Barry
To answer your other question, yes they give out lots of condoms and they always run out. Lots of protected sex going on there.
I didn’t like the thought of Barry hooking up with hot Olympians, but I would not be saying so.
See, maybe if I was an Olympian I wouldn’t have offered to have unprotected sex in the first place.
I was asleep on the couch Saturday afternoon with a sitcom’s laugh track going on the TV when Barry got home from his trip. I didn’t wake up when he walked in, but his vibes must’ve been strange enough to disturb me, because when I opened my eyes, he was standing by the couch watching me, shifting from one leg to the other. His phone was in one hand. I know it was the same size as mine, just with a more professional case (no kittens and hearts), but it looked so much smaller in his palm than it did mine. The baby was going to look minuscule in his arms.
“Welcome home,” I said sleepily, then hoped he wouldn’t read into calling my house his home. The softening of his eyes told me he absolutely did.
“My mother is coming over,” he said suddenly.
I did a lot of blinking, attempting to understand this.
“Coming over where?” I asked. “She lives in Canada.”
The blanket around my shoulders was very soft, so soft that I could just fall right back to sleep if Barry stopped talking. This was the blanket he slept under, and it smelled like him, too. Like his shampoo and his body wash, it was more his blanket than mine at this point, even though it was mine to begin with.
“Here. To your house.” Barry nudged my foot. “Right now.”
I forced my eyelids all the way open this time and held out a hand for Barry to pull me up to sitting. He did, and I do believe it was his grip (the very same grip I’d just been considering around his phone) on my wrist that woke me up fully.
“Thanks.” I rubbed a hand over my eyes before stopping short. “Did you just say your mom is coming here?”
“She’ll be here in ten.”
I shot up to standing. It was too quick, and Barry steadied my elbow when I got dizzy. I looked around the house, which wasn’t really dirty but it wasn’t exactly clean in the days of his absence. I remembered too late that I wasn’t wearing pants, and snatched the overalls I’d worn nearly every day from their heap on the ground. Barry averted his eyes, ever the gentleman, as I stepped into them and pulled the straps back over my shoulders, clipping them in place.
“You invited your mom here?”
Barry shook his head and followed my lead as I started picking things up. I threw the basket of clean clothes into my room while Barry started folding the blankets on the couch.
“She invited herself,” he said. “She flew in with my dad for tomorrow’s game, and she used Find My Friends to track me.”
This made sense to me, an avid user of Find My Friends, myself. I clicked off the TV and organized the coffee table, remote next to stained paper coaster, next to water bottle, next to a hair tie, next to unscented lip balm.
“Unannounced?”
“She really wants to meet you,” Barry explained. “I told her I’d ask, but she somehow heard ‘come on over right now,’ and she’s not one to easily take no for an answer.”
“Seems an inherited trait.”
“Hm?”
“She sounds great,” I said louder. “Does she know I’m pregnant?”
Barry stopped tidying to furrow his brows at this question. Barry’s face was a very expressive one, particularly when I did something annoying or confusing.
“Of course,” he said. “She’s thrilled.”
I didn’t believe him.
Myparents were thrilled because it was my baby, and they know me. I was an abject stranger to Barry’s family. For all they knew, I could be lying about it being Barry’s baby—it could be anyone’s baby, weren’t they at all suspicious of me?
There was no doubt in my mind that the baby was his, unless immaculate conception was indeed possible for nonreligious girls who hadn’t prayed in nearly two decades, but it was still reckless of them to believe me.
“When did you tell her?”
