Page 51 of Expecting an Argument
Heat crept across my cheeks. “W-what’s tradition?”
Beau reached behind him and grabbed two teddy bears, one pink and one blue, and set them on the center console between us. “My parents always got me gifts on Valentine’s Day, so I wanted to get gifts for the twins. The flowers are for you, technically, as a thank you for carrying them.”
I glanced at the flowers in the rearview mirror. For the twins. Just a thank you.
“Oh, right,” I breathed. “Who could forget Valentine’s Day in middle school when your parents sent a limousine to take you to lunch.”
He let out a short laugh. “That was a fun year—something I’d like to repeat with my own kids. Provided Valentine’s Dayhappens onmyweekend, of course.”
I folded my arms on top of my belly and looked out the window. “We would alternate holidays, you know.” I sighed softly. “But I’ll let you have Valentine’s Day every year.”
I caught his little smile out of the corner of my eye. “Always a pleasure negotiating with you, Counselor Adams.”
I grabbed my green water jug out of the cup holder and took a big sip, letting the cool cucumber banish the heat that had built in my cheeks.
Tears fogged my vision as I stared at the passing buildings. I used to be so tough, but I cried over everything lately—lasagna that was cold in the center, losing the drawstring in my pants, or the sight of my mom’s ashes on the nightstand.
God, I wished I could just talk to my mom. Maybe she could make sense of what I felt.
Slowly, I picked up the pair of teddy bears and crushed them to my chest as I looked out the window. Hopefully, Beau would believe I was crying over the memory of my mom and not because the roses in the backseat were onlytechnicallyfor me.
Sophomore year, Olivia argued with me about the use of a semi colon so ferociously that she snapped a pencil in half. Junior year, I accidentally almost ran over her in the school parking lot and she threatened to slash my tires. Senior year, she clocked Zach Wilson across the face with her binder because he pinched her ass.
The last word I would have ever used to describe Olivia Adams was docile, yet she had started agreeing with me, giving me quiet smiles, and letting me have only the briefest moments of eye contact.
She had to be hiding something.
Maybe it was my own paranoia or a hunter instinct that I never knew I had, but I was determined to track down exactly what was making her so squirrelly. Any time I asked her if she was all right, she brushed me off or only complained about her pelvis hurting. On the rare occasion she was happy, like when Ibrought her the exact chips and queso she had been craving, she still wouldn’t talk.
She still napped, read her lurid books, and watched people murder each other on TV, but she was a grayer shade of her normal rosy pink.
My concern was building, but I was too afraid to confront her and upset her like at Christmas. When she walked into the gym during my arm day, my heart pounded a little faster as I did bicep curls. She was out of her normal routine, so maybe I could finally catch her off-kilter and figure out what was wrong.
Olivia unrolled her squishy purple mat to do some yoga, but then walked over near my weight rack to examine herself in the mirror wall.
I couldn’t help but watch her as I finished my set. Her hair was in a neat braid that ended just between her shoulder blades. She had one hand on her back to brace herself and the other running over her protruding belly.
Watching her triggered a caveman instinct in the base of my brain. Only a few feet away was a full-figured woman that was pregnant withmybabies, wearing a pink maternity workout set thatmymoney paid for, and exercising her body inmygym.
I did that—me.
She rolled down the high waist of her leggings and frowned. “My belly button is gone.”
I put down my hundred pound weights and reached for my drink. My mouth had already watered before I took a sip from my bottle.
Her belly button was indeed completely flat—and I had donethattoo.
Olivia’s hands ran down the smooth slope of her round bump, right over the newly-formed stripes of her stretch marks. She kept that dissatisfied frown on, but I was suddenly very jealous of her hands. Despite our bathtub rendezvous weeksago, she still hadn’t let me touch her belly.
I swallowed my water. “You’re twenty-five weeks in and you’re measuring eight weeks bigger than a singleton pregnancy—your body is doing exactly what it’s supposed to.”
She scoffed and tugged her waistband back over her bump. “Don’t say bigger.”
I watched her reflection as she waddled to the yoga mat. “You havetwoin there, sugar. Bigger is better.”
I expected her to flip me off, but instead she quietly turned the TV on and played her prenatal yoga video. I swallowed my disappointment and went to work on my triceps.
During the middle of my set, I glanced up at the mirror to find her kneeling on her mat and staring at me. As soon as I caught her, she quickly looked away and got down on all fours like the video instructed. I ignored her for a few minutes, but felt a prickle on the back of my neck and looked up. Sure enough, there she was staring at me like a brown-eyed barn owl again.
