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The top three reasons all included my kid.
Now I had to talk to him about some girl. Seth Hamilton’s kid no less. Wes was six. Just the thought of girls at his age made me want to hide under the hood of a car. Maybe I could teach Wes how to take apart an engine.
Surely that would be easier.
Fuck.
“Feel better.” I backed away and crossed to the door. I snagged the trash bag as I strode out and didn’t look back.
Even if a strong part of me wanted to gather Kelsey close and take care of her. That was the most dangerous part of all.
I lengthened my stride down the hall, dumping the bag in one of the janitor bins on my way out the door.
I jammed my aviators on my face and put her out of my mind.
I’d done it before. I could do it again.
One of these days, it would finally stick.
Nine
I slept on my lumpy couch. It made me wonder if half my stomach queasiness came from the smell of the ancient fabric. Which started me down the path of cleaning my entire apartment at dawn. All eight hundred square feet of it. It didn’t take long.
Just like my unpacking, though I’d stretched out that awful task as long as humanly possible.
Since I didn’t have another episode—yay extra strength Febreeze and baking powder trick on Pinterest—I went full tilt on the baby shower prep for Sage. At least the non-cooking things. No need to infect the world if I was sick for some reason and just not showing symptoms.
Well, except those two exceptional moments yesterday.
Someday, I’d stop cringing about it.
When I was ninety maybe.
I worked on shower prep for a bit and then passed the rest of the day on my sofa. Watching TV and surfing online seemed to be about the extent of what I had energy for.
As was driven home to me with sterling clarity when I woke up with my neck bent an unnatural angle and my face smushed into a Febreezed cushion the next morning.
What was my damage lately? This was like a super stealth bug or something. Kept coming and going without warning. But today was the shower, and I needed to get my butt moving.
Making a fleet of paper cranes from a tutorial I found on YouTube seemed safe. I could always spray them down with Lysol. Not that they should hold germs in the oxygenated air—thank you, weird science trivia lodged in my brain. In that regard, I shouldn’t be causing any problems with the women and children who would probably be in attendance.
Before I’d fallen asleep last night, I’d spent a couple hours swearing at my smart TV since the little screen of my phone wasn’t enough. Apparently, I needed the videos approximately forty-two inches in size to learn how to make the paper cranes. I fell asleep dreaming of them.
I really had to stop sleeping on the sofa. Especially before nine o’clock. What was I, seven years old? It wasn’t as if I didn’t have a truly stupendous new bed to sleep on. But sleeping there made me think of Dare, and thinking of Dare made me think of wall-knocking sex or puke.
Right now, neither of those options did much for me. So…couch it was.
Lame. So lame.
After a shower and no other stomach episodes, I used part of the morning to finish my little project.
I started with the big ones that we’d hang from the trees in the backyard. When I only mangled fifteen of the hundred sheets of origami paper or so, I moved on to little ones that would perch on top of the cupcakes from Sugar Rush, a super cute bakery in town. Okay, possibly the only bakery.
When my hand started cramping, I switched to texting Ally to make sure everything was ready.
I got three replies and finally a photo reply with her middle finger in crystal clear focus with a half dozen tables already set up in her backyard. Okay, so I was being a little anal about the party.
But I really wanted it to go well. I liked having girlfriends. Was it so wrong to show them that?
