by Hart, Staci
“I don’t like Theodore.”
Amelia’s face was as flat as a pancake. “I saw you two together. You like him.”
I shifted on my stool. “No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” she insisted. “And he likes you, too. I’m just saying, it might be harder to resist that than you think.”
“I thought you wanted me to move in with him.”
“I do. I just also want you to fall in love with him so we can be sisters-in-law.”
Rin shook her head. “I still can’t figure out how Amelia was the first of us to get married, and Katherine will be the first to have a baby. It’s like we’re living in Backward Land.”
“A baby,” Val said, smiling. “It just really hit me. You’re gonna have a tiny little baby with tiny little hands and tiny little toes.”
“You’re gonna get big and round and gorgeous,” Amelia added, smiling wistfully.
“I bet it has dark hair, a fuzzy little head,” Rin mused.
“Hopefully I don’t develop gestational diabetes or anemia. Or preeclampsia,” I said. “I have a lot of research to do before my doctor’s appointment. I’ll need to sign up for childbirth classes and a tour of the hospital. I’d really like to see a female reproductive diagram, too.”
“Sign Theo up, too. He said he wanted to go to everything,” Amelia reminded.
My frown was back. Because the thought of him suffering through The Miracle of Life with me made that twisting ache in my chest tighten again. I’d bet he wouldn’t even flinch at the sight of childbirth.
The thought was oddly appealing.
“Well,” I started, “I guess I’ll accept his offer.”
Amelia clapped, her smile bright and bursting at the seams. “I’m going to be right there with you the whole way. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” I assured her.
And with a healthy dose of research, that would cease to be a lie.
5
Modern Man
Theo
Tommy’s smirk sent an urge through me to pop him in the nose.
“Don’t look at me like that, asshole,” I warned.
“You sly fucking dog. You slept with Katherine. I wasn’t entirely sure she liked anything outside of the Dewey decimal system and late fees. Never mind you.”
“Well, we’re both full of surprises. Somehow, you convinced Amelia to marry you.”
“And God help us all if she figures out she’s too good for me.” He sat in an armchair, draped regally on the article of furniture, effectively turning it into a throne. “I need to know how this went down and why the fuck you didn’t tell me.”
With a sigh, I sat on the couch, leaning to rest my elbows on my knees. “I’m not sure how it went down. She said I smelled good, talked about pheromones. It was the hottest, strangest pickup I’d ever been subjected to. We went back to her place, and I spent the night. And in the morning, she informed me that it was a one-time thing and asked me not to tell anyone. I’ve been hounding her ever since, but she hasn’t returned a single call or text. The last thing I thought I’d find when I opened my door was her. And the last thing I thought she’d say was what she said.”
Tommy shook his head. “A baby. You’re having a baby.”
“Technically, she is,” I said, repeating her observation. “But yeah. A baby.”
“You’re gonna be a dad,” he noted quietly.
For a moment, we sat under the silent weight of that word. Dad. Father. Something we had never known and had no context for. Something we had always wanted and could never have. And now, I had to fill that role as best I could with nothing to guide me but the idea of what a father should be.
I wouldn’t fail. I wouldn’t let either of them down.
My hand moved to my lips, scrubbed my jaw. “There’s more,” I admitted.
His head tilted curiously.
I drew a thick breath and let it out. “I like her.”
His eyebrow rose, just one.
“I don’t know what it was or how it happened. But something happened. Five weeks, she’s been avoiding me. Five weeks, I’ve thought of nothing but her. Last week, Ashley Fairview practically unbuckled my pants in a meeting, and I was completely uninterested. I think Kate broke me.”
Now it was disbelief, written all over his face in black Sharpie. “You’ve been trying to get Ash to pay attention to you for years.”
“It’s like she could smell that I was off the market. I didn’t even realize it myself.”
“And I don’t know how you’re getting away with calling her Kate, but kudos. Though pissing her off probably won’t help your cause.”
“It’s because the girl I took home was no Katherine. I don’t know how to explain it, Tommy. She was just…different. Softer. Lighter. And anyway, I think she doesn’t mind Kate as much as she lets on.”
“Well, she calls you Theodore. Ma doesn’t even call you Theodore.”
I huffed a laugh. “I’ll take Theodore over Teddy.”
Tommy watched me, puzzled and amused. “The last guy who called you Theodore caught a fat lip.”
“I dunno what to tell you, Tommy. I think I like it.”
“Man,” he said with the shake of his head, “you really do like her.”
“I know. And now…now she’s…God, I can’t even say it.” I cupped a hand over my eyes and squeezed, pressing my temples, looking for relief. “I’ve gotta figure out how to get her to move in.”
“She’s a loner, Theo. She needs space, quiet. Boundaries. You really think her living here is a good idea?”
“She’s carrying my baby. Yeah, I think her living here is a good idea. I think it’s the only idea. I want to know her, and I want her to trust me. I want her to stay, because if she doesn’t or if she changes her mind…if she leaves? I don’t want to lose the chance to father my child. And I don’t want to miss the opportunity to be with Kate.”
That eyebrow, which had returned to its resting state, spiked again. “You’re gonna trap her into a relationship with a pregnancy? How modern.”
“A what?” came a sleepy voice from behind me.
Tommy sighed but didn’t say anything. I turned to find our mom shuffling into the room.
My heart climbed up my throat and lodged there.
“Have a good nap, Ma?” I asked, hedging.
“Mmhmm,” she hummed, blinking slow as she rounded the couch. “Did I hear someone say pregnant? One of Amelia’s friends?”
Tommy and I exchanged a look.
“Yeah,” he answered.
I swallowed.
“Which one? The tall one, the curvy one, or the strict one?”
Tommy’s smile tilted up on one side. “The strict one.”
I shot daggers at him.
“Ha, how about that?” she said as she settled into the couch.
“Ma,” I started softly, “there’s something I need to tell you.”
At that, she chuckled. “Don’t tell me it’s yours.”
My throat clamped shut. Tommy’s smirk rose. Ma’s face fell.
“Teddy,” she warned gently, “I am not as healthy as I used to be. Please don’t give your ma a heart attack.”
I took her hand in mine, feeling the tremor through every bone in my fingers. “We got together once, a few weeks ago. She was just here to tell me the news.”
Her eyes widened, her free hand moving to her lips. For a moment, I watched her as her eyes filled with tears. Her lips were hidden behind her fingers, her face pinched with emotion.
Dread crept over me.
She’d be angry with me. Furious for being irresponsible. Upset for bringing a child into a home that wasn’t stable, that wasn’t filled with love. Because she knew that pain after being abandoned by my father.
We all knew that pain.
I’d loaded a dozen arguments, all the ways I’d make it right, all the things I’d do to make sure that history wouldn’t repeat itself. I wouldn’t abandon Katherine, and I wouldn
’t abandon my kid. And I’d make sure she knew it.
I’d do everything in my power to make my mother proud.
When her hand fell away, it wasn’t anger I found.
Her smile hit me square in the heart.
“Oh, Teddy. You’re gonna be such a good dad.”
I found myself in her arms, hanging on to her with relief and gladness. “I’m gonna take care of her, Ma.”
“I know you will, honey. I know you will.” She didn’t let go until I did. “You’ve been taking care of us since always. I put too much on you when your dad left, let you take on too much.”
“Don’t do that, Ma,” I said quietly. “I wanted to help. The thought of you having to do any more than you already were woulda killed me. Plus, I like folding laundry.”
“And cooking,” Tommy added helpfully.
Ma cupped my cheek, her eyes brimming with tears. “You are a giver, honey. The most loyal, the most dependable—”
“Hey,” Tommy joked.
She laughed. “Teddy, I know you’ll do right by her. I’m just so happy!”
She flung herself into my arms again, and I closed my eyes against my emotion.
I’d been granted a chance to rewrite my past, erase my pain by providing a future for my child.
And that was an opportunity I’d take gladly.
6
Destinations and Doorways
Katherine
5 weeks, 4 days
The squeak of the cart wheel echoing in the expanse of the silent Rose Room was blasphemy.
I cursed Eagan for giving me this one. He’d probably done it on purpose.
My lips flattened, and I picked up my pace. The squeak picked its pace up and its pitch, too. The library patrons looked up from their tomes with accusatory glares.
I decided then to make sure Eagan got stuck on card catalog organization. In addition, I decided to shuffle them before he got started.
My anxiety eased marginally once I was through the room and into a quieter, less traveled part of the library. I wound through mazes of shelves, towering sentinels of knowledge containing countless words, the results of millions of hours of combined work, of strategy and planning, of research and thought.
What lived in these rooms was more valuable than all the riches in the world.
When I pulled to a stop in front of my destination and the squeak ceased, the quiet wrapped around me, a cocoon of sound, heavy and warm. And I took to my task.
Someone had been busy researching Mesopotamia. I had stacks of books about Babylon, Gilgamesh, and Sargon and the Akkadians. Gods and myths, legends that had spawned stories to be retold in religions all across the world. As I shelved a few and wheeled the noisy cart around the corner, I imagined what the reader might have been doing. Writing a paper for school perhaps. Or researching to write a novel. Maybe a fantasy with roots in history. Or, —even more impressive—they’d just wanted to learn for the joy of learning.
I smiled at the prospect. There was nothing I found more appealing than a person who loved to learn.
When I reached my next shelf, my smile faded. Someone had put books back incorrectly. Not only were they in the wrong section of the library—we were in nine hundred, geography and history, and these belonged in the three hundreds under social sciences and folklore—but they were flipped upside down.
Eagan, I’d put money on it. I’d bet he’d set the whole thing up, that lawless bastard.
With a magnificent scowl, I cleaned the shelf up. What Eagan didn’t know—and what I’d never tell him—was that fixing the shelf actually sent a shot of dopamine and adrenaline through me.
There was little I enjoyed as much as putting things in their place.
It had been three days since I discovered my uterus was occupied, three days since Theo asked—demanded?—that I move in. He wasn’t wrong. I knew it would be easier together than apart, especially with everyone moving on. If things were the way they used to be, maybe it’d be different. Because it used to be me and my friends and no one else. We’d have raised the embryo together.
Don’t get me wrong—I was happy for them. They’d all found exemplary men, and the progression was natural. But I found myself unexpectedly mourning the idea of the four of us essentially sharing a baby.
I brushed the thought away and shifted it to reality. Being so deeply alone and pregnant was not ideal. As much as I loved solitude, I was unused to it. Our house had always been full. Someone had always been home. Now it was as silent as a tomb, and as lively as one, too.
But the thought of living with strangers was enough to make me wildly uncomfortable.
As I shelved a book about the Assyrians, I considered the man who would father my child, as I had so many times over the last few days. Really, I’d been thinking about him far longer than that. Since that first night. The only night.
I couldn’t say I didn’t know what it was about him that struck me. I knew every reason and had cataloged each one in detail and in stone. His physique alone was enough to make a heterosexual woman—any heterosexual woman—offer herself up like a filet mignon, stripped and seared and raw in the middle. But when coupled with his quick wit, persistence, and his body chemicals, I was helpless to resist.
Which was the foundation of my problem.
He made me feel reckless. Thoughtless. He robbed me of inhibition and denied me of choice though not by his own design. It was simply a fact that resided in the space between us. The way he kissed me claimed me.
And I wasn’t interested in being claimed. Especially by a man who I’d unwittingly given control.
One night had been enough to push my boundaries into spaces I wasn’t comfortable in. In the moment, it felt like relief, release, and for that moment, I unclenched my grip and let go, and I floated away in the currents of him. But when I’d realized I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet, I’d scrambled to find it again.
And that meant staying away from Theodore Bane like a recovering alcoholic stayed away from Wild Turkey—with willpower, longing, and a touch of regret.
What I needed was a relationship built on equality and partnership. Passion had no place in my life because passion was unpredictable.
My parents, for example, were passionate creatures. They were also the most unpredictable humans I’d ever known. They loved each other—anyone could see that with little more than a glance in their direction—but they were also unstable.
Case in point: they had been married and divorced four times.
To each other.
In their defense, they were never hostile. I had never once seen them fight, not in the traditional sense of the word. They would have discussions in voices somehow both firm and soft. My mother would consult her tarot cards and burn red candles and fall asleep with rose quartz on her chest and sandalwood burning on her nightstand. My father hadn’t cut his hair since sometime in the late seventies, and the scent of patchouli clung to him like he exhaled it—the oil used to mask the aroma of cannabis, which he smoked often and in large quantity.
They were gentle, peaceful people who made every decision with their hearts rather than their heads. Mom taught yoga classes. Dad played bass in a cover band. And somehow, their genetic mix had made me. Even though they didn’t understand me, they accepted me with all the grace they contained, which was a lot.
But what they hadn’t given me were the boundaries I so desperately needed. I had no bedtime. I could choose what I wanted for dinner. There were no rules, which, to most kids, would have been some version of heaven.
For me, it was a veritable hell.
So I made my own rules. In bed by ten. Up at six thirty. Meals planned with food groups and nutritional value in mind. If I didn’t wash the sheets, they wouldn’t have been washed. If I didn’t sit Mom down to plan meals and if I didn’t physically accompany her to the grocery store, we would have survived on ramen and kombucha. When I was little, we had.
By the time I was twelve, I had a day planne
r for their schedules. Because if I didn’t remind them to be where they needed to be, they’d have been incredibly unsuccessful adults.
Honestly, even their small successes were debatable and largely contingent on me.
Alongside the reversal of dynamic, we just didn’t understand each other. I thought they believed me to be just a little different, just a little odd. But to cover their bases, Mom took me to spiritual healers in the hopes they would fix me, make me more like them. Read my tea leaves to search for some truth to connect us when we were so deeply separated. Pulled tarot cards for me regularly, which she took for gospel.
I took them for nothing more than a deck of cards with pretty pictures on them.
I believed in what I could see. In science and fact, not faith. Extreme emotions made me uncomfortable and uneasy, and I avoided them at all costs. My parents had them in abundance, and every time one presented itself, it would deplete my emotional resources. They left me drained, left me feeling tired, left me folding in on myself, retreating into my room with music and a book and the still calmness of my sanctuary. Refused emotion in place of logic. Observed rather than participated.
Emotions were exhausting, and I had no practical use for them.
But Theo inspired extreme emotions in me.
My brow furrowed as I wheeled around another shelf, scanning the spines for my destination. I wondered how sharing space with him would end, knowing I had no control over my brain’s traitorous chemicals beyond keeping a safe distance. If I couldn’t smell him, I wouldn’t want him. It seemed fairly simple. I wondered if some essential oil might help, something potent. Like menthol or maybe something stronger. Like gasoline.
He’d accepted my request to stay uninvolved, and I trusted him to uphold that request. I lived my life within the bounds of rules, and if Theo respected that, everything would be fine. We would cohabitate for the sake of our baby. He and I would provide that stability that I’d always wished for as a child, the structure and dependability of consistency. Because in his way, he seemed much more like me than I’d realized on first glance. We wanted the same things.