I put the truck in park and flopped over into his lap as my stomach somersaulted. “I’m getting carsick,” I said. “Why do I have to learn this again?”
“Because I’ve gone all around town bragging about what a badass wife I have. She can move to New York City all by herself. She applied for a loan while working a full-time job, then started her own practice. She saves people’s pets on a daily basis. But always in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, ‘if only she could drive a manual.’”
I playfully pushed his chest. “Shut up.”
“Ooph.” He winced. “Easy, Sugar Ray.”
I laughed at his faux-pained expression and at the absurd idea that I could hurt him. “Sugar Ray?”
“The boxer, not the band.”
“You know they’re from Newport Beach?” I asked. “Tiffany claims she almost made out with the lead singer.”
“How does one almost make out?”
“Right?” I kicked my feet and giggled so hard that my eyes watered.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “I feel loopy from all the jerking around.”
He put a hand on my face, thumbing the apple of my cheek. “It’s good to see you laugh.”
It felt good to laugh. Not that Manning and I didn’t have fun. We’d gone drunk bowling a few weeks before and had shut down the alley before we’d come home and made love on every surface of the house. That had been fun. Regardless, fate’s dark cloud crept along with us, reminding us it wasn’t far away.
After another year of trying to have a child, Manning and I had decided to begin the adoption process. We’d been through a successful homestudy with an agency last year and had just received our third rejection from another birth mother. It turned out Manning’s past had hit us in the one place we hadn’t expected it to. Having a felony record didn’t exactly make us ideal candidates as parents.
As a last resort, we’d scheduled an appointment with my doctor to seriously discuss IVF.
I ran my fingers against the side of his scalp. His chest rumbled the way it sometimes did when I played with his hair. “You make me laugh,” I said. “You’re a good man, Manning.”
He nodded. “Because of you.”
I worried about what the rejections did to him since Manning had a history of beating himself up and blaming himself for things outside his control. Even though he’d remained optimistic, it was hard to forget all the strife he’d put us through thinking he didn’t deserve me. And now others were telling him he didn’t deserve to be a father. There was no way each rejection didn’t kill him just a little inside. He acted brave, but for nights after each of those phone calls, he loved me a little harder, and held me closer as we slept.
“They don’t know what they’re missing,” I said softly.
“I know. And I’m disappointed, because I really don’t want you to go through IVF.” He ran some of my hair through his palm, resting it over my breasts. “But it might be the only option left.”
“We’ll find our baby.”
“And it’ll be a lucky goddamn kid.”
Hearing him say that, my heart swelled. He’d come a long way since the days when he’d never let himself believe he deserved anything at all. I was grateful he’d finally found his hope in us. I wrapped my hand around his wrist and brought his palm to my lips. “Yes it will.”
“With a badass mom who can drive stick.”
“Point taken,” I said with a sigh. I grabbed the steering wheel to pull myself upright, but I sat forward too fast and a wave of nausea hit. Manning leaned in to kiss me as I covered my mouth and gagged.
“Jesus.” He drew away. “Way to kill a guy’s confidence.”
Shaking my head, I opened my door and leaned over the side. My stomach heaved as I prepared to throw up.
Manning slid over to rub my back. “I thought you were kidding about feeling sick.”
“I’m allergic to stick shift,” I said to the gravel.
“Aw, Birdy.” He massaged my shoulder from behind. “Since when do you get motion sickness?”
“I do sometimes. I told you about that one time as a kid when Tiffany took me on the pendulum carnival ride.”
“Yeah, but lots of people throw up after that.”
I eased into a sitting position when nothing came. “You think I’m faking to get out of learning to drive stick?”
He arched an eyebrow, teasing me. “I wouldn’t put it past you—but no. I was thinking something else.”
I scanned his face as I registered his meaning. Of course, it would’ve been my next thought if I ever left myself think it. I didn’t, though. After years of nothing, there was no point jumping to such an unlikely conclusion. “It isn’t anything but the car.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We’ve been trying too long,” I said, irritation creeping into my voice despite the fact that I’d just laughed until I’d cried. He and I had been through this before, most recently when I’d thought I’d missed my period, only to get it on the way home from buying a pregnancy test. “It’s not going to happen out of the blue.”
“Lake, honey. That’s exactly how it happens.” He took my hand, entwining our fingers. “Letting yourself want this, and hope for it, doesn’t mean it has to be heartbreaking when it doesn’t happen. It just means we have to keep pushing forward with all available methods. Not even for ourselves, but for the kid.”
I stared through the windshield, past our mailbox with the fading Summer Triangle he’d painted in red, into the thicket of trees across the street. Part of why I hated taking pregnancy tests was because with each negative result, I was disappointing Manning. He’d remained hopeful, while I’d only become more jaded. It wasn’t easy for me to wait for an outcome that never came, but over the years, I’d done a better job of mentally preparing myself. Manning seemed to think one day, the second pink line would magically appear.
“We talked about this when we started the adoption process,” I said. “We were supposed to stop wishing for a biological child.”
“Why can’t I want both?” he asked. “It’s not a crime to want this, Lake. You never lost hope in me, and look at us now.” He squeezed my hand and put it back on the shift. “Wasn’t it worth holding onto?”
I nodded with a sigh. It was just motion sickness—I didn’t get it often, but like everyone else in the world, I’d had it enough in my life to know what it felt like. The way Manning smiled warmly at me, though, I couldn’t help but give in. “All right. I’ll try to be more optimistic.”
“Think you can get us back up the driveway?”
“The sun might set before I do, but I’ll give it a go.”
After another twenty minutes on our own private carnival ride, I managed to get the car in front of the garage before I shut off the engine and jumped out.
A few steps toward the house, the dogs came running out to meet us. As I squatted to say hi to Altair, I detoured to vomit on the lawn.
“Shit.” Manning came up behind me as Vega tried to lick my face. “No, Vega,” he said, pulling her away by her collar. “Go in the house.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“I was talking to the dogs.” He waited until I stood, then put an arm around my waist. “But we better get you on the couch, too. I’ll find something for your stomach.”
Inside, Manning put chicken soup on the stove as I went to our bedroom. Still queasy, I put a small trashcan by the bed and pulled my hair into a ponytail. As I brushed my teeth, I paced the bathroom, trying to ignore my thoughts.
That pregnancy test I’d bought but never used? It was still in a drawer under my sink. Even though I’d hidden it in the back, I accidentally came across it now and then, and each time, my heart dropped. If nothing else, peeing on the thing and tossing it would be a good way to get rid of it. I rinsed my mouth, swiped the test from the drawer, and unwrapped it on my way to the toilet. Even though I’d used this brand a few times, my
nerves always got the better of me. I read the instructions to calm myself.
I was supposed to put the stick in a cup of urine—my first urine of the day—but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to be positive. I peed directly on it, then set it on the bathroom counter.
As soon as I’d perched on the edge of our tub, Manning leaned into the bathroom. “Soup’s ready. Want me to go get you something from the drugstore?”
“No.”
“I don’t mean a pregnancy test. If you’re coming down with something, I can pick up some . . .” He paused at the look on my face. “What’s wrong? Did you puke again?”
“No.”
“You look like you’re about to pass out, Lake. Why aren’t you in bed?”
True, my stomach was still queasy, but I doubted that was the reason I looked sick. “I took it,” I said. “The test.”
With a glance at the stick on the counter, he started to look a little pale. “Oh.”
“I just thought maybe—”
“You don’t have to explain.” Manning crossed the bathroom and came to sit next to me. I hadn’t realized I was gripping the lip of the tub until he put his hand over mine. “How do you feel?”
“Better with you here,” I said.
He kissed my temple, pausing there as he inhaled. “I’m proud of you. No matter what it says, it’s okay to want this.”
“Will you look for me?” I asked.
“Sure.” He stood and took a few steps toward the counter, where he picked up the stick.
Seconds ticked by. “Anything?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“Let’s forget it.” My heart pounded. I could see his expression in the mirror, and I didn’t want to watch it turn from expectant to disappointed. I got up. “I don’t want to know.”
“Lake,” he said, a warning should I try to leave.
I got behind him, hiding from whatever face he was about to make. That wasn’t enough, so I pulled up his t-shirt, stuck my head under first, and drew it down around me.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
“Just pretend I’m not here.” I hugged him from behind—in the dark, where I could hold onto the one thing that mattered—him. My Manning. My first love. My husband. The one thing that wouldn’t disappoint me, leave me, hurt me. I wanted more, but I didn’t need it. Emotionally, he was enough for me. Physically, he was big enough, too, a safe space for me to burrow into. I could’ve stayed pressed against his warm back forever. “I don’t want to know,” I repeated, my lips on his skin.
He covered my arm, lacing our hands through his shirt.
From his silence, I had my answer.
We made love nearly every day. It was the best we could do to move the stars. Maybe, this time, they simply refused to budge.
Manning’s torso expanded under me as he breathed. I traced the thin black triangle on his shoulder, touching each star. He didn’t know how to tell me the test was negative, but we’d been through this before.
“It’s okay,” I said. It wasn’t really okay, but I needed Manning to believe I could handle this. I needed to know I could, or else I’d give up on completing our family altogether. “Take me to the couch, Great Bear. You can carry me and put blankets over me and feed me soup. You’re so good at taking care of me.”
“It’s positive.”
“I know,” I said before he’d even gotten the words out—except what? My heart dropped to my feet, and I froze, my fingertip between stars. I didn’t move an inch, not even to breathe, in case I might disrupt the delicate synergy of a moment fate had decided to bestow on us. “Positive?” I asked, trying out the word.
“There are pink lines. Two of them. One is kind of faint, but . . . that’s positive?” He knew it was, we’d done this often enough, but it came out sounding like a question anyway.
I excavated myself from inside his shirt, pushing back strands of my hair as they went wild with static. “Are you sure?” I took the test from him. Even with the positive result in front of me, I shook my head. “It can’t be right.”
“Why not?”
The emotion in his voice made me look up. His clenched jaw and big brown eyes undid me. I didn’t want to let myself think this could be true, but Manning already believed it.
I closed my eyes. It was too early to get excited. There was a chance the test was faulty. I felt behind me for the tub so I could sit again. An unbidden tear slid down my cheek. “Manning . . .”
He kneeled in front of me. “I know.”
I shook my head. “I’m scared.”
“I’m not going to tell you not to be,” he said, taking my waist. “I’m not going to promise everything’ll be all right.”
“I don’t need you to.” I opened my eyes and put my hands on his shoulders. “But I can’t flip on my excitement like a switch. I need time to absorb this.”
“I understand.” He ran a thumb up the center of my tummy, and I shivered. “First thing Monday, I’ll make us a doctor’s appointment.”
I tried to focus on his warm eyes that didn’t judge or dismiss my fears. On his familiarly briny, masculine smell. On the way all ten of his fingers loosened on me, as if he’d just realized what was growing beneath them. Because my gut told me I was growing. In that moment, I couldn’t believe I’d ever doubted it. “There’s a baby in there,” I whispered.
He pinched the inside corners of his eyes. I still hadn’t ever seen him cry—he’d only come close a handful of times, like when opening up about his sister’s drowning, or the time in New York when I’d forced him to say goodbye, and then when we’d exchanged vows.
“I’m sorry,” he said as a few tears tracked down his cheeks.
“Why?” I asked, taking his face in my hands.
“I want to be strong for you.”
“You are, baby.” I kissed his resilient face, the lip that had been scarred and nose that’d been broken defending my honor. The gray hairs that’d started to shade his stubble, the lines that hadn’t been there even five years ago, and the features that had, like the dent in his chin. No matter how much we’d been through, good or bad, his soda-pop brown eyes held the same intensity they had back then. I kissed the face his son or daughter would look up to for the first time months from now. To them, he’d be as high in the sky and as important as the sun.
“I love you, father of my child,” I said.
“I love you, too,” he said, his voice ‘so deep, it gave me goosebumps on the inside, if that was even possible.’
I smiled, remembering how painfully naïve and awed I’d been that first day we’d met on the construction lot nineteen years earlier. Squinting up at him like he was too bright.
We had grown and changed, laughed and hurt—and loved each other through all of it. I was a woman now, but maybe it wasn’t so bad to still be that girl, too—my world warmed and given life by the sun.
19
I’d been so eager to get knocked up that I hadn’t stopped to consider timing. Now, eight months and two weeks in, I wished I’d thought it through. Sex should’ve been off the table during any months that might result in a summer pregnancy.
“Hand me that,” I said to Val, gesturing between us. “Hurry up.”
The terrified look on her face only annoyed me more. “What are you pointing at?” she asked.
“Your flip-flop.”
She and Tiff exchanged a glance that was probably meant to ask if I was insane, but I didn’t care. She took off her shoe and gave it to me. I started fanning myself. “Manning’s house is a million fucking degrees.”
“Suddenly it’s Manning’s house?” Val asked. “Not yours?”
“I never signed up to live in a sauna.”
“It’s really not that bad,” Tiffany said. “But I know when I was pregnant—”
“It’s not because I’m pregnant,” I said. “It’s the middle of June and Big Bear is experiencing an extreme heat wave.”
“It’s eighty-five degrees out . . .”
“Lake is right,” Kara said, nodding at me with a soft smile. I’d gotten to know Henry’s daughter better since my wedding, but I wasn’t as close with her as I was with most of the girls in the room. “Hopefully Manning will get the A.C. fixed soon.”
“Thank you, Kara,” I said.
The flip-flop wasn’t cutting it. I tossed it aside, looking for a paper plate, a magazine, an igloo to crawl into—anything. I rocked forward as best I could, stretching for the diaper tree on the coffee table, but in my enormous state, I couldn’t get to it. “Someone hand me one of those.”
“But it’s arranged so pretty,” said Piper, a friend from my veterinary program.
Kara moved the tree to the floor next my chair. A chair they’d made me sit in to put me on display.
I pulled a diaper out and relaxed back in my seat, waving it over my clammy face and neck. “That’s better. Now what?”
“Well,” Val said slowly, “I had this game planned.”
“Great,” I said. “I love games. Let’s have some fun.”
It was only then I noticed how quiet the room was. Val had not only organized me a baby shower, but she’d gone out of her way to invite people from coast to coast. Classmates, friends, and relatives had come from Los Angeles and Pomona, and even Roger had flown in from New York to be here—although, I suspected he was really in California to troll the West Hollywood summer scene. A few of the girls hadn’t made the wedding, and they were floored by the house—I would have to tell Manning when I saw him, assuming I didn’t die of heatstroke.
We’d all been having a nice time until the brand-new air conditioning unit had gone out. Luckily, Manning had been hiding out with the dogs in his workshop during the party and had jumped into action.
I made a hurry-up motion with my hand. “What’s the game?”
“It’s called Dirty Diapers,” Val rushed out.
“We played it at my shower, and you won, remember?” Tiffany added. “Val and I thought it would be fun. We smash melted chocolate bars into diapers, then pass them around for everyone to guess which candy it is.”
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