Chapter 24 I Have a Baby on My Spine #2
“I guess the turtle-racing bar. Back in the spring,” he said with a start. “I was in a space where I otherwise would’ve panicked, but I felt safe with you.” Their eyes met in the rearview mirror. “And from that moment on, all I wanted was to give you that same feeling back.”
Flames burst up Lainey’s neck and into her cheeks.
“And that night,” he continued, undeterred. “The sun was setting, and you looked—”
“Holy—” Bree cut him off, roaring through another contraction.
Lainey checked the timer on her phone. She had no idea if three minutes and thirty seconds was within the normal range or what they were going to do if it wasn’t.
“Lainey, I need to squeeze your hand now. I’m sorry in advance for what I do to it. ”
“If you break my fingers, we’re already headed to the hospital.” Lainey offered up her palm, grateful for the swift subject change. “How much longer until we get there?” Dear god, Bree had a grip on her.
“About twenty-five minutes, but you requested an Uber Pool, so it’s directing me to pick up—”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Hodges?”
“As god is my witness, I will rip those glasses off your pretty-boy face and break them over my giant belly!”
“I’m rejecting the ride,” he responded, thoroughly castigated by their simultaneous fits of rage.
“Thank you,” Bree responded, out of breath. She inhaled just enough to fuel a deluge of pain-induced hysterics. “I’m having a baby, Lainey. Alone. I’m an unfit mother.”
Lainey shook her head fiercely. “No, you’re not, and you’re not alone. You have Colin. You have me. We’ll raise her together like the series finale of Girls, but when we do it, it won’t feel so dark and depressing.”
Bree squeezed harder, crushing Lainey’s knuckles. “I can’t be the reason you don’t go to Sweden.”
“Sweden?” Elliot asked Lainey, his shoulders going rigid.
Lainey considered responding to Elliot, but Bree’s wail sliced through the thought. Two minutes and thirty seconds since the last one. Lainey was beginning to panic. “Can you drive any faster?” Lainey grabbed Elliot’s arm with her free hand.
“I don’t want to speed when she’s—”
“GO!” The pair shrieked in unison.
Elliot stepped on the gas, the speed limit be damned for the second time in a matter of weeks.
Elliot disappeared somewhere between the front entrance and the elevator leading to Labor and Delivery.
He’d thrown his hazards on before lifting Bree from the back seat.
She’d slung an arm around each of them but leaned almost entirely on Elliot until someone in teddy bear scrubs materialized with a wheelchair.
In all the hubbub, Lainey felt a kiss brush her forehead.
It was the quick, reflexive, see-you-later kind of forehead kiss.
The kind she imagined a real husband planted on his real wife on his way out the door.
It’d been an accident, she imagined, but it was nice for them to forget how heartbroken they were, if only for a second.
Bree’s mother, Diane, strode into the alien-green maternity suite forty minutes and one epidural later.
“Elaine, you’re such a dear. Coming straight from gardening.
Not even taking a second to run a comb through your hair.
So supportive. You can go home and clean yourself up.
You must be exhausted,” Diane suggested, in that WASP-y way of hers where each individual word was technically nice but made Lainey walk away feeling extraordinarily bad about herself.
“Lainey stays,” Bree ordered.
Lainey sneered triumphantly at Diane, who immediately proved herself useless when she “monitored” the nurse measuring Bree’s dilation and promptly fainted.
“I forgot to call Colin,” Bree realized, ignoring her mom, who was now upright in the corner and eating a doctor-ordered Uncrustables sandwich.
“Am I going to forget about my baby? Sometimes I forget to close the garage door when I go to work, and it’s open all day long.
Is that the kind of mother I’m going to be? ”
“I promise you’re not going to forget about your baby. They cry a lot, so you can’t forget about them.” Lainey leaned her torso over Bree’s head to fluff her pillow. “And I think Elliot called him.” He’d said he would sometime between the car and the forehead kiss.
“Oh good.” Bree was relieved.
Just as Bree started to push, Colin slid into the room, his sneakers squealing on the tile.
“I’m here! I’m here! Have I missed any of the important bits?
” he asked, his voice dropping all posh pretenses and settling into a slightly more intelligible Guy Ritchie.
He raced to hook up their “Push It” playlist, getting “Blackbird” by the Beatles cued up while Bree shouted at him to hurry up so she could push.
Four pushes later, the doctor introduced the room to baby Elodie. After a little cleanup, she was wrapped up in a blanket and placed into her mother’s exhausted arms.
“Do you like it?” Bree whispered over the little person between them. Colin stood over her, staring down at his daughter with soft, adoring eyes as “Blackbird” played softly on the speaker.
“The name? Of course. It’s beautiful. She’s beautiful.
” Lainey peered down at her set of tiny eyelashes and little Cupid’s-bow lips under the dimmed lights.
“She’s so little,” Lainey said out loud, even though it was a ridiculous thought.
She was a baby—of course she was little—but there was something about how perfectly scaled down to size she was.
Tiny little nails on tiny little fingers.
Lainey wasn’t sure she’d ever get over it.
Bree smiled a droopy, blissed-out smile. “I’m so glad. We named her after you. Kind of. Like a cuter version of your name. That was rude. Not cuter. You’re adorable. I’m very tired, and have spent too much time with my mother today.”
Lainey laughed as “Blackbird” ended and started over again.
“I get it. It’s an honor to have inspired the name of a future…world leader? Olympian?”
“Pianist,” Bree corrected. “Have you seen how long those fingers are?”
Lainey nodded in agreement. “Can I hold her?”
Bree lifted Elodie half an inch before Colin sprang to action.
“Hand sanitizer?” he offered urgently, pulling a bulk container of pink liquid gel out of thin air.
“Uh, okay,” Lainey replied, accepting a generous pump of gloop.
“It’d probably be best if you sit in the chair, and I bring her to you.” He pointed at the recliner with a wild expression.
Lainey frowned but sat in the chair like a child holding a sibling for the first time as Colin placed Elodie gently into her arms like a warm loaf of bread. “I probably shouldn’t drop her, huh?”
Colin’s eyes grew to the size of golf balls. “No, definitely not!”
Bree fluttered her eyes shut. “She’s joking, Colin. Why don’t you go track down another pudding cup for me? Butterscotch.”
“Butterscotch. Yes. Anything. Of course.” He scampered into the hallway.
Bree let out a long breath. “They don’t have butterscotch, so we probably have fifteen minutes before he figures that out.”
“Be nice to him. He seems so excited.”
“No, you’re right. It’s good. It’s just a lot to share something like this with someone you just broke up with.”
“I couldn’t imagine going through this with Elliot right now.” Lainey gently brushed the glimpse of exposed forehead between Elodie’s closed eyelids and her striped cotton cap.
Bree scoffed. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you and I are not in remotely similar situations. You’re married to someone you’re in love with.”
Lainey clutched her niece protectively. “I never said anything about loving him.”
“Please.” Bree rolled her eyes. “You’re deciding whether you can still trust this man who clearly loves you back. Whereas I’m married to someone I do not love and does not love me, and last night, I dreamed I officiated his wedding to Mrs. Pac-Man.”
Bree’s logic seemed irrefutable. Lainey pursed her lips. “Point taken.”
Her forehead still burned with the memory of that brush of his kiss. That simple act of casual care. The way it promised he’d see her later, rather than saying goodbye.
“It’s funny.” Lainey forced a smile. “When we met, I thought we might be too different to understand each other, but now I think we’re too similar.”
At their core, she and Elliot were both scared kids, so used to being let down that they needed trust to grow on them like vines. She thought back to that first night with Waffle, when he needed someone to show up for him before he could be brave enough to get out of the car.
“Neither of us can fill in the gaps for the other person, because we’re both equally bad at the same fundamental thing.”
Bree seemed to consider that. “I think you’re looking at this the wrong way.
Having opposite traits is great when one of you likes to cook and the other likes to clean or whatever.
But with the real stuff, isn’t it nice to have someone who speaks your language?
It hasn’t always been easy for me to understand why you’re so determined to do everything on your own.
Or why you push me away when I try to be there for you.
There were plenty of times I took it personally. ”
“Bree. I’m—”
She waved Lainey off. “No, we’re good. This isn’t about us. I’m just saying. You are both learning how to be with someone. Maybe you’re also the best people to teach each other how.”
Lainey looked down at Elodie as she cataloged all the people who already loved this little girl. Then Lainey did the same for herself, picturing all the people in her life who had shown up for her before and would continue to, if only she’d ask. It wasn’t a small number of people.
“You really think he and I could work?” Lainey’s voice wobbled with a storm of emotion. Joy, grief, hope, fear, love, regret. Each one swirled at the base of her throat.
“Do you believe him when he says he was never going to exercise the option to restore the property?”