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“It means you are finally fucking eating again,” Kip bit out, clearly hating every second of this conversation. Hating every second of being in my presence. “You don’t cook,” he continued. “And although you’re at Nora’s a fuck of a lot and she does cook, there are still plenty of meals you’ll miss or make from a packet.” He tapped the pad again. “So, you have a craving, wild as fuck, I don’t care, you put it on that pad. I’ll go buy it, cook it, and you will fucking eat it. Steak, chicken, vegetarian lasagna, whatever the fuck.”
Understanding dawned. I stared at him—his rigid posture, the way he didn’t quite look me in the eye, the tension radiating off him, the new lines in his forehead.
He looked fucking miserable.
“Why don’t you leave?” I asked him.
Kip’s jaw twitched. “What do you mean?”
I placed my hands on the island, leaning forward, glaring at him. No way I was avoiding eye contact like this spineless prick.
“I mean, this is obviously torture for you,” I said. “You’re not hiding your hatred for the situation very well—or at all. Same with your dislike of me. This isn’t the arrangement you agreed to.” I pointed down to my stomach, and Kip tensed. “Yeah,” I said. “This wasn’t part of the deal. You are not a prisoner in this house or in this marriage. You can leave. Divorce me.”
I’d already considered doing the same to him countless times. Even gone so far as setting a meeting with the lawyer. But I wussed out at the last minute. If I divorced him, I was likely setting fire to the Green Card application and my chances of staying here. Therefore, I’d be going back to a country where I had no friends and possibly an ex-husband holding a grudge—the last time he’d spoken to me, he’d promised to kill me—pregnant and without many prospects.
As much as I did not want to live with this grumpy bastard and continue the now-painful ruse, I didn’t have a whole bunch of options.
I had a kid to think about now, one who actually looked like they were going to survive the ‘inhospitable environment’ of my womb.
Kip had likely thought of it too. I wasn’t a mind reader, but I was sure that’s what I saw on his face the moment I told him. Running. Leaving me.
But he hadn’t.
He’d come back to do the honorable thing.
Well, thesemi-honorable thing.
And that had confused me. I knew he was a man of his word, which held him to a lot of things, like this marriage. But again, the pregnancy and the lifelong responsibility of a child were not in the initial agreement.
“I’m not discussing divorce,” he said, voice tight. “I’m not going anywhere. Not right now, at least.”
“Right,” I said. “Not until I give birth.”
His hand fisted on top of the pad. He was a fucking ball of fury. I swear if I held him too close to a flame, he’d fucking explode.
“Just write it on the fucking notepad,” he grunted, then stormed off.
“Twenty-two more weeks,” I told myself, snatching the bag of chips, leaning back in my chair, and fucking hating that now I was craving veggie lasagna.
thirteen
Dorito Casserole
Though it wentagainst all my better judgment and all the rules about holding a grudge against asshole baby daddies, I wrote on the fucking notepad.
It wasn’t my fault.
I’d spent three straight months vomiting my fucking guts out and surviving on Sprite, toast, and Ritz crackers. I had a lot to make up for. Plus, the hunger I was feeling was an entity in and of itself. The baby didn’t care about the grudge I held against its father. All it cared about was that its father actually knew how to cook.
He made it. Everything I wrote on the list. Even the obscure, really hard shit I wrote just to fuck with him.
Nora and I were eating the Dorito casserole he’d left in the fridge earlier today. I rarely saw him actually cooking—he timed it like some sort of magician—but there was always food in the fridge. The fucker was overflowing. And not just with the junk I requested. Healthy shit too.
Berries—all washed and in the flowery berry keepers I’d bought with good intentions of washing them because I’d read about all the pesticides this country sprayed on shit but then forgetting or being too lazy. Carrot sticks. Little egg bites that looked—and tasted—exactly like the Starbucks ones.
I was eating better than I ever had. And because of that, and the magic of the second trimester, I was feeling somewhat like a human again.
“I may talk shit about a lot of American cuisine, but the humble casserole is truly one of your country’s greatest accomplishments,” I said, pushing my plate away and staring enviously at the glass of wine I’d urged Nora to drink.
