Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
I refine, tighten, broaden. Business registry. Marriage licenses. Public tags. Private profiles. I am very good at this when I shouldn’t be. Still nothing. It shouldn’t make me feel better. It doesn’t. It just makes me feel… off. Like the data’s there but the query string is wrong.
Or like I’m rationalizing because the alternative is going back to that store, looking her in the eyes, and asking with an ounce of grace instead of a mouthful of fear.
My phone buzzes.
DUKE: Brief at 1900. Client added a holiday party to the itinerary. Tux level. Don’t shoot me.
Copy, I’ll source a penguin suit.
When I took this job, I thought… maybe I could casually send Melanie a text and reconnect. I didn’t expect this.
I wasn’t lying about my job. I’m here until after the holidays. Asher sent Duke and I to trail a popular influencer: Diva Dame (real name classified) to watch for tails. Duke’s been great to work with, and once we arrived in Saint Pierce, Dean Maddox added Gunner Slade to our duo, because Gunner’s familiar with the area.
I toss the phone onto the nightstand and lie back, shoes still on. The ceiling has the kind of texture that makes you think of popcorn and sublets. I stare at it until the heater clicks off and the room goes quiet enough to hear my pulse.
“Good ol’ Freddy,” I say to the empty air, trying the phrase on for size. It doesn’t fit.
I shut my eyes because the alternative is seeing a baby store window every time I blink. Sleep takes the long way around. When it finally gets here, it looks like a deck in Colorado, a blanket that smells like peppermint, and a laugh I can’t unlearn if I try.
Morning will feel cleaner. It always does. There’s a route, a client, a schedule. There are things to be done that don’t care about the past tense of a kiss.
For now, there’s just the quiet hum of a room I don’t live in and the echo of a question I asked the wrong way.
6
Melanie
By ten a.m., my living room looks like a baby store sneezed. There’s tissue paper everywhere, a suspicious number of Allen wrenches that all look identical, and a crib in twelve languages that insists step four should be obvious. Nothing about step four is obvious.
Amelia sits cross-legged on the rug with the instruction booklet and a highlighter, like she’s prepping for the SATs: Crib Edition. “Okay,” she says, tapping the page. “We need dowels A through C, screws D, E, and possibly F if your baby is advanced.”
“My baby is extremely advanced,” I say, fishing in a hardware bag that might actually be a portal to Narnia. “He or she already has opinions. Yesterday they kicked every time I played the ‘90s playlist but booed a cooking podcast.”
Amelia smirks. “Taste. I approve. Hand me an E.”
I pass her something that could be an E or a tax deduction and flop onto the couch with a graceless sigh I blame entirely on my center of gravity. My hand slides to my belly—round, high, currently doing a slow stretch like a cat waking from a sun nap. Seven months. How can time move this fast and this slow at once?
“Okay,” Amelia says, not looking up, “why did you tell Lucas the baby isn’t his?”
The question falls into the room like a bowling ball into a ball pit.
I pick at a thread on my maternity leggings. “Because he asked me if it wasn’t his like he needed me to say it. Because I panicked. Because I’m a disaster with a side of lightly salted denial.”
Amelia looks up, eyebrows in the stratosphere. “Mel.”
“I know!” I fling my hands. “But did you hear how he asked? ‘The baby’s not mine, right?’ like… he needed confirmation. Like he was bracing for impact.”
“Or like he didn’t want to blindside you in public?” she counters gently. “Like he was trying to make sure he understood?”
I make a face that is nine parts stubborn and one part… something else I don’t want to name. “He literally told me in Colorado he doesn’t do complicated. And you know what’s complicated? Humans. With diapers.”
“Lots of humans do diapers and complicated,” she says, sliding a dowel into the correct hole with maddening ease. “Charlotte and Asher are learning twelve dog personalities at once with a baby.”
“That’s different,” I say, even though I’m not sure how. “Lucas travels. He works weird hours. He… he’s really good at leaving. And I’m really good at wanting people to stay and then pretending it’s fine when they don’t.”
Amelia’s expression softens. She gets it. She was there for the college heartbreak, the almost-move to New York, the brand deal boy who loved the idea of me more than me. “You could have told him,” she says. “You still can. He has a right to know.”