11. Unicorn Puke
11
Unicorn Puke
As the headmistress of an elite school for young men, I inspire them to great achievement. However, I also instill values in them, like charity, responsibility, and respect. I want them to succeed, but I want them to do it in a way that makes them—and us—proud.
Abigail Davidson, Headmistress of St. Bernardino Academy
LUCIE
H oly shit.
I blinked hard, then peered through the glass window in the door to the bar again.
Nope, I was right the first time. Unicorns had puked all over the bar.
There was a rainbow balloon arch over a long table against the far wall. Pastel gift bags sat under the arch like a leprechaun’s prize. A giant white-frosted sheet cake dominated one of the four-tops in the middle of the room, and crock pots and chafing dishes took up the tables to the left.
People milled about, smiling. But no smiles were as big as those of a pair of women holding hands in front of the cake, one of them hugely pregnant.
What the fuck was going on? I’d come down at opening on Saturday to talk to Danny before the bar got busy, but I’d clearly failed at that. Was he even here?
I stuck my face against the glass so I could peer at the bar. He and Leo stood side by side, grinning. Leo pulled a beer, and Danny shook something in a shaker.
When the door opened, I nearly fell on my face. A short woman in her fifties gazed up at me. Silver glinted in her dark curls, and her brown eyes looked familiar. “Are you here for the shower?” she asked.
“Shower?” I repeated.
“I guess not,” she said. “The bar opens at two.”
She scanned me from head to toe. Was she judging me for peering into a bar at barely noon?
“I’m here to see Danny,” I said. “I need to talk to him.”
“Oh? What’s your name?”
“Lucie. I’m a…a friend of his.”
She tipped her head to the side, then took a slower scan of me, lingering on my oversized black wool sweater. “Come in, Lucie. He can take a break.”
I hesitated. “I can come back later.” I didn’t want everyone there to hear what I had to tell Danny, not until we’d figured a few things out.
“Come in, come in. It’s no problem. I’ll take his place at the bar. How hard can it be?” She patted my upper arm, then tugged me inside.
Fine. I was doing this. It was best to get it over with. As we always said at the newspaper, bad news might sell papers, but it didn’t improve with age. The woman towed me toward the bar. When Danny spotted me, his grin faded, and a tiny line formed between his eyebrows.
“Daniel,” the woman said. “ Lucie is here to talk to you.” She released my arm and stared at Danny, then at me, like she was deciphering a code.
“Hi,” I said. “Could we go somewhere quiet?” The woman narrowed her eyes at me.
“Sure,” he said. “Thanks, Ma.”
Ma?
He walked to the hallway, but before we got to the restrooms, he opened a door to the right, and I followed him into a tiny office. An ancient metal desk held an old desktop computer and a CRT monitor. Shelves above the desk bowed under the weight of a collection of binders. Metal shelving on the other two walls held an assortment of booze, boxes of napkins, and a giant tub labeled “Christmas Decorations.”
I shut the door, squared my shoulders, and faced him.
Danny rolled an armless chair from the corner in front of me, then leaned against the desk. I lowered myself onto the chair. But I hated sitting below him like a misbehaving child, so I stood. “You sit,” I said.
The furrow between his eyebrows deepened, but he obeyed. I didn’t take his place on the desk. Instead, I paced to the metal shelving, then took a deep breath.
“I’m pregnant.”
“Wait. What?” He didn’t look shocked, only confused.
“I’m not saying it again.”
“But I—but you…”
The tension in my shoulders eased. At least he wasn’t going to ask how I knew he was the father. “I forgot, okay? I got busy with work and didn’t get the emergency contraception, so here we are.”
“Are you okay?” He jumped up. “Sit. Get off your feet.”
“I feel fine. It’s not like I’m like…like that.” I gestured behind me like we could see through the wall to the baby shower beyond. Though, if I carried this through, I would eventually get like that.
Shit . I paced, wishing there was more space in the tiny office. “Who is that, anyway?”
“My cousin Belinda and her wife, Jung-mi. They’re expecting twins next month.”
“Twins?” Holy shit, what if he’d put twins in me? I put my hand over my racing heart.
“Don’t worry,” he said like he was reading my mind. “They don’t run in my family. Well, I mean, I have siblings who are twins, but there aren’t any others in the family. Ma always figured it was their father’s genes, but he didn’t stick around long enough to find out. Anyway, Belinda’s having twins because of the artificial insemination. Do they run in yours?”
“No. Thank god.”
There were a few beats of silence as I wiped the image of two squalling babies from my brain.
“Do you know what you want to do about it?” he asked.
“I…I don’t know. I just found out yesterday. It’s a lot, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Look, I know it’s a lot for you too. And I’m really sorry I fucked up.” I swallowed.
“Hey.” He caught my hand, halting my pacing. “I had just as big a part in this as you did. It’s okay. And whatever you decide, it’ll be okay.”
“You want me to decide?”
“It’s your body. Your life will change the most, at least over the next seven or eight months.”
“I thought you were Catholic. Couldn’t you get excommunicated or something?”
He snorted. “I’ve got a pregnant lesbian cousin. We’re not exactly the paragons of traditional Catholicism.”
“So do you want me to get an abortion?”
“I didn’t say that. I want you to do what’s best for you. If that’s an abortion, I’ll go with you and make sure you’re okay. If that’s carrying the baby to term, we’ll work it out. Together. As co-parents.” His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“What if…what if I want to keep it?” Saying it made my chest feel lighter, though my stomach was still a pretzel.
He exhaled. “Then that’s great.”
“I…it might be my last chance, you know? To be a mother.”
He scratched his cheek. “You…you wanna get married?”
“What?” I yanked my hand away. “No.”
“Okay, then.” He nodded. “We’ll work out an arrangement. We’ll share the responsibilities. And until the baby’s born, anything you need, just ask.”
“I don’t need anything. I’m fine.” If I said it often enough, I might believe it. “I’ve got health insurance, and the paper has a maternity leave policy. It’s not great, but it should get me through the early days.”
“What about your book?”
I squinted at him. With the bomb I’d just dropped, how had he remembered my book? “I’ll finish it before the baby’s born.”
He smiled, a crooked one that wrinkled up his cheek on one side and made me want to kiss it. “Of course you will.”
I wish I had as much confidence in myself as he did.
“So, we’re keeping this on the down-low, I assume, for another…” He looked off to the side. “Six weeks?”
“For as long as we can. If my boss finds out, he’ll remember I’m a woman, and I’ll be working the shit beat.”
“Can I tell my family?” he asked. “Not the whole family. Just Leo and my mom.”
“That was your mom I met before?”
“Yeah.”
“What about your dad?”
“Died when I was little. My siblings all have different dads. None of them stuck around.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
“About my dead dad? That was a long time ago.”
“That and…and for not knowing about it.” There were so many things I didn’t know about Danny. I hadn’t thought about all the ways this baby would tie us together. It would have grandparents. I hoped Danny’s mother would be better at it than my dad. “Okay, you can tell them. But I don’t want”—I gestured through the wall again—“that.”
“We can go slow,” he said, “until you’re sure of what you want.”
Heat rose from my chest, up my neck, to my face. “Are you second-guessing me? Because I’m not changing my mind. I know what I want. I might not be into that pastel-rainbow-unicorn bullshit, but I want to be a mother.” Until he’d questioned me, until the retort flew out of my mouth, I hadn’t known what I wanted to do. But now, as I said it, the truth locked into place.
“Hold on.” He put his palms up. “I thought… Never mind. I fucked up. I’m sorry. We can do this however you want. As long as there’s room for me in the kid’s life.”
The word kid conjured up an image of Danny running beside a dark-haired boy on a bicycle. Danny walking him up the stairs into a school. Danny tossing a ball with him. All the things my dad never did with me. As I’d pointed out (fine, been an asshole about) that morning after, Danny was all about taking care of people. He’d be a wonderful dad.
“I have some complicated feelings about parents,” I said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take them out on you.”
A tentative smile creased his cheeks. “It’s okay. I’m sure we both have a lot of fuckups in our future.”
I squinted one eye at him. “For example, did you propose to me in the office of a bar?”
His chuckle came deep from his chest. “It’s not the last mistake I’ll make, I promise. Let’s agree to give each other a little grace?”
“Deal.” I held out my hand, and he shook it. “We’ll figure it out, together.”