“I’m locking down all Duke related emotions nice and tight, but don’t worry,” Daniella said. “I’ll come to you when I have my inevitable breakdown.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Please do. What's new with you?” I said to Brittany. She started bouncing in her seat as soon as she had my full attention. “Oh god. What is it?”
“If we can just move to your desk. I can show you on your calendar.”
“Fuck. Yeah let me actually work. I think a month off is more than enough. Eat all the food, drink all the whisky. When we get a few spare minutes, we’ll call Michael on speaker and I’ll have him do his new Scottish accent for you. It’s terrible.”
I threw my hands up, ending our a.m. party, then Brittany gave me the rundown on everything she needed approval for and meetings and calls she needed approval to set up. And designs, designs, designs that needed to be approved. The holidays were right around the corner. I was glad I enjoyed the fuck out of my honeymoon. I wasn’t getting another break until after St. Patrick’s day.
✶
It took me almost three hours to get through my first round of catch up. No idea if it was the jetlag or what but when Brittany popped up at my desk again, I felt like my head was on backwards.
“Daniella says you're buying us lunch,” she joked. Sort of. “What can I get you?” She handed me a menu to the sandwich shop around the corner. I scanned the sheet. Nothing looked good.
“The Coastal and the chicken soup ’cause I'm feeling extra fancy.”
“Sounds good. Are you okay?” she asked.
It wasn’t until someone said something that I realized I wasn’t but I was still three-hundred emails away from the bottom of my inbox. Taking a break hadn’t occurred to me. I stretched my neck and looked at my phone. There was a text from Michael.
“I do feel a little out of it, but I’ll be fine.” Blinking extra hard, I actually read his text as Brittany headed back to her desk.
Haven’t seen you in six hours.
We’re still married right?
The text was so cute, and for some reason, made me tear up. I got weepy when I was overtired.
Nope. I texted back. Found a new man. Sorry.
I miss you. Come pick me up. I don’t want to be a small business owner anymore.
He texted me back right away.
I’ll send a car.
I knew he was joking, but suddenly I wished he wasn’t. I didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with me, but all I wanted was to be with him, in his arms. His next text didn’t help at all. A picture of his left hand popped up. I looked at his shiny platinum band, then down at my own, ringed with diamonds.
I got distracted during a meeting just now. Keep checking out my new hardware.
“Kay. Hey. Kayla.” I looked up to see Daniella staring at me.
“Yeah?” I whipped my head up, realizing a second too late that I was wiping my eyes.
“You alright?” Lili was looking at me too and Brittany had turned back around.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” I let out a slightly unhinged laugh. “I actually think I’m legit PMSing and I’m exhausted. Ignore me please.” I grabbed the tissues that Jade was kind enough to order because, even though Daniella and I had worked out the kinks with payroll and all manner of shipping options, we forgot to get basics like Kleenex until she came on board. “Plus I’m just hangry. I barely ate any breakfast.”
The girls all smiled at me and returned to their work. I hid behind my monitor. It took me another five minutes to get my shit together.
✶
There are long days and then there is your first day back to work after your honeymoon. Lunch did not help at all. I was dragging ass through the rest of the afternoon, counting down the minutes till I could call it quits for all of us and still give off some sort of impression that I was actually taking my job seriously. Which I was, but oh my god, I wanted to go home. A nap was so called for and I really, really wanted to see Michael. But when Patch and I walked through the door, Holger was waiting for us like he was ready to stage an intervention.
“What’s that look?” I asked him when I walked into the kitchen.
“You told me to remind you. Thank-you notes.” He pointed toward the mountain of wedding gifts waiting on and around the living room table.
“Oh come on maannn,” I groaned.
“Don’t come on man, me—” fucking hilarious with his German accent. “The thank you cards you special ordered already arrived and you gave me specific instructions.”
“Well I have to wait for Michael to come home before I can crack into these anyway.” And of course I heard the garage open and close, and Penny’s tags as she sprinted to be reunited with her buddy. Michael walked around their butt sniffing and he smiled when he realized Holger and I were having another one of our showdowns.
“Don’t even bother, man. Whatever it is you want, you're not gonna get if it means me going against her,” he laughed.
“We have to open gifts and get started on the thank you cards, but I don’t want to. I just want you to hold me.” I walked into his arms and buried myself under his chin. I may have glared at Holger.
“I wasn’t hired to teach either of you ettique. Your dinner is ready.”
Michael laughed even harder and pulled me closer. I knew he wanted a kiss, but I wanted to cling to him a few seconds more. “Hey what’s going on?”
“I think I’m going crazy. I think you broke me.”
“Come sit.” He took my hand and pulled me over to the island stools while Holger pulled our dinner out of the oven. My mouth instantly started watering as I sat and turned to face my husband. He reached up, smoothed back my hair, kissed me on my temple and then my lips. He kissed me again, longer this time. “What’s going on? How was work?”
“Work was fine. It was nice to see the girls and we got an order from this woman who runs a small gay bookstore in Louisiana. She wants to carry the Queer Qards.” We’d already done one big deal with a larger distributor, but the smaller orders made my day.
“That sounds great. What’s got you wanting to fight Holger?”
“Nothing. ’Cause he knows I’d mop the floor with him,” I teased. Holger rolled his eyes at me. “I just felt weird today. Like tired, but almost lonely? I couldn’t put my finger on it. I don't feel like myself. I googled 'Is it normal to miss your spouse after your honeymoon?'."
Michael huffed a little laugh. "Any good results?"
"Fifteen pages on what to do when the honeymoon period of your relationship is over and an article about a woman whose husband just dipped on her for five days during their honeymoon."
"Sounds like a classy guy. If it helps any, I missed you too. Ruben kept making fun of me because I was either looking at my ring or our engagement picture on my desk."
"I started crying after you texted me that picture."
"Ah, baby." Another kiss helped a little. I went in for another just for good measure.
"I'm that weird woman, aren't I? Twelve hours apart and wandering around Third Street Promenade asking people if they've seen my Michael."
"You know what I think?"
"What's that?"
"That a lot of people are cynical about love and so maybe we're conditioned to think we're being foolish when we care for someone else so much. But I also think that I waited a really long time to find the perfect woman for me, so if I'm so amazed that she wants to spend her life with me that it makes me pause to stare at this little symbol of that love every three and a half minutes or so, those cynical people can kiss my ass."
"So how do I go on being a functioning member of society when I seriously want to spend every minute of my day with you?"
"Well let's see, we can increase our texting exponentially."
Holger set down two helpings of beef Wellington with impressive looking greens in front of us. My stomach growled as we thanked him.
"There's that. We could text more," I said, digging into my dinner. I moaned and gav
e Holger the thumbs up. He was such a punk sometimes but he cooked his ass off. Michael took a few bites of his own before he went on.
"I can sell the team and retire, and you can work on K&D from home."
"Nooo don't do that. It's cool that you own a basketball team and now that we're married, I kinda own it too. Don't sell my team."
"Then I think we're just gonna have to spend all of our free time together joined at the hip."
"I know what we can do." I put down my fork and turned my whole body toward him. "Oh this'll be good."
"I'm listening."
"Well we do a lot of stuff together, but most of the time it's work related, for you at least. I think our honeymoon was so great because this last year was so busy we couldn't just stop and have it just be us."
"That is true."
"How about we extend our honeymoon. Keep doing fun romantic stuff together for a whole year and then for our anniversary, we'll go on a super date?"
"A super date you say."
"Shut up. Seriously. Let's make a point to do something special together once a week. Just us. We'll call 'em honey dates."
"I think we can do that."
"Good. I'll make a list of fun coupley stuff for us to do after dinner."
Holger spun around at the sink. I thought he might kill us both.
"After we open some gifts and send some thank you notes," I added. That seemed to get him to chill the fuck out. For the moment.
✶
We devised a plan, mostly because I wasn't gonna let Holger ruin all my fun. I'd unwrap and Holger would keep a spreadsheet of who the gifts were from and Michael would make the list of HoneyDates we wanted to go on. Fifty-two, give or take, rocking romancey dates just for me and my man.
"What have we got so far?" I asked Michael as Holger handed me a box that weighed a freaking ton.
"From Adam Reynolds."
"God, what is in here? A body?"
I set the box down gently, careful not to break the coffee table. Adam Reynolds was another master of tech. Where Michael had the app game covered, Adam was in the business of hardware. He'd added Cyclone's Vortex smart watches to our goodie bags in the gifting suite. That was more than enough, plus his son, Blake and Blake’s fiancée, my buddy Tina had already given us a beautiful painting. I couldn't imagine what else Adam could want to give to us. I opened the card. I read it once and then read it again out loud for Michael.
You bitched and moaned when I threatened to toss you off the store if you didn't convert your shit to 64-bit architecture, but I was fucking right. I'm always right.
Michael just shook his head and laughed.
"I assume this is just for you?"
"He’s such an ass. Go ahead and open it."
I pulled back the paper and unwrapped a sixty-four piece tool kit. "Oh I'm keeping this. We don't have tools at the Miami house."
"What are you going do with those?" Michael asked, his eyebrow almost hitting his hairline.
"Build things. That's what. You can write his thank-you note. Let's switch." I took Michael's laptop and handed him my lap board and stationary.
He had a shared doc up with HONEYDATES FUCK YEAH in bold at the top.
I read down all the things we'd discussed: bowling, drive in, wine tasting, cooking classes, more picnics ’cause the one we shared in Scotland was a-maze-balls, the opera, and karaoke downtown. There were two items with question marks. Horseback riding—I told him to put a pin in that. The other was tattoos, which we hadn't discussed.
"Babe? You wanna get tattoos together?"
He stopped the mad scribbling he doing and looked up. He shrugged. "I was planning to get a little something to commemorate our wedded bliss. Thought maybe you'd be game."
Michael had one massive tattoo that spanned his right side, front and back. I was ink free.
"Yeah, I think we could do that. What were you thinking of getting?"
"Well, I wanted it to be a surprise."
"For your wife?"
"For my wife."
"Yeah, okay we can do that. Did you schedule something already?"
"I did. For this weekend."
"Oh?"
"Don't worry, it won’t interfere with our date. I'll call Sophea and see if she can squeeze you in too. You’re not gonna get a whole back piece are you?"
"Ah no."
"She'll be cool. I'll email her tonight."
"Does it count as a date if you already had it on the books?" I said, crawling forward to kiss him. It had been an hour since our mouths had touched. I thought I might die.
"After, I'll take you to dinner and a movie. How about that?"
"I think it's a date."
Four
By Friday I'd caught up on most of my work, and Michael and I had made a dent in the gift pile. I was feeling pretty accomplished until Holger reminded us that Vera was hanging on to another four dozen or so gifts at the Miami house. Those people were just going to have to wait. Friday night, Michael had dinner plans with his business partner Steven and someone who wanted them to invest in something or other. But Saturday was our first HoneyDate. His tattoo artist Sophea only had Michael on the books for that day. I had no idea what massive piece he was getting this time, but she said she would absolutely ink me up. Daniella helped me brainstorm ideas. We settled on a candy heart with Michael’s name in the middle, stippling style.
“I know you’re not supposed to tattoo someone’s name on you,” she said, laughing even though she was dead serious. “But if he does something really stupid they are doing amazing things with cover-ups these days.” She was right, thank you Tattoo Nightmares for showing us the way, but I had a feeling I would never regret it.
I let Holger bully me into sending out ten more thank-you notes and then I had to call it quits. I still hadn’t recovered from our trip. Actually I was starting to feel even more worn out. I wanted to wait up for Michael to get home from dinner but there was just no way. I climbed into bed with the dogs around nine and I was out.
✶
At 2:33 am I jumped out of bed, ran to the bathroom and threw up. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been physically ill, maybe high school when I had food poisoning, but this was something else. I was dead asleep and the next thing I knew, I was sprinting for the bathroom. I think I knew, in the back of my head, but puking in the middle of a REM cycle when I was bone tired had my body on autopilot. I needed more rest. My body needed to be horizontal again. I came back to bed and felt my way around in the ambient light from the backyard. Michael asked me if I was okay. I think I mumbled something like “Yeah, I’m fine.” I wiggled back under his arm and even though my whole body felt like I’d just done the electric slide through a car wash, I fell back to sleep.
✶
We didn’t have to be at Sophea’s shop until noon, so Michael let me sleep in. He was already up and out of the bedroom when I got up. I took a long time getting ready. I felt a little better, but still really strange. I was afraid I was going to be sick again. When I came into the living room, I found that the rest of the gifts were unwrapped and Holger and Michael were organizing them. An impressive display, but all I could focus on was the smell of whatever Holger had made for breakfast and fresh coffee. My throat clenched.
Michael glanced at me, then went back to whatever he was tinkering with. “Hey babe, we knocked all the rest out. I already wrote notes for the random business people who you don’t actually know. You just have to sign those and then we put the ones we knew you’d want to personalize over here.”
It was so thoughtful and later when I could think straight I would really appreciate it, but instead of thanking them both, I walked straight over to Michael and put my hand on his side. He turned on reflex and pulled me closer to his side. He kissed my face.
“Good morning. What’s up?” he said and then his smile immediately dropped. I knew exactly what my face looked like. “Holg, man, give us a second.”
Holger nodded then did his usual
disappearing act when Michael and I needed to talk privately. When I couldn’t hear his footsteps in the hallway anymore I looked up at Michael.
“I think I’m pregnant.”
“Oh. Okay,” he said cautiously. I appreciated that he was leaving all his emotions at the door because I was freaking out. “Is that what happened last night?”
“Yeah, I threw up, but it wasn’t normal. And I’ve been really tired. I’ve been really tired and rundown since before the wedding. I thought it was just all the planning and running around and small talk with relatives, but now I don’t.”
“Okay, well I can cancel with Sophea. We’ll stay home and you can rest, and I’ll make some calls, get you in to see your doctor.” I had a GP but I hadn’t been in to see her in a minute. “Is your period late?”
I thought back to my most current pack of birth control. My period was due next week, but… “I think I actually skipped my last one and the one before that was kinda light. I just thought it was stress. Shit, I am so sorry.” I was already kinda warm and out of it, but then I felt a sudden rush of heat and dread flood over me. I was such an idiot.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay. Let’s find out for sure, okay? Could just be some weird Scottish flu. Maybe no need to panic.”
“Okay.”
“And even if you are pregnant, still no need to panic. Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You’re right.”
“Do you want to go get back in bed? Holger made waffles and bacon, but we can get you something lighter?”
I realized then that even though I was feeling kinda meh, I didn’t feel like I needed my German housekeeper to tuck me in with my blankie. My body was vibrating and my brain was taking a weird trip into the past, analyzing all the moments that qualified me for an episode of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant, but I was okay. I could be up and about. I could leave the house. And Michael did have a point, it was best to know for sure before I started freaking out.
SO FOR REAL: A Sugar Baby Novella Page 4