At last, I slid into acceptance. This was going to be my life from now on, I realized. I’d better get used to it.
I WOKE TO THE SOUND of the shower running. And…ugh. My head felt stuffed with fuzz and my mouth with dust. I had to lie there for a few minutes before I could even piece together that I was in my hotel room in Las Vegas and it was morning.
How I got here, I had no idea.
Water. I needed water. Hell, I’d even take three-dollar water. I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My stomach lurched.
Bad idea.
Maybe I didn’t need water quite so quickly.
That was when I noticed the slacks on the floor and the man’s shirt…and were those boxers?
Frantically, I tried to piece together how I got upstairs and—I glanced downward—dressed in a T-shirt. No bra or underwear.
The shower stopped, and I heard male humming.
Okay, June, think.
Last night. After the concert, I’d met up with Brie and Martucci at the hotel bar. They were doing tequila shooters. Kitty and Gran had decided to call it a night. Their flight was leaving early in the morning, so they’d thanked me and invited all of us to Marissa’s birthday party. After they left, Troy came down wearing jeans and a leather jacket and carrying a travel bag. He gave his hotel key card to Brie—said he was going to head home so she might as well have her own room.
The last thing I could remember was Martucci challenging me to an upside-down shooter. I don’t recall if I said good-bye to Troy. Just did a back bend over the barstool. Then I watched as he walked away, upside down, and Martucci poured the tequila in my mouth until my throat burned and my eyes watered.
Martucci.
It was all coming back. Him carting me up to the room. Pulling off my top. Me, sliding off my panties.
There was a wastebasket next to the bed. I gazed into it, wondering if I’d see a used condom or a wrapper. It was empty. Which was either good news or bad news—either I didn’t do anything or I did, and without protection. Right now, Martucci’s sperm could be thundering through me, trying to create little Martuccis.
The bathroom door handle turned, and—why I suddenly felt the need to be modest I don’t know—I pulled the sheets around me.
And out walked…Runner. My masseur. Huh.
He had a towel wrapped around his waist, his massive chest bare. His hair hung loose and wet down his back.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully.
“Morning.”
“How’re you feeling?”
“Confused.”
“Yeah, that was one wild night.” He picked up the shirt off the floor and tossed it on. I averted my gaze as he stepped into the boxers and then the pants. “You were really out of it.”
Was it Runner who’d undressed me? It must have been, but the memory of Martucci was so distinct. The way I’d tugged on his rattail. But maybe it was Runner’s ponytail. Or both of theirs. Who knew? I might have had my first one-night stand or my first orgy.
“Well,” Runner said, heading for the door, “Brie ought to be out of the bathtub by now. Thanks for letting me use your shower.”
Use my shower?
“We didn’t sleep together, then?” I asked.
He boomed out a laugh. “I needed to shower before work. Brie was already in the tub and in no hurry to get out…or to share. She suggested I use this one.”
“Ah, so you and Brie…”
“Helluva woman, that friend of yours. Glad I hooked up with you guys. Whooee, you sure put back the tequila fast last night. You didn’t even make it to midnight before you started to pass out.”
“Speaking of that,” I ventured, “were you the one who brought me up here?”
He shook his head. “Nah, it was your friend. The Italian guy.”
I nodded, smiling, as if that were swell news.
Runner left, and I managed to shower, pack, and meet the others for the drive home, where I immediately crawled into one of the motor home’s sleeper bunks and slept. I woke up only long enough to attempt to gag down a McSomething or other.
Martucci dropped Brie off first, then took me home, which gave me time alone with him to ask what I’d been dreading but needed to know.
I moved to the passenger seat to sit next to him as he drove. He chewed on sunflower seeds, spitting the hulls into a bag on the dashboard.
“I don’t know how to ask this, so I’m just going to ask it,” I said.
“All right.”
“Did we have sex?”
“Don’t remember a thing, huh?”
“If you must know, I vividly recall you undressing me.”
“Ah…” He sighed happily. “So do I.”
“Very amusing. This was a tough weekend for me. I was extremely vulnerable. I can’t believe you’d take advantage. That you’d—”
“Parker, don’t get yourself in a twist. I was only messing with you. Nothing happened.”
“Oh, please. Don’t lie.”
An image of me licking his face rose to my mind.
“I’m not lying. You were totally wasted, so I brought you up to your room. And sweetheart, you were begging for it. Practically dry-humping me. You know, you really shouldn’t go so long without sex.”
“And you expect me to believe you didn’t take me up on it?” I was skeptical and, frankly, a little insulted.
“You may not believe this, but I have standards.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me that you undressed me, but you didn’t look.”
“Hell, yeah, I looked. But I didn’t touch. And you know why?”
I rolled my eyes. “Because you respect me.”
“No…because you were freaking me out. Kept licking my face. Pulling on the rattail, saying it was my source of power. That I was Samson and you were going to cut off my source of power in my sleep.”
“Oh.”
“I was afraid you’d go after my other source of power. Pull a Lorena Bobbitt on me. I felt lucky to get out of there alive.”
“Sorry,” I said, feeling sheepish.
He turned back to his driving, his face wounded. “What do you have against the rattail, anyway?”
Chapter 22
It’s best that you found this out now,” Susan said. “You don’t need to waste time on a man who’s going to take forever to want kids.”
“August isn’t exactly forever.”
“Don’t make excuses for him,” she said, pointing a plastic fork at me. “That’s how you wind up in these relationships that never go anywhere. You deserve better.”
It was Monday morning, and Susan had invited me out for breakfast. We ate egg sandwiches and fruit cups at the deli up the street from work while I filled her in on the details of the weekend. Most of them, anyway. I omitted the part about nearly date raping Martucci.
I’d spent the rest of Sunday sleeping off my hangover and wishing things had gone differently with Troy. The idea of this list leading me to my true love—okay, it was corny, but I couldn’t shake my disappointment. Troy had seemed like the sort of guy I could hang with, baby or not. It wasn’t exactly effortless being with him—there was the matter of my feeling self-conscious over his sister—but I’d hoped we could get past that.
“Maybe this baby is the best thing to ever happen to you,” Susan said. “It’ll be a barometer. You’ll know right away—a guy is either ready for a commitment or he’s not. Period.”
“But Troy had seemed so…right,” I moped.
“They’re always perfect before you get to know them. But everybody has their flaws. I could sit here for days telling you what bugs me about Chase. But blowing you off because you’re going to have a baby—I’d assume that’s a deal breaker.”
I blew out a breath. “I’d be feeling a whole lot more high and mighty if I hadn’t forgotten the baby myself.”
“Oh, June. You didn’t forget the baby. Leaving it on top of the car and driving away is forgetting the baby. Your mind was elsewhe
re for a while. It’s allowed.”
“Did you ever?”
“C’mon…pregnant with twins? I wished I could have thought of something else. Or slept, for that matter. But in your case, I can see how it would happen. It’s not as if people are constantly coming up to you and feeling your belly.” She chewed her lip. “June, I hate to say this now. It’s extremely bad timing. But I’m going to say it anyway. No one—and I mean no one—would fault you if you were having second thoughts.”
“I’m not having second thoughts.”
“Are you sure? Because if you wanted to back out, it would be fine.”
I steeled my shoulders. “I’m not backing out.”
“Good,” she said, picking up her food tray and standing to leave. “Because as we speak, there are thirty people gathered in my office with gifts for you. So if you’re going to go through with it, you’ll have a few nice things for the baby. If you might change your mind, don’t remove any of the tags.” We tipped our trays into the trash can. Susan added, “Oh, and act surprised.”
MERYL STREEP can rest assured—her job is safe. I threw my hands to my face and squealed after they shouted, “Surprise!” but everybody figured out that Susan had clued me in.
No matter. I still scored plenty of loot.
At long last, after years of chipping in for everybody else’s weddings and babies and buying Girl Scout cookies and magazine subscriptions by the truckload, I was getting mine.
I tore into the gifts excitedly. The biggest one was a stroller that the staff had pitched in on. And not any stroller, I was informed, but the Cadillac of strollers. I hoped it came with a driver’s manual.
In addition to that, I got a swing, a bathtub, blankets, an ear thermometer, towels, and several tiny outfits cuter than anything I own. The gift that astounded me the most was a T-shirt with little cars and buses on it. It was so tiny. I kept holding it up, marveling that a human was going to fit in it.
Later, over cake, the questions came in a barrage. What was I naming the baby? (Um…I haven’t decided.) Was I taking time off? (Definitely some, but how long I wasn’t sure.) Was I going to be in the delivery room? (Probably.) Was I nervous about it? (Yes.) Would I be breast-feeding? (That was from Martucci. I didn’t bother to reply.)
At one point, Mary Jo from the vanpool department said, “This baby is being born in August, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“This August?”
“Of course this August. Why would you ask that?”
“It’s only that it’s so soon, and you don’t seem very prepared.”
“I’m prepared,” I said defensively, knowing full well she was right. I hadn’t even given an inkling of thought to a name. Something was definitely wrong about that, but I pushed the worry away.
Eventually, people started wandering back to their offices. Susan had to rush off to a meeting. I was packing up the gifts when Phyllis showed up, apologizing that a meeting with Bigwood had gone longer than expected.
“This is for you.” She thrust a wrapped box at me. “I got the same thing for my grandbaby.”
I didn’t miss the message behind her words. “Your daughter got the letter,” I said softly. “You’ve made up.”
“Well, we’re not exactly sitting around holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya,’ but”—her face shone as she talked—“we’ve been talking. Met the husband. And their kids are cute as hell. They got this wild curly hair—I don’t know where it came from. Danny is three, and Jennifer just turned a year.”
“Those are pretty common names from a girl named Sunshine.”
“Sally,” she corrected me. “She goes by Sally now. But get this: Her husband rides a motorcycle—how’s that for a kick in the pants? A little Honda piece of crap, but still. There’s hope for that girl yet if she picked a husband who rides.” Phyllis gestured to the gift. “Anyway, open it.”
As I tore into the wrapping paper, Phyllis asked how the list was going.
“I’m almost done. Two tasks left to go,” I said, holding up a tiny Harley-Davidson leather jacket. “Oh, Phyllis, this is so cute! Thank you.”
She nodded and then said, “Which ones do you have left to do?”
“Find a guy named Buddy Fitch and make him pay—that’s a tough one. I’m stumped. I’m spending every night on the Internet searching. The other is that I have to change someone’s life.”
“That letter you wrote changed my life,” Phyllis said. “So go ahead and mark that one done.”
Shaking my head, I said, “Thanks, but not a chance. I only threw words on paper. Getting back with your daughter…you did that on your own. Anyway, I’m bringing the final adoption papers over to Deedee and her family this Saturday. I figure as soon as we sign them, it’ll be official. Then I’ll feel as if I can say I’ve changed a life.”
My heart skittered as I said all that out loud.
Phyllis must have noticed because she said, “There’s nothing to be nervous about. You’ll do a fine job.”
I sure hoped so. Little Whatever-her-name-was-going-to-be deserved the best mom possible.
DEEDEE PALED as she watched the woman writhe nude on the screen in front of us. Maybe this childbirth class was a mistake. The adoption lawyer had recommended it because it was especially for girls giving up their babies. I promised to take Deedee every Wednesday night until she went into labor. Unfortunately, seeing what she was in for in just over a month’s time, Deedee looked more frightened than I’ll bet I had when I’d seen The Birds.
I did my best to comfort her. “The sort of woman who’d let her birth be filmed for the world to see is going to be the type to scream a lot,” I whispered. “And I know for a fact that you don’t have to be completely naked.”
A girl whose name tag identified her as Janai leaned over. “Yeah, and I got two words for that lady: bikini wax. I thought her bush was the kid’s head coming out.”
Another piped up, “Why is she doing it without no painkillers?”
“I say pass the Demerol and wake me when it’s over,” Janai added. “And I’m getting me a Brazilian wax before I go in. If a whole bunch of people are going to be staring at my snatch, I might as well make it pretty.”
“Especially if it’ll help take the focus off my ass,” a girl agreed woefully. “I know guys like junk in the trunk, but I’ve got a fucking dump truck going back there.”
“I hear that,” someone seconded.
I could tell that Deedee wanted to participate in the exchange, but she was way out of her league. Although the other girls were teenagers, they all seemed to have more mileage on them. Still, for all their swagger—and they’d spent the first part of the session swapping stories about deadbeat boyfriends so bad that they made Troy Jones seem like Father of the Year—there was no missing that they were scared.
The birth movie ended, and the instructor opened the floor for questions. Janai raised her hand. I expected her to ask about painkillers, which was what I would have wanted to know in her shoes. But she said, “What if there’s something wrong with the baby and they don’t want it?”
The instructor—and there was a woman with a tough job—then facilitated a discussion about a birth mother’s rights vs. adoptive parents’ rights. That segued into how to find a good lawyer and how drug use during pregnancy affects the baby’s health. I whispered to Deedee, “Guess you’d better cut down on the crack cocaine, huh?” but she either didn’t hear me or pretended not to.
On the drive home, Deedee was as quiet as she’d been during our first few get-togethers. I didn’t push it. I had plenty on my mind myself.
There’d been a moment in the film when a girl handed her baby over to an adoptive mother. The pure joy on the woman’s face as she accepted the child should have been thrilling, but it sent a shot of panic pulsing through me. I’ll bet anything she had remembered the due date. That she had a name picked out. That she knew the difference between a washcloth and a burp towel. Heck, she’d probably read What to Expect
cover to cover a dozen times.
Was there something wrong with me?
I had told Susan I wasn’t having second thoughts, but what about the fact that I wasn’t having any thoughts at all?
I’d been counting on getting more excited as the baby’s due date neared. Instead, fears that I might be making a huge mistake had been creeping into my consciousness. It was getting harder and harder to squelch them, but I had to. There was a little girl about to be brought into the world who needed me. I couldn’t let her down.
When I pulled up to drop Deedee off, there was an unfamiliar car in her driveway. “Looks like you have company.”
She groaned. “My mom’s fiancé.”
I was stunned. “I didn’t know your mom was getting married. You never even mentioned that she had a boyfriend.”
“He’s the manager at the restaurant where she works. They’ve been going out awhile now.”
“Do you like him?”
“They French-kiss in the living room,” she said by way of reply, making a gagging noise.
“How soon are they getting married?”
She shrugged. “My mom wants to do it before her thirtieth birthday for some reason. That’s in December.”
My jaw dropped and nearly hit the steering wheel. “Your mom is only twenty-nine?”
“Why?” She snickered. “How old did you think she was?”
“I don’t know. Older than me, I guess. She’s about to be a grandma!”
“No, she’s not,” Deedee said quietly, and she pushed on the door handle to let herself out of the car.
What could I say? She was right. My mom was about to be a grandma. As I watched Deedee walk up the steps to her house, I thought about that film again.
The whole time, my eyes had been on the arms holding the baby. It occurred to me for the first time that Deedee’s had been most likely on the arms handing the baby away.
IT WAS TEN O’CLOCK by the time I got home. I changed into an oversize T-shirt and my cotton robe, then hit “play” on my answering machine while I set up the coffeemaker for the morning.
There were three messages. The first was from my mom, saying that she wanted to have a baby shower for me and would a week from Saturday work?
The Next Thing on My List Page 23