The Knocked Up Plan

by Lauren Blakely

  “Thank you,” she says, breathlessly. “Thank you so much.”

  I bring her closer, hug her tighter. I can feel the happiness radiating off her in waves. It’s a palpable thing. It has its own energy, its own temperature.

  When she lets go, she takes my hand and guides me to the table.

  “So, this is the man who’s making me a grandmother.” Her mother greets me as if I’m some kind of conquering hero.

  I join them, and it’s like I’m me, but I’m also not me. I don’t know how I fit into this scenario. My part is over, like a character in a play who was killed off in the first act.

  My role in the story of her life has ended.

  Twenty-Five

  Nicole

  There’s a new member of my life.

  I’ve gotten to know her quite well during the last five weeks. Her name is Grace, short for “saving grace.” I hug her, resting my cheek against the porcelain bowl.

  We’re so tight these days that I just shared my dinner with her. Though, to be fair, dinner is a rather generous term to describe the meal I had tonight.

  An apple and peanut butter.

  By my rough estimate, there is about ten percent of it still left inside me. I wait for my Rosemary’s Baby to heave it out of me. I picture her or him down in my belly, having a conniption fit, tossing furniture, bureaus, whatever he or she can get her baby claws on.

  When I saw my doctor earlier this week, she assured me this level of morning sickness is normal.

  I told her we might have different definitions of the word “normal.”

  She said it was perfectly reasonable to barely keep a thing down, and that my body was producing all the nutrients my Rosemary’s Baby needs, even if crackers and bread are the only food items my body will accept. She laughed when I used the name of the spawn-of-Satan baby from a famous horror flick for my unborn child. Obviously, my baby is truly an angel, but sometimes the behavior in my belly is devilish.

  I asked my doctor how long morning sickness lasts.

  “Till about the twelfth week,” Dr. Robinson told me with the cheery smile on her face that never seems to disappear. I surmised she’s never been a host for a parasite baby, but then she went on to inform me she had morning sickness for all four of her pregnancies.

  “Four? You had three other ones after the first?”

  She patted my hand. “Just wait till you get to labor, honey.”

  She sent me on my merry way, and here I am, with three more weeks left of morning, noon, and night sickness. It’s the worst at night.

  But even as Rosemary’s Baby mercifully holds on to the remaining ten percent of my dinner, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because the baby is healthy and that’s all that matters.

  I pull myself up from my new worship zone and pat Grace on the seat. “You did well tonight. We will meet again soon.”

  In fact, we spend breakfast together the next morning before I leave for work.

  When I step into the hallway, my neighbor calls out to me as he walks to the elevator.

  “Hey, Nicole! Your plunger is awesome,” he says as if he’s never experienced anything better than that household device.

  “Glad to hear,” I say as I lock my door.

  “Any chance you could loan me an iron sometime?”

  I shoot him a look. “Frederick, I can’t loan you an iron. But do you need me to take you shopping for an iron?”

  His eyes light up. “You would do that?”

  I laugh. This poor guy. He’s so helpless. I bet his mother did everything for him. Time for his neighbor to fix that. “I would. Let’s go iron shopping soon.”

  When I reach the office, my stomach flips, and I bring my hand to my mouth.

  Dear God, let me make it to the bathroom.

  But then, the sensation fades away, and maybe it’s actually nerves, because there’s Ryder’s office at the end of the hall. I’m not nervous to see him, per se. After all, I’ve seen him most days in the five weeks since learning I’m pregnant. We’ve pulled off the slide back into just-friends as seamlessly as we migrated into friends-with-benefits. We’ve grabbed lunch a few times, we’ve made a few dirty jokes, and I’ve done my darnedest to glide into this new phase without a hiccup.

  The fact that he’s done with his dating guide and I’m done with—well, with needing his sperm—has eased the re-entry. We don’t have to spend time together like we did, so keeping our hands off one another has been doable.

  But mostly, this new phase has been manageable because my morning sickness had the audacity to appear in week five and send my sex drive to Pluto.

  Sometimes, though, the nerves show up when I see him. Perhaps because he’s still handsome, and he’s still kind, and we still made this Rosemary’s Baby together.

  I shove aside the nerves and pop in to say hello, as I do every day.

  “Hey.” I give a faint wave.

  He swivels his chair around and smiles, a magnetic smile that nearly sends my stomach flipping once more. Maybe from butterflies this time, but I can’t tell anymore. Too much is happening in my body. “Hey. How are you doing today?”

  “Fabulous.” I mime retching.

  He grabs his waste bin and pretends to catch. “I’ve got barf bags from my last cross-country flight. Need one for the trip to your office?”

  I manage a small laugh. “I think I’ll make it, but I can’t speak for whether I’ll need one for this assignment. I have to write a column today on how to tell if the guy you met online is catfishing you. Several readers shared their horror stories with me. I’ll probably retch from that.”

  “I might join you in the yakking. Catfishing curdles my stomach.” He lifts his chin with a question. “Does Cal know yet?”

  “About the column?”

  Shaking his head, he swirls his finger in the direction of my belly.

  “Not yet. I’m waiting till the first trimester ends before I share the news.”

  He nods. “Makes sense. Gotta make it past that point. The doctor still says everything is good?”

  I detect a hint of concern in his voice, and it’s endearing. So sweet, in fact, that I want to curl up in his lap and mope and whine and cry and then demand he bring me crackers and juice, and stroke my hair. Clearly, this pregnancy has warped my mind. My body is so out of whack that I’m picturing things I shouldn’t be picturing.

  Instead, I hold my chin high. “I’m the spitting image of health, she tells me.”

  Ryder smiles, though it doesn’t seem to reach his eyes. I wonder if he thinks of me differently now. Maybe that’s the reason his smile isn’t the same. Perhaps I’ve been sorted into some other class of woman now. I was once a sexual being; now I land squarely in the miserable pregnant woman section. I still see him the same way, though. When I look at him now, I think about how handsome he is with those jeans and that shirt. Other times, my mind wanders to how devastatingly gorgeous he looks without a stitch of clothing on.

  But I can’t even hold on to those thoughts in my mind because my body is a rebel. My stomach yanks all dirty images from me and blends them up with toast and crackers.

  “Gotta go.” I make it to the bathroom, and I’ve named this room Mercy because some sweet soul designed this building with single bathrooms, instead of stalls. It makes it that much easier to keep my little baby all mine.

  When my stomach is empty, I dive into the tales of catfishing, and I want to throat-punch every man who ever did this.

  I’m confident Rosemary’s Baby agrees.

  At the end of the day, Ryder knocks on my office door. He stands in the doorway, looking cool and relaxed. I catalog his clothes this time, since I’m not about to heave. He wears dark jeans that fit him so damn well I bet they gossip to other jeans about how good it feels to hug his legs. The dark blue Henley makes his eyes look even more like the sky, and that damn black leather jacket reminds me how sexy he is. It’s such an edgy look for a man who’s so goddamn good. I want to stare at his beauty all night
. Revel in his hotness. Freeze this moment when I feel good, and I can spend the night staring at him.

  That’s not weird at all.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I say as I zip my bag and toss a scarf around my neck. December has fallen in Manhattan.

  “Are you up for Ping-Pong tonight? Match against LGO.”

  My eyes widen, and that oh shit I totally forgot feeling sweeps over me.

  “You forgot,” he says, his lips twitching as if it’s cute I can’t remember anything.

  I grab my coat from the back of the door. “Baby brain. I can start using that excuse already, right?”

  “If you ask me, this is your chance to milk it. Use it for everything. For the next thirty-one weeks, right?”

  I stop, with one arm in a sleeve. “You know exactly how far along I am?”

  “I counted. Conception was mid-October, so that was two weeks. You were four weeks when you found out you were pregnant on November second. Now it’s five weeks later, and you’re nine weeks along.”

  Endearing doesn’t cover it anymore.

  Ryder steps behind me and finishes the job with the other sleeve, putting my coat on me. He faces me, adjusting the scarf and the collar. “Stay warm.”

  “Wait! I’ll play tonight.”

  His eyes twinkle. “You will?”

  I hold up a hand. “Unless Rosemary attacks me again with another bout of nighttime sickness.”

  “You named the baby? Are you having a girl?” His voice rises at the end with a touch of excitement.

  I wave that off. “No. Rosemary’s Baby. Like the movie.”

  “Ah. Got it. But Rosemary is a cute name for a girl.”

  “It is.” I sling my bag over my shoulder, turn off the light, and lock my door.

  We leave together, and before I know it, he’s walked me all the way to my home, twenty blocks away. At the entrance to my building, a pang of sadness darts through me. I desperately want to invite him upstairs. But for what? I’m not in the mood for sex, and I can’t stomach food, and besides, I’m seeing him in a few hours for Ping-Pong.

  Still, I wouldn’t mind just hanging out with him, watching one of my favorite flicks. Gone With the Wind or Talladega Nights.

  I part my lips to speak, but I yank the words back in. I might miss him in moments like these, but we had a deal. We had an arrangement. He did his part so damn well. He put the bun in my oven in a mere two months, and now I’ve got to do my job and bake it without being a psycho emotional pregnant freak who invites the baby donor upstairs for no reason other than she’s a weeble-wobble of out-of-control hormones. I remind myself that he was in it for the hot sex with a horny woman trying to get knocked up, and for the companionship on a work project. The work project is done, and now I’m anything but a horny woman.

  “I’ll see you at eight at the Lucky Spot,” I say, bouncing on my toes, trying to muster all the chipperness I possibly can. “And I’ll bring my lucky paddle.”

  “See you then, Nicole,” he says, then plants a chaste kiss on my cheek and leaves.

  See? He’s completely content to be my Ping-Pong partner, and only my Ping-Pong partner. He’s not looking for a hormonal co-worker to watch Scarlett O’Hara with.

  But he does need someone to help crush the opposition tonight. I can be that person for him. I head upstairs, determined to drag my sorry ass out of my apartment in a few hours’ time. I walk my dog, shower, pull on jeans and a pretty red sweater, and eat a few spoonfuls of rice.

  I take my time with the rice, hoping to coax the grains to stay down.

  But Rosemary has other plans.

  Twenty-Six

  Ryder

  Sweat drips down my chest, and I breathe hard from the racquetball game as I walk down the hall of the club. Flynn grins like a fool. The bastard.

  “You’re gloating,” I grumble.

  “I know. But you have to know I’ve only beaten you nineteen percent of the time—”

  I jerk my head. “Nineteen percent?”

  “Dude. Math is my forte. We’ve played forty-two games, and I’ve won eight, including tonight’s.”

  “No wonder you’re a rich bastard. That brain of yours is an impressive beast.”

  “That’s nothing. You want to talk impressive math? Let’s get into irreducible polynomials with integer coefficients.”

  I whistle in appreciation, and I’m about to hassle him some more when my phone rings. I grab it from the side of my gym bag. Nicole’s name flashes. I slide my finger across the screen in a nanosecond. “Hey, how’s it going?”

  “I don’t know how anyone craves pickles in the first trimester.” Her voice is beleaguered. “I don’t know how any pregnant woman has ever craved anything in the history of being pregnant. I ate rice and I can’t even keep that down. I think I have a date with Grace, my toilet bowl.”

  “You named the toilet bowl, too?”

  “We’re besties these days.”

  “Do you need anything? Can I get you anything at all?” I ask, wishing there was something I could do for her.

  “No. Just go on without me,” she says like a soldier in a war movie telling his platoon to keep fighting.

  “Seriously?”

  “If I show up tonight, I might dry heave all over the opponents, so while that could be a great strategy for winning by default or scaring the daylights out of them, I should stay home.”

  I laugh but then quickly correct myself. “I meant seriously as in you seriously don’t need anything? I’m happy to help.”

  She scoffs. “Night sickness is best not seen by someone who might have found me attractive at one point.”

  “He still does,” I say as we head into the stairwell.

  But she’s heaving and coughing, so I doubt she heard me. When she stops, she asks, “Is there anyone else who can be your partner?”

  I glance at Flynn. “Yup. I’m looking at him now.”

  We say good-bye, and I point at Flynn. “You’re my new Ping-Pong partner tonight, and I am counting on you to kick unholy ass one hundred percent of the time.”

  He pumps a fist. “I will, and trust me, I won’t make any ball jokes. Or knock-knock ball jokes for that matter.”

  Two hours later, we’ve crushed the competition, and Flynn is a happy motherfucker. Wish I could say the same about myself. While I’m glad we won, I keep thinking about Nicole, alone in her apartment with her no-fun nausea.

  But I do my best to enjoy the moment.

  We head to the bar to toast our victory, and while we order, a woman in a slinky red dress at the end of the bar stares at Flynn. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice she grabs her cell phone, looks at my buddy, quickly taps on the screen, then looks at him again. Recognition dawns on her face.

  As the bartender delivers our drinks, Slinky Dress makes her way to our end of the bar. “Hi,” she says, cutting in front of me to chat with him. Her voice drips with honey. “I couldn’t help but notice you from the other end of the bar. You have the most gorgeous green eyes.”

  I arch a skeptical brow. She noticed his eye color from across the bar? Or perhaps she googled Flynn Parker’s vitals?

  Flynn smiles. “Thank you. Your brown eyes are lovely, too.”

  He’s such a gentleman, and I’ve got to look out for him.

  “I love this place,” the woman says. “It’s so close to where I live. The vibe here is great.”

  As she chats up Flynn, I give them some space so I can conduct both research and recon. I google morning sickness treatments while keeping an eye on Slinky Dress. Something is off about her. The woman’s dress looks cheap, as if it’s from a discount mall, judging from the weird stitching down the side. Meanwhile, she’s telling Flynn she works at an advertising agency, planning campaigns for all sorts of high-end consumer products.

  Her coat is draped on the empty stool next to her. The corner of a white ticket pokes out of the pocket. Her back is to me as she talks to my buddy. “It’s so thrilling being young and
living in Manhattan, isn’t it?” She drops her chin in her hand, surely batting her eyes at Flynn as I find a site that gives me an idea for something—a small thing—that I can do for Nicole.

  “The city’s awesome. What part do you live in?” Flynn asks.

  “I’m in the Village. I walked here tonight after work.”

  That’s when the alarm bells ring. Holding my phone as if I’m simply trying to get a better signal, I lean closer to her coat and peer at the white paper in the pocket. It’s a New Jersey Transit ticket with today’s date on it.

  I hit send on the online order, toss some bills on the counter, and clear my throat. “Flynn. We need to get out of here.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll hang a bit.”

  I tip my forehead to the door and give him a meaningful stare. “You were going to help me move my TV stand.”

  “I was?” He blinks, then a second later, it hits him. “Yes, I was.”

  Once we’re outside, he says, “What was that about?”

  As the cold snaps my face, I pull up my collar. “Just a little live catfishing. That woman was from Jersey. She doesn’t work on Madison Avenue. She watched you from across the bar, looked you up on her phone, figured out who you were, and made her move. I bet she’s a gold digger.”

  His jaw drops. “Shit, man. You are good.”

  I shrug. “Sometimes the radar works.”

  He points at me. “That radar of yours is spot on. Like when you told me to assess a woman’s interest like an algorithm. I tried that strategy on a date recently, and the woman had Trojan horse written all over her, so I moved on.”

  “Good. I don’t want anyone taking advantage of you.”

  “I appreciate that,” he says as we walk toward Seventh Avenue. He’s quiet for a minute. “You know . . . a buddy of mine is recently divorced. He’s eager to get back out there. Throw his hat in the ring. I should have him talk to you.”

  “Always happy to help a brother out.”