It's Complicated

Maria grunted as she struggled to get into a standing position from the couch, putting all her weight on the hand that clasped to the armrest. Harry was in the kitchen making her a smoothie, and she had to wee. Again.

At first, she hated the stomach that protruded out of her. More than once, she hit it against walls or pieces of furniture, unused to the extra baggage. It was like she was trying to adjust to driving a bus when she’d only driven Smart Cars her whole life.

But despite her clumsy behavior, the baby was still growing normally and healthily. During the fourth month, the doctor had offered to tell Maria and Harry the sex of the baby, but Harry didn’t want to know. Maria had said that she hadn’t cared, which she thought shocked the doctor a little bit, but she couldn’t let Harry know the truth.

And the truth was that she loved the baby. It was strange, feeling a sort of strong, deep connection toward something that she’d never met, that hadn’t even been born, but she did. She couldn’t quite describe it, at least, not while still making sense, but she knew it in her heart. If anything ever happened to the child she carried, she didn’t know what she would do. Every day, she started to come to terms with the fact that the baby was a part of her, that the two depended on each other for survival, and she couldn’t help but adore the feeling of being so incredibly needed.

When Maria came out of the bathroom, running a hand through her hair as she moved to throw it up into a ponytail, Harry put her glass on the counter. “I think I added too much yogurt,” he apologized, looking up at her sheepishly.

“Don’t worry about it.” She waved away the apology. “I’m sure it’s decent enough.”

Since that day on Jess’ porch, she tried to make herself more pleasant to Harry. She tried to make him feel more loved and more wanted, since that was how she figured everyone wanted to feel once in a while.

At first, Harry had been confused. He’d gotten so used to warding off Maria’s constant insults and sarcasm that her somewhat kind attitude was more of a culture shock than anything else. It took him a while to adjust to her new personality, but at the end of the day, he did like it. After all, she hadn’t abandoned who she was, biting and sarcastic and somewhat bitchy, but she had just adopted nicer aspects, too.

Maria took a sip of the smoothie and nodded approvingly. “You actually didn’t put too much yogurt. This is how much I put in.”

“Oh.” Harry grinned widely, incredibly proud of himself. “That’s good, then!”

Maria ventured into the living room and settled down on the couch, her attention fixed on the television in front of her. There was some kind of home improvement show on, which Maria had recently gotten obsessed with. She wanted more than anything for the nursery to be perfect for the baby. She already had ideas in mind, but she wanted to add cute, sweet touches that would dazzle whoever entered the room, and she had turned to the home improvement channel for ideas.

Maria drank her smoothie quietly while Harry ate a granola bar next to her. She could tell that he was trying to get interested, too, but it wasn’t working. He kept biting his lip, checking his phone, and shifting in his seat uncomfortably.

“Don’t torture yourself,” she chuckled. “We can watch something else. What do you want?”

Harry gave her a sheepish smile as he picked up the remote control and started flicking through the channels, not knowing a particular show that was on that he’d want to see. Maria sipped her drink quietly next to him, not even complaining when he went through the entire rotation of channels three times without finding a show of his liking.

Finally, he shut off the telly with a sigh, throwing the remote control lightly onto the coffee table in front of him. “So did you pick out a color for the kid’s room yet?” Harry asked conversationally.

Maria cocked an eyebrow at him. It had been a while (okay, maybe forever) since they had a casual conversation that wasn’t about anything incredibly serious, and she wasn’t exactly sure how to reciprocate it. “Not exactly,” she responded. “I’m still deciding between a mint green or an aqua.”

“Well, if we paint it aqua, do you think our baby will feel too constricted?” Harry’s tone was serious, but Maria couldn’t help but wonder if he was kidding. “Like, if the baby’s a boy, the blue room will be too stereotypical?”

“It’s a baby, Harry.” Maria rolled her eyes and finished off her smoothie. “I don’t think the baby is going to feel like he has to fulfill particular gender roles because his room is a certain color. Don’t give his nursery so much credit.”

“So you think it’s a boy, too?”

His voice was quiet and full of emotion, wavering slightly as he leaned forward and put his palm on Maria’s swelled stomach. It was so hard for the two of them to believe that Maria, at a little over five months, was just over halfway through the pregnancy. She was almost as big as Jess, who was about a month and a half further along and with twochildren. Harry loved to tease Maria about it, talking about how hard it would be to give birth to the giant baby growing inside of her, but she just smacked him off the head to shut him up.

“Yeah,” Maria breathed, her eyelashes fluttering against her cheekbones lightly as she looked down at Harry’s large hand on her stomach. The baby was kicking, almost as if he could sense his father’s presence just beyond the wall that held him inside. Maria wanted to get choked up at the image, but she knew that she was probably just getting sentimental. After all, he’d really been kicking all day, and Harry’s touch had nothing to do with it.

“Little Harry Junior.” He leaned kissed Maria’s stomach, softly, and the baby seemed to kick harder. Seemed. Maria didn’t want to draw any conclusions.

“We’re not naming him Harry Junior,” she stated plainly. “I hate when people name their kids after them.”

“Oh? Then what did you want to name him? Let’s hear your brilliant ideas.”

Maria opened her mouth before shutting it again. In all honesty, she had no idea what she wanted to name the child. She hadn’t really given it much thought, despite the constant reminders that the clock was ticking.

“Maybe Henry,” she suggested, putting her hand over his. “It’s similar to Harry, but slightly different. I’ve always liked the name Henry.”

“It’ll go into the Suggestion Box,” he responded, though she could tell from the sparkle in his eye that he liked what she’d come up with. It was a compromise between the two of them, really. “But I do like the sound of Henry Edward.”

She didn’t really have any objections to giving him Harry’s middle name. There would be no harm in that. “Henry Edward McCormack.”

“Or Henry Edward Styles.” Harry looked up at her with wide green eyes, but Maria just felt her face close up.

“Harry, we’ve been over this. He’s getting my name, not yours.”

“But I’ve been thinking. What if we don’t have two different last names?”

Maria opened her mouth, about to tell him that he was an idiot, when she realized what he meant. Her heart started to race, the faintest of blushes coloring her cheeks, as she gasped, “What?!”

Harry shrugged, like he’d suggested they try soy milk instead of dairy milk. Like it was the most casual thing in the world. “I’m just saying, I don’t see why not. We’ve been living together, we’re having a child… why not make it official?”

Maria gawked at him. All through her life, she’d seen romantic displays of men proposing to their girlfriends on the internet, where they wrote messages in the sky with airplanes, dropped to their knees in front of the Eiffel Tower, threw together a flash mob. Maria had always waited for her day to come, where some guy would do something incredibly romantic to ask her to marry him, like putting a trail of rose petals to their bedroom, where he’d be waiting on one knee with the ring in hand.

But instead, she got Harry, who had the sweetest of intentions, but knew absolutely nothing about wooing women. She couldn’t say for sure why that was the case, but she figured that it was probably due to the fact that he could just look at whoever he wanted, and they would immediately be wooed by his features. He didn’t even have to say or do a thing. He just was.

“Are you seriously asking me to marry you like that?” Maria scolded, rolling her eyes. “Is that where this is going?”

Harry noted her irritated tone and sat up, finally retracting his hand and clearing his throat. “Um, yeah, that was what I meant. What did you want?”

“A ring, for starters! Have you never seen a proposal?”

Harry sighed, leaning over for a second. When he returned, he had a small box. “I do have a ring. I’ve been hiding it here for a week, trying to find the right time to say something to you. I was just waiting until you said yes to pull it out.”

“Well, that’s marginally better. But do this properly! Get down on one knee, say something cheesy, ask me straight-out.” When he didn’t move immediately, she laughed and said, “Come on then!”

Harry grumbled good-naturedly as he got down on one knee, staring up into Maria’s eyes. “Maria, you are the most beautiful and most complicated girl I’ve ever met in my entire life. I never know whether I’m going to get a sweet, gentle, caring girlfriend or if I’m going to get a slew of sarcasm that never ceases to make me chuckle, even when you’re angry. I love how you keep me guessing, and I love how you finally accepted that I truly, deeply love you. So, if you could be so kind, would you mind much becoming my wife?”

“That’s more like it,” Maria complimented, leaning forward and cupping his face with her hands as she kissed him until she was breathless. “Yes, I’ll be your wife.”