“Both? Don’t you live in Ohio?”
Barry blinked before tilting his head toward his shoulder. “I got traded.”
“Oh.”
What. The.Fuck.
“I’m a hockey player,” he clarified, like I didn’t know. Fair enough, because when we hooked up, I in fact did not know. If anything, I guess it could appear suspicious for his one-time hookup to be athisplace of employ. “How areyouhere?”
“Nepotism,” I said. “My dad owns the janitorial business the facility uses. I get shifts in the nice buildings.”
Barry kept glancing at my stomach, probably because the last time I saw him we’d just created the life that was in there and now I was sleeping on a couch in the team lounge where he newly worked. It most likely looked like I was here to ask for money. I wasn’t. I wouldn’t, ever.
Because, again, low culpability on his part in my estimation.
“I live here,” I clarified.
Barry was still extraordinarily cute. His hair was shorter than it had been in New York, shaved close instead of loose and floppy, but his nose was still distinct and a little crooked, and I was quickly remembering and trying to forget that he had little freckles on the tops of his shoulders.
“In this building?”
“No. Well, sometimes I sleep here, but just little naps. I meant that I live in Utah.”
Barry nodded as he took this in.
“You never texted me.”
“I got pregnant, so.” This wasn’t the explanation he wanted, but I hoped it would do. His continued confusion told me it didn’t suffice. “Baby’s not yours, don’t worry.”
Barry looked only marginally relieved to hear this, shoulders dropping slightly with his head bobbing, but seeing him again had the synapses in my brain firing off fifteen images per second of what the baby might look like—would she have his nose? His ears? What shade of brown were his eyes again, and would the baby’s be green like mine or a mix of both of ours? Is that how genes worked? What else would come through his genes?
I needed to keep cool. I was about to ruin everything if I didn’t calm down, but I couldn’t stop imagining the baby coming out with some congenital disease, and the doctors having no idea. And what if she died from this? Oh God, what if my baby died? Our baby? What if we made a baby, I gave birth to it, and then the baby died all before Barry even knew he was a father? That happened, it happened all the time, and what if it was my fault? Could it have been avoided if I had just asked if he had some disease?
“Well—”
“I’m sorry—I lied,” I half whispered, now with a palm on my stomach. “It’s totally your baby.”
I stood again to leave and wasn’t nearly so dizzy this time, so I went straight across the lounge toward my cart.
Barry called after me, but I was busy picking up the vacuum cord so I could tow it behind me in my pathetic fleeing. He reached me before I could even get out of the lounge, and I looked back and forth between his hand on my shoulder and his eyes, which were deep brown and really wide like I’d just told him he was the father of a baby he didn’t know about.
I recognized the look; I’d worn one just like it for two months.
“I know it’s a lot,” I said. “I’m—we’re—I’m having a girl, and I’ve known for weeks but I don’t know if I should tell peoplebecause then they’ll all get her pink clothes and I don’t want to be the one that teaches her from birth that girls just wear pink, you know? And I like pink, I really do.”
He was the second person I told the gender news to after Kate, and I wasn’t sure why I was telling him other than I’d felt supremely alone these last six months, and maybe he should have input on the whole telling people the gender thing, if he wanted it.
Barry’s mouth opened and then closed, sort of floundering.
“I wasn’t going to tell you. I’m not trying to ask for anything, I really do work here. Also, I think I want to name her Frances, because it was my grandma’s name and it’s a sweet name, right? Frankie?”
Barry started to speak, but I cut him off with more rambling before he could protest. “No, you know what? You don’t have to worry about this, any of this. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to think I was asking for money or anything, I’m not—you can just forget it. But are there any health issues I should know about?”
I was a little winded from talking, and for half a minute, my shaky breath was the only sound between us. I didn’t make a move, not when Barry’s hand was so warm on my shoulder, and he was trying to comprehend the grenade I’d just detonated at his feet.
In the kitchen down the hall, one of the chefs turned on an old Pitbull song, which wasn’t really the vibe, but whatever.
“A girl?” Barry whispered.
