“Like him,” she snapped back. “I’m sorry. I love you, Lainey, and in ten hours, I’ll be able to appreciate how strange this situation is for you, but right now, I need you to let him talk!”
Lainey raised her eyebrows to Elliot as if to say,Take it away. He smirked, and for a moment, they were back, and it was good, which made the moment when she remembered that they weren’t that much worse.
“Do you want me to say doctor things or—?”
“When did you realize you were falling in love with my best friend?” Bree asked through gritted teeth.
“Bree,” Lainey cautioned.
“I need distractions, and his answer will be interesting enough to distract me,” Bree hollered. She’d moved to a sideways position, using the back seat as a chaise lounge.
“I don’t think Lainey’s comfortable with—”
“I have a baby on my spine! ANSWER THE QUESTION!” Bree barked.
“I guess the turtle-racing bar. Back in the spring,” he said with a start. “I was in a space where I otherwise would’ve panicked, but I felt safe with you.” Their eyes met in the rearview mirror. “And from that moment on, all I wanted was to give you that same feeling back.”
Flames burst up Lainey’s neck and into her cheeks.
“And that night,” he continued, undeterred. “The sun was setting, and you looked—”
“Holy—” Bree cut him off, roaring through another contraction. Lainey checked the timer on her phone. She had no idea if three minutes and thirty seconds was within the normal range or what they were going to do if it wasn’t. “Lainey, I need to squeeze your hand now. I’m sorry in advance for what I do to it.”
“If you break my fingers, we’re already headed to the hospital.” Lainey offered up her palm, grateful for the swift subject change. “How much longer until we get there?” Dear god, Bree had a grip on her.
“About twenty-five minutes, but you requested an Uber Pool, so it’s directing me to pick up—”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Hodges?”
“As god is my witness, I will rip those glasses off your pretty-boy face and break them over my giant belly!”
“I’m rejecting the ride,” he responded, thoroughly castigated by their simultaneous fits of rage.
“Thank you,” Bree responded, out of breath. She inhaled just enough to fuel a deluge of pain-induced hysterics. “I’m having a baby, Lainey. Alone. I’m an unfit mother.”
Lainey shook her head fiercely. “No, you’re not, and you’re not alone. You have Colin. You have me. We’ll raise her together like the series finale ofGirls, but when we do it, it won’t feel so dark and depressing.”
Bree squeezed harder, crushing Lainey’s knuckles. “I can’t be the reason you don’t go to Sweden.”
“Sweden?” Elliot asked Lainey, his shoulders going rigid.
Lainey considered responding to Elliot, but Bree’s wail sliced through the thought. Two minutes and thirty seconds since the last one. Lainey was beginning to panic. “Can you drive any faster?” Lainey grabbed Elliot’s arm with her free hand.
“I don’t want to speed when she’s—”
“GO!” The pair shrieked in unison.
Elliot stepped on the gas, the speed limit be damned for the second time in a matter of weeks.
Elliot disappeared somewhere between the front entrance and the elevator leading to Labor and Delivery. He’d thrown his hazards on before lifting Bree from the back seat. She’d slung an arm around each of them but leaned almost entirely on Elliotuntil someone in teddy bear scrubs materialized with a wheelchair. In all the hubbub, Lainey felt a kiss brush her forehead. It was the quick, reflexive, see-you-later kind of forehead kiss. The kind she imagined a real husband planted on his real wife on his way out the door. It’d been an accident, she imagined, but it was nice for them to forget how heartbroken they were, if only for a second.
Bree’s mother, Diane, strode into the alien-green maternity suite forty minutes and one epidural later.
“Elaine, you’re such a dear. Coming straight from gardening. Not even taking a second to run a comb through your hair. So supportive. You can go home and clean yourself up. You must be exhausted,” Diane suggested, in that WASP-y way of hers where each individual word wastechnicallynice but made Lainey walk away feeling extraordinarily bad about herself.
“Lainey stays,” Bree ordered.
Lainey sneered triumphantly at Diane, who immediately proved herself useless when she “monitored” the nurse measuring Bree’s dilation and promptly fainted.
