fic: The Omen (1/2)
Title: The Omen (1/2)
Rating: T, implicit sexual situations
Ship: Tripp/Maureen
Summary: This is how they recover.
Author's Note: I don't know. This is a bloody mess. Happy Labour Day!
The love that's tearing you down
is the love that will turn you around
It starts like this:
"I'm pregnant."
And Maureen remembers how.
Her fingers on Tripp's collar, his belt buckle, his lips on her neck, his skin slipping over hers. It all, him and her, just comes into a sharp focus so easily. Maybe too easily, and she can't help but wonder if it's bad that it's so simple. One minute they're yelling at each after a week of mounting tension and the next Tripp is hurling his tumbler to the countertop, the aged scotch spilling to the floor, the glass shards poking Maureen through her dress.
When Tripp enters her, fingers digging into her waist and hoisting her up against the marble, Maureen's moans break into his mouth just as roughly.
"Okay."
It all goes from there.
Boys have never really been interested in her, and Maureen supposes it has something to do with her plainness, but she knows, somewhere in her, there has always been something just bursting to come out since her adolescence. There had been something in her worth taking note of, enticing to breach the surface.
Tripp is the first to notice it.
Maureen is twenty the first time she sees Tripp.
It's funny because when she sees him, Maureen wonders how she has gone all this time without ever knowing him before.
It's at one of the elite soirées her parents take her to, and despite being meticulously groomed for them her entire life, her nerves start swimming around inside of her the moment she meets him.
The first thing she sees are his eyes. They're bright and warm and swirling with a maturity that Maureen has never known from men her age. She is so painfully aware of the heat spreading over her cheeks and at that moment she wants nothing more than for the ground to open her and swallow her whole.
"I've never seen you before," he grins at her, and she would collapse if he hadn't been holding her hand so firmly, "I'm Tripp."
The words stutter in her throat for a reply, but she smoothes them over with a confident smile as more blood rushes to her face, "It's nice to meet you."
Tripp smiles and her heart stops (just like in those sultry novels Maureen had managed to read only after moving away to college) and she feels a fluttery feeling in her stomach that's unlike anything she has ever experienced before.
When he leaves, her mother nods at her approvingly.
What Tripp doesn't understand or realize, or maybe he just buries it away somewhere, is that she had dreams too. Maureen had them, had cherished them like a child does with its favourite toy, until she gave them up to be Tripp's wife, to bolster his political career, and encourage his own dreams of making his family (grandfather) proud.
After his affair, after the arguments, and the empty threats of divorce (because really, grandfather would never allow it), they reach a stalemate.
They live.
In the same house, in the same bed, but that's just it, they're living; breathing and waiting for the silence to crack open and thaw, waiting for the smell of Serena to wash off of him and trust to regain them both, waiting for something to catalyze their... what? Love? Their sense of companionship, at the very least?
There's something inside of her that screams it's too late and that it will never happen, but rest of Maureen, the part of her meeting Tripp for the first time, convinces her that it's plausible. That she fell in love with him once and it makes no sense to have gone through the pain and the tears if it could happen again.
Tripp offers to leave once (if she really thinks it's best). It happens after breakfast one Sunday morning as he finishes off the last of his orange juice.
Something flashes across his eyes as he says it, and Maureen pictures him visioning her with another man, in another home, and she almost feels guilty for it when she sees the forlorn expression on Tripp's face. It reminds her of the night Serena was admitted into the hospital, after Nate had knocked Tripp to the sidewalk, helpless and alone.
Maureen doesn't say anything because the look on his face mirrors her own, and truthfully, having gone three weeks without a single fight, Tripp might be the one leaving, but he can't stand to lost her either, not when there is no one really left.
She wonders how long this feeling will last for them both.
They just need a little time, Maureen reasons, time to readjust and figure out how to get back to where they were right before the wedding, when everyone awed at how well they were together. She wants her and Tripp to be right and not a mistake. Doesn't want to live behind a mask for the rest of her life. She wants that fairytale ending she had pictured when she had first seen him, the type of endings her older cousins told her were for losers when she was younger. She wants years and years of laughter and smiles that make everything that had once been wrong distant memories of the past.
"I'm sorry," he says as he slips under the covers on the other side of the bed.
There is a lot for him to be sorry about.
Her too, if she'll just let herself admit it to him aloud.
Maureen bites her lip in anticipation, hands tracing the still-too-early nonexistent bump on her stomach. Maybe this is when they will actually start speaking, here, in their cold bed at eleven in the evening when most couples are either sleeping or making love.
There is just so much Maureen wishes she can formulate into phrases. Wishes that whenever she and Tripp get close to the opportunity to talk about themselves, her racing thoughts would freeze for one damn second so she can organize them. She wishes that she could just hear herself think.
"Sure," she whispers tiredly, turning to face the bedroom door.
Maureen doesn't think of sex very often. (It's a little hard considering she and Tripp only exchange words when they are needed. Some nights she has already fallen asleep by the time he comes home from work. Other nights it is the other way around.)
But sometimes, like after a run when Tripp bends to retrieve bottled water out of the back of the fridge and the edges of his shirt rises up, Maureen secretly spies his smooth flesh glistening under sweat. And when her hormones kick into overdrive, Maureen can't help but think of the instances when Tripp has to be flustered too, and those thoughts only force her to press her legs together tighter and control the ache between her thighs.
After they meet, Maureen wonders if she'll ever see him again - really see him. There are bound to be times at other social gatherings when she will eye Tripp from across patios, tables, and throngs of people. She wants more than their polite talks, because despite growing to learn more about him, Maureen wants more than that. She wants to step out of a limousine or her driver's car and find him there waiting for her.
Yeah, it's a stretch, but that is what single and romantic girls like her do.
Despite the risk of having Tripp and his friends laugh at her for being totally obvious with her feelings and acting like a twelve-year-old harbouring a middle school crush, Maureen tosses a look over her shoulder and is startled to find his eyes meeting hers, as if he has been looking for her.
It seems too good to be true when Tripp makes his way towards her, smiling and hands in his pockets, making her stomach flutter all over again.
She considers leaving in the middle of the night and going someplace far away like Africa or a small village in Eastern Europe. Maureen considers leaving and seeing if Tripp will follow. If one day, she'll look around and see him staring at her, shaken and relieved to have finally found her. She considers leaving just to see what will happen.
She never does.
Tripp tastes like candy; his lips like strawberry gum and skin like those saltwater taffies from Maine that she loves so much. He smells like expensive cologne and feels like velvet when his voice vibrates into her chest.
The first time they make love she is twenty-three.
She spends the entire night feeling him with her hands, pushing aside his damp dark blonde hair from his forehead, his muscles shifting under her touch, and growing accustomed to the way her fingers tighten in his with every movement.
Tripp's groans and sighs replay over and over in her head along after they're both quiet.
And then it gets frightening, because men like Tripp, stunning, ambitious, and intelligent, they don't fall for girls like her. They date models and women with wild and spontaneous personalities that make a person forget where they come from.
When has a guy like Tripp ever chosen the average girl? The girl who still goes through her parents' wedding album. The girl, who despite her background and wealth, doesn't really stand out in comparison to her counterparts. The girl who belongs to the world that only reinforces Tripp's silent struggles between with the decisions he wants to choose and the ones he has to make.
She hates herself for doubting him even a little.
Whenever she experiences morning sickness, Maureen uses the downstairs bathroom.
One humid afternoon Maureen finds herself rearranging the flower ornament in the front foyer. It doesn't take long for the menial task to completely consume her concentration to the point where she doesn't notice Tripp enter through the doorway until she hears his voice behind her.
"Hi."
She grunts in response, turning the vase over and restarting.
She hears his footsteps retreat down the hall and resumes her task; every combination feels wrong and looks worse than the one before it. Maureen considers giving up entirely when she hears Tripp coming back.
He stops a few feet away from her, just standing and she can feel herself sweating under the heat of his gaze despite the air condition on full blast.
"I was thinking," he starts, arms crossing timidly over his chest, "maybe you should go back to school."
Maureen drops the flowers from sheer mortification.
"What?"
"I said, ma-"
"You don't know what you're talking about," she snaps at him, eyes hard and fingernails digging into her palm.
She isn't upset at what he has suggested, it's just the fact that Tripp is the one to deliver the statement, breathing life into an old regret Maureen refuses to think about since their wedding. She considers walking away, maybe going out for a stroll and cooling down but she doesn't, so naturally Maureen is still caught up with him, but still never really letting herself trust Tripp and what is worse is that he knows how she feels.
She had given up school to marry him so maybe this means he's finally deciding what to do. Maybe this means he is seriously contemplating filing for divorce.
Tripp purchases enough prenatal vitamins to feed a small army of pregnant mothers. He makes sure she is always fed, doesn't let her do any lifting, and the baby soon becomes the icebreaker to their long silences, the catalyst to their talks regarding other developments in their lives.
Their child, Maureen believes, just might have saved their marriage.
In most relationships people develop their own language. Maureen initially picks up the idea from watching a cheesy soap when she's eleven. She watches the character have whole conversations with looks and touches and becomes aware of her and Tripp's own language rather quickly.
She knows that when Tripp wears flannel he is feeling more stressed than usual, and that rapid blinking means I'm confused, please explain what is happening.
And these signals only mean more now that they're in this faux stage of their marriage, this rough patch, if you will. Because society loves to gossip and would want nothing more than to find out what it is really like behind closed doors, how they've managed since all that has happened.
(His grandfather could only mitigate so much damage.)
Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night and listens to Tripp's deep breathing for a while, remembering that his actions would have nearly destroyed her if Maureen hadn't forced that hard shell over herself, if she hadn't had that instant reaction from the most brutal humiliation and betrayal she'd ever felt in her life.
They don't seek therapy.
Never.
It's pointless talking to someone about their setbacks when they can't admit them to each other.
Sometimes Maureen hopes for a signal she can give Tripp, one that could convey all that she wants to say to him without ever having to say it.
She comes close to it one time.
At Tripp's cousin's birthday, they come out of hiding from the limelight. Maureen is showing just a bit, noticeable to anyone really looking, so she prepares herself by wearing a loose fitted dress to draw away attention from that region.
However it doesn't help. The entire evening she can feel nearly all the women staring at her, and Maureen can feel the onset of a severe migraine approaching just by their incessant whispering. She looks around for a place to escape to and finds Tripp's eyes on her instead, causing a shiver to run down her spine when their gazes meet.
Maureen stands quietly as he moves towards her, and she instinctively reaches for Tripp's hand, squeezing it twice. Let's get out of here.
"I hope she turns out to be like you."
Maureen lowers the book from her hands and raises an eyebrow at Tripp leaning against the doorjamb. She had been resting against the headboard of the bed, ankles crossed in front of her, digesting the words from the novel when she spots Tripp at the bedroom door from the corner of her eye. She had chosen to ignore him, but after that declaration, it would certainly prove to be difficult.
"It's too early to determine the sex of the baby. How do you know it's a girl?" she enquires, pushing her legs under the duvet and surveying him closely as he walks over to the dresser and unfastens his watch.
Tripp shrugs, turning back to her, slowly pulling off his loosened tie and unbuttoning his shirt. Maureen darts her gaze away when he peels it back, the sight of him bare-chested causing a stir in her loins.
"I don't know. I've just got a feeling," he replies, standing there shirtless with his hands in his slack pockets.
Maureen coughs awkwardly, eyes glued back to the book as her cheeks redden. She immediately feels like she is twenty and Tripp is looking at her from across a crowded space.
"So, do you really mean it? About her being like me?"
She can picture the grimace on his face, can almost see him recalling everything awful and maddening thing she has done, but when Maureen looks up she only sees Tripp chuckling softly. It's the greatest sound she has heard in a long while, the way it rumbles through the air between them.
"Yeah, yeah I do."
When she discovers that she is pregnant the first thought in Maureen's mind is that she can't breathe. The blue line on the pregnancy test watches her from the sink counter and there suddenly isn't enough air in the bathroom so she runs out and collapses on the bed.
Maureen is too astonished to scream or cry because her second thought is that the test is wrong (until she remembers in the incident in the kitchen). Her third is whether or not she should keep it, and her forth is when she should tell Tripp (because she has never been good at keeping secrets from him anyway).
Everything changes when Maureen wakes up with a sharp pain in her abdomen. She groans, palms pressed flat to her middle as she takes note that Tripp has already left for work. It takes all her strength to call a cab and go to the hospital, and the entire ride she can't help but feel fear and utter disbelief along with the alarming warmth pooling in her seat.
Maureen doesn't realize that she had passed out until she wakes up and sees Tripp sitting next to her in the hospital room.
"Maureen," he murmurs as his hand moves up to cradle her cheek. His eyes look dreary, but she can see a sliver of relief in them.
She can't help but flinch at his touch because oh God no her baby, their baby. She sniffs, because the look on Tripp's face explains everything, it always does, and it isn't long before she breaks down into sobs, curling into herself on the bed, fists flying to fight Tripp off when he reaches for her.
"Stop," she says hoarsely, struggling to catch her breath behind her cries and hot tears, "Tripp, stop it."
He freezes and moves back far enough for her to see that he is crying too and the image slams into her so hard that it only makes Maureen cry harder at the emptiness inside her.
For an entire fortnight Maureen cries herself to sleep and dreams of the baby, tiny and pink, with blonde curls and her eyes. Each night she wakes up screaming.
Tripp tries to comfort her; he makes her tea and when he tries to hold Maureen in their bed, she just can't stand to be in his presence so she pushes him away physically, since she is already so far ahead with doing it emotionally.
Maureen realizes that she is being unfair; Tripp lost the baby, too, but it hurts to be near him. There's a burning awareness making her stomach lurch because all the progress they made until the miscarriage is now ruined.
She's too scared to consider what this means for their marriage.
(It takes all her willpower not to breakdown when she sees the unopened box of saltwater taffies on the kitchen counter.)
Maureen cries and cries until she spends all her tears. Tripp is worn out too, she notices, taking in every excruciating sigh, every rub at his tired eyes and hollow face, his body worn from fatigue and stress. He seems to have given up trying to console her, has retreated back behind the solid mass he put up when they first made their arrangement to stay together and move to D.C.
For a while nothing feels and looks like it has changed until Maureen opens the cupboards and finds her prenatal vitamins, at least a dozen of them, all lined up in a neat row.
It starts with a sniff, her fingers trembling as they reach out and tighten around the bottles like a vice. The next minute Maureen is crying hysterically, standing over the toilet in the bathroom and pouring the pills in, flushing the orange pellets after emptying each bottle.
Tripp comes in, home early from a meeting when he finds Maureen sobbing on the ground. He kneels down next to her in less time than it takes to breathe, under eyes dark from lack of sleep, and this time she doesn't pull away when he runs his hand down her arm.
"You're shaking," he whispers, and she doesn't realize it until he presses his firm chest against her side, pushing away the sweaty hair from her neck.
"I did everything right. I did everything right, Tripp."
It's a futile attempt at explaining her anxiety. Maybe it isn't even that, but he doesn't push the subject, only clarifies that he knows and it's not her fault.
And it feels like an eternity has passed before Tripp finally moves from her side, uncoiling his arms from around her and moving towards the tub to prepare a hot bath. Then he comes back, helps Maureen to her feet and slowly undresses her, his nimble fingers as light as feathers when they brush across her skin.
Maureen stills, quiet but not unnerved at her stark nakedness. Tripp doesn't look anywhere but her face as he eases her into the tub; the water instantly soothes all the aches she didn't know she had.
She stares blankly at the wall across her, at the toiletries on the bathroom counter and the towels on the nearby rack. Tripp rolls up his sleeves and reaches for the sponge.
PART 2
Rating: T, implicit sexual situations
Ship: Tripp/Maureen
Summary: This is how they recover.
Author's Note: I don't know. This is a bloody mess. Happy Labour Day!
The love that's tearing you down
is the love that will turn you around
It starts like this:
"I'm pregnant."
And Maureen remembers how.
Her fingers on Tripp's collar, his belt buckle, his lips on her neck, his skin slipping over hers. It all, him and her, just comes into a sharp focus so easily. Maybe too easily, and she can't help but wonder if it's bad that it's so simple. One minute they're yelling at each after a week of mounting tension and the next Tripp is hurling his tumbler to the countertop, the aged scotch spilling to the floor, the glass shards poking Maureen through her dress.
When Tripp enters her, fingers digging into her waist and hoisting her up against the marble, Maureen's moans break into his mouth just as roughly.
"Okay."
It all goes from there.
Boys have never really been interested in her, and Maureen supposes it has something to do with her plainness, but she knows, somewhere in her, there has always been something just bursting to come out since her adolescence. There had been something in her worth taking note of, enticing to breach the surface.
Tripp is the first to notice it.
Maureen is twenty the first time she sees Tripp.
It's funny because when she sees him, Maureen wonders how she has gone all this time without ever knowing him before.
It's at one of the elite soirées her parents take her to, and despite being meticulously groomed for them her entire life, her nerves start swimming around inside of her the moment she meets him.
The first thing she sees are his eyes. They're bright and warm and swirling with a maturity that Maureen has never known from men her age. She is so painfully aware of the heat spreading over her cheeks and at that moment she wants nothing more than for the ground to open her and swallow her whole.
"I've never seen you before," he grins at her, and she would collapse if he hadn't been holding her hand so firmly, "I'm Tripp."
The words stutter in her throat for a reply, but she smoothes them over with a confident smile as more blood rushes to her face, "It's nice to meet you."
Tripp smiles and her heart stops (just like in those sultry novels Maureen had managed to read only after moving away to college) and she feels a fluttery feeling in her stomach that's unlike anything she has ever experienced before.
When he leaves, her mother nods at her approvingly.
What Tripp doesn't understand or realize, or maybe he just buries it away somewhere, is that she had dreams too. Maureen had them, had cherished them like a child does with its favourite toy, until she gave them up to be Tripp's wife, to bolster his political career, and encourage his own dreams of making his family (grandfather) proud.
After his affair, after the arguments, and the empty threats of divorce (because really, grandfather would never allow it), they reach a stalemate.
They live.
In the same house, in the same bed, but that's just it, they're living; breathing and waiting for the silence to crack open and thaw, waiting for the smell of Serena to wash off of him and trust to regain them both, waiting for something to catalyze their... what? Love? Their sense of companionship, at the very least?
There's something inside of her that screams it's too late and that it will never happen, but rest of Maureen, the part of her meeting Tripp for the first time, convinces her that it's plausible. That she fell in love with him once and it makes no sense to have gone through the pain and the tears if it could happen again.
Tripp offers to leave once (if she really thinks it's best). It happens after breakfast one Sunday morning as he finishes off the last of his orange juice.
Something flashes across his eyes as he says it, and Maureen pictures him visioning her with another man, in another home, and she almost feels guilty for it when she sees the forlorn expression on Tripp's face. It reminds her of the night Serena was admitted into the hospital, after Nate had knocked Tripp to the sidewalk, helpless and alone.
Maureen doesn't say anything because the look on his face mirrors her own, and truthfully, having gone three weeks without a single fight, Tripp might be the one leaving, but he can't stand to lost her either, not when there is no one really left.
She wonders how long this feeling will last for them both.
They just need a little time, Maureen reasons, time to readjust and figure out how to get back to where they were right before the wedding, when everyone awed at how well they were together. She wants her and Tripp to be right and not a mistake. Doesn't want to live behind a mask for the rest of her life. She wants that fairytale ending she had pictured when she had first seen him, the type of endings her older cousins told her were for losers when she was younger. She wants years and years of laughter and smiles that make everything that had once been wrong distant memories of the past.
"I'm sorry," he says as he slips under the covers on the other side of the bed.
There is a lot for him to be sorry about.
Her too, if she'll just let herself admit it to him aloud.
Maureen bites her lip in anticipation, hands tracing the still-too-early nonexistent bump on her stomach. Maybe this is when they will actually start speaking, here, in their cold bed at eleven in the evening when most couples are either sleeping or making love.
There is just so much Maureen wishes she can formulate into phrases. Wishes that whenever she and Tripp get close to the opportunity to talk about themselves, her racing thoughts would freeze for one damn second so she can organize them. She wishes that she could just hear herself think.
"Sure," she whispers tiredly, turning to face the bedroom door.
Maureen doesn't think of sex very often. (It's a little hard considering she and Tripp only exchange words when they are needed. Some nights she has already fallen asleep by the time he comes home from work. Other nights it is the other way around.)
But sometimes, like after a run when Tripp bends to retrieve bottled water out of the back of the fridge and the edges of his shirt rises up, Maureen secretly spies his smooth flesh glistening under sweat. And when her hormones kick into overdrive, Maureen can't help but think of the instances when Tripp has to be flustered too, and those thoughts only force her to press her legs together tighter and control the ache between her thighs.
After they meet, Maureen wonders if she'll ever see him again - really see him. There are bound to be times at other social gatherings when she will eye Tripp from across patios, tables, and throngs of people. She wants more than their polite talks, because despite growing to learn more about him, Maureen wants more than that. She wants to step out of a limousine or her driver's car and find him there waiting for her.
Yeah, it's a stretch, but that is what single and romantic girls like her do.
Despite the risk of having Tripp and his friends laugh at her for being totally obvious with her feelings and acting like a twelve-year-old harbouring a middle school crush, Maureen tosses a look over her shoulder and is startled to find his eyes meeting hers, as if he has been looking for her.
It seems too good to be true when Tripp makes his way towards her, smiling and hands in his pockets, making her stomach flutter all over again.
She considers leaving in the middle of the night and going someplace far away like Africa or a small village in Eastern Europe. Maureen considers leaving and seeing if Tripp will follow. If one day, she'll look around and see him staring at her, shaken and relieved to have finally found her. She considers leaving just to see what will happen.
She never does.
Tripp tastes like candy; his lips like strawberry gum and skin like those saltwater taffies from Maine that she loves so much. He smells like expensive cologne and feels like velvet when his voice vibrates into her chest.
The first time they make love she is twenty-three.
She spends the entire night feeling him with her hands, pushing aside his damp dark blonde hair from his forehead, his muscles shifting under her touch, and growing accustomed to the way her fingers tighten in his with every movement.
Tripp's groans and sighs replay over and over in her head along after they're both quiet.
And then it gets frightening, because men like Tripp, stunning, ambitious, and intelligent, they don't fall for girls like her. They date models and women with wild and spontaneous personalities that make a person forget where they come from.
When has a guy like Tripp ever chosen the average girl? The girl who still goes through her parents' wedding album. The girl, who despite her background and wealth, doesn't really stand out in comparison to her counterparts. The girl who belongs to the world that only reinforces Tripp's silent struggles between with the decisions he wants to choose and the ones he has to make.
She hates herself for doubting him even a little.
Whenever she experiences morning sickness, Maureen uses the downstairs bathroom.
One humid afternoon Maureen finds herself rearranging the flower ornament in the front foyer. It doesn't take long for the menial task to completely consume her concentration to the point where she doesn't notice Tripp enter through the doorway until she hears his voice behind her.
"Hi."
She grunts in response, turning the vase over and restarting.
She hears his footsteps retreat down the hall and resumes her task; every combination feels wrong and looks worse than the one before it. Maureen considers giving up entirely when she hears Tripp coming back.
He stops a few feet away from her, just standing and she can feel herself sweating under the heat of his gaze despite the air condition on full blast.
"I was thinking," he starts, arms crossing timidly over his chest, "maybe you should go back to school."
Maureen drops the flowers from sheer mortification.
"What?"
"I said, ma-"
"You don't know what you're talking about," she snaps at him, eyes hard and fingernails digging into her palm.
She isn't upset at what he has suggested, it's just the fact that Tripp is the one to deliver the statement, breathing life into an old regret Maureen refuses to think about since their wedding. She considers walking away, maybe going out for a stroll and cooling down but she doesn't, so naturally Maureen is still caught up with him, but still never really letting herself trust Tripp and what is worse is that he knows how she feels.
She had given up school to marry him so maybe this means he's finally deciding what to do. Maybe this means he is seriously contemplating filing for divorce.
Tripp purchases enough prenatal vitamins to feed a small army of pregnant mothers. He makes sure she is always fed, doesn't let her do any lifting, and the baby soon becomes the icebreaker to their long silences, the catalyst to their talks regarding other developments in their lives.
Their child, Maureen believes, just might have saved their marriage.
In most relationships people develop their own language. Maureen initially picks up the idea from watching a cheesy soap when she's eleven. She watches the character have whole conversations with looks and touches and becomes aware of her and Tripp's own language rather quickly.
She knows that when Tripp wears flannel he is feeling more stressed than usual, and that rapid blinking means I'm confused, please explain what is happening.
And these signals only mean more now that they're in this faux stage of their marriage, this rough patch, if you will. Because society loves to gossip and would want nothing more than to find out what it is really like behind closed doors, how they've managed since all that has happened.
(His grandfather could only mitigate so much damage.)
Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night and listens to Tripp's deep breathing for a while, remembering that his actions would have nearly destroyed her if Maureen hadn't forced that hard shell over herself, if she hadn't had that instant reaction from the most brutal humiliation and betrayal she'd ever felt in her life.
They don't seek therapy.
Never.
It's pointless talking to someone about their setbacks when they can't admit them to each other.
Sometimes Maureen hopes for a signal she can give Tripp, one that could convey all that she wants to say to him without ever having to say it.
She comes close to it one time.
At Tripp's cousin's birthday, they come out of hiding from the limelight. Maureen is showing just a bit, noticeable to anyone really looking, so she prepares herself by wearing a loose fitted dress to draw away attention from that region.
However it doesn't help. The entire evening she can feel nearly all the women staring at her, and Maureen can feel the onset of a severe migraine approaching just by their incessant whispering. She looks around for a place to escape to and finds Tripp's eyes on her instead, causing a shiver to run down her spine when their gazes meet.
Maureen stands quietly as he moves towards her, and she instinctively reaches for Tripp's hand, squeezing it twice. Let's get out of here.
"I hope she turns out to be like you."
Maureen lowers the book from her hands and raises an eyebrow at Tripp leaning against the doorjamb. She had been resting against the headboard of the bed, ankles crossed in front of her, digesting the words from the novel when she spots Tripp at the bedroom door from the corner of her eye. She had chosen to ignore him, but after that declaration, it would certainly prove to be difficult.
"It's too early to determine the sex of the baby. How do you know it's a girl?" she enquires, pushing her legs under the duvet and surveying him closely as he walks over to the dresser and unfastens his watch.
Tripp shrugs, turning back to her, slowly pulling off his loosened tie and unbuttoning his shirt. Maureen darts her gaze away when he peels it back, the sight of him bare-chested causing a stir in her loins.
"I don't know. I've just got a feeling," he replies, standing there shirtless with his hands in his slack pockets.
Maureen coughs awkwardly, eyes glued back to the book as her cheeks redden. She immediately feels like she is twenty and Tripp is looking at her from across a crowded space.
"So, do you really mean it? About her being like me?"
She can picture the grimace on his face, can almost see him recalling everything awful and maddening thing she has done, but when Maureen looks up she only sees Tripp chuckling softly. It's the greatest sound she has heard in a long while, the way it rumbles through the air between them.
"Yeah, yeah I do."
When she discovers that she is pregnant the first thought in Maureen's mind is that she can't breathe. The blue line on the pregnancy test watches her from the sink counter and there suddenly isn't enough air in the bathroom so she runs out and collapses on the bed.
Maureen is too astonished to scream or cry because her second thought is that the test is wrong (until she remembers in the incident in the kitchen). Her third is whether or not she should keep it, and her forth is when she should tell Tripp (because she has never been good at keeping secrets from him anyway).
Everything changes when Maureen wakes up with a sharp pain in her abdomen. She groans, palms pressed flat to her middle as she takes note that Tripp has already left for work. It takes all her strength to call a cab and go to the hospital, and the entire ride she can't help but feel fear and utter disbelief along with the alarming warmth pooling in her seat.
Maureen doesn't realize that she had passed out until she wakes up and sees Tripp sitting next to her in the hospital room.
"Maureen," he murmurs as his hand moves up to cradle her cheek. His eyes look dreary, but she can see a sliver of relief in them.
She can't help but flinch at his touch because oh God no her baby, their baby. She sniffs, because the look on Tripp's face explains everything, it always does, and it isn't long before she breaks down into sobs, curling into herself on the bed, fists flying to fight Tripp off when he reaches for her.
"Stop," she says hoarsely, struggling to catch her breath behind her cries and hot tears, "Tripp, stop it."
He freezes and moves back far enough for her to see that he is crying too and the image slams into her so hard that it only makes Maureen cry harder at the emptiness inside her.
For an entire fortnight Maureen cries herself to sleep and dreams of the baby, tiny and pink, with blonde curls and her eyes. Each night she wakes up screaming.
Tripp tries to comfort her; he makes her tea and when he tries to hold Maureen in their bed, she just can't stand to be in his presence so she pushes him away physically, since she is already so far ahead with doing it emotionally.
Maureen realizes that she is being unfair; Tripp lost the baby, too, but it hurts to be near him. There's a burning awareness making her stomach lurch because all the progress they made until the miscarriage is now ruined.
She's too scared to consider what this means for their marriage.
(It takes all her willpower not to breakdown when she sees the unopened box of saltwater taffies on the kitchen counter.)
Maureen cries and cries until she spends all her tears. Tripp is worn out too, she notices, taking in every excruciating sigh, every rub at his tired eyes and hollow face, his body worn from fatigue and stress. He seems to have given up trying to console her, has retreated back behind the solid mass he put up when they first made their arrangement to stay together and move to D.C.
For a while nothing feels and looks like it has changed until Maureen opens the cupboards and finds her prenatal vitamins, at least a dozen of them, all lined up in a neat row.
It starts with a sniff, her fingers trembling as they reach out and tighten around the bottles like a vice. The next minute Maureen is crying hysterically, standing over the toilet in the bathroom and pouring the pills in, flushing the orange pellets after emptying each bottle.
Tripp comes in, home early from a meeting when he finds Maureen sobbing on the ground. He kneels down next to her in less time than it takes to breathe, under eyes dark from lack of sleep, and this time she doesn't pull away when he runs his hand down her arm.
"You're shaking," he whispers, and she doesn't realize it until he presses his firm chest against her side, pushing away the sweaty hair from her neck.
"I did everything right. I did everything right, Tripp."
It's a futile attempt at explaining her anxiety. Maybe it isn't even that, but he doesn't push the subject, only clarifies that he knows and it's not her fault.
And it feels like an eternity has passed before Tripp finally moves from her side, uncoiling his arms from around her and moving towards the tub to prepare a hot bath. Then he comes back, helps Maureen to her feet and slowly undresses her, his nimble fingers as light as feathers when they brush across her skin.
Maureen stills, quiet but not unnerved at her stark nakedness. Tripp doesn't look anywhere but her face as he eases her into the tub; the water instantly soothes all the aches she didn't know she had.
She stares blankly at the wall across her, at the toiletries on the bathroom counter and the towels on the nearby rack. Tripp rolls up his sleeves and reaches for the sponge.
PART 2