Page 85 of Bar Down Baby!
“I’m sorry about today,” Barry said after a few quiet minutes of just our forks and knives on the plates.
“I was mad at you. Less mad now.” I waved my fork over the plate, and he huffed. “It wasn’t cool to go behind my back like that, but we wouldn’t have found the mold otherwise.”
“I wanted to help,” he admitted. “I should have talked to you, I just didn’t want you to say no because of money.”
“Money is a really valid reason to say no to something.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “I just—you’re always trying to be so independent, you know that? And stubborn.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“It’s not a bad thing, but I think you make your life harder than it needs to be in an effort to do it all yourself.”
I chew on a piece of meat and mull over this.
“Growing up, I was always a kind of free spirit,” I said finally. “Just, I was disorganized and did my own thing, and got into trouble without meaning to, and I think my family always felt like they had to protect me. Or steer me in the right direction. Then I went to college and almost dropped out because it was hard and I was lonely. I pulled my shit together eventually and graduated, got a corporate job I hated, then another I hated worse?—”
I shrugged, ate a bite of roasted sweet potato, met Barry’s steady, focused gaze.
“I feel like I’ve been trying to prove to them that I’m good, I can do things on my own, I don’t need their help all the time. I’m not just some fuckup who can’t handle her corporate job andgets pregnant with the first hot stranger she meets in New York—I want them to see that I’m capable.”
“They do,” Barry said simply and with full certainty. “Everyone sees it.”
I put my fork down so I could face him fully with my confusion. He nodded like he wasn’t going to take it back or backtrack.
“What you’ve done to your grandma’s house, the plans you’ve made, how you’ve been saving for the baby—you’re strategic, thoughtful, and smart. Your brother looks up to you, your sister would almost definitely kill a person if you asked her to, and your parents all think the world of you.”
I lowered my eyebrows and frowned. “They baby me. Kate especially.”
“Theyadoreyou,” he corrected me. “I think they want to help you, not because you need it, but because they love you. They know you’d never ask, so they insert themselves where they can.”
I swiveled back toward the counter and took a drink from my can, weighing the truth of this assessment. Of course I knew they all loved me. We were a loving bunch and very close. But I thought I was…burdensome. More than any of them, I thought I asked the most.
Barry pointed at me with his fork.
“It’s why they all jumped to help me when I said I wanted to bring in help with the kitchen and bathroom. They were thrilled.”
“How’d you convince the guys on your team to help on their day off?” I asked.
Barry’s lip pulled into a lopsided smile. “Reminded them how you wake up before any of them to keep the facility so nice for us, even eight months pregnant.”
“They care about you,” I noted. “They wouldn’t have done it if they didn’t.”
“Maybe. I also promised them a hundred bucks each, though, so maybe it was that.”
We both laughed, and I bumped his arm with my elbow.
“It would’ve taken way longer without them,” I said. “And I was mad at you, but—it’ll be really nice to have it done. I guess I mean, thank you.”
Barry’s gaze was so soft, so knowing. I couldn’t deny that he had gotten to know me in these weeks together. If that was his plan, then he’d succeeded.
I still feared, though, that the more he learned, the more he’d find wanting.
I smiled, despite myself.
“And I guess if we hadn’t found the mold, I wouldn’t know where I can rob a really nice mattress from.”
Barry laughed and didn’t say that he’d give it to me without having to commit a bed heist. He didn’t need to.
