Page 71 of Blueline Baby

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CHLOE

WHAT HAVE WE DONE

I did not want a baby shower. Lorelei insisted. And as I’m coming to realize, if Lorelei wants something to happen, it happens. She’s almost as much of an unstoppable force off the ice as her husband is on it.

I presented my objections in order: I don’t like being the center of attention, I don’t need gifts, and the baby can’t tell the difference. Lorelei listened to all three points, told me they were excellent and booked the arena lounge anyway.

So here we are, in a huge private lounge overlooking the empty rink, the whole room decorated in shades of green and yellow. Because while Jack remains convinced this baby is a boy, I change my mind by the hour.

It’s not the small, intimate gathering I agreed to. Lorelei said “just a few of the wives.” Then she invited what looks like the entire roster and their families. The lounge is packed. There’s an elaborate cake on the counter, and Dean is wearing a white t-shirt that says #1 UNCLE.

When I got here an hour ago, I stood in the doorway and didn’t know what to do because the last time I was at a party with this many hockey players, I stood in a corner and waited to take Britt home. Now they’re all here for me. Or at least for the baby.

Jack has stationed himself at the gift table like a security guard, and every present that comes through the door is entered as evidence in his gender campaign.

“Green,” he says, holding up a tiny onesie. “Which is basically a boy color.”

“Green is not a boy color. My toothbrush is green.”

He ignores me and folds it up, satisfied with himself. “Gordie is going to love it.”

“We are not naming him Gordie.”

“Him.” Jude points a finger at me across the table. “She said him.”

“I said him because Jack keeps using male names as grammatical placeholders. That’s different.”

Ten minutes later, Jack holds up a yellow rubber duck. “Ducks are a boy thing.”

“Ducks are a bathtub thing.”

He’s already decided he won this argument, the same way he decided months ago that this baby is a boy and has refused to hear a word otherwise. I’ve tried to get him to consider girl names. I’ve made lists. Alphabetized ones. He waves them off every time like I’m being cute about it and says he just knows, as if that has ever been how human biology works. If this baby comes out a girl, we will have no name for her, and it will be solely his fault.

Lorelei planned several polite baby shower games. The hockey players took all of them over. There was one where you were supposed to guess my stomach measurement with a piece of yarn, and Smitty turned it into a high-stakes competition with a leaderboard and real cash on it. The guesses range from flattering to horrifying. Two grown men are now arguing in the corner about whether Jack should be allowed to compete, since he has home advantage.

Somewhere in the chaos, Jack ends up next to me. He puts his hand on my bump, which is where his hand almost permanently lives and crouches down to talk to my stomach, which he also does now, in front of dozens of people, without an ounce of shame.

“Ignore all of them,” he tells my stomach. “Especially the one in the ridiculous uncle shirt. You’re going to be so much cooler than him.”

“You’re going to give this child a complex before it’s even born.”

“I’m giving him elite confidence.” He straightens up, kisses my temple, hands me a plate of food, and walks me to a padded chair. “Sit and eat. You’ve been on your feet too long.”

Somewhere around the second hour, it catches up with me.

I don’t see it coming. One second I’m laughing at Jude trying to assemble a stroller he was told not to touch. The next I’m thinking about how much Britt would have loved this.

Not the baby part. The party part. The noise, the gambling, the twenty hockey players crammed into one VIP room. She was good in rooms like this in a way I will never be, and this is the exact life she moved us into that expensive apartment building to find. She’s the reason I was ever at a single one of those parties. She’s the reason I opened the door the night Jack fell through it. Every good thing standing in this room leads straight back to a girl who isn’t here.

I walk where it’s quieter and look down at the empty, scraped ice, and I let myself feel it for a minute. She should be here. I don’t know how to be this happy about a life she handed me and then torched. And there’s no good word for missing someone who is still alive and choosing to be a stranger.

I don’t hear Lorelei come up next to me.

“She would have hated the green and yellow,” she says. “Just for the record. She would have told you to find out what you’re having so the party could have a cohesive color theme.”

I laugh, surprised. “She would have.”