From the Top

by Dani Collins

  “Frankie?”

  “Not, um, yet.” She kept her chin tucked, eyes big and wary.

  “She wants to be,” he presumed.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you two getting married?”

  “That’s a cheap shot.” She scowled.

  “It wasn’t meant to be. I only said it because you did.”

  He could see why she took offense, though. Her father had married them and didn’t even recognize their divorce. He wouldn’t show up to so much as give her away if she remarried a man, let alone condone her marrying a woman.

  “And come on. This relationship of yours is still pretty fresh for planning a baby together.”

  “We’ve been together nearly three years. Exactly as long as you and I were married before we got pregnant with Aiden. At least we live together. That’s more than you’re doing with your baby mama.”

  Fair point, but he didn’t know what choice he would make even if he had one. Ilke had other priorities and he had been there, done that. He refused to commit to someone who wasn’t as committed as he was. Not after going all-in with the woman sitting across a kitchen table she shared with someone else. She had left him pretty cynical about relationships in general and women in particular.

  “Who would she be having the baby for?”

  “Both of us,” Wanda asserted firmly. “Of course, she wants to have a baby. So much I couldn’t stop her even if I wanted to, which I don’t. I want a baby in the house. Aiden deserves a sibling. I think we can all agree on that.”

  He scratched his throat and stared at the ceiling. When she started building consensus, he knew she was maneuvering him toward something.

  “Aiden is going to have a sibling,” he reminded her. “That’s what I’m saying. If you want a baby, I can give you one.”

  She started to say something and caught it back at the last second, winding up with tightly closed lips. She exhaled with deliberation. But as she shifted on her chair, folding her knees beneath her, and her jaw twitched, searching for words, it struck him what she was trying not to say.

  Or was trying to work up the courage to ask.

  “You have got to be kidding.”

  She flicked her gaze at the driveway, which was still empty.

  “You want me to knock up your girlfriend? Are you out of your mind?” He went cold all over. Then hot with rage.

  She flashed him a wary look. “Be a donor. Not actually, you know, sleep with her.”

  “You have got a set of balls, Wanda. Well, actually, that’s why you need me, isn’t it?” He rose.

  “It’s not as crazy as it sounds. At least listen.” She held up a staying hand. “We know you’re healthy and we already have a custody situation that works—”

  “I’m going to wait in my truck.” He started for the door.

  “This way it would be Aiden’s half-brother or sister.” She scrambled to follow him. “You just said that’s a good thing.”

  “Before I say something that could harm our otherwise functioning co-parent relationship…” He stepped onto the porch.

  “Nate.”

  “Even if I didn’t have my own situation to deal with, the answer would be a hard no.” As he started down the steps he heard the pit-pit of studded tires rolling over packed snow. “And don’t tell her why I refused. It’s private. You owe me that much.”

  *

  Vivien had told Ilke to take weekends off, but Ilke went down to breakfast Sunday morning hoping to ask Glory for something to do. There were too many hours in the day otherwise. Too many thoughts to think, all of them causing her to freak the hell out.

  She had downloaded a couple of books on pregnancy. That was her first mistake. It was not a magical, natural process like she’d been led to believe. It was terrifying. Things were going to happen that she couldn’t hope to control.

  It’s not too late…

  It was way too late to change her mind. She wasn’t ready to think of the baby as much more than the strawberry it was supposedly the size of, but she intended to leave that strawberry to become an avocado and eventually a spaghetti squash and a watermelon. A small watermelon, please God.

  The few times she had let herself wallow in the idea of becoming a mother, all she could picture were those harried women who seemed to need ten hands. They never combed their hair and were impervious to screams and mucus. That wasn’t her. She barely tolerated the roar of spectators and giving blood made her light-headed. Her tolerance level for people touching her without asking was zero.

  Last night, in desperation, she had looked up articles on how to cope with an unexpected pregnancy. “Surround yourself with support,” had been the number one piece of advice.

  Ha ha ha ha ha. The Internet was hilarious.

  Vivien was all the support Ilke had and when she had asked the older woman what plans she had made when she discovered she was pregnant, Vivien had given her a vague, “I didn’t have to think much about anything except staying off the sauce. Oskar took care of finding me an apartment and a doctor, hired all the staff. Aside from the birth, it was quite painless.”

  Fabulous.

  “Continue to pursue your dreams and interests,” was another brilliant suggestion in the article. I’ll get right on that, Ilke had mentally muttered. Along with, “Focusing on the positive,” and “Educating herself on what to expect.” Far as she could tell, those were mutually exclusive. She could do one or the other, not both.

  About the only advice that helped the tiniest bit was, “Give yourself time.”

  That permission to be ambivalent was deeply relieving. She didn’t know how she would get used to the idea, but thought it would help if Nate would talk to her and help her figure out what their future would look like. She hadn’t seen him since the dinner with the investors and couldn’t really blame him if he was too busy to speak to her, she supposed. Rolf was stomping around, growling about his brother not being home yet. Even Marvin, The Ever Cheerful, seemed to be wearing his bushy brows in a gray unibrow of concern over the theft and vandalism at the base.

  Oh God, the smell of this dining room in the morning. She halted in the lobby to press her bent finger to the indent below her nose, trying to stave off the wave of nausea that hit with the scent of pork sausage and scrambled eggs. Toast and a fruit cup might stay down if she took it to her room, but she was really hoping to catch Glory.

  Most mornings the room was abuzz with people in work gear grabbing food, shoveling it in, chasing it with coffee, and hurrying away to whatever their task of the day entailed.

  The atmosphere was different today. The crowd was much thinner, everyone wore street clothes, and the general mood was relaxed. Fresh snow was falling outside, but weak sunlight filtered through it.

  Spring skiing. She suppressed a sob of longing and turned to the buffet that was always set up along the back wall.

  Nate was already there, making her heart wobble, even though his back was to her. He was talking to his son who held a plate in two hands.

  “Sausage?” Nate asked.

  “Two.”

  “Yeah? You’re hungry enough to eat both?”

  Aiden nodded. His blond-tipped Afro was so long, it wafted with the movement.

  Ilke hadn’t looked closely at children since she’d been one, but she had a sudden, ridiculous urge to cup that little boy’s face and gaze on his nutmeg-brown skin, those round cheeks and bright eyes, his sweetly formed mouth that was a perfect miniature of Nate’s. His black brows had Nate’s same skeptical peak in the arch, and he gave the sausages Nate’s approving nod as they arrived on his plate.

  Her strawberry wasn’t big enough for her to feel it move, but a fluttery sensation tickled inside her abdomen. Would their child look like Aiden? Like Nate?

  It was the first time she had tried to picture their baby and it made her throat close.

  “We gotta get you a haircut before we go to Sacramento.” Nate’s hand splayed over the boy’s puffy hair so it poked up b
etween his fingers like dandelion fluff.

  “No.” Aiden’s mouth pursed in a stern pout. “Mama said I don’t have to.”

  “Well, she has to deal with it the most, I suppose, but Grammy is going to have an opinion when we see her, especially since it’s Grandad’s birthday.”

  “Grammy is a lady. Miss Eden says ladies like boys with long hair, ’specially in a rock band.”

  “You’re in a rock band? With who? Miss Eden?”

  “And Zuzu and Will.” He nodded.

  “Yeah? You guys got a name?”

  “Puppy Guppies.”

  Ilke couldn’t hold back any longer. She laughed.

  Nate turned and his head went back as he recognized her. Something indefinable and fierce flashed across his expression before he schooled himself and gave her a stiff nod.

  “Good morning,” he said almost begrudgingly.

  “Good morning.” Her chest got tight.

  The ache grew as he placed a protective hand on his boy’s shoulder.

  “I like that name for a band,” she told Aiden.

  Aiden took a shy step toward his father and tilted his head upward to check in.

  “This is Miss Ilke. Say hello.” Nate was so guarded in the way he spoke and subtly held her off.

  Ilke saw the invisible wall, clear and tall and thick, that he planted firmly around his son, warning her to keep her distance. It stung, making her feel not good enough. Unwanted. Locked out.

  “’Lo, Miss Ilke.”

  “Nice to meet you.” He had both hands gripping his plate so she didn’t offer to shake, but her heart was racing like she was in the presence of a real rock star—none of which had ever done much for her.

  It was so silly. She stared at Aiden, wanting to say something else, something to prove to Nate she wasn’t a threat. She wanted him to give her a tour of the inside workings of the family he already had, to help her inch her way forward with the one they were creating, but finding the words was like reaching for a foreign language she barely knew.

  “Here comes trouble,” Nate said, looking beyond Ilke, but down toward the floor. “I told you he was with Trigg.”

  Aiden lit up. “Murphy!”

  A flash of black-and-white fur brushed by her leg. The mutt greeted a beaming Aiden with a lick on his cheek and a nudge of his black nose against the plate he held.

  “Let me take that,” Nate said, quickly lifting away the plate so Aiden could throw his arms around the dog’s neck.

  The dog wiggled with excitement, tail wagging hard, but he didn’t stop walking despite Aiden’s hug. He circled through the dining room, sniffing and greeting everyone while Aiden stumbled alongside him, trying to push, pull, and drag him.

  “Go to your mat,” Aiden ordered, trying to muscle the dog toward a door off the end of the dining room. “You’re not allowed to be in here. Miss Glory will have an opinion.”

  He made it sound like an opinion was a conniption fit.

  “You tell him, kid,” Trigg, Rolf’s brother and the current snowboard gold medalist, chuckled over Aiden’s struggle to discipline his dog.

  A handful of diners called out greetings and belated congratulations to Trigg. He slapped his hand to the chest emblem of his Wikinger hoodie, dipping his head in appreciation.

  He deserved his victory lap. He was five years older than her, almost thirty, and they had both gone at their respective disciplines with equal fervor. She knew he had worked every bit as hard as she had to earn his place on the podium, but she still wanted to slink away before he noticed her.

  She had to stand there and wait for him to acknowledge her, though, so she could congratulate him on achieving what she had failed to. There was no room for envy, even though the words were already a fishbone stuck in the base of her throat before he gave her a look of mild surprise.

  “What are you doing here? Where the hell were you in Korea?”

  Seriously? She drew back the hand she had started to offer in greeting, body flushing hot all over with public humiliation. ‘Friends’ was an overstatement. Trigg was Trigg. Jerk.

  “What?” he said of her scowl. “You should have swept it and you totally choked. What happened?”

  She slid a look at Nate, but when she saw only a stiff blankness, as if he was bracing himself for her to blurt out their special news, she turned her back on both of them and threw her slice of white bread into the toaster. Then she scrabbled through the cups of yogurt in the tub of melting ice, looking for a plain one.

  She was not going to cry.

  “Can I feed him?” Aiden called.

  “I’ll scoop and you can pour it in his dish,” Trigg said, crossing to where Aiden had herded the dog into the adjacent room.

  “Then wash your hands and come eat,” Nate said to Aiden.

  Ilke’s toast popped and she threw it on a plate, collected her silverware and waited for Nate to move along so she could get to the fruit cups.

  He stood in her way until she looked up at him.

  He was looking at her plate. When his eyes lifted to hers, his gaze was full of questions. His lips parted as if he wanted to say something.

  “Excuse me,” she said, then circled around to grab what she wanted.

  A fresh group of people came in, clogging up her path to the exit as Trigg came back and exchanged greetings with them.

  Annoyed and trapped, she sat down at the nearest empty table and dipped the crust of her unbuttered toast in the juice from her fruit cup, pretending to be absorbed in her phone.

  She listened to Nate with his son as Aiden came back and Nate let the boy pick the table they sat at and promised to share a waffle with him if Aiden ate all his eggs.

  “I really want to know.” Trigg invited himself to sit at her table by setting down a heaping pile of scrambled hash and dark brew coffee. “Let’s deconstruct it so you can gain back some ground at the Cup.”

  “I withdrew.”

  “That was stupid. Why?”

  Really?

  “Can I have your number?” she asked.

  “You don’t have it? Sure.” He rattled it off.

  She punched it into her phone, then sent him a text. Fuck off.

  He glanced to read it and snorted. “You’re not that sensitive. Tell me what happened. Let’s deconstruct it so you bounce back next season.”

  She wanted to say, You don’t know me, but the truth was, she never used to be sensitive. She had known Trigg for close to fifteen years. She often crossed paths with him. They had worked out together in the gym of this lodge last summer and often traded good-natured insults. That was Trigg’s idea of friendship and about the only kind she was comfortable with.

  So she shouldn’t be taking his blunt criticism so hard.

  She barely knew herself anymore, though, and it was unnerving. Favoring an injury was something she could understand. Being totally off in ways she couldn’t explain hadn’t made sense. It had done a number on her confidence. Maybe it would have been different if this baby was a planned event, or even a welcome surprise, but it had thrown her on every level.

  “Enough sulking.” Trigg jabbed his fork in the air between them. “It’s been a week. Let’s fix whatever hamstrung you—That doesn’t sound right. Was that the problem, though? You pull a hammy?”

  God in heaven. She looked for escape and caught Nate watching them.

  She scowled, blaming him for her pregnancy, her failure, and now this public denouncement.

  Trigg was actually successful enough, and influential enough, that his wanting to help her was the kind of thing other athletes would wet themselves over. It was just so lowering to have it be like this, when her career was benched and she ought to have managed the wins on her own. When she couldn’t even take advantage of the hand he was extending.

  “Maybe it’s time for some staffing changes? Who’s your coach these days?”

  “Can we not do this right now?”

  “Coach Wurgler used to say every day you lose takes two
to get back,” he reminded her. “Start now and you’ll be that much further ahead sooner.”

  “Trigg—” Nate said.

  But as Trigg turned his head in Nate’s direction, his gaze was snagged by someone entering the dining room. “You.” He dropped his fork with a clank and pointed a furious finger at Glory.

  She grinned broadly as she walked right by him to pick up two plates and begin filling them. “Well, look who’s back.”

  He hooked his arm on the back of his chair to twist and face her. “I honestly thought he’d given the bachelor party to Mr. Home By Nine On A School Night over there.” Trigg thumbed in Nate’s direction.

  Rolf joined Glory at the buffet, coffee in each hand, and nodded to indicate he wanted more eggs.

  “I let the dog pee on your carpet this morning,” Trigg told Glory. “What do you think of that?”

  “I let him pee in your bed when you’re not here.” Glory paused by Nate’s table to tilt a look at Aiden. “We’re just teasing. You know that, right?”

  Aiden grinned around the fork in his mouth.

  Ilke sat straight and feigned boredom, but her eyes felt hot. It was the same sort of trash talk that Trigg had thrown at her, but there was an undeniable warmth of affection and friendship underlying their banter, closing her out of their inner circle.

  “So much for the matinee reservations I made at the medieval jousting restaurant,” Nate said to Rolf. “Sorry, man. I know you were looking forward to it.”

  “I don’t even know what that is, but I already know I would prefer it.” Rolf followed Glory to the table where Trigg sat with Ilke.

  Glory slid in beside her and Rolf sat next to his brother.

  Now she was trapped. Stockholm, with its expensive real estate and abundance of unemployed yet qualified workers, suddenly seemed like a brilliant place to be homeless and jobless.

  “How do you feel about running into Haven with bank deposits and other errands?” Glory asked her. “You can use the lodge vehicle if you don’t want to put miles on your rental.”

  “Can I run my own errands while I’m there and turn in my rental?”

  “Sure. In fact, use mine. Rolf wants to buy me a new one, but I never use the one I have. Borrow it anytime, just top up the tank on your way back here.”