Chapter 4 Dani
Dani
The twenty-sided die rolled across the table before coming to a lopsided stop on sixteen. “Does that mean my levitation spell worked?”
I looked up from my character sheet to find four sets of eyes gaping back at me like I had grown a second head. Technically, I was growing another head, but that was beside the point.
“Wait, wait, wait.” June blinked rapidly, like she was trying to reset her brain. “Rewind and play back the tape, please.”
Jo muffled a laugh. “The tape, mami? You’re really showing your age.”
“Shut up,” she said, swatting at his shoulder. Not that he could feel it through his thick wool sweater. “You’re the oldest one at this table.”
He clutched his imaginary pearls. “By seven months. And those months gave me wisdom, thank you.”
No one laughed, though.
The banter dried up as everyone turned their attention toward me. The weight of it settled over the table like a dense fog.
Clarke was the one to finally break the silence. “You’re pregnant.”
Oof, that was going to take some getting used to. I had just wrapped my head around the idea of being pregnant. Saying it aloud or hearing it said to me—about me—was a completely different story.
I pivoted in my seat to face my friend, and that was when I saw it: the tiny flicker of hurt in her eyes. And damn, if that didn’t burn more than the acid reflux I had been experiencing lately.
Just another fun side effect of pregnancy.
Clarke was a lot more than just a colleague.
We had worked together every day for over a year now.
I had been the one to hire her for the social media team when she’d been fresh out of a toxic relationship, desperate for a new start.
Since then, we had become a two-woman army—cloaked in matching Roasters’ jerseys, living off stadium pretzels and sarcasm, and texting during meetings like middle school tweens.
And still, I hadn’t told her about Brooks.
I shifted in my seat, suddenly wishing I could shrink inside my hoodie. “Yeah, I am.”
She didn’t say anything right away. Just nodded like she was adding it up in her head—my recent mood swings, the bouts of nausea during the first away series that I had played off as food poisoning, my sudden obsession with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and ice cream.
And Flamin’ Hot Cheetos dunked in ice cream.
I swallowed hard. “I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. Any of you. I just— I needed time to figure out how I felt about it before I said the words out loud.”
Clarke gave me a tight-lipped smile.
I deserved that. I hadn’t planned on dropping the whole “Oops, I had a secret relationship with the sexy as fuck baseball coach and now I’m carrying his spawn” bombshell during our bimonthly Dungeons & Dragons session, and yet somewhere between the charcuterie spread and Jo’s guava pastries, it had just spilled out of me.
To say my announcement had surprised my friends would be an understatement. Nessa was the only one who didn’t look like she needed a cold compress.
“Sooo,” June said, sitting up straighter on her floor pillow. Typically, we met at the tavern for D&D, but tonight, we had opted for a cozier spread at Smutty Buddies. “Now that everyone is caught up on who you did last summer, do you want to discuss next steps?”
“Slaying the orc queen, obviously,” Nessa answered quickly, even though she knew good and well that June wasn’t talking about the game.
We all knew exactly what June was really saying. I still had options. It was early enough to end this pregnancy if I wanted to. There was no shame in that, not in this group, and definitely not in my own mind.
“I’ve decided to keep it,” I told them.
Judging by their expressions, none of my friends had pegged me as the baby type. To be fair, I hadn’t either.
I liked my space and control. I never cooed at passing strollers or daydreamed about names for my future children.
The very thought of giving birth scared the ever-loving shit out of me, and I was starting to realize that I had an unsettling, deep-seated fear that my little parasite might grow up to become a serial killer.
Blame it on my love of true crime podcasts.
I had never done anything conventional, so motherhood had always seemed like a farfetched concept.
But as complicated and terrifying as it felt, there was something in me that had settled around the idea of having this baby.
Like the part of me that had always braced for abandonment for as long as I could remember had finally found something—or in this case, someone—to stick around for.
And that quiet certainty, however new, was enough to move forward.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I told them, voice thick with emotion. “And it probably is because I have no idea what I’m doing, but that’s never stopped me before. Besides, it’s not like I can do worse than my mom.”
Nessa sat forward, resting her hands on her tattooed thighs. “Badass.”
“Yeah,” June added. “That alone is how I know you’re going to be a great mom.”
I’m glad somebody thinks so.
Because the truth was, I was more scared of being a mom than I was of having a baby. And yeah, I knew those two things were supposed to be one and the same, but they didn’t feel that way to me.
Having a baby was physical. It was swollen ankles and hemorrhoids and, according to the pregnancy book I had downloaded to my Kindle, dry nipples, all of which led up to that moment in the hospital when someone put a tiny, squirming person in your arms. Terrifying, yes, but there was a beginning and an end to it.
Being a mom, though . . . that was something else entirely.
That was waking up day after day, trying to be someone new. Reliable. Selfless. Someone who could put another person first without resenting them, a feat my own mother had never fully grasped.
But what scared me the most wasn’t the pressure to be a good mother—it was the fear that somewhere along the way, I would stop recognizing myself. That I would vanish into the job.
And being a mother was a job—fuck anybody who said otherwise.
“By the way,” June said, shaking me out of my existential spiral. “I still can’t believe that you were secretly juggling that man’s rosin bags for months.”
“June!” Clarke cried.
Nessa buried a laugh behind her hands.
“Oh, come on,” June protested. “I feel like I deserve a little credit for that top-notch baseball innuendo.”
I massaged my temples, half-laughing despite the situation.
This was why our “Bitchcraft” group got on so well.
One second, we were battling an orc queen and foraging for magical fungi with levitation powers, and the next we were breaking down my emotional news like it was an episode of Love Island.
Damn, Brooks would love that reference.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that any one of these foxy, queer weirdos—aside from Clarke, the “token straight friend” of the friend group—would offer me a place to stay or an alibi, if needed.
“Speaking of Coach Daddy,” Nessa said between sips from her Enemies-to-lovers is a valid life choice mug. “Does he know yet?”
I hesitated.
Jo gave Nessa a look like not now, but she held up her hands in surrender. “Just asking.”
“Not yet,” I admitted.
The words hung in the air for a beat too long, until Nessa reached over and popped another apple slice drenched in brie into her mouth.
“Well,” she said, “Coach Daddy or no Coach Daddy—”
“Please don’t call him that.”
“—just know that this kid is going to have a full library by the time they’re born. I’m talking classics, queer fairy tales, picture books about feminist icons. And yes, I will be curating it personally.”
“Of course you will,” I replied, my heart squeezing in the best way.
She winked at me. “No child of yours is going to grow up without knowing the importance of consent, dragons, and a well-written epilogue.”
Jo grinned. “And this guncle comes with a killer pastelón recipe that he would love to pass on to the next generation.”
I smiled and blinked away an unshed tear. For fuck’s sake. I had cried more in the past few weeks than in the last five years—pregnancy wasn’t for the weak.
June, who had been nibbling the edge of a cracker like it was a delicate art form, piped up to say, “And when this tiny goblin starts walking, Auntie June will make sure they’re doing toddler yoga and have a strong plank game by age three.”
Everyone laughed, but she added, a little softer, “Also, if you ever need a break or, like, two hours to nap, I would be happy to babysit.”
“Seriously?”
She smirked. “Dani, you’re giving up sushi and booze for nine months. It’s the least I can do.”
Damn. Sushi, too? Apparently, I hadn’t reached that chapter of the book yet.
All eyes turned to Clarke, expectant.
“Well,” she started, crossing one leg over the other. She smoothed out her floral skirt and gave me a look that was equal parts sass and sincerity. “I wish you would’ve told me sooner, but now that I know, I will march into every baby store in Oregon and veto any beige onesie they try to sell you.”
Jo snorted. “You hate beige that much?”
“It’s not a color. It’s a cop-out,” she said with dramatic flair.
Clarke finally smiled, small but genuine. I nodded, and something unspoken passed between us, solid and forgiving.
“If it helps,” June said. “Babies are basically just loud potatoes for the first few months anyway.”
A sharp laugh busted out of me. They didn’t know what they were doing either, none of us did, but they were mine. Messy, ridiculous, and ride or die to the end.
“You’re all disasters,” I said.
June grinned. “Disasters who will help you keep the tiny potato alive.”
Nessa clapped her hands once. “Okay, feelings acknowledged, love affirmed. Now can we kill the orc queen?”
I nodded. “First, we kill the orc queen,” I told her. “Then, we figure out how I tell Brooks he’s going to be a daddy . . . again.”