Well Suited

by Hart, Staci

  “Worse. Much worse.”

  Val nodded, though her lips smiled small. “Then you know this is the right thing. It’s just not going to be easy.”

  My shoulders fell, my body curling in on itself. My hand shifted absently to my belly. “There has to be a way to make it more bearable.”

  “Of course there is,” Rin said with a smile of her own. “With rules. Lists. Research. Planning.”

  The mention of my favorite things lifted my spirits marginally. “What about the unpredictable? What about him?”

  “Well, you have rules with him, right?” Val asked.

  “Yes, but today I wanted to betray them. We were sitting there in the doctor’s office with my naked ass stuck to the exam table, and I wanted him to kiss me. I thought he was going to, too. But then…well, he didn’t, and that was somehow infinitely worse than if he had.”

  “Maybe you need to bone him out of your system,” Val offered.

  My jaw clenched, lips flattening. “That will only make things worse.”

  One of her brows climbed. “Oh, really? Because I seem to remember you offering us that advice at one point or another.”

  My brows knitted together so tight, they almost touched. “That was different.”

  “How so?” she countered. “Seems to me that your body knows something your brain hasn’t figured out yet. So give in to those hormones and pheromones and whatever other mones you’re a slave to. Put rules on it if you’re afraid of getting attached. Give in and get control.”

  The sense she made annoyed me. “Well, for starters, none of you were pregnant and living with the father. Who, might I add, is a veritable stranger. There are too many red flags to count.”

  “I’m just saying, I think you should consider it. You’re into him. So, scratch the itch. Put rules on the whole thing to make yourself feel better. You’re having a baby. You’re moving in with him. Do you really think you can resist?”

  “After today, no. That’s my problem.”

  “Then figure out how to have your proverbial Theo cake and eat it, too.”

  For a moment, I let myself wonder if it were possible. Maybe there was a way to control it, some perimeters I could establish to help keep myself safe from losing emotional control.

  It was too much to even consider.

  “One thing at a time,” I said definitively. “First, the embryo. So far, everything is on track. I hate that I was overwhelmed by today. But there was something about hearing and seeing and the reality of it all that caught me off guard. I think that’s really my fear—this is only the beginning of events that will catch me off guard. I need a contingency plan.”

  Amelia perked up. “I can help with that. One of the things my therapist had me do to overcome my anxiety in public was to recite the ABCs.”

  I frowned. “The alphabet?”

  “No—acknowledge, breathe, and connect. Acknowledge what’s making you anxious, breathe through it, and connect.”

  “Connect with what?”

  She shrugged. “Anything. The ground, something solid, or with yourself and the acknowledgment. It’s almost acceptance. But really, labeling the thing itself is sometimes enough. For instance, when Theo gets in your space, acknowledge the fact that you want to ride him like a cowgirl.”

  Laughter burst out of Val. “Or a reverse cowgirl, if you’re feeling sassy.”

  “I hate that there’s logic in what you’re saying. I really do.” I tried to smooth the pout off my face, but it didn’t work.

  “How’s your research coming?” Rin asked, changing the subject like the saint she was. “I saw the stack.” She nodded to the shelf next to the couch in the living room, which was stuffed haphazardly with the top-rated books on pregnancy and early childhood.

  “It’s going well. I’ve gotten through four already, and I have notes. I’m annoyed that I didn’t ask the doctor any of my questions. I’d prepared them specifically for the appointment.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Amelia asked.

  “Because I’d just heard the baby’s heartbeat, and I had the sonogram in my hand. It took everything I had not to cry, never mind recall the questions I had.” I shook my head. “I don’t even recognize myself. I have lost all control over my thoughts and emotions, and I hate it. I hate it so much.” My voice was raw again, my emotions surging in an epic flail and flex of power.

  Traitors.

  Rin said softly, gently, “But that’s life. That’s living. That’s growing, Katherine. Even how you feel right now will change. It’s fluid, and sometimes, it’s unpredictable. There’s only one way to survive.”

  I met her eyes, silently begging her for the answer.

  “You have to find a way to be flexible.”

  My eyes narrowed.

  “Hear me out,” Rin started. “There’s never just one way to get from one point to another, right?”

  “Debatable. The shortest distance between two points is a line.”

  She gave me a look. “Let’s say you want to go from work to home. There’s one route that’s the fastest, sure. But what if the subway station is closed?”

  “Why would the subway station be closed?”

  Rin waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. It’s hypothetical.”

  I frowned. “I’ve never seen a closed station.”

  Val sighed. “There was an accident on the tracks, and none of the trains are running.”

  My frown eased. “Okay. Continue.”

  “So,” Rin said, “how would you get home?”

  “Probably a taxi. I could walk to a different station, depending on where the accident was and if the other lines were up. Or a bus. I could take a bus.”

  “There you go. Flexible. It’s about problem solving in the moment rather than depending on a single plan. You were flexible on finding out you were pregnant.”

  I considered that for a moment. “Huh.”

  “It’s accepting what has happened and making a new plan. Really, it’s more efficient this way, if you think about it. You don’t waste time worrying or planning for things that might or might not happen. You allow things to happen as they come,” Rin said.

  “Flexible,” I muttered.

  Val chimed in with a waggle of her brows. “I bet you were super flexible when Theo took you home.”

  “And look at what that got me. Knocked up.”

  Val shrugged. “Maybe being flexible with Theo again will get you something even better than a baby.”

  “It’s not Let’s Make a Deal. I’m not picking behind one of three doors for a prize.”

  “I mean, you kinda are,” she insisted.

  “Anyway,” Rin said with a pointed look in Val’s direction, “just problem solve in the moment. Take a minute to weigh out the outcomes and consequences. And then, jump.”

  Val lit up. “Jump. Be brave.” She reached into her bag at her feet, returning with her red lipstick. “Once upon a time, we all four went to Sephora and left with tubes of red lipstick and a pact to be brave. We’ve held up our end. Now it’s your turn.”

  I stared at the lipstick, not wanting to meet her eyes.

  “We do so solemnly swear,” she recited, “to use this shiny little tube of power to inspire braveness, boldness, and courage. We promise to jump when it’s scary, to stand tall when we want to hide, to scream our truth instead of whisper our fears. May we be mistresses of our destinies, and to hell with anyone who tries to tell us otherwise.”

  Hear, hear, Amelia and Rin chimed, smiling.

  Val handed me her lipstick with all the hope and faith in the world written in her smile. “Be the mistress of your destiny.”

  I took the shiny tube, staring at my stretched-out reflection on the metal surface. It was as disorienting and distorted as I felt. But her words rang true. They were etched on my heart and had been since we first uttered them.

  “I don’t trust myself,” I admitted.

  “Well, that’s why we’re here,” Val said. “And so is Theo. Lean on
us. We won’t let you down.”

  I squirmed against the discomfort of being reliant on others. I had always been self-sufficient, and now…well, I couldn’t even choose what I wanted for lunch without potentially crying. I could count the number of times I’d ever cried on two hands, and seven-tenths of those had happened since I peed on that damnable stick.

  And then there was the matter of Theo.

  I’d wanted him to kiss me today. I wanted him to kiss me right freaking now. I wanted to throw my rules and rationality out the window.

  And though I knew it was a horrible, potentially catastrophic idea, a sizable percentage of me didn’t care.

  10

  If I Have My Way

  Theo

  8 weeks, 6 days

  My office was silent but for the scratch of my pen in my checkbook.

  Pay to the order of John Banowski in the amount of Ten Thousand and 00 cents.

  The scribble of the pen as I signed. The rip-crack of perforated paper tearing.

  It had been nearly six years since John Banowski first showed up on my doorstep with an open palm and a smile to rival the devil himself.

  I couldn’t call him my father. I couldn’t call him anything but a waste of skin.

  Six years ago, Tommy had broken out, hit number one on the New York Today bestseller list. A week later, the doorbell rang to reveal the man who’d abandoned us twenty years ago. It didn’t matter that I barely remembered him from my childhood—at least not as much as I remembered his absence. The second I’d opened the door, I knew exactly who he was. His height alone was the first clue—few people could look me straight in the eye other than Tommy. Dark hair, the same jaw I saw in the mirror every morning, a smirk that was mine.

  Thank God Tommy and Ma hadn’t been home. I couldn’t imagine what his showing up twenty years late would have done to Ma. And Tommy…well, I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop him from disfiguring John if I’d tried to. Which I wouldn’t have.

  Especially when he asked for money.

  Demanded really.

  You see, when Tommy had gotten his first book deal, we’d sat down and made a series of decisions. Ma had just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and the last thing either of us wanted to do was expose her to the media. So we came up with an elaborate plan to smoke-screen our lives, to create an image for him. We changed our last names, covered up our meager beginnings in the Bronx, started fresh. And Tommy’d made a deal to fake date a famous actress in the months leading up to his first book release.

  Six years ago, John Banowski stood on my stoop, noting with calculated precision all the things we’d done so much to hide. The front we’d developed to keep her safe from the public eye had been endangered with the help of a medical bill that had made its way to him.

  He and Ma had never gotten divorced.

  Hard to divorce someone you couldn’t find.

  Of course, at the time, she couldn’t afford to divorce him, and then the prospect just drifted away. That bill was his leverage. His knowledge was a foot in the door. He knew we’d made the whole story about Tommy up, and he’d be the first to take it to the media.

  Unless I paid him.

  And with that bill in hand, he’d explained the ways he would systematically take us down.

  So, for six years, I had been writing a monthly personal check to keep Tommy and Ma safe from John Banowski’s designs. No one was to know. If Ma or Tommy found out, the deal was off.

  I’d do everything in my power to keep him away from them. Especially Ma. Tommy would kill him. Ma would just be devastated.

  It was so much easier to bear my past when I could pretend he never existed. That was one thing I had been sure of the second I shared air with the opportunistic trash pile. And it was a comfort I was determined to keep intact for my family.

  We hadn’t spoken a word since he showed up that day so many years ago. And as long as his checks came on time, I figured we wouldn’t.

  Which was exactly how I preferred it.

  The financial burden wasn’t a burden at all. Tommy paid me half a million a year to be his assistant, manager, and publicist, and I had no bills to speak of. The house had been paid for in cash, and Tommy took care of the utilities. Well, I took care of them. With his credit card. I didn’t go out, didn’t go on vacation, didn’t own a car—what’s the point in New York?—didn’t do much of anything other than work and take care of Ma.

  My only luxuries were my suits. Gorgeous custom suits, closets of suits, a sea of black and white and gray. My affinity for well-tailored suits could be traced back to my teens. We’d been running wild in the neighborhood—one of the guys we ran with had the big idea to vandalize all the bus stop ads, which, at the time, primarily featured Paris Hilton in a bikini with a hamburger the size of her head in her pretty little hand.

  But then we came to a stop devoid of bikinis or hip bones or the come-hither stares of a hotel heiress.

  It was an ad for TAG Heuer smack in the middle of Mount Eden, which on its own should have had an ad exec fired—nobody in fifty blocks could afford a TAG. But there he was, some good-looking guy in a suit that made him look like somebody. Somebody in a place full of working-class nobodies. He had dark hair like me, dark eyes like mine, his jaw set in determination, like he was about to make a million-dollar deal. The dim shade of my form reflected off the scratched-up, foggy plastic casing, superimposing me onto him.

  And that was when I’d known. Someday, I’d own a suit like that. Someday, I’d be somebody.

  I’d kept that promise to myself along with all the rest of them. Once I decided to do something, I did it. Once I declared I’d go after something, I got it.

  It was a knack of mine.

  I stuffed the lone check in an envelope and hastily addressed it, leaving his first name off—less questions if, for some reason, it was returned. And when it was done, I slipped it into my inside coat pocket and headed downstairs.

  Ma was in the kitchen, shuffling around the island with a plate in her hand. I frowned at her.

  “I was just coming to get you lunch,” I said, taking the plate.

  “I figured, but I don’t mind doin’ it myself.”

  “Well, I do. Come on. Come sit down.”

  She sighed but let me take her arm and deposit her on a barstool at the island. “How’s your day, honey?”

  “Fine,” I answered noncommittally as I pulled containers out of the fridge with prepped food. “What have you been doin’?” The Bronx slipped, as it sometimes did around her.

  “Readin’ a book Amelia gave me. It’s about a girl who time travels to Ireland during the rebellion. I think I’ve cried through half of it.”

  I shook my head. “That’s why I read nonfiction. Last thing I need is for a book to make me cry.”

  At that, she laughed. “Please, when have you ever cried? I’m not convinced you have working tear ducts.”

  I chuckled, plating her food and turning for the microwave.

  “I mean it. Even Tommy cried when he broke his arm that time at the basketball court.”

  “Ah, the great trashcan escape of ’02,” I said with a smile and a shake of my head.

  “Couldn’t blame him for crying. I almost fainted at the sight of his arm bent in the wrong direction. But you? You dislocated your shoulder riding your bike through that drainage tunnel and didn’t shed a tear. Never seen anything like it.”

  I shrugged. “Didn’t hurt that bad.”

  She made a derisive noise. “That’s a bald-faced lie, and you know it.”

  “Didn’t hurt bad enough to cry.”

  She sighed again, smirking as she changed the subject. “How’s Katherine feeling?”

  “Seems to be okay. I’m meeting her for lunch tomorrow.”

  At that, she smiled, a wily expression that sparked a glint in her eye. “Oh?”

  “Trust me, it’s not that glamorous.”

  “Oh,” she said as her face fell. “Still not interested?”r />
  Now it was my turn to sigh. “I told her I’d follow her rules, so I will. I’ll respect the hell outta her boundaries. I’ll respect them so good, she’ll be wishing I disrespected them.”

  A laugh. “I hope she comes around.”

  “Me too.”

  “Think you’ll end up together?”

  “If I have anything to do with it, I sure do. It’d be different if she refused me because she didn’t want me. But she does. I can feel it. She almost kissed me at the doc’s office. But that’s just the thing. We’re like magnets trying to get at each other through a sheet of plastic—not enough to stop the pull, but just enough to keep us apart.”

  “Think you’ll get married?”

  I snorted a laugh. “I’d settle for a kiss. Anything past that…well, I don’t even want to think about it until that door opens up. It’s currently locked tight.”

  “Dead-bolt tight?”

  “Nah, but she’s left the chain on.”

  She smiled. “She’s strict, huh?”

  “Rules make her feel safe. She likes control, and she’s in the middle of something she’s got no control over. Throw me in the mix?” I shrugged a shoulder. “Anyway, I have an unending well of patience.” I watched her for a second. “What’d you bring up marriage for?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Nothin’ more than that I know you, and the fact that she’s carrying your baby probably makes you feel a certain…obligation.”

  I frowned as the microwave beeped. “That’s not why I want her, Ma.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  I gave her a look and handed her the plate.

  “Well, that’s not exactly what I meant. It’s just that you have your own set of rules. I figured it bothered you not to have her locked down and the baby along with her.”

  “I knew the second I saw her that she was special. Different. I’m playing for keeps. But she doesn’t do this, Ma. She doesn’t even date, never mind cohabitate or have babies with somebody. A stranger, no less.”