Their first kiss was rushed and laced with liquor. The first time they had sex was a result of risky texts that were sent as they sat next to each other on the couch watching Girly Cow reruns. Her clothes started to just pile up in a heap on his bedroom floor and pretty soon they were just living together. None of these things were discussed, or planned. It was just the pace that they had and every step felt natural.

Except this one.

Sam said she needed a week or two to figure things out. She started to pace a lot and he noticed she skipped her daily Fat Cake between breakfast and lunch. Then around day 12 they started talking. And writing. And reading. And planning.

It started with a fight. He found a small piece of paper sticking out of her jeans that were strewn across the floor one day while she was at work. On the paper was a list.

Spencer's eyes.

Eat whatever I want.

Paid vacation.

Parks.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Marty.

When she got home that day, her eyes clouded with thoughts other than shutting the door and throwing her coat over the couch, he presented the paper to her. Of course the fight that followed wasn't about the positive pregnancy test that hadn't left the bathroom counter since the two pink lines shook their world.

"You can't just go through my stuff."

"It was practically falling out of your pocket. From a pair of jeans that were on. The. Floor." His tone was hysterical, loud, and unnecessary. But fuck it, he was frustrated and tired of constantly being trapped in his own head about the future of their lives together. He didn't care that she left clothes on the floor, but for some reason right now was a good time to make up some flaw in her that he could be angry about.

"I'm so sorry that my clothes are crowding your precious floor, that is obviously so spotless." She gestured to the ground around her, sprinkled with a few clothing items, shoes and art supplies.

It went on from there. She was mad that he had crossed some made up private boundary that they had never established, and he was mad that she kept things from him and more ridiculously, that she left clothing on the floor. Their voices rose and harsh words were yelled across the room and in a blink of an eye she was grabbing her purse again, pulling out her keys.

"Wait." Spencer sighed and took two long strides towards her, grabbing her arm.

"Get off." She yanked her arm out of his grip.

"Sam, stop, this is ridiculous. Don't go." He was so tired. Tired of this pointless, made up fight. Tired of keeping all of his thoughts bottled up inside. Tired of wanting to talk to her but not wanting to break her. Tired of the uncertainty.

She stopped struggling to keep him away, but kept her hand on the door knob.

"Whether or not it was ok for me to read this paper." He held it, clutched in his hand as if it was giving him the strength to speak to her. "We have to talk about this. We have to decide what to do."

After ten minutes of heavy silence, he grabbed her hand and led her to the couch where a legal pad was sitting with a red pen. She eyed the paper for awhile, not moving. Her hands were clutched together at her knees.

"Tell me about this list." His voice was low and horse, like a struggled whisper.

She spoke right away, quietly and carefully.

"If I have a baby, I want him... or her, whatever, to have your eyes." She paused, then with out looking at the list still clutched in Spencer's hand, she continued. "I can eat whatever I want for nine months and it's fine. When... it is here I can stay home for three months and still get paid. I like the parks around here." She took another pause, a deep breath filling the silence. "The Very Hungry Caterpillar was the only book I had when I was little, and I still have my copy. Um... and I've always thought if I ever had... a baby-a boy... I would name him Marty."

Spencer wrapped his arm around her, slowly, each inch circling her slow and cautious. She let him rest his arm around her hip and ultimately the gripped list crumpled to the floor.

Spencer grabbed the red pen, his other hand still resting on the small of her back, and wrote on the legal pad in front of them.

Pros.

Cons.

He quickly jotted down her list in the pros column. And they went back and forth for two hours, writing down pros and cons, both serious and trivial. They laughed and had moments of weighted pauses. For a few minutes after Spencer wrote Reason to get married they made out on the couch as if it were five years ago, when they were first exploring each other after months of longing.

They fell asleep on the couch for a few hours, until Spencer was startled awake by his phone ringing. Socko was calling, probably drunk. He ignored the call and slid his phone in his pocket. He carried Sam to bed where they both called in to work and stayed in bed the next morning, abandoning their first list, which looked like this:

Pros: Spencer's eyes, eat whatever I want, paid vacation, parks, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Marty, Sam's nose, teaching it curse words, baby shower gifts, reason to move, having a constant hang out buddy, reason for Carly to visit more often, Patrick, Susie, Olive, reason to get married, financially stable, the timing is not bad

Cons: Birth, poop, scared, pressure, not getting sleep, work can get in the way, money, we could fuck him/her up, no drinking for nine months, my body, the world kind of sucks, moving is tedious, baby proofing, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, becoming terrible parents or friends, birth

Sam woke up before him that morning and he found her with his laptop propped on her knees reading articles about raising children in Seattle and the best schools in the area, and different birth methods. He propped up next to her, looked over her shoulder and they had small back and forth conversations about what was on the computer screen.

This is how their days were for weeks. They kept researching about the "meatloaf" that was growing inside of Sam, while also pretending it wasn't there. They talked about how sci fi pregnancy was and how there were so many books on pregnancy and child rearing, which one should they buy. At Barnes and Noble Sam had a small panic attack among the pregnancy books. Spencer calmed her down in the cookbook section. Once she was breathing right, they decided to leave and as they walked through the front door, Sam mumbled something abut adding hormones to the cons list.

Sam stayed late one night at work and as Spencer sat on the couch flipping through channels, he added "staying late at work" to the cons side of their list, which had reached a ridiculous ten pages. After he turned off the TV in frustration, he grabbed the legal pad and flipped to a blank page and started drawing.

He drew a small room with a crib against the wall. Above the crib were stars of different shapes and sizes and on the floor was a rug that was round with a pink strip around the edges and white on the inside - like a Fat Cake. He drew in a book shelf, with a prominent copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar on the shelf among a bunch of title-less books. The curtains against the window were striped and the pad on the changing table was polka dot. He added a small metal lamp on the dresser which had a crooked rectangular shape to it, and Spencer made a mental note to get the materials for the lamp the next day at the junkyard. He designed a sculpture of puzzle pieces that spelled out MARTY above the drawing.

Sam walked through the door at 8pm. Her face was downcast with exhaustion, her hands full of papers and a bag of groceries from Hey Food.

"I am starving." She exhaled, dropping the papers on the table next to the door and quickly walking past him to the kitchen where she plopped the bag on the counter. "I just went by Hey Food and grabbed a frozen pizza and some... other things." She dumped the bag out and the counter filled with a multitude of snacks and vegetables and small bottles of chocolate milk. She started to unbox the frozen pizza.

She moved across the kitchen to preheat the oven, talking while she worked. "I am just so hungry all the time. And tired. It's ridiculous. And everyone was on my nerves today." She took her coat off and slung it across a dining room chair. "Some cooz at Hey Food was buying tofu and bean sprouts." Sam rolled her eyes. "And she needed to use a coupon to save like twenty cents off of her stupid tofu and I wanted to smash her face into the cash register because the coupon was expired but 'she wasn't leaving with out her discount!'" Sam's mocking voice made him smile.

She grabbed a bag of chips and ripped it open, popping a handful of the snack into her mouth.

"What have you been doing?" She asked, her voice muffled by the food.

She rounded the corner of the counter and Spencer's heart thumped in his chest as his stomach fell to the floor.

Sam's yellow blouse was snug around her middle. Her small stomach poked out over her pants, the white buttons on her shirt starting to strain to stay closed. Spencer felt like time was standing still and each breath he took was a struggle as his world blacked out around him and all he could see was her. Sam. Her sunset hair cascading down her face, her small stature cute and powerful with an addition of the most beautiful stomach he had ever seen. She stood with her hip popped like she always did but she was different. He was different. They were different. He wanted to scoop her up and kiss her.

"Are you alright?" She asked, finally.

"You..." He couldn't form words and he didn't know how to draw her attention to this addition to her body without offending her. He stood up and walked towards her and reached a shaky hand towards her stomach.

"What are you doing?" She chuckled with a raised eyebrow.

His hand made contact with her shirt and she jumped. She grabbed on to his arm to steady herself.

"Holy shit."

Spencer's words were not his first choice when feeling his pregnant girlfriend's belly for the first time. So deliberate and gentle. Touching and moving. Accompanied with "Holy shit."

Sam's eyes followed his stare and he saw them widen at his hand and her stomach.

"Fuck." Her voice was shaky.

"Sam." His other hand reached the back of her neck and she looked up at him, her eyes so scared but her face brightening with a genuine smile.

"Fuck." She said again.

Spencer touched his forehead to hers. "I think we're having a baby."

"Fuck." Her word hadn't changed but she sounded more excited than scared the third time.

"What if we suck at this?" He asked, his voice full of hope and terror.

They both laughed as their noses grazed. Spencer captured her lips with his as his hands trembled on the sides of her small belly. She pulled away slowly, stealing a small kiss before looking up at him through the golden hair that crowded her face.

"Who cares?"