Chapter 12 #4
At that, Steven jumped in. ‘Nah, I was just trying to be careful, innit? She woke me up this morning talking about contractions, and then—’
Bianca cut him off. ‘Yeah, and then I told you the contractions and pain stopped after an hour! I said we didn’t have to come all the way here – that it was probably just Braxton Hicks.’
Steven turned the camera back to himself with a look of exasperation. ‘OK, but what do you expect me to do when you’re yelling in pain, and then suddenly start going on about “Braxton this” and “Braxton that”? In my head, I’m thinking: what’s Toni Braxton got to do with her going into labour?!’
At that, Bianca and I burst into fits of laughter. Men could be so clueless at these things.
‘Bro? I actually CANNOT with you right now. What did the doctor say? Are they gonna observe her or what?’ Steven panned the phone camera back to Bianca again, who answered.
‘Yeah, basically. They said we can go home. I’m definitely not in labour and they had me bouncing on this ball to see if it would trigger any further contractions just to be on the safe side. I’ve been on this for an hour but nothing, so we’re gonna get going in a second.’
Phew. Good to know they weren’t in labour yet.
That brief moment of chaos weirdly gave me a second wind – a little shot of adrenaline when I needed it most. After getting off the call with Steve, I took another dose of Pepto-Bismol and decided to walk around the flat a little to see if I could walk upright without my stomach doubling over in pain again.
After a few laps around the living room and a quick cuddle with Toby – who was confused and almost resentful of my presence in the house due to him being so used to having the flat to himself during the day – I took another dose of Paracetamol and headed back to the sofa with the packet of Jacob’s crackers.
If I could keep a couple of the crackers down without throwing up, then it would be a sign that I was on the mend.
I slightly chewed on the edges of a cracker as I scrolled through my Instagram feeds – it had been so long since I’d had a sick day that I almost didn’t know what to do with myself outside of sleeping or watching TV.
I needed to be productive in some way, shape or form, and rotting on the sofa all day just wasn’t going to cut it for me.
I scrolled through my notifications to find a fresh onslaught of engagement from none other than Theo himself, with his last ‘likes’ being sent just over forty-five minutes ago.
I’d wanted to believe that this was just an extra service he’d added on to the ‘overnight stay’ option perhaps; something to make his clients feel extra special.
I logged into the OuiMeet app just to see if I’d missed any fine print or extra services, but I hadn’t.
All of his Instagram engagement was organic.
I couldn’t quite work out what his game was, in all honesty.
On one hand, he’d initiated a boundary with his clients regarding developing a relationship outside of the app but, on the other hand, he was getting pally with me for free on social media.
I was definitely receiving mixed messages from him, and it was something I would potentially bring up on our date tomorrow evening – that and the ‘1996’ at the end of his username.
I was more inclined to believe at this point that he was twenty-nine years old instead of thirty-four.
I also couldn’t help thinking that him being younger than me was a slight turn-on for me.
From my brief experiences being around him, he presented himself as quite a dominant man, but maybe that could all change tomorrow – especially with what happened in the back of the Uber the other day.
I opened my inbox to see a new message from him:
Hello beautiful lady. I hope you’re having a wonderful day so far. :)
I was conflicted. On one hand, this was lovely, but on the other hand, I couldn’t help but wonder how many other women he’d sent texts like this to.
Was he ‘dating’ other women this week as we spoke?
As much as I wanted to lean in to the prospect of developing some kind of whirlwind love affair, I couldn’t allow myself to develop feelings for him, knowing that he was probably fucking other women at the same time.
I’d decided that our relationship had to be purely transactional, for the sake of my mental health at this point.
I decided to play along and send a message back:
Hello to you too, somewhat-handsome gentleman. I’ve had better mornings, but I’m otherwise OK. Looking forward to tomorrow. I hope you’re well too, and I hope you don’t charge these interactions to my card btw. ;)
The ‘read’ notification text appeared instantly.
Almost as if Theo had been waiting on tenterhooks for me to respond.
I could almost bet that he wouldn’t have been so forthcoming with his texts if he could see me now; shitting and puking up a storm.
I decided to withhold my current health status in case he decided to postpone. I read his reply: