t really like the sound of that one. I’m not sure why, but it just doesn’t appeal to me. He agreed to take that one off the table.”
“I’m not sure I’m down with Harmony either,” Neesh opined. “In any case, I can’t wait to hear what you eventually come up with.”
“Me either,” Laura said.
They watched the sun sinking toward the sea for a few minutes, hearing the crashing of the surf and the screaming of the gulls as they flew back and forth. There was no offshore marine layer and only the gentlest of a breeze blowing.
“I saw in the papers that your girlfriend Celia is one of our neighbors now,” Neesh said, breaking the silence.
“Yes,” Laura said. “She has a beautiful house not even five minutes from here. Maybe I can talk her into having us over one of these days. I’m sure you’d love to see it.”
“She is a cool chick,” Neesh said. “At least from what I saw of her at your wedding. How is she doing these days? She over the breakup with her hubby?”