Wow, I'm a prick. I had no idea it had been so long since I updated. I'm so sorry! I hope everyone's okay and vaxxed up.
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"Don't you have that thing at school today?"

"Nothing's more important than — "

"I know." She kissed him sharply on the mouth once, and then in quick bursts until he stopped talking and pulled her up against his body. His hands strayed to her backside, their usual resting place whenever he folded her into the comforting planes of his embrace.

"I'll even vlog the whole thing like it's a reality tv show and my urine is the main character if you want."

He glanced at her briefly, the waxing rays of the morning sun gilded the sharp angles of his face and the auburn scruff of his beard, striking a flash of green from one eye and then he was laughing down at her, his face registering a bewildered sense of amusement.

"You're so weird."

Natalia pouted in response, which Gabe took as an invitation to kiss her.

"Come see me when you're back in school," he instructed, touching the side of her face and tugging a curl loose from her messy bun.

"Okay."

"I mean it, I'm not too busy for you."

"Okay. I get it."

He looked sceptical even as he bent down to caress her ever growing belly, and indulge in one of the many secret conversations he had with his child.

"One of these days I'm going to find out what y'all talk about."

"It's classified."

Natalia rolled her eyes, even though he couldn't see them and ran her fingers through the growing strands of Gabe's dark brown locks. He kissed her belly before he stood up and brushed the creases from his dark pressed trousers.

That thing was a TV crew following him around for the second time. The football season had ended on a never seen before high and the local TV station wanted to film a spotlight segment on Gabe and the school. In the afternoon it would be followed by a farewell event for the senior members of the football team. He was dressed up for the occasion, in navy formal trousers that hugged the thick muscles of his thighs and calves, a crisp ivory white shirt, shiny brown shoes and a brown belt.

One thing about military dudes, they knew about dressing impeccably. Natalia was almost sorry to let him out of her sight.

Natalia smoothed out his collar, checking for any transfers of her makeup on his shirt, she wasn't wearing much; just mascara, lip balm and eyebrow pomade but with even just that you couldn't be too sure.

Crazy was an understatement to describe how the past academic year had gone. Natalia  silently thought. The semester was almost finished and she was receiving her degree specialisation in education.

She had passed with distinction, and had everything gone to plan she would have been boarding a flight home to London in mere days. Instead she had a fiancé and a baby on the way. She was rooted in this place like no place elsewhere on this planet.

"Everything alright?" Gabe asked her, taking in her shiny eyes, she had drifted off in her mind again and forgetting that she was fixing his collar, her hands were still idle on the warm unyielding muscles of his shoulders.

"Yeah," Natalia smiled brightly, gathering herself. "I was just thinking about this year, about us..."

"Good things I hope," Gabe smiled back, his gaze warming her face like the sun.

"Mmm..." Natalia mock wrinkled her nose as if she couldn't think up enough good things about the past year.

"Witch," Gabe grumbled, pulling her into his arms again and rubbing his bristly cheek into her exposed neck.

Natalia leaned away from the tickle sharp sensation laughingly. Holding his face away from her, she said rather breathless,"Oh, I'm going to be late for my appointment."

"I can't wait for school to be done. Just you and me for three glorious months." He told her, sparkling eyes pinning her down and making her heart skip a beat in excitement. Just her and Gabe. No timetables, no work, nothing getting in the way of basking in his presence. "We can do whatever you want," he continued. "Travel, stay at home, lounge around in bed all day."

"How ever will we fill the time, I wonder?"

"I gotta couple ideas but you're running late." His voice lowered and took on a gritty quality, his face had that familiar heated look, the one that got her into this situation to start with.

"That's a shame." She bussed him a noisy kiss on the cheek to distract him, it was so wet that he had to wipe it away and then she picked herself out from his embrace or she'd never leave to be on time.

She always lost track of time when she was this close to him. It melted away and bent around them, like they were constants in the universe's equation.

"I love you," she called out before he could respond, dancing away from the answering swat aimed at her arse. Her neck was still smarting from his beard and she could smell his expensive cologne all over her, masking her scent as she got into the waiting uber to the family doctor for her urine and blood test.

They had to be weekly since her doctor was concerned about the level of protein in her urine, an early indication of high blood pressure. She had gone in once more before the doctor had decided it had to be a weekly occurrence. Relaying that information to Gabe had been one of the most daunting things she had done, but he had taken it well-ish. He hadn't wrapped her up in bubble wrap...yet so she guessed that he wasn't too worried.

It must be love love, Natalia mused internally. Old Natalia would have snapped by now. Having to share her health concerns with another person and having to explain her life choices were things that she hadn't needed to contend with for over a decade.

In therapy, she had realised that her fierce independence was a trauma response — an overcompensation to feeling abandoned and a need to never be caught slipping like that ever again.

But Gabe, he came through for her in ways that she never even knew she needed until now. Like when she had been exhausted at the early stages of her pregnancy and he had hired a cleaning lady for a couple of days a week, when he took over most of the cooking and the laundry without being prompted or without a complaint.

When he showed up at home with her favourite snacks or flowers for no reason other than she looked a bit down. Being okay with staying indoors most day evenings and weekends even though he loved the outdoors. He had even done her school marking on occasion.

She had always thought that pregnancy was an uneven exchange between men and women, that's why she had never subscribed to the notion of being barefoot and pregnant by 25. She had always rebelled against it. But Gabe made her rethink everything.

"How long do we have to do this for?" Natalia asked Doctor Karonovsky, her family doctor who also specialised in Obs and Gyne.

"Until I'm no longer worried," he said with a smile as she handed off her urine to him, and he got ready to draw some more blood from her.

"I'll get this to the lab and we'll call you with the results. You have our emergency on-call number, if you experience any of the symptoms we talked about, you need to call as soon as you can and get yourself to the nearest ER."

"Yes, of course."

In the Uber ride back to school, because she had returned her trusty rental car – it was time to get something a little more permanent — she called her old friend Lima, whom she hadn't spoken to for a hot minute.

Something was up with that girl and Natalia was determined to get to the bottom of it. She had been avoiding speaking to her, which was wild. They had never gone more than two or three days without speaking to each other even if they had beef. Sometimes they had even paused beef to tell each other things and then resumed their petty silence. She hadn't spoken to Lima for more than two weeks and she was starting to worry.

She knew it had something to do with Ty. Ty who I just had returned from Dubai, where he had been visiting for business and where he had surely met up with Lima. Natalia hadn't had a chance to catch up with him yet, but she made a mental note to invite Dan and Ty to dinner so she could corner Ty and pump him for information or make Gabe do it.

Gabe's interrogation style would be much more effective and if that didn't work she'd have to resort to the nuclear option. Which was crying. Nobody wanted a crying pregnant woman in their face and she wasn't above threatening both Ty and Lima, even if the latter would be over FaceTime with her tears. When she saw Lima leave her on read, Natalia seethed quietly all the way to school.

Someone had informed her there had been no cover for her second morning class. So she went and took it herself since she was already there. Might as well do the job she was getting paid for. Natalia texted Gabe in lieu of going to see him but he didn't respond, clearly too busy just like she knew he would be.

The students in her younger years were watching a film in class about climate change, so Natalia could get some admin work done before school was out for the summer.

She had a long summer ahead of her, with the baby having an early Autumn due date, and she had a wedding to plan. She wasn't sure she was going to get the summer wedding of her dreams, maybe she needed to let go of her traditionalist indoctrination. Maybe she didn't need to waddle up the aisle before her baby was due.

The realisation felt like a weight was lifted off her shoulders. She wanted to look her best on her wedding day, not like she had swallowed a beach ball and she wanted to plan the perfect day. She'd have to run it by Gabe first. He wanted to get married like yesterday, but she was sure he'd come around.

In the late morning, she went looking for Gabe, she couldn't find him so she went to mooch around in the staff room since she had a free a period.

"There you are," Porsha said when she got through the door.

"Here I am!" Natalia parroted cautiously. If she had done something to earn Porsha's ire she was about to hear it.

"Ella and I have just been discussing your birthday."

"Oh," Natalia looked down at her phone, the date was flashing at her. One week before her birthday. She had completely forgotten about it.

"I don't celebrate my birthday."

"Oh pish!" Ella started and then she froze, remembering Natalia's video interview almost a year to the date, where she had asked why Natalia had dropped out of her PhD and spent a decade teaching in a conservative Muslim country and Natalia had answered very frankly. It just didn't feel like a day to commemorate, when it was a reminder of who she'd lost.

"Good luck convincing Gabe," Porsha snorted and Natalia frowned. Objectively, Gabe knew when her birthday was but they had never discussed her preferences around it. She'd have to remember to bring that up with him.

Natalia quietly slipped into the assembly hall in the afternoon. A projector was set up and everyone was watching a montage of highlight reels from the games earlier in the year and the past years. It was weird seeing another version of Gabe on the screen, he couldn't put her finger on it. He just looked different.

The camera crew were still there filming the events as part of their segment. Next came another video montage, except this had a familiar black and neon logo in the corner. TikTok.

And again there were different versions of Gabe on the screen. One where he was shirtless on the floor in what seemed like a push-up competition with a student, surrounded by the rest of the team and their jeers and cries. He was barely breaking sweat, and was doing two or three push-ups for each one the student did.

Then came another TikTok video of him giving one of his come to Jesus speeches, the rascal that had filmed and edited it had pieced together catch phrases and sentences that he said very often into a full speech to hilarious effect.

Gabe was watching the video with his face in his hands, from where she was standing she could see the tips of his ears were bright red. Natalia laughed, enjoying the show. It was a rare sight that his self-assured arse was ever embarrassed and she was here for it.

And then there was another video of the team teaching Gabe how to do the woo dance to a country and drill mashup soundtrack she would have never ever conceived of hearing and then they segued into doing country line dancing. Stereotypically, before she had arrived in the States she had always thought it was a white endeavour but living in Texas taught her nothing united Southerners like line dancing.

And then there were some more videos of Gabe's antics on the field, when he wasn't punishing them with runs and push-ups he was screaming in their faces and breaking apart clipboards.

That was actually his thing, there was an ongoing joke that he kept Clipboard production in the US running and Natalia could see why after about 20 snippets of him destroying the things with Papa Roach's Last Resort playing in the background. These kids were so ruthless with the song choice that Natalia started laughing, catching Gabe's attention.

Gabe locked eyes with her across the room and beckoned her over with a subtle tilt of his head. She crossed the room in waddling strides and took a seat next to him in the front of the room.

"Why did y'all come for his whole life like that?" She said when she was seated, sending the room into tittering sniggers.

"Please tell me she's in one of these TikTok things," Gabe pleaded.

"Nah, but why am I in this?" Natalia complained.

Someone loaded up another video and it was just before a game, where Natalia had shown up with orange slices and was handing them out to passing players, someone had captioned it, "She thinks we're in little league..." to everyone's amusement.

"Okay but didn't you guys win that game, hmm? I'm not saying it had anything to do with those oranges but it was something to do with those oranges..." Natalia joked with the team.

"Now, don't be talking about the doping when the press here, Miss Burton..." Another teacher quipped again to laughs.

There were students, football players, other athletes and even parents and teachers present.

"You okay?" Gabe murmured at her side in between videos.

She nodded her head, as he took her hand and threaded their fingers together subtly. She squeezed her reassurance into his grip. Everything was fine. He let her hand go when he was convinced but not before studying the side of her face intently and then returning to the proceedings at hand.

"I'm taking the boys out for dinner later," He told her when the speeches and certificate giving were over.

Natalia yawned, fatigue over taking her. As always she was done with being awake by the late afternoon. "Okay."

"And then I'm going for a couple of drinks."

"Okay," Natalia said amused. She still found it funny that Gabe liked to keep her abreast of all his whereabouts.

He even did it at home, announcing where he was if they were in different rooms or even if he took the bin out. She wasn't sure if it was a white thing or a military thing. Maybe it's healthy communication in a relationship she thought snarkily to herself.

"You going to wait up for me?"

"I dunno if I can," Natalia said coyly, calling a smirk to her lips. She knew where he was going with it.

Gabe was a horny drunk. He always came home extra amorous when he'd been out for a couple of pints. Preferring to make love long and languidly until his buzz had worn off and then passing out.

"Witch," he called her for the second time that day and she laughed knowing that she was going try and stay up for his arrival, but she wasn't going to make him aware of that though. She liked to keep him on his toes.