Page 39 of Bar Down Baby!
He pulled his hands rather reluctantly away from me, and I stepped back to heat up one of the meals. There: I couldn’t offerhim money or a relationship, but I was growing this baby, and that wasn’t nothing, right?
I microwaved one of the containers, sprinkled it with more salt than exactly necessary, and headed for the living room to read a fanfic that Kate sent me.
“Oh, and Barry?” I called.
“Yeah?” he said from the kitchen.
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
CHAPTER 11
A HARVEY FAMILY THANKSGIVING
Though we wouldn’t eat until three p.m., we were expected to get to my mom’s house by noon on Thanksgiving Day. Until the food was served, we’d all mill about, eating snacks and helping Mom finish various dishes while Dad and Ron messed with the turkey in the smoker.
Of course, there was the puzzle set up on a folding table in the living room, and we’d all return to it throughout the day until it was done, and then maybe we’d start another. I’d chosen a really good one for today. It was a collage of action movie covers—everyone likes action movies, even Ron, who mostly likes the Discovery Channel. I let Barry choose the back-up, and he picked one of the cat-related puzzles from under the TV.
It was a good choice.
I already knew that Barry could make salads—I’d eaten two of the ones he’d prepped for the week and they were delicious—so when he admitted he wasn’t traveling to Canada for the break and would love to spend it with us, I told him his only obligation was to make a salad. He drove me straight to the store so I could get the ingredients I needed for my cranberry sauce, and he picked up supplies for not one but two salads—a green and a pasta.
I was up before seven to make the sauce, just in case I messed it up, and he’d stirred from his living room slumber at the smell of the cranberries bursting amidst the ginger and orange zest on the stove. He tried sleeping on his blow-up mattress downstairs but woke with a spider on his face, thus hadn’t tried sleeping inthe basement again. For the last few days, he put the blow-up mattress on the floor in the living room, deflating and rolling it up each morning.
“So early,” he’d muttered on the way to the bathroom, but didn’t go back to sleep. Barry showered quickly and shaved his cheeks and jaw smooth, though I knew the shadow of a beard would return before dinner. When he came out of the bathroom shirtless, just wearing dark jeans with the band of his underwear peeking out, I looked away so quickly I almost tweaked my neck. Professional athlete meant professional athlete body, and the sight inspired memories that were wreaking havoc alongside new pregnancy hormones. Horny ones.
I kept my eyes on the cranberry sauce, which had turned out perfectly.
“Which should I wear?” Barry asked from the living room. Still exposed from the waist up, he held a crisp blue button-up in one hand, a flannel in the other.
“The orange one,” I said. “It’s a family dinner, not a business meeting.”
“Heard.”
Barry retreated into the basement to finish getting ready. It was impressive to me that he didn’t seem nervous, not as we moved around each other in the kitchen (his shampoo smelled like eucalyptus), not as we loaded into Kate’s Camry (Barry’s long limbs stuffed in the back seat with Greg Senior as he cradled a salad bowl to his chest), and not as we pulled up to my mom’s house (the very house I grew up in, where my three parents were waiting along with Jeremy strewn over the couch). Barry’s apparent ease was unsettling, because I am at dis-ease around almost everyone, everywhere, when I first meet them. I imagine that when I inevitably meet his huge, fancy family, I will not be so put together.
“Remember to compliment Mom’s jewelry and whatever my dad cooks,” Kate said as we walked up the driveway. She’dpeppered him with information about the family in the car, preparing him more than I’d thought to.
“Right. And Dan?”
“Ron,” Kate and I corrected in tandem.
“Ron is a sweetie,” Kate said.
“You’ve won him over by existing,” I said. And then Kate pulled open the front door and announced our arrival with a loud hello.
As soon as we stepped over the threshold, we toed off our shoes and Barry followed suit. He nudged his loafers next to my Crocs and padded after me. The sight of his socks on the linoleum of my childhood home was somehow more intimate than any intimate moments we’d had leading up to this point—including the whole baby thing.
The entryway opens right up to the living room where Jeremy lay sleeping on the couch beneath a pink, purple, and blue blanket Mom crocheted after I’d come out as bisexual in high school. Kate nudged his foot hanging over the side, and he startled awake.
“Hey,” he glared at Kate, but stood and gave her a hug anyway. When he caught sight of Barry, he let out a soft gasp.
“I was sixty-forty on if you were lying about Barry Wright,” Jeremy admitted, still awestruck.
I pinched my brother’s arm. “Why would I lie about that?”
“And which was the percentage you thought she was lying? Sixty or forty?” Kate asked.
“Good to meet you, man.” Barry clapped Jaremy’s hand and brought him into a bro hug I was sure Jeremy would freak out about with all his friends for the next week.
