Page 16 of Bar Down Baby!
“Hm?”
“Do you want to sit?” He motioned with his head toward the tall counter table. I cut one last look at the couch before agreeing. He sat in the chair across from me, much like in the diner yesterday morning.
This was it. The conversation.
“I’ve been thinking,” Barry began, and what a horrible way to start.
He’d been thinking.
This was the moment I’d been preparing for, the reason I’d been showering him with “don’t worry about it” and “the baby isn’t your problem.” She wasn’t his problem, really, and I didn’t want to let myself hope that he’d think she was, and now he was going to tell me I was right, and she wasn’t—and that would be fine. It would be. I’d been planning on this?—
“You should move in with me,” he said.
I was already nodding in that sort of saintly,don’t worry I understand, way when he said this, but after a moment I halted.
“What?”
“Hear me out,” Barry said, and leaned his elbows on thetable. Our knees were almost touching. “This is actually a really good idea.”
“How is that?”
“I can help you,” Barry said. “And I have a cool condo in the city, close to the training facility, lots of amenities. There’s a pool, even. A hot tub.”
I almost,almostgot distracted by the pool and hot tub situation, but I would not be swayed. I wasn’t even allowed to use a hot tub while pregnant. “Help me with what?”
“Things, you know?”
I did not know. I had the image of him helping me like a live-in nurse, holding my arm up the stairs and wiping dribble from my chin.
“What things?”
“Like cooking and cleaning and setting up a nursery. Changing lightbulbs, house projects, fixing a flat tire.” Barry presented this list like it was incredibly obvious, all the benefits of moving in with a man I barely knew. I didn’t remind him I still had no car.
“No way,” I said. “No.”
“Why not? Do you have a roommate? Where do you live now?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“Well, you can’t just live alone.”
“Pregnant women frequently live alone,” I said. “Like army wives and single moms, it’s not that uncommon.”
“It’s not safe,” Barry insisted. “What if you fall?”
“Why would I fall? I’m twenty-five.”
He scooted closer, his knees pressing right up against mine.
“You could faint,” he said. “Are you eating more than one meal a day?”
I glared at this. What made him think I was incapable of taking care of myself? I ate at least two full meals a day, three when Kate brought something, and she often did except on Fridays when we got food with Dad. I also was a serioussnacker, it’s not like I starved myself. I was nearly seven months pregnant andlookedthe part.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” Barry said. “It’s just, what if you get sick and nobody’s there? Or what if you get attacked?”
“Who the hell is attacking me in my home, Barry? The killer that lurks in quiet suburbs? Also, I love my place.”
The house was not new by any means, and had many, many quirks, but before it was mine it was my grandma’s, and she was my favorite person on the planet. My grandpa’s old tools were still in the shed—I used some of them to build things for the house—and my brother’s handprint was still in the concrete slab in the backyard. Both of my grandparents would love how I’ve been fixing up the house, little space by little space, and sure it wasn’t whatever downtown condo I guessed Barry lived in, but it wasmine.
