Page 83 of Bar Down Baby!
“How many bedrooms is this place?”
“Four.”
“Four,” I echoed. I don’t think I knew they even made apartments with more than three.
“And an office over there. Though I don’t really know what to do with that space. Thinking of making it a gym, but there’s a gym in the building, too.”
I toed off my shoes and walked barefoot on the cold floor to the glass doors into an empty office with a nice tall window. Lots of big windows in this apartment. I imagined it felt a little like a fishbowl at night.
At least there was no mold in the walls. Probably.
“Maybe a playroom,” I said, already smiling at the thought—a little book rack, a play kitchen, a plush green rug in the middle of the room. It would be perfect. “Do you own this place?”
“Yeah, I bought it before coming down. Figured if I didn’t like it, I could rent it out and go somewhere else.”
“How very landlord of you.” I crossed into the living room and skimmed my fingers across the back of the couch. There was a big TV, a luxury blanket on the couch, a comfortable rug, a PlayStation, even.
“Barry,” I started.
“Hm?”
Junior rubbed against my ankles, then jumped on the couch. After a moment of exploring, he started making biscuits on the soft blanket.
“Why have you been staying on an air mattress in my living room and keeping your things in the most horrible basement?”
Barry looked surprised, then shrugged.
“I told you. I wanted to be around.”
“But—” I gestured vaguely in the direction of, well, everything. “This place has just been sitting empty?”
He shrugged again, and I mimicked him. When he shuffled on his feet, I let out a stunned laugh, too high to be natural.
“Barry, you’ve been sleeping in a living room with mold in the walls when you had this empty here for you?”
“Well, I moved onto that lovely mattress recently,” he corrected. “And I like your house.” Even as outlandish as it felt standing in this place, I believed him.
I sighed. “I like it too.”
Barry tentatively took a step closer, his hand stretched halfway toward me. When I didn’t stop him, he closed the distance and tugged me against him, my head resting on the front of his shoulder.
After a stiff moment, I exhaled and lifted my arms around his waist.
“Your house is going to be okay,” he said. “The mold is going to get dealt with, the kitchen is going to be beautiful and functional, and that bathroom is going to be so cool.”
I sniffled, his words soothing my anxiety more than I wanted to admit.
“Our baby is going to want to stay here all the time,” I said, the fear escaping without my meaning for it to.
Barry pulled back and lowered his face to be in line with mine. “Oh, Han, look at me.”
I didn’t want to, but his light fingers on my chin turned my gaze in his direction.
“You are so, so wrong about that. She is going to love that house as much as you love it, as much as your grandmother loved it, and she’s going to beg to buy it from you when she’s old enough. She’s going to live in that backyard every summer and leave muddy footprints on the kitchen floor. She’ll leave her toyseverywhere, and do puzzles with you at the old table, and she’ll never be scared of the basement, because you’ll have made it so, so nice for her.”
I laughed, a wet sound, and Barry smiled. I hated those dimples as much as I prayed our daughter would have ones just like it.
“And where will you be?”
