One of the first things we figured out was crate training was a big joke. I heard plenty of people rave about it and say it was the only way to go if you were going to have a well-behaved dog. That might be true for some animals and some pet owners, but not so much for Rosie and me. As soon as I picked her up, we went to the pet store together and loaded up on everything I could think of that she might need. Several massive bags of puppy food, dozens of toys, treats, a couple of different collars, a leash, puppy pads, and her crate later, my house felt properly taken over. It was now the home of a puppy and we are going to be very happy together.
That is, until I put her in the crate last night and headed up to bed. I slipped on some covers and turned the light off, and the house echoed with the heartbreaking sound of her wailing downstairs. I went down, added a blanket to her crate, and went back upstairs. The next time I couldn’t handle the sound of her crying anymore, I gave her a soft toy to cuddle with. The next time it was a chewy bone to keep her entertained in case she was just too full of energy or I had the one insomniac Lab puppy in existence.
Finally, there was no room left to add anything else into the crate, so I just took her out and brought her upstairs with me. She plopped down onto my bed and immediately burrowed under the blankets at the end. I got in bed, and she curled up cuddled against my feet and was snoring within seconds. That was it. I was done for. I was officially the guy who let his dog sleep in bed with him.
Another thing I had to get used to fairly quickly was waking up to her little pink tongue most of the way up my nose. She licked me awake standing on my chest until I got up and brought her over to her puppy pad, then carried her downstairs for breakfast. I was making a cup of coffee when my phone rang.
“Morning,” I said.
“How’s Rosie?” Cole asked.
“Is that where we are as friends now?” I asked. “You call to check on my puppy.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Fair enough. She’s doing well. Currently chasing her favorite pink tennis ball around the living room.”
“Is she still sleeping in your bed?” He sounded like a concerned grandmother checking to make sure I was raising the new baby in an acceptable way.
“Yes. She has claimed the bottom corner and has her own blanket,” I told him.
“Have you even tried the crate again?”
“No,” I said. “She cried and wailed. I told you. She hated it. It kept me up and it was heartbreaking. She didn’t want to be down on the bottom floor of the house while I was upstairs. She would rather be with me.”
“Of course she would rather be with you. But you gotta be consistent. You have to teach her that the crate is her spot and that’s where she’s comfortable and can go to bed. Just like teaching a baby how to sleep in their crib. It’s better for both of you.”
“Why?” I asked.
“All those reasons all the experts say it is,” Cole said.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “That’s very compelling evidence. Tell me, Cole, does Bud sleep in a crate?”
“No,” he said. “But that’s a completely different situation.”
“Why?” I asked with a laugh.
“Because I didn’t get her a crate,” he said.
I laughed again. “Well, that is a very good reason.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying her. You seem more like yourself again.”
“Me too. Having her around has been great,” I told him.
It really had been. She absolutely did the trick. I didn’t even have the time to be lonely. The wiggly black puppy needed constant attention. I was still battling with her over her leash and learning to walk on it. We were working on learning to sit and lie down, and if I wasn’t trying to teach her something, she wanted me to be patting her, playing with her, feeding her, or running around with her. It was a lot, but she was absolutely worth it.
Rosie was adorable even when she was stealing my food or chewing up my slippers. That was one of the things that surprised me about having her. Everybody always hears about dogs chewing up slippers, but I thought that was just a cliché, something people said because it was a cute, funny thought. I didn’t remember one of our dogs ever chewing up slippers or shoes or anything like that. But Rosie couldn’t get enough of them. She latched right on mine like those slippers were going to get the best of her at any moment. Her little growls were so cute I couldn’t believe she would ever be intimidating to anything.
I loved when she snuggled up under the covers to go to bed or curled up on my feet while I was watching TV. I loved discovering new foods she enjoyed sharing with me and watching her attempt to bury the ones she didn’t like. When it was just the two of us, she was easy to talk to. I didn’t have to be left just with my own thoughts or attempt to untangle things in my brain by myself. She couldn’t answer or give her opinion, but at least I could talk things out. Every now and then she would tilt her head to the side or wag her tail, and I liked to think that was her way of trying it to be a part of the conversation. I never really knew what it meant, but every time she wagged her tail and her tongue slid out in response to Merry’s name, I chose to think of it as her giving her endorsement.
I wanted things to work out with Merry more than I ever could have imagined. Almost more than anything I’d ever wanted in the world. She was constantly on my mind, and when I wasn’t purposely thinking of her, she would find her way into my thoughts. I could be thinking about something completely different, and suddenly she would show up as a part of it.
Mom called to talk about her idea of renting a huge beach house for all of us to share for a couple of weeks toward the end of summer, and I immediately envisioned Merry stretched out in the sand beside me. I stumbled on an inexplicable marathon of Christmas movies during a late-night weekend movie binge, and instantly I could see Merry and me at my annual Christmas party, cuddling in the lights of the tree and sneaking as many trips under the mistletoe as we could.
I wanted her as part of my life. Not just now, but into the future. I could see us together, building something incredible. But something held me back. I still felt like keeping her at a distance, allowing her to maintain her space as much as she wanted, was still a good plan. It was what I promised her and what she agreed to. I figured if anything changed, she would let me know. That meant I still hung on to my hope. If there was even a hint of a chance that one day she would forgive me, I would hang on to that hope and keep going. It gave me a boost every time I saw her walking around the complex or sitting under her tree having lunch or reading.
That’s what I’d come to think of it as. Merry’s tree. I don’t know if I’d ever actually noticed that tree before she came to work at the company. Of course, I knew it was there. But I just didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. Now I noticed it every time I walked out of the building. My eyes immediately went to it, and I searched the area around its thick trunk to see if she was sitting there. Some days she had files and papers spread out around her and her tablet propped against her thighs. Other times she was sitting on a blanket eating her lunch either with her brother or while reading a book. Sometimes she was just leaned against the tree, her face turned up into the sunlight as she took a few minutes for herself in her busy day.
A week after getting Rosie, she had officially stolen the hearts of everyone at work. The entire crew was completely obsessed with her, and I had to bring her around to let her to see everybody at the start of my day. First thing in the morning, I brought her to each of the offices to visit with everybody, let her spend some time snuggling with Mom while I got my coffee, ate breakfast, or handled some phone calls. Then I reclaimed what she affectionately referred to as her grand-dog and brought her into my office. She had her own bed and an assortment of toys that kept her busy, but her favorite time of day was lunch.
When the middle of the day hit, I took my food and brought her out to run around by the pond. She loved to splash the edge of the water and jump up to try to catch the bugs that fluttere
d up from the surface. When I was done eating, our tour of visitation brought us to the garages where she was lavished with more attention from the crew. That day, I spent some time with Darren and Dad, then put Rosie on her leash for my daily determined attempt to make her walk like a normal dog.
She was actually doing better, and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel where she would finally accept her occasional need to wear her leash. We were heading back up to the office, and I glanced over at Merry’s tree. She hadn’t been there when we first left for lunch, but now she was. She and Brandon were eating box lunches again, and he said something that made her laugh. I wanted to just stop and listen to it for a while. Her laugh was one of the best sounds in the world. She glanced up and noticed me. I waved, and Merry grinned and smiled back.
My heart swelled in my chest. We were making progress. Maybe things would be okay.
36
Merry
Being pregnant changed everything. That seemed like an incredible understatement and a fairly stupid thing to even comment on considering being pregnant meant I was literally growing another human being inside my body. While it was still difficult sometimes to wrap my head around the idea of there actually being another person developing inside me, a person who would one day be born and go out into the world to affect other people, that was something I’d understood from the very beginning. I knew when I saw the two pink lines on the positive pregnancy test I was going to have a child. At least, the idea was starting to form in my head.
I knew it for certain after I sent Olivia to the store to buy one of every single type of pregnancy test she could find so I could have a panel of results rather than just one. Maybe I was that one person out of however many who got the false positive. That was a thing, right? There were tests that malfunctioned, and it was possible it could tell me I was pregnant when I really wasn’t. Or was it false negatives that were the possibility?
It didn’t really matter, because while that one test might have been a dud and given me the wrong answer, the other twelve I took throughout the day that day weren’t going to be. And they all agreed with the first one. I had a consensus… I was going to be a mother. In that instant, my life changed forever. I knew I was going to have a baby, and one day that baby would grow up. He or she would affect other people in the world. They would make friends. Fall in love. Hurt people. I wasn’t too fond of the idea of that last one, but it was an inevitability. I was just going to have to do my best to raise my child well and hope to keep the hurt to a minimum.
My thoughts about my current existence changed. My thoughts about my future changed. My thoughts about my relationships and potential relationships changed.
All that I was ready for. It kind of went without saying those things couldn’t stay the same after I found out I was carrying a child. But it was all the other things I wasn’t really anticipating. And those might have been hitting me just as hard. After all, it was easier, possibly borderline delusional, but easier, to compartmentalize emotions and not let myself think about anything too far into the future than it was to ignore feeling tired, always having to pee, and discovering new and odd things about my body on a near-daily basis.
Today’s discovery was that if I hung upside down for more than ten seconds, I felt like I was going to pass out. It wasn’t even an extreme hang. I hadn’t strapped myself into huge boots and dangled myself from the closet rod to adjust my spine. I just lay down on my bed, propped my legs up on the wall, and flipped my head back over the edge of the bed. It was something I’d done a million times in my life, a position I assumed when I was really thinking about something.
Not anymore. It took only a matter of seconds before black dots started dancing in front of my eyes and I felt woozy. Olivia saw me press one hand over my eyes and reached out to grab my hand and help me right myself on the mattress.
“You can’t hang like that,” she told me. “Your body is sending all your blood to the baby to help it grow, so if you do that what’s left is going to rush to your head and there won’t be any left for anything else.”
“Selfish baby,” I muttered. I instantly felt guilty and rubbed where my belly would eventually be. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, Little Bean. I’m sure you are a very kind and generous baby.”
“Little Bean?” Olivia asked. “Are we trying out celebrity-inspired names? Unique and unisex so it works either way?”
“No,” I told her. “That’s not going to be its name. But I felt like I had to have something to call it. Then I saw it today and it just looked like a little bean to me.”
“That’s right. Today was your first ultrasound. Did you get pictures?” Olivia asked.
She sounded so excited, and I gestured toward the nightstand where I’d set the strip of black-and-white images. My best friend squealed as she scooped it up and looked at it.
“Do you have any idea what you’re looking at?” I asked.
“Of course I do. I’ve looked at all the ultrasounds for my nieces and nephews,” she told me.
“Well, good, because I didn’t. The image came up on the screen, and I just stared at it, not having any idea what I was seeing. Do you think that means something?” I asked.
“It means ultrasounds are really blurry and hard to see anything, especially when you’re still as early as you are,” she said.
“Or maybe that I’m already destined to be an inadequate mother because I couldn’t even distinguish my own embryo from anything else,” I commented.
“Don’t even start that. The only reason I can tell what’s in there is because my siblings have a lot of kids. I learned.” I turned my head to stare up at the ceiling again. “All right. Spill. What are you really thinking about?”
“He waved at me,” I said.
Olivia let out a groan and toppled backward on the bed. I couldn’t really blame her. This was not a new conversation. I spent a good portion of my time now moaning about Quentin to Olivia. And my best friend, bless her, was getting tired of it. She didn’t say it, and I knew she never would. She was taking her role as my support system and confidant during this whole thing very seriously, and I knew she wanted to be there for me. But there was only so much she could cover her exasperation when I started talking about him… again.
“Is that it?” she asked.
“It was during lunch. He was walking his puppy up from the garages, and he smiled and waved. It was a genuine smile, like he wanted to come over and talk to me. But he didn’t. He just went on by. Brandon was with me, and he’s already told me I should maybe give everything with Quentin a second chance. He looked at me like he was waiting for me to get up and chase after him or something.”
“And you didn’t?” Olivia asked.
There was a slight note of sarcasm in her voice, and I scoffed at her.
“I just sat there watching him. Waiting for him to turn around and come back to sit with me. Can you even believe that? I was sitting there under a tree, holding my sandwich like I was on the front cover of some time-warp family magazine, hoping his puppy would break free from him to come steal it so he’d have to run over.”
Finally, Olivia sighed. She reached over and smacked me on the thigh with the back of her hand.
“Just talk to him. That’s the only thing that’s going to make anything better. You have to talk to him,” she said.
“I know.”
I let out a long breath, and she opened her eyes a little wider like she was expecting me to say more.
“And?”
“I will. On Monday. I’ll go to his office and I’ll talk to him and tell him about Little Bean,” I told her.
“How?” she asked.
I turned my head to look at her, my eyebrows furrowing together.
“‘Quentin, I’m pregnant.’ What do you mean how?” I asked.
“Your plan is seriously just walk into the man’s office and just blurt out that you’re carrying his child? Don’t you think you should have more of a lead into t
hat? Somewhat of an approach so you aren’t blindsided by what he might say?”
“How am I supposed to prepare for what he might say?” I asked. “I have literally no idea how he’s going to react.”
“That’s why you have to have an approach,” Olivia told me. “Cut him off at the pass. Rather than him being the one who gets to react badly, and you haven’t responded to it, come up with a way to tell him that covers all your bases first. That way if he’s going to have a negative reaction, you’ve already said everything so he doesn’t have to say it to you again.”
“All right,” I said. “That actually makes sense. I guess I’ll tell him it wasn’t something I was expecting, but it’s happened, and we have to deal with it.”
“That’s a little bit aggressive,” she said.
“You’re probably right. What about I tell him about the baby, then say it’s both our faults, not just his. I’m not blaming him for anything or saying he did anything wrong. We both willingly slept together, and neither one of us made the decision to stop because we didn’t have a condom. So, we’re both equally responsible,” I suggested.
“I mean, that’ll get the job done,” Olivia said. “It’s not exactly the gentlest or most meaningful of ways to tell a man he’s going to be a father. And you left out one important thing.”
“What?” I asked.
“How you feel about him,” she said.
“I don’t need to talk about that right now,” I told her. “That’s really not the important thing. He needs to know about the baby and not have anything else clouding his thoughts.”
“Anything you say,” Olivia told me. “As long as he knows about the baby, you can deal with everything else some other time.”
She saw right through me. She knew I had a hard time talking about my feelings and would have no idea how to even approach that conversation. But she was right. We could do this one step at a time. First, we talk about Little Bean. We figure out what we’re going to do about that, and then we go from there.
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