Chapter 11 #2
I nod. “Josie and Sebby were a big help,” I say, smiling at Josephine, who’s showing Dad all the pages she’d colored in the new watercolor sketchbook I’d gifted her before we boarded the plane.
Forest grins as he makes his way to his bedroom. “Did you pack mine up too?”
“No, but I will for fifty bucks.”
He chuckles. “Nice try.”
I’m thinking of an excuse I can tell Dad to get him to leave, so I can finally abandon the safety of the couch, when Forest suddenly fills his doorway, his eyes wide and unblinking.
He doesn’t have to say a damn thing when he lifts the plastic grocery sack—the one he’d tossed to the side before he’d fucked me and came inside me for the second time.
With Dad’s back turned to get a bottle of water from the fridge, I shoot off the couch and sprint across the living room. Forest steps back a half second before I plow into him, and I snatch the bag from his hand. He sets Sebastian down on the bed and follows me into the bathroom.
“You didn’t take it?” he asks with a whisper, having a tough time ripping apart the hard plastic packaging of the emergency contraceptive pill.
“We fell asleep.” My hands shake so badly when I fill the hotel-provided cup from the faucet that the water spills over.
“Oh shit,” Forest says as we watch the pill slip, in slow motion, from his bumbling fingers. It lands in the sink and immediately starts to dissolve. He’s slow to pinch it with a grimace and brings what little is left to my mouth, as if to hand-feed it to me.
“I’m not taking that.” I gag at the thought of swallowing it and turn my head away. “I have no idea how clean this sink really is and what kind of germs it might have picked up.” It crumbles between his fingers, anyway, before I can decide if it’s worth trying to force it down.
“Yeah. Wouldn’t want to risk it. We’ll…find one at the airport,” he says with a questioning lift of his voice and a heavy sigh, washing his hands. “If they don’t have one—”
“I guess I’ll run to the store when we get home,” I finish quietly. “That should be fine, right?”
Forest’s shoulders drop. “Maybe?”
We stare at each other for a long time. Is he imagining, like I am, what would happen if I were to take the pill too late for it to work and we had a child together? Forest and I would be attached to each other for the rest of our lives.
Finally, I ask, “Will you grab my suitcase so I can change?”
He steps back, perhaps only now noticing that I’m wearing his clothes. “I wish you didn’t have to.”
“You have to stop looking at me like—”
“Like I want to put a baby in you?”
“Yes!” Though he might have already. I push him through the door, then shoo him away. “Go!”
When we get back to Texas, Dad and I help Forest bring his and the kids’ luggage inside his house. Since we all live on the same street, it only made sense to hire a shuttle bus instead of driving separately to and from the airport.
“Are you staying to help put the kids to bed?” Dad asks me.
“Yes,” Forest and I answer at the same time, though Forest’s voice comes out shriller than mine.
“Jinx,” Dad says, his brows pinching because I hadn’t said it first. With a short wave, he heads home, rolling both our luggage down the street.
As soon as I close the front door, I motion for Forest to hand me his keys. “I’ll take your car.”
Forest brows wrinkle briefly. “Why can’t you take yours?”
“Dad will think it’s suspicious.”
“I think we’re well past that.”
He’s so right. Dad hardly spoke on the flight, keeping tabs on me after I chose to sit on Forest’s side of the aisle with Josephine between us instead of beside Dad.
Forest spins his keys on his index finger and clicks his tongue. “Are you sure you’re okay to be out driving this late?”
Considering it’s only nine o’clock, I tell him, “I’ll be fine. I’ll go slow.”
“I don’t know…” he says, scratching the back of his neck.
A whine works its way up my throat. “If you want me to take the damn pill, then hand them over.”
For a second, I think there’s a chance he’s going to refuse. How silly of me.
Forest blows out a long breath before he finally drops the keys in my hand.
Right.
My phone chimes with a notification as soon as I hop in Forest’s SUV. BigDawg12kn sent $46.78. Included is the pill emoji.
My stomach clenches. I’m sure it has to do with the fact that not only do I have to drive in the dark, but I also have to do so in a gargantuan vehicle I’m unfamiliar with.
Even worse, I need to adjust the seat all the way forward, lifting it as high as it will go so that I can see over the steering wheel.
And still, I can barely see over the hood.
Surely, it would be better to wait until the morning, right?
The answer, unfortunately, is no, because the longer we wait, the less likely it is that the pill will work. Inhaling deeply, I put the SUV in—
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I drop my forehead against the steering wheel and bang it several times before jumping down from the driver’s seat and slamming the door shut. Forest opens the front door before I can knock. “Why didn’t you tell me it’s a stick shift? I can’t drive stick.”
He scrubs a palm down his tired face with a sigh. “You stay here, and I’ll run to the store.”
I hand Forest the keys as I take Benjamin, cradling his head against my chest and begin to hum. He really is the cutest, sweetest little baby. Maybe even cuter than all my nieces and nephews combined.
Forest is almost out the door when Josephine screams bloody murder from her room. We both race inside, finding her in tears, standing on her bed in the farthest corner.
She points to something above her bedroom door. “Spider! Spider!”
I shriek and do a running jump onto her bed, cowering in the corner with her, locking my arms tighter around Benjamin to protect him, as full-body shivers wrack my body. “Oh my god, kill it, kill it!”
Forest looks up. “It’s just a little jumping spider,” he says calmly. “Nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t care! Kill it!” Josephine and I both scream. And because we’re screaming, Sebastian does too. He comes running into the room, climbing onto the bed to hug my legs.
After tossing his keys onto Josephine’s desk, Forest spends the next thirty minutes chasing the spider across two walls, eventually trapping it under a plastic Tupperware container.
When he tries to slide a piece of paper under the container to transfer the spider outside, the spider jumps out and lands somewhere on the carpet near the bed.
The kids and I scream and leap off the bed, running for our lives out of the room.
Then Forest spends another hour trying to reassure Josephine that he did indeed find the spider and has taken it outside, so she’s safe to sleep in her bed.
I know the truth though—there wasn’t a damn thing in that container when Forest waltzed past us and stepped out into the backyard.
Josephine knows it too. And that’s how I end up sleeping on the couch with her while Forest tries to get the boys to bed after one, the late nap, and two, all the ruckus Josephine and I stirred up.
Just before dawn, Forest wakes me and whispers past a yawn, “I’ll pick up the pill on the way to work.”
“Good morning to you too,” I grumble and slip from the couch without jostling Josephine. “Try not to drop it this time,” I tell him with a curl of my upper lip, then book it across the street to sneak into my house, crossing my fingers and toes that Dad isn’t up yet.