Chapter 1
A RE-MEET CUTE
It was a miserable November morning, the kind of cold that feels like a betrayal because fall wasn’t that long ago, and you can still remember summer.
I was almost done cleaning the biggest area of my shift.
I started with the bathroom that morning and looked at the mirror, first at my cheeks, which were round, then the skin beneath my eyes, puffy, then at my stomach, which was also round, but not soft.
I didn’t think it would feel like that, I always thought it would be softer.
My doctor assured me it was normal for my growing belly to feel so firm, it’s all the water in there, the amniotic fluid.
At nearly twenty-seven weeks pregnant, it felt like there was enough amniotic fluid in there for multiple babies. My stomach now made working uncomfortable, but it wasn’t unbearable.
I looked back up to my face, bored into my own eyes for a few moments, psyching myself up to finish my shift, then sprayed the mirror until my features were obscured by the vinegar and water mixture.
It wiped clean immediately, it wasn’t like the sink in the men’s room that someone used for brushing their teeth, pasty spots of white there every morning, but even that wasn’t horrible.
Nothing in the training facility was ever that bad, probably because it was still so new.
When my dad asked if I’d join the team on a new property we got the janitorial bid for, I was about seven days pregnant at the time and clueless about it, so I had no concern that I’d be working at the new training facility for the city’s professional hockey team.
I also still thought Barry from New York was maybe a finance bro or a lawyer.
It was a nice-ass facility, and even if I knew basically nothing about hockey, it was still cool to get to work there.
My little brother Jeremy hated me for getting the job over him, but he also probably wouldn’t work a shift at four in the morning even if his life were in jeopardy.
When I learned I was pregnant, I started picking up extra shifts, and when I found out that Barry was a professional hockey player himself, I wondered if I’d ever see him here.
The concept stressed me the hell out, but I determined that he played states away and the likelihood of finding him at the practice facility for an opposing team at four a.m. on weekdays was relatively low. It would be fine.
Plus, I wasn’t going to give up cleaning the building; I liked it too much.
I was so used to cleaning boring office buildings that having a facility with weight rooms, a huge kitchen, multiple lounge areas, and an office space for all team operations felt fresh and exciting.
And getting there early meant that I got to watch the sun rise through the building’s big windows, slowly filling the rooms with daylight. Straight up lovely.
I cleaned six sections a day, five days a week, and took at least two evening shifts, plus fill-in weekend shifts at other buildings when I could.
I needed the money. Badly. There was this goblin creature in my stomach that was growing into a one-day angel baby, and my savings account wasn’t as healthy as the mommy blogs said it should be. Quite the opposite.
Tech writing paid better, but it was soulless.
None of the team staff came in before seven, so I had hours alone to play music as loud as I wanted, which was almost meditative.
I changed all the trash liners in my sections, scrubbed the toilets and counters—mopped four times a week—cleaned the locker room, the showers, and the weight room, then did the admin area before making my way to my favorite place: the large lounge where I supposed the hockey players…
watched TV or something? I didn’t know fuck all about what they did, but there were TVs and couches and long tables. A dream to clean.
Beyond being perpetually sick and exhausted in my first trimester, pregnancy didn’t slow me down too terribly after week fourteen.
I had to start wearing this belly band four months in because who knew that growing a baby was a major strain on one’s back?
At first, there was the nausea and vomiting, so much vomiting, and the second trimester was better, except I was still exhausted constantly.
Now that I was just starting my third, my body was more uncomfortable than ever, but again, at least I wasn’t losing my life force sitting in a cubicle writing marketing copy for the AI company that laid me off in April.
I usually ended in the lounge because it had the best couches, and I could sit on them for the last bit of my shift to regain some energy before packing up and going home. Even when the players and staff started trickling in early, they usually didn’t start in the lounge.
The couch in the corner farthest from the door was the best of them.
Leather, but not the kind of leather that you have to pry your skin off of.
Buttery leather, rich, and the cushions were better than my bed, so I finished the surfaces quickly and vacuumed around the room and beneath all the chairs before finally plopping down there for a brief rest.
I thought I’d just sit, scroll a bit, chill, but then the sleep demons came for me and I decided a nap was in order.
Just a short one. No one could see this couch from the hall, it would be fine.
By the time I woke up, my shift would be over, and maybe the kitchen staff would let me take a smoothie on my way out.
As I closed my eyes and sank further into the couch, I set a timer for twenty minutes—who could fault me for twenty minutes? I’d rest, then I would get up and wheel the vacuum into its closet, clock out, and head to the bus. Easy.
And it was; I woke up to the alarm no problem, but when I rubbed my eyes and sat up, I gasped at the sight of someone sitting on a coffee table across from me.
I thought for a second I was having that dream again, the one with the sexy rude billionaire, but in that dream, I was always wearing something much nicer than the bleach-stained Harvey Janitorial polo I wore to clean. So it had to be real.
The man seemed very real, and his eyes were locked directly on my stomach, which was so round that the polo stretched thin over the middle.
I recognized him immediately.
It was Barry. Barry who lived in Columbus, Ohio, kissed like it was a life-extending act, and liked matcha-flavored ice cream. NHL player Barry Wright. Barry who was—
“Hannah, right?” he asked, though he knew. I knew, we both knew. I nodded. He pointed at my stomach. “Is that?”
“No,” I said, way too fast. “Why would you think—no.”
I stood up then, but I hadn’t eaten enough before my shift, so I had to sit back down until the gray orbs circling my vision subsided. When they did, he was still sitting in front of me, now looking shocked and concerned, body poised and ready to brace me if I toppled over.
“How did you find me?” I asked because he had to have come looking for me. There was no other explanation. He had found out about the baby and tracked me down to chastise me, or to take her away from this life of generational janitorial work.
How did he find me?
“What?” Barry didn’t sound defensive like I had figured him out, he sounded very confused.
“Who told you?”
“Who told me what?”
“About the baby,” I said. “Why else would you be here?”
“Hannah—”
“Did my mom call you? That is so not okay, actually.”
“No, Han—”
“Am I dreaming? You are not here.”
This was a strange dream. Definitely. Or a guilt-fueled hallucination for never calling.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to pull myself awake.
It worked sometimes if I really focused, but after a good twelve seconds of this, my stomach growled, and it seemed that in fact this was not a dream at all but some cruel, bizzarro reality.
But Barry lived in Ohio, right? He totally did, he played on the team there, so what was he doing in Utah at—I peered at my watch—8:44 a.m.?
“How are you here?” I asked.
Barry’s eyebrows shot up on his forehead. “In Utah? Or in this practice center?”
“Both? Don’t you live in Ohio?”
Barry blinked before tilting his head toward his shoulder. “I got traded.”
“Oh.”
What. The. Fuck.
“I’m a hockey player,” he clarified, like I didn’t know. Fair enough, because when we hooked up, I in fact did not know. If anything, I guess it could appear suspicious for his one-time hookup to be at his place of employ. “How are you here?”
“Nepotism,” I said. “My dad owns the janitorial business the facility uses. I get shifts in the nice buildings.”
Barry kept glancing at my stomach, probably because the last time I saw him we’d just created the life that was in there and now I was sleeping on a couch in the team lounge where he newly worked. It most likely looked like I was here to ask for money. I wasn’t. I wouldn’t, ever.
Because, again, low culpability on his part in my estimation.
“I live here,” I clarified.
Barry was still extraordinarily cute. His hair was shorter than it had been in New York, shaved close instead of loose and floppy, but his nose was still distinct and a little crooked, and I was quickly remembering and trying to forget that he had little freckles on the tops of his shoulders.
“In this building?”
“No. Well, sometimes I sleep here, but just little naps. I meant that I live in Utah.”
Barry nodded as he took this in.
“You never texted me.”
“I got pregnant, so.” This wasn’t the explanation he wanted, but I hoped it would do. His continued confusion told me it didn’t suffice. “Baby’s not yours, don’t worry.”
Barry looked only marginally relieved to hear this, shoulders dropping slightly with his head bobbing, but seeing him again had the synapses in my brain firing off fifteen images per second of what the baby might look like—would she have his nose?
His ears? What shade of brown were his eyes again, and would the baby’s be green like mine or a mix of both of ours?
Is that how genes worked? What else would come through his genes?
I needed to keep cool. I was about to ruin everything if I didn’t calm down, but I couldn’t stop imagining the baby coming out with some congenital disease, and the doctors having no idea.
And what if she died from this? Oh God, what if my baby died?
Our baby? What if we made a baby, I gave birth to it, and then the baby died all before Barry even knew he was a father?
That happened, it happened all the time, and what if it was my fault?
Could it have been avoided if I had just asked if he had some disease?
“Well—”
“I’m sorry—I lied,” I half whispered, now with a palm on my stomach. “It’s totally your baby.”
I stood again to leave and wasn’t nearly so dizzy this time, so I went straight across the lounge toward my cart.
Barry called after me, but I was busy picking up the vacuum cord so I could tow it behind me in my pathetic fleeing.
He reached me before I could even get out of the lounge, and I looked back and forth between his hand on my shoulder and his eyes, which were deep brown and really wide like I’d just told him he was the father of a baby he didn’t know about.
I recognized the look; I’d worn one just like it for two months.
“I know it’s a lot,” I said. “I’m—we’re—I’m having a girl, and I’ve known for weeks but I don’t know if I should tell people because then they’ll all get her pink clothes and I don’t want to be the one that teaches her from birth that girls just wear pink, you know? And I like pink, I really do.”
He was the second person I told the gender news to after Kate, and I wasn’t sure why I was telling him other than I’d felt supremely alone these last six months, and maybe he should have input on the whole telling people the gender thing, if he wanted it.
Barry’s mouth opened and then closed, sort of floundering.
“I wasn’t going to tell you. I’m not trying to ask for anything, I really do work here. Also, I think I want to name her Frances, because it was my grandma’s name and it’s a sweet name, right? Frankie?”
Barry started to speak, but I cut him off with more rambling before he could protest. “No, you know what? You don’t have to worry about this, any of this.
I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to think I was asking for money or anything, I’m not—you can just forget it.
But are there any health issues I should know about? ”
I was a little winded from talking, and for half a minute, my shaky breath was the only sound between us. I didn’t make a move, not when Barry’s hand was so warm on my shoulder, and he was trying to comprehend the grenade I’d just detonated at his feet.
In the kitchen down the hall, one of the chefs turned on an old Pitbull song, which wasn’t really the vibe, but whatever.
“A girl?” Barry whispered.
I was very cognizant of my own blinking, twice, then three times more.
“Yes,” I whispered back.
“Do you have a picture?”