by Karen Booth
“What, are we ten years old? Are we playing chicken with ‘I love you’? If you think it’s too soon, then we have no business having a baby.”
“Claire, come on. I know you’re freaked out, but this is great news. We’ll make it work.”
My frustration was getting the best of me. He didn’t understand the ramifications of what was happening, he’d never had to function for days at a time on minutes of sleep. He’d never had magic boobs that transform into rock-hard squirting footballs. He’d never played Barbie for so many hours that he began to have unforgivable thoughts about a certain doe-eyed doll and her closeted boyfriend, Ken.
“I just need some time.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Less than twelve hours into Operation Baby, Chris was already enjoying the hell out of it. By the time I came to bed, he was waiting for me with the goofiest look on his face, deliriously happy.
“Come here. Let me see you.”
I blushed. Even in my shell-shocked state, that was always my reaction when he extended an invitation to come to bed. “What? There’s nothing to see.” I climbed in and scooted closer to him while he put his arm around me, parking his other hand on my stomach. “I’m serious,” I pleaded. “There’s nothing to see.”
Pushing up on his elbow, he gazed into my eyes. “I know. I just want you close.”
This scenario was never part of my original teenage fantasy. Birth control was unnecessary when we went on our endless sex benders. I simply didn’t get pregnant. He swallowed me whole with the look on his face, his hold on me exponentially stronger now.
“I’m tired.”
“Of course you are,” he answered, his voice turning buttery.
I folded into a ball and turned my back to him—freezing, as usual. He bundled me up with his arms, curling his long body around mine and I sank into the heat radiating from his bare chest.
It was hard to believe that his faultless gene pool, beautiful and talented, had decided to make a baby with mine. Knowing him, he probably had exceptionally good-looking sperm, charming and smooth, mixing cocktails and making sexy, witty comments. I was sure my pushover eggs fell for the very first pick-up line, keenly aware that since they were a bit beyond their freshness date, they were damn lucky to have the attention.
I reached over and turned off the bedside lamp. “We have a lot to talk about.”
“We do.” His voice was quiet and calm. “But we don’t need to figure everything out right now. I know this isn’t what either of us planned, but I’ve always wanted to be a dad and you’re such an amazing mom. I feel great about us doing this.”
I rolled back to flatten my face against his shoulder, to smell him and feel his skin against mine.
He raked his hand through the tangles in my hair. “I really do love you.” He stirred me up, speaking softly in my ear. “I knew I was falling in love with you when we were on the island. I didn’t say the words because I didn’t want to scare you off.”
Whenever he spoke about scaring me off, or holding on to me, it felt odd, as if he had things turned around. Considering him and all he had to offer, it still felt unlikely that he’d ever choose me for real.
“I love you too. I do.” I pushed his floppy hair away from his face. “I’m scared though. It feels strange to be doing this when Sam’s nearly finished with school. I never saw myself starting over and having another child.” He rubbed my arm and I let my legs unfurl.
“When do you want to tell Sam?” he asked.
“Not for a while. Anything could happen in the next month or two, including a miscarriage.”
His body tensed.
I’d thought the night we told each other “I love you” would be all about passion, not babies and cold feet. Even so, there was no denying that when it was just the two of us, I felt like things were right.
* * *
He was still wearing his excited new daddy grin the next morning. I was relieved that Sam was using her Saturday morning wisely, sleeping in; she would’ve sensed that something was going on.
“I’m going for a run,” I said, finishing the morning dishes.
He held up his finger while he finished jotting his answer in the crossword puzzle. “Is that safe?”
“Yes, the baby’s the size of a peanut,” I whispered, not wanting Sam to overhear us.
“Okay, if you say so.” He eyed me with trepidation. “Can I take you to lunch today? I’m tired of being cooped up in the house.”
“What about our friend outside?”
“It’s lunch with my girlfriend. What’s he going to do?” He let out half a laugh. “Take a picture of me with my elbows on the table?”
“I’m glad you can have a sense of humor about this.”
Lunch was at a modern re-make of a diner that afternoon, with a young tattooed chef and waitresses with lots of piercings. Chris insisted on eating outside on the patio even though it made us easy prey for the photographer. He sat right next to me, with his arm slung over the back of my chair. Our shadow watched from his car across the street. I tried to ignore it. Chris was much better at it than me.
“What are we in the mood for today?” he asked, leaning closer and nuzzling my hair.
“I was thinking the bacon cheeseburger. The fries are insanely good here. I might need to save room for dessert though. They had strawberry shortcake on the specials board.”
He dropped his menu on the table. “No grilled chicken and salad? No tofu veggie scramble with a side of fat-free packing peanuts?”
“Hey, smart guy, I need to take advantage of my condition. It’s not every day I can pig out without the guilt.” I closed my menu, settled on the burger. “What about you?”
“I don’t know. Do you think I can get away with saying I’m eating for two?” He pooched out his flat belly and rubbed it. “Because I’m starving.”
The weather was temperamental, like it couldn’t decide what kind of day it should be. The sun would come out for a few moments and it felt amazing, my face drawn to the glow. Then it would retreat behind gray and purple clouds and the wind would start. I huddled and pressed myself into Chris when it became too cold to bear.
I was finishing my strawberry shortcake when he sent the waitress off with the check. He’d already made short work of an enormous piece of chocolate cake on top of a steak sandwich and chili cheese fries. He seemed fascinated by watching me eat.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked, licking whipped cream from the spoon. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s not polite to stare?”
He smiled and said nothing, but rather leaned over and totally laid one on me—soft and steamy. He hummed and grinned afterward, plucking his sunglasses up from the table.
“You know that’s going to end up on some trashy celebrity website,” I said.
“I don’t really care anymore.”
I looked into his face, seeing my own silhouette in the reflection of his silver aviators, marveling at how easily he plunged me into sensory overload—his sweet and musky smell, the sound of his voice, the sensation of his skin against mine. Sometimes it felt as if I could disappear into him and it wouldn’t matter. I would still be happy.
“Ready?” he asked.
“I need to pick up a few things from the drug store across the street.”
“If you want your privacy, I can duck into the coffee shop. Our friend will most likely follow me.”
Luckily, I didn’t see anyone I knew in line while I discreetly held my folic acid tablets, Tums, and copy of Fit Pregnancy magazine. I did, however, recognize someone in the magazine rack. Chris was one of the sidebar images in People. The photo looked to be a few years old, his hair was longer. The headline promised an exciting bonus: an excerpt from the now bestselling book, Love, Destroyed.
Chris had lectured me about reading the tabloids, but I was curious after Elise’s book had come out and I’d looked online. Bloggers posted crazy and inaccurate details about what was supposedly in the Rolling
Stone article. I felt like screaming at the screen since I knew exactly what was in that story. The online gossip hounds voiced their opinions of Chris as if it all was fact, when it was entirely based in rumors. To my astonishment, people had no sense of boundaries when it came to the baby. There were countless theories about what really happened when they lost the pregnancy, none of it sympathetic to either Chris or Elise.
I sent him a text from the checkout and met him at the car.
On the way home, Chris stole the trick I use on Sam, where I bring up potentially uncomfortable subjects while driving. “I’m thinking we need to get you a new car.”
“By we, you mean you.” I shifted in my seat. “Nice try. I don’t want a new car.”
He was quiet, but I sensed he wasn’t going to give up so easily. When we turned into my neighborhood, photographer guy splintered off, probably for a late lunch and a pee break.
Chris pulled into the driveway and turned off the ignition. “Don’t you think this car’s a bit past its prime? I’m sure the airbags are completely insufficient.” He took my shopping bag from me.
I huffed as we walked inside. “I don’t care. I love my car. End of discussion.”
“End of discussion? I’m not twelve years old.”
“You’re not buying me a new car and you know I can’t afford one.”
“What if it’s to keep our baby safe?”
I let out a very distinct but nearly silent hiss. “Sam’s upstairs.” I pulled his hand and tugged him to the living room. “Don’t you think we should figure out some other things before we talk about a car?”
“Like what?”
“Uh, like where we’re going to live. Let’s start with that.”
“Well, I assumed we’d move everyone to LA. My house is much bigger and we can make the room next to the master bedroom into the nursery. We can redo the guest room for Sam. It’s twice as big as the room she has now.” He pulled a small red and white tin out of his pocket. “Mint?”
“Uh, no.” I shook my head, flabbergasted. “Please, continue.”
“We’ll need to send Sam to a private school but I’m sure I can pull some strings. I thought we’d put your office downstairs, across the hall from my music room and then we’ll see each other during the day. We’ll get a nanny so we can both work. It’ll be perfect.”
Wow. I blinked erratically. He’d already planned everything, without me. “Okay, well, that’s the exact opposite of what I was thinking. I don’t want to make Sam change schools for her senior year. And your house is the least baby-friendly place I can think of. There’s all of that glass and the pool.”
“Hey, Mom?” Sam called from the other room. “Where are you guys?”
I grabbed Chris’s arm. “In here, honey,” I yelled.
“There you are.” Sam was in jeans and a t-shirt, looking untidy and like she hadn’t tended to her curls. “The house was empty when I got up and I didn’t see a note.”
“Hey, Ms. Abby,” Andrew said, as he unexpectedly trailed Sam, eating out of a box of Wheat Thins and smiling like he’d just found out that looking at boobs makes you smarter. “Hey, Chris. What’s up man?”
“Not much, Andrew,” Chris replied, clearing his throat and hitting my leg with the back of his hand.
I didn’t say a word, hoping silence combined with my practiced mom-stare might make one of them crack. Sam and Andrew had had plenty of time alone in the house if Andrew had come over right after we left. There was a preponderance of messy hair and rumpled clothes between them, which was the norm for Andrew, but certainly not for Sam. Andrew’s permanent grin was beyond bothersome—he was a happy kid, but not that happy.
“What’ve you two been up to?” I asked, my eyebrows arching.
“Homework,” Sam blurted.
Andrew added, “Big calculus test on Monday.”
Chris couldn’t leave an ideal set-up alone. “Sounds like you lot have been hitting it pretty hard.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chris was being insanely cute about the baby thing, reading and looking up terms online with endless curiosity. It almost made me feel good about what we were doing.
“Are you learning a lot?” I asked, sneaking up behind him at my desk.
“I am. It’s amazing what your body’s going to do. I can’t believe there’s a part of you that can stretch this big.” He held his arms out in front of him and made a circle the size of a hubcap with his thumbs and index fingers.
I gulped, having forgotten about what was waiting for me after forty weeks of fat ankles and sore boobs. “That’s not right. Your hands are too big. It’s more like this.” I molded his fingers to make the circle less scary.
“Are you sure?” He returned to the computer. “I bookmarked a diagram that shows how big it gets.”
“That’s okay. I don’t need to see a picture.”
“I found a message board for first-time dads. I thought that’d be good for me. I want to make sure I do a good job.”
He turned and looked up at me before circling his arms around my hips. His adoration, seeming to grow by the minute, made me feel as if I’d eaten an entire tub of chocolate frosting—on a high from the sugar, but also like I’d completely overdone it.
With morning came my first real bout of nausea, but it wasn’t terrible, just enough to wake me. It was early, a few minutes after five, and Chris was dead asleep, breathing heavily into my face and conspiring with my brain to keep me awake.
The question of living arrangements weighed down my every thought. It was hard to see how we’d never agree. Then there was the commitment talk. We hadn’t gone there at all, not even close. Perhaps he felt that with a baby, the commitment was implied. It wasn’t like I wanted to get married; I only wanted to know his intentions, but that made me sound like my dad.
I crept into Sam’s room to wake her, beating her alarm clock by several minutes. I perched on her bed and studied her sweet face as she slept. She’d probably never thought she’d have a little brother or sister, our “little nipper” as Chris had already dubbed him or her.
When Sam was born, I was on autopilot, having been in the trenches for weeks over losing my mom. Labor and delivery just happened. I’d never felt as though I was participating. After she’d arrived, I longed to look at her like the moms did in the pregnancy books, but at the time, I felt as though I’d made the most irreversible choice ever. There was no way I could be responsible for another human being for the rest of my life.
That first night in the hospital had been awful. Sam couldn’t latch on to breastfeed. She fussed. I panicked. I was completely spent, no gas left in the tank. I rang the nurse, but they were short-staffed and must have forgotten me. All I’d wanted at that moment was my mom, to tell me what to do, to cradle Sam, to tell me everything would be okay. But she was gone, forever, and I’d never felt more alone.
Sam flailed her skinny newborn arms that night and I watched as her hand went to her face and she rooted around, squawking like a baby bird. Eventually, she found her three middle fingers and sucked them into her mouth.
She slept for the rest of the night comforting herself with her hand and I woke up to a lecture from the nurse about sleeping with her in my arms. I looked into Sam’s tiny red face, edged with the pink and white hospital stocking cap, and felt so scared, so horribly inadequate that I hadn’t been able to feed my own child. That was when I first knew that I needed Samantha much more than she needed me.
“Sam, honey, time to get up.” I gently rustled her arm.
She opened one eye and closed it, turning over on her side. “I hate Mondays.”
I waited before attempting to raise the dead again. “Time to hop in the shower.”
“I’m trying,” she whined. She pulled the covers over her head.
“Sam, honey, I have a question.” I chewed on my fingernail. “Were you and Andrew having sex in your room on Saturday afternoon?”
The lump under the covers didn’t move. “I’m a
wake now, if you’re wondering.”
“Good.”
The lump moved her hand and pushed the blanket away from her face. “What happens if I say yes?”
“I don’t want you to worry about what happens. I want you to worry about the truth.”
She scrunched back in bed, straightening the t-shirt that had twisted around her torso. “Yes.”
“Did you use a condom?”
“Of course. I’m not dumb.”
“Good, because not using one would be really dumb.” Lord knows you wouldn’t want to be knocked up, like your mother. “Is this the first time this has happened?”
She eyed me uncertainly. “It’s the first time at our house. We did it once in his car.” She sat up further in bed. “I think I messed up though.”
My breath caught in my chest. “Messed up?”
“Yeah.” She looked down again. “Andrew thinks I was a virgin. I couldn’t tell him the truth because he’d be mad. Especially if he found out when it happened.”
I sighed. “I can’t tell you what to do about Andrew. I think you know it’s not right to lie to him. Especially if you want your relationship to go anywhere.”
“Am I in trouble?” she asked. “I mean, for the sex in my room thing?”
I studied her face—her cheeks were an enviable shade of pink in the morning. “I don’t know yet. It’s better if you do it in the safety of our house but I don’t want you to think I’m giving you free rein to have sex whenever you want.” I groaned quietly. “Just don’t do it in his car again. It’s dangerous. Now get ready for school.”
Chris came downstairs soon after Sam left, shuffling his feet and rubbing his eyes. He looked irresistible, even with a pillow crease across his forehead.
“Can I convince you to come back to bed?” he asked, with an enticing rumble to his voice.
I peered up at him from behind my oh-so-sexy reading glasses, the latest sign that I was giving in to the nonsense of turning forty. “I don’t think I need any convincing, but I need to brush my teeth.”