by Kate Rorick
“Do what?”
“You’ve been weird since the article came out in the Times. What the hell is bothering you about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Sure doesn’t feel like nothing. I’ve seen you swallow the congratulations I’ve been getting. You turn the conversation away every time it comes up.”
“Maybe I’ve got other things on my mind, ever think of that?”
Apparently he had thought of that, or more so, he didn’t care, because he laughed in a broken, harsh way.
“Come off it. You know what’s bothering you, and so do I.”
“Oh really? If you knew what was bothering me about the article, I doubt you would have written it that way.”
“You know, I can’t change the fact that Frankie was the first person I ever loved. And that loving him changed my life. But the fact that you would rather I hide that about myself is really, really disappointing.”
“What?” she replied, blinking in shock. “That has nothing to do with it.”
“You pretend to be this open-minded, thoughtful person, but really, you’re just a sheltered suburban little girl at heart.”
“Wow.” She couldn’t contain her shock. “It’s almost like you expected this fight. Dare I say you’re spoiling for it? Could it be that this trip to New York is a chance to rekindle an old romance?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If I were going to be with Frankie I’d be with Frankie. We didn’t work out. But Frankie was and is important to me! You don’t get to be mad that I’m seeing him!”
“I’m not mad that you’re seeing him!” Lyndi replied, hot. “I’m angry that you decided to tell the whole world that—”
“That what? That I’m bisexual? I wrote my first article about that, too! I’m not hiding it. But now that everyone you know knows it, suddenly it’s shameful!”
“Don’t you dare put those words in my mouth!”
“I’m not going to say I’m sorry that I loved him because it makes you more comfortable. I’m not going to say I’m sorry for writing it, either!”
“I don’t hate the article you wrote because of what you said about Frankie. I hate what you wrote about me!”
Marcus’s hands went to his hair, nearly pulling it out. “What on earth did I say about you in the article?”
“Nothing!” she cried. “And that’s the problem. Nothing beyond calling me your ‘roommate.’”
Marcus opened his mouth to reply, but something stopped him. Perhaps, Lyndi thought between gulping breaths, he had finally heard her.
“The entire article, I’m your roommate. Not your girlfriend. Not even your ‘baby mama’ as much as I despise that term. That’s what Nathalie calls us—roommates. Never to my face. But she does. I could take it from her because I thought she just didn’t get it. But I never expected to hear it from you.”
Again, nothing from Marcus.
“That’s what you told the world. What you told my family and friends. I thought I was more than that.”
“You are.” He moved toward her, his arms open.
“Since when?” she asked, stopping him in his tracks. “When in your mind, did we stop being roommates and start being together?”
“ . . . I . . . I dunno. Around the time—”
“Around the time I told you I was pregnant?”
His silence was all the answer he needed to give.
“I thought we’d been more a lot longer than that,” she said sadly. “I guess Nathalie was right. I guess you were always just my roommate.”
“Lynds—I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else. Before the baby I mean. I just . . . it’s hard for me to place my trust in a relationship. Any relationship.”
“Would we even be together without the baby?” she asked.
“Yes!” he answered immediately.
“You seem awfully sure for someone who thinks I’m a closed-minded suburbanite at heart.”
“Lyndi.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I do want you. I want this baby. I want us.”
“Which do you want most?” she asked. It was an unfair question. But it was one by God she needed an answer to.
And it was an answer he apparently could not give, because he remained heartbreakingly silent.
“You know what, have fun in New York,” she said, defeated. “I’ll see you when you get back.”
“Where are you going?” he asked, as she moved to the door to grab her jacket and her helmet.
“I’m just going for a ride. Clear my head.”
“Are you sure you should—”
But before he could get the worried sentence out, she was through the door.
And she made it all the way down the stairs, out the front door, and nearly onto her bike before she burst into tears.
Chapter 17
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER TRIP TO IKEA, Nathalie thought, as she followed by rote its amiable arrow-lit paths. Since becoming pregnant, there was something so soothing about the big blue box that dominated downtown Burbank. She had come here after work more often than she liked to admit, enjoying the meatballs and the affordably priced modernity. Even the plethora of Allen wrenches. But really, she knew the reason she found IKEA so delightful at the moment was it had everything she needed, for each and every room, and lots of it.
Which for someone who felt time creeping up and her preparedness sliding away, was more relaxing than a coma.
But this trip was not destined to be soothing. No . . . this trip was already fraught with assembled-furniture-related tension. Because this time, Nathalie had David in tow.
“I thought you said we had all this stuff on the registry?” David said, as he kept a foot behind her, lollygagging as she beelined straight for the nursery section.
“We have a lot of things on the registry,” she replied, her teeth unconsciously gritting. He would know what they had on the registry if he’d ever looked on the registry. She’d signed him up for it, too, he could just log on anytime. But no . . . that didn’t happen. “But stuff like storage bins, and oh! These cute little night-lights! They are just finishing touches for the nursery.”
Part of Nathalie realized she was in a hard-core nesting phase. But that didn’t mean that David wasn’t driving her crazy. If he wasn’t asking her relentless why-do-we-need-this questions, he was ignoring her and her extremely necessary preparations completely. The spare room, which currently was a catch-all office/guest room/place where David’s dumbbells went to die was scheduled to be turned into the perfect nursery for their little girl, who at this point, was only thirteen short weeks from joining them.
But David didn’t seem to feel the immediacy of this. He ignored every single attempt Nathalie made to get him to move his stuff out of the spare room so they could start painting the walls. Meanwhile, Nathalie spent hours agonizing over paint chips, coming up with a shade called Blue Iris for their daughter’s room.
“Blue?” Kathy had asked when Nathalie explained her design scheme. “But you’re having a girl!”
“It’s a very feminine blue,” she had replied, but Kathy continued on, sputtering objections, and plotting out ways to incorporate pinks into the curtains and linens.
But David wasn’t objecting to her designs, and her feminine blues. He was putting up barriers to any change whatsoever.
“Do we really need bins and night-lights?” he replied, defeat evident in his voice.
“YES,” she replied. “We do.”
“Fine. Then why are we looking at cribs?”
Nathalie blinked at him. “Because I told you we are getting the crib today.”
“It’s not on the registry?”
She took his phone out of his hand, and queued it up to their registry website. “Why don’t you look at the registry and tell me what’s on there.”
David took the phone from her, gingerly, like it was a time bomb. Good, maybe a little more irritating and a little less teacher-patience was required in the present situation. Especially consi
dering how crowded IKEA got on a Saturday afternoon. Her bastion of peace and tranquility was quickly becoming overstuffed with people here for KALLAX bookshelves and Swedish Fish.
Really, if it wasn’t for her anonymous Twitter friend, she would have lost her temper with David long ago.
@WTFPreg—“We’re having a baby so we have to get rid of all this stuff.” “I’m giving you a baby and you’re taking my stuff?!?!?”
The latest series of tweets actually gave her a small amount of sympathy for David’s position. He didn’t have the kind of keen baby-focus that Nathalie had, if simply because she was reminded of it every minute of every day, now that the baby was tap-dancing on her abdomen.
But still, he wasn’t the only one giving up their stuff. She’d lost her office space, too, to make room for their daughter. She’d already dragged her little desk out of the spare room and into a tight corner in the bedroom, and put all of her extra stuff in storage. Why David, who didn’t have the burden of working on his feet all day and being pregnant, couldn’t bring himself to do the same was . . . well, it was heartbreaking.
She knew he was stressed and just wanted to play video games. She knew he was under pressure. But she also came to understand—quite recently—that he had put a lot of that pressure on himself.
As she stared hard at him, and he avoided her eyes by seemingly scrolling through the baby registry on his phone, the phone miraculously buzzed in his hand.
He couldn’t hide his relief as he answered it.
“Hey, Brian. Yes . . . yes I sent the documents . . . Hello? . . . hello, I’m losing you . . .”
And then the line went dead.
David blew out a breath, frustrated. “Okay, I’m going to go stand outside, call him back.”
Nathalie reared back, livid. “No you’re not!”
“I can’t not reply. And I have no reception in here.”
“This place is twenty-two acres big—if you leave you’ll never find me again.”
“I’ll call you.”
“Not if there’s no reception,” she countered immediately.
David’s mouth hung open, stopped by sound logic. Then he shook it off, and was back to being able to argue in his lawyerly fashion. “Then let’s go. We can come back another day. This place is too crowded anyway.”
Nathalie found herself breathing like a bull in the ring. “David, we have to do this today! Because you haven’t wanted to come and do it any other day.”
“I haven’t been able to come and do it any other time. You know how crazy work is right now.”
Her eyes narrowed, her hands went to her hips.
“Yes, David, I know exactly how busy you’ve been. Dinner last night clarified that point very accurately.”
David’s eyes went stony. In retrospect, perhaps IKEA wasn’t the ideal place for a couple who had an unfinished fight simmering from the night before. But then again, not mentioning to your wife that no one at your office knew she was pregnant was a bit of a faux pas, too.
Nathalie had been looking forward to last night’s dinner since David had told her about it a week before. His immediate boss, Brian, had invited them to meet him and his wife at Burbank’s finest steakhouse, a fancy-enough place to throw Nathalie into a tizzy of clothes-related panic.
The difficulty was none of her fancy dresses accommodated her belly anymore, and all of her maternity clothes were meant for school—professional, but not exactly cocktail attire.
“I could wear the red one, I suppose? It’s empire-waisted, and I think I’ll be okay in heels still . . .” she had said to David as she pulled out every single article of clothing in her closet that fit. He sat on the bed, in his suit, looking miserable. But hey, that was the husband’s role in this particular situation, wasn’t it? “I could wear the black skirt and a top if I dress it up a little with accessories? Or there’s the green sheath dress . . . it’s not very fancy, but I look the least pregnant in it—”
“The green dress,” David said immediately.
“Why?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.
He shrugged a little and said, “It’s my favorite.”
She felt a suffuse glow of pleasure as she put the green dress on, happy that David had a favorite of hers from her new temporary wardrobe. However, that sneaking suspicion didn’t let go of the back of her brain. And she should have paid more attention to it.
Brian was a ruddy-faced man with hair several shades lighter than his complexion. His wife was small with a wide, welcoming smile. Nathalie liked them immediately. Odd, considering how much she had been prepared to be intimidated by the man whose dictates had been keeping her husband on his work-toes for the last six months.
“So Dave here says you’re an English teacher!” Brian said, as they sat down to dinner. “You must give my wife recommendations for books, she can’t get enough—three book clubs!”
“Oh, not before cocktails!” his wife replied. “Two drinks in and I’ll be telling you all about how much I detested The Road.”
“It’s a Cormac McCarthy script you’re doing all those contracts on, isn’t it Davy-boy?” Brian said, turning to David, who did not, for once in his life, seem to mind being called Dave or Davy-boy.
“Pfft,” his wife said, winking at Nathalie. “My husband never listens to my opinion on books.”
“Hey, he sells tickets and wins Oscars,” her husband replied.
“That was last month’s adventure in lit acquisition,” David replied with a good-natured smile. “Long hours. But it all turned out in our favor.”
“Then what have you been doing this month?” Nathalie asked her husband. He had been coming home just as late, playing just as many alien-blowing-up video games, taking just as many after-hours phone calls. If he didn’t have a huge project . . .
“I’d love to know that, too! Seriously, I’ve never met anyone more dedicated to get his desk cleared by the end of business,” Brian said. “You’ve got a go-getter there, Nathalie.”
“I’ve been working on ironing out those last wrinkles in the terms for the new development from our Japanese acquisition,” David replied judiciously.
“Oh good,” Brian’s wife exclaimed as the waiter approached to take their drinks order. “I’ll have a double martini, my husband will have a manhattan. Nathalie, what would you like?”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” she demurred, and turned her attention back to David and Brian.
“That? We don’t need those done until next business quarter! My goodness, you are a showstopper.”
Nathalie watched David’s face closely. His good-natured smile was becoming strained, his posture stiff. He usually reveled in being praised for his hard work.
But this . . . this sounded like he was trying to put as much distance between himself and his work as possible—even though he never stopped doing it.
“Oh, but you must have something!” Brian’s wife butted into her thoughts again. “A glass of wine, perhaps?”
“Oh, she’s not—er, that is . . .” David stuttered.
“I’m not drinking,” she said easily. “I’m pregnant.”
The sound that came out of Brian’s wife’s mouth could only be described as a Muppet squeal. Then, she swatted her husband’s arm. “You sly dog, why didn’t you tell me!”
“I didn’t know myself,” Brian said, with a slow smile of awareness. “Davy-boy, you’ve been playing things close to the vest, haven’t you? No wonder you’re getting next quarter’s work done now.”
“Oh you lucky girl! We never had kids ourselves, Brian’s work always made timing impossible, and then my life just got so crazy, and well . . . we made do.”
“Yep, with all the extra income and time to travel and go enjoying life,” Brian guffawed. Nathalie saw David’s jaw twitch.
As Brian’s wife had inundated her with the usual questions (“When are you due?” “Boy or girl?” “How are you feeeeeeeeeling?”), Nathalie glanced at her husband, who would not meet her eye. On the i
nside, she festered. But oddly, she could tell that David was, too. What on earth did he have to fester about? He wasn’t the one ambushed by people not knowing about their growing family—a family he seemed to be in complete denial of if he hadn’t even told his closest associate at work!
After that, dinner had taken on a false lightness. While Brian and his wife took on the full delights of the bar, David didn’t drink more than a glass of wine. Still his face was red with the effort it took to keep Brian talking, and off the subject of their child. Meanwhile, Nathalie listened to the conversations, tried to contribute with personal and humanizing stories about her husband to cast him in the best light, all the while she was roiling on the inside.
And now, they stood in the middle of IKEA, at a détente over a phone call and bad reception.
“You don’t need me to pick out a crib,” David said dismissively. “You can do what you want.”
“We should be doing this stuff together.” Nathalie sighed. But when David remained silent, she huffed out a breath. “Fine. I’ll pick out the crib on my own. Just like I’ll paint the nursery on my own, and move all your stupid dumbbells out on my own, and do everything on my own!”
David didn’t seem aware of the people that had begun to give them a wide berth as they stood in the nursery section, because he came to loom over her, his voice raised. “Well, we wouldn’t have to be doing any of this if you hadn’t insisted on getting pregnant!”
Sound rushed out and back in again like waves on the shore, while Nathalie made sure she’d heard what she’d heard. Then . . .
“WHAT?” she screeched.
And just like that, they had become that couple. The one having a fight in the middle of IKEA. But she had stopped caring—or possibly stopped seeing everyone’s stares. The only thing she could see was David’s face, and the naked truth he was finally revealing.
“I don’t recall getting pregnant on my own. You were a willing and enthusiastic participant!” she yelled. “We’ve talked about a family for years.”
“And then it took us years to get here,” David yelled. “I finally got settled in a new job, we finally paid off student loans. You know what I was going to do if we didn’t get pregnant when we did? I was going to ask if we could take a break from trying. We could have saved money, and just been David and Nathalie again. I was going to take you to Italy to visit my parents. Instead, we have a house, and we are going to have to replace the air-conditioning system soon because it’s a thousand years old and we will never get ahead now. How are we supposed to save for college? Why should I make up a will and trust if we have nothing to leave our kid?”