Chapter 19
Andi
I’ve just come in from the garage, just reset the security alarm, when my phone buzzes with a text from Kevin: You get home okay? I forgot to ask, who knows about the baby? Should I not say anything to anyone?
It’s all so new to me that I’ve been walking around in my own little bubble, not thinking about other people or how or whether to tell them.
I call him as I head to my room.
He picks up right away. “Hey. You home okay?”
“Yeah.” I toss my purse on the bed and drop down beside it. Click on the bedside lamp and fall back against the pillows. “I hadn’t gotten to the telling-people stage yet. Nobody knows but you.”
“Hmm.” His voice is low, gruff. I wonder if he’s stretched out on his bed too. “Did you know that clerk in the bookshop?”
For an instant I wish we were having this conversation face-to-face, his hand on my waist, our knees touching.
For the first time, that kind of intimacy sounds…enticing.
He’s waiting for me to answer his question. Bookshop. Girl. “Um…I don’t think so. Did you?”
“No. So probably no danger of her telling anyone.”
Good thinking. It’s like he’s more tuned in to small-town gossip than I am. “You know… I think I don’t want to tell anybody else till the first trimester has passed.”
“Really?” His surprise morphs immediately to support. “Okay. I won’t say anything to my family for a while either, then.”
Oh shit. His family. There’s someone in this besides just us.
It shores up my snap decision. “Yeah. Doc said anything could happen at this point, but it’ll be more of a sure thing in another month or so.”
“Makes sense. So…just you and me then, for now?” His voice wraps around me like a hug.
“You and me…and Baby.”
“Yeah.”
I can hear a tiny smile forming with the word, his bones and facial muscles relaxing into something softer. Warmer. Before I can think it through, I say, “You seem happy about this.”
A pause. Then a cautious, “Aren’t you?”
“Well…” I hadn’t thought about it precisely in those terms, but… “Yeah. I think I am.”
“Then so am I.”
Another pause. It’s hard to know what to say next.
Then, voice low and blurred with a surprising amount of emotion, he says, “This baby’s going to be wonderful, Andi. A sweet, beautiful, lucky, lucky baby.”
We say good night then, but all through my get-ready-for-bed routine I’m hearing those words, wishing I knew him well enough to feel safe amending his words to “Our baby.” I’d love to share this overwhelming blooming feeling with him. That’s what it’s like—my heart’s blooming .
Maybe hanging out with him, letting him help with stuff, is the fairest, best way I can handle this right now. Stay friends and just…watch out.
Obviously if he’s just acting sweet like Gram and Mom’s husbands did at first, I can’t give him anything he can use against me or Lil Bit.
But if Kevin’s the man he appears to be, I want him to be able to see and feel and share and remember every minute of his lucky baby’s existence.
***
We settle into a routine: work most of the day, then I go run a couple of half-ass miles with him in late afternoon, then back to work. Sometimes Kevin comes to spend time with the shelter kids after he’s finished at school. Then we do dinner together, either out somewhere or at his house.
“We could do this at your place sometimes, if you want. Save you from a late drive home.” He’s not looking at me as he carves a rotisserie chicken.
“That’s okay. I like knowing I can go straight to bed when I get home.”
’Cause I’m sure as hell not getting to go to bed here.
Ever since the proposal fiasco, Kevin’s been more reserved physically. No flirting and only platonic touches, almost like he slips into trainer role. Back rubs, foot rubs, occasional friendly arm around my shoulders… But nothing to indicate he’d be up for more. Ever since I kissed him on that bookstore night, if I get too close, he steps back fast and says, “Oh, I forgot to tell you…” and then some innocuous thing I know he made up on the spot to defuse the situation.
Looks like I was right about him having no interest in being anything but buddies with plain everyday me. Or maybe he’s turned off by pregnant women. Whichever, the result is the same.
And that’s a damn shame, because I find myself wanting him every minute of every goddamn day. At the track, when he sees me coming in from the parking lot and smiles, his eyes crinkling, sunlight glinting off the gold fuzz on his perfect legs as he jogs over to greet me. Over dinner, when he teases me and gives me the best cuts of meat and asks me questions about my growing-up years and how I think children learn. At night, side by side on the couch, when his warmth and scent enfold me as we watch movies.
And later, in my bed alone, when he’s called to make sure I got home okay and to read me some interesting snippet or other from the pregnancy book he bought us, I lie back against my pillows and wish he were there with me, and I wonder just how bad it would be to let him know where I live.
How dangerous, realistically.
He certainly hasn’t shown any desire to spend the night with me.
***
Kevin
“You seem happy, Uncle Kev.”
CeCe and I have just finished playing a new video racing game with her little brothers. The two boys just had to say good night to get ready for bed.
Geez, I love hearing their voices, even when they’re trash-talking me and grumbling about having to take baths.
“You mean happy for a guy who keeps getting his butt kicked by a bunch of middle-schoolers?”
But she’s serious. “No, I mean really happy. Happier than you did when you first moved. Happier than you did before you moved, even. Happier than…when you were with Cheryl.” She almost whispers that last word.
Hmm. “I guess I am. Making new friends, liking work so far… Yeah, I’m good.”
I hadn’t consciously thought about it, but life does seem pretty good right now. Be a lot better if I didn’t occasionally feel like I’m walking on eggshells with Andi, trying not to do anything that would jeopardize my place in her life or the baby’s, but…still mostly good.
Although this nothing-physical stuff might kill me.
If I’d thought Andi was ripe and glowing and sweet-smelling and tempting as juicy peaches before, I had no idea. She comes striding toward me from the parking lot and I swear the air lights up around her. The grass is greener. The changing leaves are brighter. Her light dazzles me, makes me squint.
And those curves of hers when she’s in motion… Could she possibly have gotten any sexier? I can’t take my eyes off her, but I’m pretty sure if I did, I’d see that all activity around me had come to a halt, with everyone who’s attracted to women just standing, staring, probably with their mouths open, salivating, wanting to sweep her into their arms and taste her just as much as I do.
CeCe breaks into my thoughts. “You know, I saw her the other day.”
What? “You did?” How?
“She asked me how you were doing, whether you’d be coming home for Thanksgiving.”
Oh. CeCe’s talking about Cheryl.
Things in my mind drop from Technicolor back down to black and white. “Huh.” I just—don’t have anything to say about Cheryl. Or to Cheryl.
“I think she’s missing you, Uncle Kev.” CeCe’s tone is cautious. Tentative.
“Her new boyfriend not keeping her busy enough?” The bitter edge in my voice isn’t as pronounced as it would have been a couple of months ago, but I still hear it. A few days after she dumped me, I learned Cheryl had taken up with some guy best known for racing his motorcycle on I-80. Without a helmet. A definitely-not-vanilla guy.
CeCe snorts. “Oh, him. He’s in the hospital.”
“Wreck?” I should feel sympathy, probably, but…
“O’ course. But they broke up before that, anyway.”
To my surprise, I don’t care enough to ask why. “Well, about Thanksgiving, I’d sure love to see you all, but I have to work some things out here before I know if I can come.”
I hear her swift intake of breath. “Uncle Kev! You got a girlfriend?”
I hesitate. Do wishes count? “Um, she’s not—No…”
She squeals loud enough that my windows are in danger of shattering. “Wait till I tell Grandma!”
“No, now, CeCe—”
“Love you! Bye!”
Well, heck. Now I’m going to be fielding questions and hints and well-meaning nosiness from Nebraska every day, on top of Steve Jackson’s, “So what’s up with you and Andi Salazar?” and Tisha Williams’s weekly, “Say hi to my friend for me. She’s a fine woman.” I always tell Steve, “Just friends, man,” and his big laugh trails him all the way down the hall. To Tisha I respond, “Yes, ma’am, she sure is.” A fine, fine woman.
At the shelter, I see how she is with other people. She holds herself back just a little, but she’s always friendly. Respectful. Calm. Capable. And they talk about her like she can do no wrong. They admire and respect and love her.
And…maybe…I’m falling too?
Which is why I’m doing my best to resist her right now. I think maybe she wants me physically—maybe she’d be up to renegotiating our relationship that way—but maybe not. She’s the one who set the boundary and she’s got to be the one who lowers it. Even if respecting it kills me. Which it might.
But there’s another reason too. When I heard that proposal come out of my mouth the night she told me she was pregnant, I realized three disturbing things at once: one, in some ways it felt exactly right to ask her to marry me, short acquaintance or not; two, on the other hand, I knew it was wildly, stupidly soon for me to be thinking that; and three, that’s always been my MO. I’ve always leapt straight to serious, always fallen easily in love without doing the real work to lay a strong foundation for a relationship. I always just assumed that would fall in place. When or how I thought that would happen, I’m not sure, but I believed it would.
With Andi, things are so much more complicated. So much trickier, with so much more at risk. I’m aware of the sand under my feet…aware that there’s no concrete there. Yet.
The idea of doing something that might cause her to pull away scares the hell out of me. Yeah, it would make things more complicated for me as the father of her baby, but also, the idea of a firm and final rejection from her might just crush me for good.
So I’m trying to pour some footers for us. Get us on solid ground.
Be what she needs right now, so she can picture me being what she wants for the future.