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“Back to the salt mines you go,” Kat says.
We rise and hug. With Kat’s permission, I kiss my fingertips and press a gentle kiss onto her flat belly. “Can’t wait to meet you, sweetie pie.”
“Aw, I love you so much, Auntie Banana.”
Outside in the gray Seattle day, we hug again, and I congratulate her again. When Kat says she’ll see me at Jonas and Sarah’s upcoming wedding, if not before, I reply excitedly, “And you’ll see Henny there, too!”
“I can’t wait,” Kat says. “I’m sorry about Golden Kat PR. I know you were counting on that.”
“Kitty, I’m ecstatic for you. All I want is for you to be happy. Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure something out.”
“I know you will.”
With a little wave, Kat heads up the street toward her car, while I turn in the other direction to walk the four blocks to my office building. Two steps into my journey, I punch the button to call Henny. The chances are slim I’ll reach him at this time of day. Plus, it’s a bit silly to call him now, since we’ll be talking on FaceTime in mere hours for our nightly call. But I can’t wait to at least try to catch Henn to get his reaction to the shocking news of Kat’s bun in the oven. In fact, not calling Henny right fucking now would take a sort of superhuman strength I simply don’t possess.
21
HANNAH
“Hello, beautiful,” Henn’s sweet voice says when he unexpectedly picks up my call.
“I can’t believe I caught you. Do you have a couple minutes to chat?”
“I do. I’m grabbing a quick coffee to give my eyes a chance to uncross. Hang on, baby.” Henn speaks to someone on his end of the line, who replies to Henn in a notably congenial tone. “Okay,” Henny says. “I’m good to talk now. What’s up?”
I snicker. “Have you spoken with Josh recently?”
“No, we’ve texted here and there with Reed. Why?”
“Josh didn’t drop any bombs on you recently?”
“What’s going on?”
“Buckle up, babe. I just had lunch with Kat, and she dropped the bomb of the century, which I’m explicitly allowed to pass along to you.” I pause for dramatic effect. “Kat’s pregnant with Josh’s accidental Faraday spawn.”
“What?”
“That’s exactly how she put it. She said she’s near the end of her first trimester.”
“Holy fucking shit. I’m assuming Josh knows, if she said you could tell me?”
“Kat told him a couple weeks ago. Apparently, he didn’t handle it very well. Kat’s exact words were that Josh reacted like a total dick.”
“Sounds about right. I’m sure he totally freaked out.”
“If he didn’t want a kid, then I guess he should have wrapped it up tighter, huh? It takes two to tango.”
“Indubitably.” Henn pauses. “Wow. I’m honestly shocked. Josh has always been insanely careful. In college, he was always paranoid some gold digger would try to trap him with a pregnancy.”
My hackles shoot up. “Are you implying Kat might have—"
“No, no, of course not. Just thinking out loud.”
“Kat would never do that, Henn.”
“Hannah, you have to know I wasn’t implying that about Kat. I’m saying Josh is a totally new man with Kat, in so many ways.”
My shoulders soften. “I guess so, because Kat said, now that he’s gotten used to the shocking news, he’s actually excited about the baby.”
“Really?”
I tell Henn everything Kat said about Josh’s excitement. Also, about the fact that Josh has now declared his love for Kat, explicitly, and also welcomed her to live with him in his new house in Seattle.
Henn whistles at that last revelation. “This is all uncharted territory for Josh. He’d never say ‘I love you’ or invite Kat to move in with him, solely because of the pregnancy. I hope Kat knows that.”
“She does. She gave Josh a get-out-of-jail-free card at first, but he didn’t want to use it.” I tell the story of Kat telling Josh to fuck off when he acted like a dick at first, and Henn cheers Kat on throughout my story.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Henn says. “I pity their poor kid.”
“Huh?”
“With Josh and Kat’s combined genes, he or she is gonna be butt-ugly.”
I burst out laughing. “Yeah, that poor kid’s gonna be one tick shy of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
“It’s unavoidable.” Henn chuckles. “Hey, is it cool if I call Josh to congratulate him on Kat’s Cinnabon in the Oven, or will that get Kat into trouble for being a blabbermouth, as usual?”
“Actually, Kat said, and I quote, ‘Go ahead and blab away, Hannah Banana Montana Milliken! I’m bursting at the seams for the whole world to know!’”
Henn lets out a little tsk. “Let it never be said our girl doesn’t stay true to her brand.”
“She’s consistent, that’s for sure.”
“Did Kat say anything about her pregnancy affecting her plan to start her own PR firm?"
“Yeah, she’s scrapping the company. For the foreseeable future, anyway, if not forever. Kat said she can only birth one baby per year, and this year it’s going to be the accidental Faraday spawn in her belly.”
