Chapter 34
EXPERT TILERS
For the next week, if Barry and I weren’t working our jobs, we were working on projects at the house.
Thirty-five weeks pregnant was maybe not the ideal time to be doing so many house projects, but I had lots of help.
I was right in my belief that Kate and I could figure out tiling with the right tools and YouTube videos, and we installed the bathroom tile and kitchen backsplash while Ron, Dad, and Barry busied about with other projects.
I couldn’t believe how quickly things came together with so many hands and a bigger budget than what I’d been working with for years now.
This home improvement shit was easy if you were rich, apparently.
Ron being an electrician secured him MVP status as he installed five light fixtures and replaced a dozen old outlets around the house, and my dad had efficient wall painting down to an art.
Jeremy came to help, too, but mostly he brought burritos and chattered at us while we worked.
His greatest contribution was bringing over one of his buddies to help haul the old washer and dryer out of the garage.
He did also assemble my bed frame, which now housed The Mattress to End All Mattresses. Mom had brought over new sheets.
The work in the house was exhausting, and I think I would’ve given up and lain down all day every day if I didn’t have the belly taping hack from Hunter.
She was still planning a baby shower for me, one that would happen next Saturday since the guys were going on a six-day road trip, the first of the new year.
Barry lamented this fact, an underlying current of stress that I would go into labor at any time.
Chloe had left a few days after Christmas, hugging me tight before she left.
She’d also whispered in my ear a plea to please, please not break her brother’s heart, a commitment I still didn’t know that I could make.
We hadn’t talked seriously about “us” since the talk on Christmas.
He loved me, I knew, though he hadn’t said it, and if I thought about the depth of my feeling for him, I got queasy.
I was in love with Barry Wright. I could deny it to others as much as I wanted, but I couldn’t lie to myself.
I wanted him almost as much as I feared having him.
Every day I believed more that his feelings were genuine, but I still couldn’t imagine what these feelings would look like after the baby was born—three months, a year, three years down the line.
It was the thing that had always kept me from going all in on a relationship, this not knowing.
My parents were together for sixteen years before they called it quits.
They were happier now, but it took a lot of heartache to get there.
And hadn’t they been happy together once?
Hadn’t they believed they were forever once?
I was mulling over this conundrum while painting window trim in the bedroom when Barry came in and wrapped his arms around me, lifting my belly up and making me groan immediately.
I melted backward against his chest and laughed.
It was a relief, but also, maybe more so, it was an excuse for Barry to hug me.
He was always finding excuses to touch me, pushing my hair behind my ears when my hands were occupied, wiping dried paint from my jaw with a warm towel, rubbing my shoulders, kissing my neck when it was just us and no one was there to make assumptions.
“Let’s call it for the night,” he muttered into my ear, no lack of suggestion in his tone.
Despite making no progress in defining our messy relationship, we were still all over each other.
Usually when my family left at the end of each night, we found something new for us to christen; the newly installed vanity in the bathroom, the bed, the new car, the kitchen counter—there was no shortage of surfaces for Barry to kiss and fuck me against, and I was incapable of denying his eager lovemaking.
“Junior is probably hungry and grumpy, and if I’m not mistaken, someone has to work in the morning,” Barry mused.
“And you have a road trip to pack for.”
Barry groaned and dropped his teeth to my neck before lightly gnawing until I was laughing and wiggling in his arms.
“Why’d you have to remind me, Harvey?”
“Were you hoping that ignoring it would make it not real?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“Was it working?”
“Well, now we’ll never know.”
I rolled my eyes, still grinning, and took a few long breaths in his arms before pulling away from him.
“Alright, fine. Let’s go before Junior starts picketing about his feeding schedule.”
The house was just about ready for us to move back into it, and there was no question or conversation that when it was ready, Barry would move back in too.
If I thought too hard about it, I’d start freaking out again, and at this stage in my pregnancy, I wanted to freak out as infrequently as possible.
The main solution was to avoid all distressing thoughts of the nature and longevity of our relationship, or lack thereof.
There was one thing that would unite us forever, at least, and there was no uncertainty that she would be finding her way into this world in the next five weeks, one way or another.
“Kate said it’s time to pack the hospital bags, by the way,” Barry said as he drove us back to his apartment.
“Already?”
I knew we were close, just a month away from the due date, and months had been moving quickly since I saw that positive pregnancy test.
“She sent me a link of things we’ll both need. She’s so thorough.” He turned on his blinker, then clicked on the radio.
I tilted my head, processing what he had just said, then clicked the radio off.
“You want to be in the delivery room? Like when it’s happening?” I asked. This idea had occurred to me, but I had diligently avoided thinking about it, and he had never said explicitly that he wanted to, so I never brought it up.
He paused and I watched his eyebrows furrow, but he kept looking at the road. “Do you…not?”
“Birth is really intimate, Barry,” I said, the only explanation that I could come up with.
It was true—birth would be intimate, probably the most revealed I could be, I guessed—but what I really meant was if you see me at my most exposed and still decide to leave, I don’t think I’ll survive it.
Couldn’t say that, though.
Barry recoiled. “Yes, as is sex, or a blowjob in a cleaning supplies closet, or living together for two months.”
“C’mon those aren’t the same as birth. Women poop on the table during birth, their vaginas can tear, it’s maybe the most grisly and vulnerable way to see someone.”
“And you think I wouldn’t want to be there to support you?”
It was simpler to tell myself that if he wanted to be there, it was to see his baby enter the world and take her first breath, not to support me, but it felt like a disservice to him to admit that.
He’d been nothing but supportive since moving in, it shouldn’t surprise me he had the same aspirations for birth.
He merged onto the highway, and I was grateful the road required his full attention so he couldn’t see my face.
“You don’t want me there?” he asked quietly, and the hurt in his voice was unmistakable.
“I just—it’s complicated. I’ve never done it before, it’s scary.”
“So, who would you have there instead?”
“Kate?” She’d helped me come up with the birth plan (albeit a very simple one: induction if we make it that far, hospital, meds if I want), and was the first person I thought of when pondering who I wanted to help me usher new life into the world, and with it, ushering me into a frightening new chapter of life.
She’d been by my side looking over me since I was born, whereas I blushed when Barry looked at me for too many seconds. Reasonably, she was my first choice.
“I have to think about it, okay?”
Barry did not look like this was okay, but after a long silence with his jaw clenched, he jerked his head in a nod and clicked on the radio again, a move I was thankful for this time.