Page 8 of Bar Down Baby!
“Whatever she’s having is great,” Barry said.
Josie paused at this, as did I. What kind of trust do you have to have in a person to blindly order their usual breakfast order?
Barry didn’t seem to notice the deliberation as he tore what looked like five packets of sugar over his coffee cup.
“And maybe a glass of milk?” Barry asked after another moment.
“Sure thing,” Josie said. I watched her retreat to the kitchen, wishing that the ordering process had taken twice as long as it had, maybe even longer.
I considered telling him he couldn’t ask questions until thefood came out, but one man can probably have only so much patience.
I took off my coat because my armpits were wet, but my arms were immediately cold so I put it back on. I repeated this a couple of times before settling on spreading the jacket across my legs like a blanket. Barry waited.
I slid my palms over my arms. “Okay, go ahead.”
Barry took a sip of his coffee, which I thought to be roughly seventy percent sugar, before speaking. “When did you find out?”
“End of June,” I said. “There was a lot of vomiting.”
Barry said nothing, just worked something over in his brain while he watched me across the table. I could hardly meet his eyes.
“June,” he said.
“I missed a period in May, but I didn’t think anything of it because my periods are always irregular, and sometimes I get my birth control in three-month supplies and take new pills right through the off weeks, which I did.” I took a quick sip of coffee, which burnt my tongue, but just a little. “I kept getting sick and for a few days I thought it was food poisoning, but my sister told me to go buy a pregnancy test, so I did and I was.”
“June,” he said again.
“Yeah.”
Kate had been lovely and supportive about it all, going to my doctor’s appointments with me and asking the questions that I didn’t know to ask. She was the Type A among us and had to make sure I was doing pregnancy right, researching the best vitamins for me to take, what lotions I needed to use, what I should and shouldn’t be eating every day. She even tried to make me an exercise program for the entire pregnancy, but I told her not to bother since I barely exercised before, I wasn’t about to start now. I did walk with her, though, a couple of miles a couple of days a week. I could concede that much since I liked walking with her, and it was for the health of the baby after all.
“And you’re sure it’s—she’s—the baby…is mine?”
“Unless you believe in immaculate conception, yeah.” I think this was a joke he would have laughed at under different circumstances. “Definitely yours.”
As a rule, I was not in the habit of sleeping with people I’d just met, and when I met Barry, I’d been six months out of the habit of sleeping with anyone. And I hadn’t since.
“When are you due?”
“February fourth,” I said.
“February,” he echoed.
“Yeah.” I didn’t know how long he could keep just repeating months back to me, but whatever it took for him to process was fine.
“Why didn’t you text me?”
“Because this isn’t your problem,” I said. “I mean it, you don’t have to worry about any of this.”
“Did you make the baby by yourself?” Barry asked. We’d been talking rather quietly before this point, murmuring to each other mostly, but now he was incredulous and speaking loud enough for someone to overhear. Josie was one such person, and she looked over from the counter with saucer-eyes, like she was just putting together that Barry Wright was possibly the guy I told her about.
“No, but?—”
“And why wouldn’t I want to worry about this?” he demanded.
“Aside from the obvious, it’s my fault I got pregnant.” I dropped my voice to a whisper and leaned closer. “I’m the one who said we shouldn’t use a condom.”
“And I’m the one that said okay!” Barry threw his arms up. His reluctance to agree to this was baffling. If the roles were somehow cosmically reversed and I was a successful, handsome, single hockey player, and he was the one pregnant telling me not to worry about it, I would possibly jump on that offer. Because a baby is a big responsibility, a huge one, a whole life’s worth. Notone you enter into lightly. And especially not one you blindly offer to jump into with a stranger.
