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Flashing me a manicured middle finger, she says, “Asshole. I’ve got a whole other outfit planned. Something loose to back up the big reveal.” She shudders. “Do we have to announce the pregnancy tonight, though?”
“Yes. Wren’s already three months in. Soon, she’s going to start showing and you’re going to have to mimic her pregnancy as she gets bigger. Which reminds me… the package came this morning.”
She makes a show of crossing her fingers on both hands. “Let it be Gucci. Let it be Gucci. Let it be… Fuck.”
When she sees what I’m holding, her face crumbles to pieces. I don’t have to look to know, since I checked this morning to make sure the order was correct.
“We’ve been over this, Bee. It has to be done.” I temper my own frustration because I understand hers. I may have my own miserable part to play in this little charade, but at least it doesn’t include prosthetics.
“Can’t I just… not see anyone ‘til the baby is born?” she begs as she fingers the plasticky swell of the fake pregnancy belly lying limply in the box.
“He expects us to be at family dinners on the fourth week of every month.”
“So we’ll get a doctor’s note or something. We’ll say that I’m forced to be on bedrest until the baby’s born. Yeah!” Her eyes get more and more animated. “We’ll tell him that the pregnancy is high-risk. That way, once this kid is born, we can also say that another pregnancy might kill me so we won’t have to do this ridiculous dance a second time.”
“Bee,” I say patiently, “you know the stakes. If you don’t go to him, he’ll come here. That’s worse.”
Her face somehow falls even further, just when I thought she was running out of places for it to go. She drops her chin onto her interlaced fingers on the countertop.
“Just try it on,” I encourage, nudging the box toward her. “It’s made with the best material money can buy.”
Bee’s face is still hidden from view. “Idumwansjfhosndnndifiebsnb!”
“You’ll have to repeat that,” I drawl, tilting my glass back and forth so the vodka sloshes from side to side, not unlike the way Wren’s bathwater went this way and that as I…
Cut. It. Out.
She drops her hands and looks at me with narrowed eyes. “I don’t want to be pregnant. Even fake pregnant!”
Sighing, I push it in her direction. “You don’t have a choice.”
She snatches it from me angrily and holds it up against her stomach. “God, this feels wrong.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Fuck you.”
Suppressing a smile, I take her glass and offer it back to her. “Drink. You’ll feel better once you’re done. Then you’ll have to chew through a pack of gum and some mints before we get to your father’s estate. He can’t smell alcohol on your breath.”
She discards the fake belly unceremoniously. “Can you get it away? I can’t bear to look at it anymore.”
Sighing, I give her what she wants for the meantime. Once the box is packed away in the storeroom, I sit back down beside her. The glass of vodka is long since drained to the dregs. “Bee, need I remind you that this was your idea?”
“It felt like a good one at the time.”
“It still is.”
She wrinkles up her nose. “Don’t take this the wrong way, because I do love you to death… but the thought of marrying you makes me want to cry.”
I snort with laughter. “I’m not exactly jumping for joy myself.”
She starts laughing, too, and by the end of it, she’s dabbing her eyes with a napkin to keep the tears from ruining her makeup. “God,” she sighs as her laughter subsides. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around this past week. Especially with Wren being here. I guess having her here made it so much more real and I needed to blow off some steam. I needed to lose myself in fun.”
“Mm, and what’s fun’s name?”
She gives me a mischievous grin. “This girl I met at Wallflower. Arianne. Body like a goddess and a smile like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Planning on seeing her some more?”
