Page 117 of The Write Track

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“What about Ginny?”

That was from the secondFriday the 13th, the one Jason made his first appearance in. “Absolutely not.” I vehemently shook my head. “What about Lila?”

“Ooh. FromPsycho.” He considered it for several seconds. “Let’s put that on the maybe list.”

I nodded.

“What about Sue? Or Susan, I guess.”

I made a face. “What’s that from?”

“Carrie.”

“No. I don’t really consider that a horror movie as much as a traumatic coming-of-age story.”

“That’s fair.” He combed his fingers through my hair. “Wendy is out, right?”

“I loveThe Shining,but Wendy’s character is… very loud.”

“And you think we’ll be dooming ourselves if we name our baby after a loud character?”

“I do think that.”

“Fair enough.” He tightened his arms around me. “Wait,” he said after almost a full moment of silence. I’d been coasting on the beat of his heart and almost close to dozing.

“Hmm?” I forced myself awake.

“I have it,” he insisted.

He didn’t have it. There was no way. We’d been playing this game for far too long.

“Sidney,” he insisted.

I stilled. I didn’t hate that name. “You’re not going to want to name her something like Sidney Ellen Ripley Cooper, are you?”

“As fantastic of a name as that is, I have the middle name too.”

Now I was doubly suspicious. “What’s the middle name?”

He held up his hand, as if reading the name off a marquee. “Sidney Abigail Oakley Cooper.”

That was quite the mouthful, and yet it had a certain ring to it.

“Maybe she’ll like to play with her food too,” he teased, tickling my sides.

I gasped, caught between amusement and eternal happiness. “I kind of like it,” I admitted. “What if she hates horror movies, though?” The thought hadn’t even occurred to me, and now I was panicked at the thought.

“She won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Even if she does, it will be okay.” His voice was soft.

“How do you know that?”

“Because, from the moment I met you, I knew everything was going to be okay.”

There was no stopping my smile. “Are we going to dress her up as a bloody ballerina vampire for her first Halloween?”

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