The Marriage Contract

by Natasha L. Black

  As I stood up, the hand poked back out of the covers and waved, so I waved back. Then I turned off the main lamp, leaving the little soft yellow lamp on in the corner, and headed out to the living room. Chloe had made a bed on the couch for much of the day before, and I cleaned up the spot she had been in and made a new bed for her there in case she ventured into the living room.

  When I got to work, Jordan waved from the bar when he saw me, and I waved back as I headed into the kitchen. My usual routine was to hang up my jacket, wash my hands and arms, grab my apron, and then open up my knife bag. I got as far as washing my hands before Jordan was poking his head in.

  “Hey, man,” he said. He was grinning in a good-natured way, and I thanked my luck that at least I didn’t have to deal with Grumpy Jordan.

  “Yo, what’s up?”

  “Just checking in with you. You still feeling okay? How’s Chloe?” he asked.

  “I’m good. Not feeling sick or running a fever or anything. Chloe feels like death, but getting a little better, I think. She’s all bundled up in bed,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”

  “Before I go back to the bar,” Jordan said, pulling himself back into the room after initially starting to walk away, “Hannah had an idea. We were talking about how low-key your wedding was and how you guys deserved a reception if you wanted one. No pressure or anything, but I know all of us in the family want to celebrate you getting hitched since most of them weren’t there. We could do it at the bar in Astoria. Go home for a big party.”

  “That sounds fun,” I said, finding myself to actually mean it. “You think Ava would do a theme for us?”

  I laughed. Jordan did not.

  “Yes,” he said, completely stone-faced. “Yes, she would. And it would be awesome.”

  I laughed so hard I nearly doubled over, and Jordan joined me.

  “Alright, I have to get dishes prepped for tonight, so unless you want to grab a knife and get to chopping, you had better leave me be,” I said.

  “Just tell Chloe,” he said. “I’m sure she’d be down for it if she knew it was the Andersons throwing it at the old bar.”

  “Maybe. I’ll run it by her.”

  I got out of the bar a little early, thanks to a slower kitchen night and Jordan telling me to go ahead and bounce around midnight. I had prepped a bunch of the regular food, so all it needed was to be dropped in the fryer or heated in the stove or a pan for a few minutes before plating. The line cook was more than capable of running the kitchen for an hour or so. Besides, I had a sick wife to take care of.

  It still felt super weird to think of her that way, but it was what it was. She was legally my wife. It just so happened to have started as a joke, but now it was feeling like so much more. I had lucked into the best relationship in my life.

  Rolling into the parking lot, I saw Hannah’s car sitting next to the handicapped spots. Considering how late it was, it worried me that she would still be there, and I hustled up to the steps of the townhouse around twelve-fifteen. When I got to my door, I could hear Hannah inside talking, but she didn’t sound upset, so I quietly put the key in and opened up gently, in case she was on the phone and Chloe was asleep.

  “Hey,” Hannah said, waving at me from the easy chair next to the couch when I got inside. I waved back, and a familiar hand rose above the back of the couch to wave at me, too.

  “Hey, Hannah. How’s Chloe?”

  “I’m fine,” Chloe said in a voice that screamed that she was most certainly not doing anything resembling being fine.

  “I sincerely doubt that,” I said as I reached the couch and bent over to kiss her head. She wasn’t sweating at her hairline anymore, so that was good, but she looked miserable. Her skin had a distinctive greenish color about it that made her look not unlike Oscar the Grouch.

  “She’s been doing a bit better,” Hannah said. “Got some ginger ale in her, but that’s about it. No stomach for food.”

  “Ugh,” Chloe said, sticking her tongue out. “Food. Ick.”

  Hannah stood and grabbed Chloe’s toes over the blanket and gave them a shake.

  “I’m going to head home,” Hannah said. “This baby is about ready for her one in the morning feeding, and then I get a few hours’ sleep.”

  “Okay,” Chloe said from her blanket mountain. “Love you, bye.”

  “Love you, too, hon,” Hannah said and began walking toward the front door. I followed her and opened the door for her.

  “Hey,” I said in a near whisper. “Is she okay?”

  “I think so,” Hannah said. “I was just dropping some stuff off to make her feel better. I remembered when we were little, she liked those cheap popsicles and dumb magazines when she was sick, so I brought some over. Popsicles are in the freezer, by the way.”

  “Thanks, Hannah. I appreciate you coming to see her.”

  “Of course,” Hannah said. “She can be a little bratty when she’s not feeling well. Don’t take it personally.”

  She grinned, and I forced out a laugh.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Good night,” Hannah said, then turned to the couch. “Good night, Chloe.”

  The hand returned for one final wave over the back of the couch, and Hannah ducked out carrying the car seat and fussy baby at her side.

  I closed the door and headed into the bathroom. I remembered she loved the lavender oils, so I used some in building her a bath and made sure to sit a couple of towels and a fresh change of comfortable pajamas out and went to get her.

  “Come on, you. Let’s get you in the tub.”

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly and held out her hands. I pulled her to her feet, and she shuffled toward the bathroom. When we got there, she turned and put her hands weakly on my chest, stopping me from following her in. “No. I’m not sexy. This bath is solo.”

  “Okay. I’ll be in the living room if you need me.”

  “Good.” She nodded and shut the door between us. She looked so sad to have to shut me out, but I had a feeling a tub would perk her up a little and hopefully relax her so she could sleep.

  When I finally heard the drain going as she got out of the tub a little later, I went into the linen closet and pulled out new sheets and changed the bed I’d made her on the couch. Switching out the old pillow for a new one and filling a new glass of ginger ale, I went into the kitchen to make some tea. Having the ability to bounce between the tea and the ginger ale would give her options and hopefully help her stomach calm down.

  I laughed when I watched her shuffling out of the bathroom to the living room again, giant fuzzy slippers on her feet. She had gone from one Muppet to another, apparently, though I didn’t think Chloe was actually in the mood for any cookies. I followed her in and set her tea down on the coffee table before holding the sheets out for her to curl up.

  We sat and watched television for some time, her sipping her tea and shifting around uncomfortably on the couch. I offered for her to take the recliner, but she declined, and I watched, growing more worried about how she seemed to not be able to settle down.

  Finally, the clock had wound late enough that there was no point in staying up anymore. She hadn’t thrown up in a while, and she clearly couldn’t get comfortable on the couch. I stood up and offered my hand, and she took it.

  “Let’s get you to bed,” I said, and she nodded pitifully. I walked her upstairs into the bedroom, tucked her in, and curled up beside her. I didn’t want to squeeze her, but I wanted her to know I was there, and soon we drifted off to sleep.

  32

  Chloe

  No matter what I did, I couldn’t make myself fall asleep for more than a few minutes at a time. Before bed, I took a long bath with my favorite lavender-scented shower gel and drank a cup of hot tea. Usually that was good for knocking me right out. Even at the end of a stressful day, that combination had always relaxed me so much it lulled me right into a deep sleep.

  But not that night. I lay curled up on the couch for a long while, trying to get m
yself comfortable enough to rest, but felt antsy and out of sorts. Eventually, Matt took my hands and pulled me to bed, gently tucking me in and curling up behind me.

  I wanted to stay there with him. He was comforting and warm, at least making me feel less anxious. But the longer the bouts of sleeping for a few minutes and then waking up with my stomach uneasy or heartburn making my throat sting went on, the guiltier I felt. He needed to get some sleep, too. He had a business to run. I couldn’t expect him to be my own personal teddy bear, even if I was feeling sick.

  Eventually, I slipped out of bed. I was trying to be as careful as I could not to disturb him, but he immediately rolled over and looked at me.

  “What’s wrong? Where are you going?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to keep you up,” I said. “I’m having trouble settling down, so I’m just going to go into the spare room and maybe read for a while.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  I knew he was having the same uncomfortable flashbacks to when I retreated to the spare room before we finally acted like adults and talked things through. That was not a good time for either of us, and I didn’t want to bring back the memories. But at the same time, I was miserable. There was no need to make him miserable along with me.

  “At least one of us should get a good night’s sleep tonight. You go on and rest. Hopefully I’ll feel better in the morning. I’ve got to shake this thing eventually,” I said.

  “You still think it was the Chinese food?” he asked. “I mean, I thought it tasted a little funny, but I didn’t think it was going to mess you up like this.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe one of the customers at the bar had a little bug or something and I caught it. I’ve never had the best immune system. That’s something else you’ll get to learn about me. I’m a big baby when it comes to being sick. Just wait until I have a real cold. Pathetic all around.”

  He was falling back to sleep, and I had to smile at his efforts to keep engaging with me.

  “I bet you’re adorable,” he murmured.

  “I whine the entire time, eat nothing but double noodle soup and butter crackers with cream cheese, and there are copious amounts of tissues used. Yeah. It’s a whole thing. And that’s what you’re signed up for,” I said.

  He flashed me a sleepy thumbs-up, and I made my way quietly out of the room and into the spare room. Rather than getting a book, I tucked myself under the covers and tried to will myself to sleep. Even as I did, I was thinking about the idea of food poisoning versus a stomach bug. I didn’t know what might be going on.

  My symptoms didn’t really sound like food poisoning. And no one in the bar had seemed sick. If that had been the case, I would have also expected by now for someone else working there to have gotten sick. I might not have the best immune system ever made, but I wasn’t going to be the only person in an entire area to catch something as contagious as a stomach virus.

  There was another option. One I wasn’t really prepared to think about right then. But I was going to have to if I didn’t open my eyes to a miraculously better stomach.

  Eventually I managed to crash for a couple of hours, but it was still woefully early when my stomach lurching woke me up and sent me scrambling for the bathroom. This didn’t bode well for that third option.

  I was glad the bag Hannah brought me was safely tucked away in the very back of the cabinet under the bathroom sink. Unless there was a very sudden urgent need for carpet cleaner, Matt wasn’t going to discover it before I used it. Which I was hoping I wasn’t going to have to do. When she showed up and handed me that bag, I thought she was being ridiculous. I took it and hid it away, thinking it was going to be a big joke.

  Not so much.

  Now I was fishing that bag out from under the cabinet and bracing myself. It felt like I was the only non-virginal woman who had ever gotten to my age without having to do this. But here I was, reading the little paper insert in a box to make sure I could pee on a stick correctly. That wasn’t a skill I ever thought I would value, but suddenly it was the most important thing I could do.

  Three minutes later, I was staring at the results.

  Five minutes later, I was still staring.

  Ten minutes later, the little window started to look strange, and I remembered the insert said the results weren’t valid anymore after a certain length of time. Which meant what I saw first wasn’t actually going to change.

  What the hell was I supposed to do next?

  I definitely wasn’t ready to be a mother, and I knew Matt didn’t want children. He was fantastic with his nieces and nephews, and he talked about them like they were the greatest things in the world. It just wasn’t something he wanted for himself.

  With still no answers as to how I was going to handle this, I finally wrapped the test up in the bag and threw it deep in the trash can, then headed downstairs. With any luck, I would be able to play it off and not give anything away to Matt until I figured out what exactly I was going to do.

  The other bag Hannah brought me was still sitting on the coffee table, and I sat down on the couch. My legs were feeling shaky, and I was a bit dizzy, but I did my best not to show it. Pulling several crackers out of the sleeve of saltines, I munched my way through them, then followed them up with a couple of pieces of peppermint gum. Hannah reassured me it would help me feel better.

  I hadn’t been convinced, but within a couple of seconds of chewing the gum, I actually did start to feel steadier. My stomach started to settle, and I figured I was in for a lot of peppermint gum over the next couple of months.

  The flavor was gone from my first set of gum, and I had moved on to a couple of fresh pieces when Matt came in. He was fresh from the shower and smelled clean and warm. He grinned at me when he saw me sitting up on the couch.

  “You look like you’re feeling better.” He leaned down to drop a kiss in the middle of my head. “Maybe you feeling sick is all my fault.”

  The way he said it was teasing and playful but considering the telltale test buried in the bottom of the trash can upstairs, it didn’t strike me as quite as funny.

  “What?” I asked, perhaps snapping a bit more than I intended to.

  He looked at me quizzically. “It was a joke. You went and slept in the spare room, and now you’re feeling better. So maybe I’m the one that made you feel sick in the first place. You could be allergic to me.”

  The strange look turned back to a smile, and I forced one back in return.

  “I don’t think I’m allergic to you,” I said.

  “Well, that’s good to hear. Because I definitely intend on spending a whole lot more time with you.”

  He leaned down for another kiss, and I managed to push a bit of a chuckle out through my ever-tightening throat. This was probably the prime moment to tell him about the pregnancy test. No introduction. No beating around the bush. No contemplation and laying out a big plan. Just tear off the bandage and tell him straight out so that we could figure it all out together.

  I looked right at him, ready for the words to come tumbling out of my mouth. Only, they didn’t. Wherever they were, they stayed firmly there until Matt finally walked away into the kitchen.

  “Want some more tea?” he called in to me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That sounds good.”

  “Anything to eat? I see you broke into the crackers already, but that’s not exactly food. Can I make you something? Maybe one of the Popsicles?”

  I wanted to say no. The idea of food was still not sitting right with me, and even though the peppermint tea did a valiant job of making me feel better, I didn’t know if it was enough to combat actually adding food any more involved than crackers to the mix. But before I could answer, that little plus sign on the test popped back into my mind. It was a stunning realization. This wasn’t just about me anymore.

  I might not want food. I might not be hungry. But there was a baby who needed nutrients to grow, and that meant I had to be the one to funnel them to it. I n
eeded to apply as few emotions to that as possible. If I was going to keep this to myself for now, overthinking it wasn’t going to work out for me.

  “Maybe some scrambled eggs,” I said. “Really simple. No pepper or anything.”

  “Toast?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Bacon?”

  “No, thank you,” I said quickly. I had a feeling that was just going to be a step too far.

  A few minutes later, he came into the living room with breakfast and tea. He handed me a plate and a cup, then settled down beside me with his own. I took a cautious bite and was pleased when I didn’t immediately feel sick.

  “Is there anything you wanted to do today?” Matt asked after a couple of minutes of eating.

  “We need to do some grocery shopping and get a couple things for the house.”

  He nodded. “Sounds good. We can finish up here and head to the store. You sure you’re up for it?”

  I nodded, but there was a hint of hesitation in the back of my mind. I was definitely going to need to be packing gum for this excursion. The last thing I needed was to end up sick in the middle of the store. We finished breakfast and got dressed while making out our list.

  I spent the rest of the day trying my hardest to act like nothing was wrong. Especially when we walked through the store and passed the baby department. I found myself stopping for a second and staring at the tiny clothes, trying to imagine buying them and wondering which I would choose. Matt called to me from up ahead when he noticed I was no longer walking with him, and I jogged to catch up.

  33

  Matt

  “Alright, you clean downstairs and I clean upstairs, then we meet in the middle?” I asked.

  Chloe nodded. “I’m sorry, I just don’t want to be going up and down the stairs so much right now. Don’t want to test it.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “A plan is a plan. If I can get to the bathroom before you’re done, I will.”