I’m at work inventorying manila envelopes with my head in a closet when someone taps my shoulder.
I pop out of the dark closet and am practically hissing at all the sunlight the program staff get up here on the eighth floor. The admin annex is a flat-gray cave with mauve accents. We like it so dank in there you can hear the condensation plopping off the tips of the houseplants. Everybody else gets to live in the sunshine.
I blink the light away and find Xaria staring down at me. “You’re a hard woman to track down these days,” she says dryly.
Probably because I literally run when I hear her high heels a’tappin’.
“Just busy!” I chirp.
“Head back down to the annex with me?”
I nod and she falls into step beside me. We take the elevator downstairs together and I file after her into her office.
“So,” she says bluntly, her eyes burning a hole through my soul. “Have you made a decision?”
I shift on my feet. “To be honest…I haven’t had a lot of time to consider it. I’ve had…uh…a lot going on.” My hand naturally curves around my belly but Xaria’s eyes do not look down.
“I know a whole new job description might seem like a lot, but you’d slip into it fairly easy. You obviously know all the players already.”
I have begun to have a suspicion. And it’s not a nice one. I think Xaria is on the hunt for a lackey. If I were her, I, too, would be sick of being the bearer of bad news, of getting glared at during all-staff meetings. I, too, would want someone to start doing my dirty work.
But am I really gonna agree to be the one cutting budgets and telling the red pandas to take a hike?
“I know I’m pushing you, Eve. It’s only because I think you’d be great at this job and I’d like to work with you in that capacity.”
I defrost a little bit. Her genuinely wanting to work with me hadn’t occurred to me yet. “I just…I really don’t know.”
Her eyes snap and I can see that I’ve tap-danced on her patience. “Eve, I can’t pretend I’m not disappointed,” she says. And then lifts her palms to me and shrugs. “I’d like to fill this position sooner than later and I figured you’d jump at the opportunity. I didn’t expect you to leave me in limbo.”
I bite back the fierce urge to apologize. “I…I know. I promise I will make my decision soon. Things are really shifting for me, personally, and…I just need a bit more…time.”
She looks like she wants to say more, but then she just sighs and nods.
When I leave her office I see Bevi and Micah scrambling to look busy. Neither will look me directly in the eye. I don’t like what Xaria has to say, but at least, at least she is actually talking to me. She’s certainly not avoiding me.
And just like that, Ethan has entered the anxiety chat.
This has been happening to me lately. I feel a moment of frustration? Suddenly I’m thinking of Ethan. Someone jostles me on the train? I’m incensed thinking of Ethan’s shoddy handling of this situation. I get a paper cut? I end up tearing up over Ethan. Xaria thinks I’m leaving her in limbo? She doesn’t know the first thing about limbo. I can almost pretend I’m cool with being cut out of his life until something else, anything else, goes wrong and then all the injustice of it threatens to turn me into a dragon lady. A pregnant dragon lady.
If Ethan were here right now I’d incinerate him with all the frustration and embarrassment that’s just been injected into me by Xaria. I pick up my phone. All it would take is one text. I could cut him down to size. The size of a baby carrot.
I want my ultrasounds back, you coward, I type out. My finger hovers over send. I imagine the text jumping out of his phone and face-planting him into his own terrible behavior. I imagine him spiraling into despair, so ashamed he can barely brush his teeth anymore.
My self-righteousness suddenly doesn’t seem so victorious.
This is the kind of text that feels so ecstatically good for about ten minutes. And then you spend the next year trying to undo it. Even if he deserves it. Like it or not, he’s the father of this baby under my dress, and if I rage-raze the relationship to the ground, it’s not just me who potentially loses him. I delete it letter by letter and go back to not speaking to the person who is not speaking to me.
I spend the next two hours placing orders for office supplies and trying not to publicly cry. There should be a rule against your work life and private life both being in shambles. One shamble at a time, please!
I oscillate between frustration and anxiety for the rest of the workday and drag myself home at five on the dot, feeling all sorts of inadequate.
Well, if there’s one place on earth where I rule the world, it’s my own bathroom. In an attempt to lean into the happiest parts of my life, I’m headed out tonight to see a movie with Willa, Isamu, and Shep. Ethan and Xaria are still simmering in my gut, so I decide to make myself feel better by getting a little dolled up. I wash and dry my hair and decide to try a YouTube tutorial for this complicated braid thingy. I get halfway done and my arms start to ache so I inspect it with a hand mirror and decide it actually looks nice half-up/half-down like that.
Yesterday at lunch Marla took me to a pregnancy store in Grand Central and secretly used her loyalty points to buy me not one but two different jumpsuits. I slide myself into the black, long-sleeved one that’s floaty around the ankles and send her a selfie just like she’d made me promise to do.
Inspecting myself in the mirror, I look very, very pregnant. Unmistakably pregnant.
I put on some makeup and feel comfortable and cute and…pretty. The dolling up is a success!
I’m headed to the place that Shep is going to be tonight and I can’t tell if it’s butterflies or the baby doing some sort of complicated wiggle-dance. Maybe both.
I take the train and even though it’s evening, when I come aboveground at Union Square, it’s almost fifty. I wonder if spring will come early this year.
The last time I was here, I didn’t buy Christmas presents and ended up hiding inside Shep’s jacket. I can’t help but wish for the exact same outcome this time.
My steps quicken.
I stop at a crosswalk and bounce on my heels, a slow bubble of excitement in my stomach. I follow the river of people across the street, the movie theater up ahead.
It was raining earlier so everything is sparkly-reflective-colorful and the lights of the marquee are almost blinding. Wouldn’t it be grand for the lights to clear and there would be Shep? I’d cross the sidewalk to him and tumble into his arms and the magic of a warm night in March would suck us away into another dimension where we could kiss and explore and flirt with zero concerns. Okay, tap the brakes, Hatch.
Unfortunately, when I blink the lights from my eyes, I find myself face-to-face with Jeff Burrows exiting the movie theater.
Figures.
Jeff Burrows went to our high school and, when we first moved to New York, was one of the only people that Willa and I actually knew here (besides Shep). Naturally, we reached out to him. We hung out just enough times to remember that we hadn’t liked him much in school and we didn’t like him much in adulthood either. He’s good-looking in a sort of condescending way and has a knack for running into me in the city at the exact wrong time.
I hope he doesn’t see me. I hope he doesn’t see me. Maybe I can just scoot past—
“Eve Hatch,” he says, stopping in my path.
“Oh. Hi, Jeff. How are you?”
His eyes skate down my body and nearly explode. “You’re pregnant.”
“What?” I shout. I look down at my belly and slap my hands over my mouth. “Holy shit!”
He rolls his eyes at my theatrics. “Congrats. Hey, it’s so weird to also run into you because I just spotted Shep Balder in there.” He points over his shoulder to the theater. A sly, knowing smile crosses his face. “Are you meeting up with him? Don’t tell me he’s the baby daddy.”
I gape at him. What is it about a pregnant belly that makes someone think they’re allowed to say something like that to you? I grind my teeth.
“It’s not Shep, Jeff.” I put my hands on my hips and give him my best don’t-fuck-with-pregnant look.
He cows, but not enough. “Really?”
“You want it in writing?”
He laughs and I wish I hadn’t made a joke out of it.
“You’re married, then?” Jeff guesses.
“I’m not with the father.”
Jeff makes a vaguely surprised noise, but then his face turns sly again. “This must be killing Shep, then.” His eyes are on my belly.
“What?”
He smirks. “He was so protective. I personally saw him get his ass beat over you at least twice in high school.”
“That can’t be—”
“Man, this is so like him. Still following you around after all these years. Even when you’re…” He gestures at the baby bump and laughs like this is all a joke. My life. And Shep’s place in it.
Have you ever seen a pregnant woman drop-kick someone? Well, you’re about to.
Unfortunately for Jeff, Xaria and Ethan have ignited a roiling fire in my gut today and yes, yes, let’s point it at him. He’s messed with the wrong pregnant dragon lady. I take a step into his space and he jolts backward to accommodate the belly.
“Who are you sleeping with these days, Jeff? Got any STDs? How about major life events? Been dumped lately? Thoughts on becoming a father one day? Worried about male pattern baldness? No? Well, you should be.” My pointer finger’s come out to play and it’s about half an inch from Jeff Burrows’s nose. “Hmm, let’s see.” I take a step back and exaggeratedly survey his body from head to toe. “Which parts of your physical appearance give me the right to opine on your personal life? Or, better yet, your sex life?”
His mouth has flopped open, but unfortunately it’s not with chagrin. I see outrage burn in his eyes.
“Whoa, whoa. Calm down—” he splutters.
“Oh, baby. I’m just getting started.” I draw breath.
“No.” Suddenly a purple-leather-gloved hand is in between us, wagging a bossy finger in Jeff’s face. “Nuh-uh. No way.” I turn and see a tiny woman with a nest of gray hair pinned under a floppy hat. She’s got enormous glasses on and a scowl so potent I expect Jeff to shrivel like dried fruit. “I know you are not shouting at a pregnant woman on the street, young man.”
“I wasn’t shouting,” Jeff insists, looking back and forth between the two of us, trying to figure out if we know each other.
“By the looks of her,” the lady continues, giving me the up-and-down. “She’s, what? Eight and a half months along?”
She’s way off, but she’s my one-woman army right now so I nod vigorously. “Yeah!”
“So I don’t care if you were shouting or not,” she says to Jeff, eyes narrowed. “If you aren’t bending over backward for her, then you’re doing it wrong.”
“I just…I wasn’t…That’s not…” Jeff mumbles, and oh, look, there’s the chagrin I so badly wanted to see a few moments ago. He lifts two hands and shows me his palms. “I’ll just go.”
The lady makes a shooing motion and I watch Jeff just sort of back up and disappear into a crowd of tourists trundling past. I turn to my savior. “Wow. Thanks.”
“Tell me he’s not the father, sweetie.”
I pull a gargoyle face. “Oh, God no.”
“Good. Now, get inside out of this cold! It’s not good for the baby. And get off your feet, you’ll get varicose veins.” Her eyes narrow. There’s a litany of overbearing advice brewing on her tongue.
“Thank you!” I say brightly. And then scamper into the theater, safely out of her view. I breathe deeply and try to calm the adrenaline in my veins.
“Eve!” Willa waves at me from the other side of the lobby, then charges towards me.
“Hi. Where’s Shep and Isamu?”
“Bathroom. Hey. What’s that face?” she demands, surveying my expression.
“Oh. I just ran into Jeff Burrows and—” I open my mouth to explain but then realize that I can’t actually explain unless I tell her what he said about Shep.
That it’s killing him I’m pregnant with someone else’s baby.
Shep getting his ass beat over me.
It can’t be true. If Shep had gotten beat up in high school, there’s no way I wouldn’t have known. So there’s not even any reason to bring it up to Willa.
“And what?” Willa asks, hands on her hips. “What did he say to you?”
“Just some stuff about my pregnancy. He was surprised I wasn’t married.”
She rolls up her sleeves and glares out at the sidewalk. Uh-oh. I grab her arm. “Don’t worry about it. He’s gone and it wasn’t that big of a deal. I’m just…sensitive right now.”
Her face falls. “Still haven’t heard from Ethan?”
I make a puke face. “No. But I almost texted him today. I had a moment of unmitigated rage and I nearly took it upon myself to completely RIP his self-esteem.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Father of my child, high road, better not to act impulsively, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Well, you know what? None of that applies to me,” Willa says, and winter blows through the lobby as her eyes darken and a crown of icicles bursts from her hairline. She’s daydreaming about smite. “That’s it. You won’t let me hunt down Jeff? Fine. Ethan will do. I’m gonna head down to Good Boy and smoke this motherfucker.”
But I don’t even have time to grab the back of her sweater before she pauses, sags, and turns back to me. “Ugh, I can’t ruin my relationship with him either,” she grumbles. “If he ends up a part of your life then he’s gonna end up a part of my life, and if we’re on bad terms, then that’ll just make things awkward for you.” She points to the you in my belly. Her hands find their way to her hips. “Loving your kid is really inconvenient, you know.”
“I know. It means you have to be a better person. What a burden.”
She laughs but then, on the tail of the laugh, her eyes get glossy. Her expression freezes and she turns around, dashing her tears away. I’ve had that happen to me before, when one emotion skates in on the heels of another. Loving your kid is really inconvenient, you know. I wonder if she accidentally meant that in more than one way.
“Okay, so tell me what you said to Jeff.” She signals at me to finish the story.
I give her a quick rundown of my male-pattern-baldness speech and she laughs and crows and gasps in all the right places.
“Can you even believe I said that?” I ask her.
“Of course, I can believe it. You’ve finally unleashed your strongest, baddest, bitchest, bad bitch to ever bad-bitch her way—”
“Are these even compliments?” asks Shep from behind us.
“Of course,” Willa asserts. “She ran into Jeff Burrows and had to bad-bitch him out.”
“Wait, really?” Shep turns towards me in alarm. “What happened?”
“And she won’t let me hunt him down and make him cry,” Willa gripes.
“He’s here?” Shep straightens and swings around, his expression gone icy.
“You think we could make it into the theater without you two opening a can of whoop-ass on someone?” Isamu says dryly. “We’re going to miss the previews.”
“Yes, let’s go.” I put a hand on each of the Balders and push forwards.
“Wait! Wait!” Willa throws her hands up. “Popcorn.”
“Yes. Good call,” I say. “Let’s get an absurd amount. Enough to drown in. I’m starving.”
“You got it.” She surveys the semicrowded lobby. “You two go get seats. Isamu and I will meet you there.”
Shep and I head up the escalator towards our theater.
“What did Jeff say?” Shep prods.
“Oh, it was no big deal. I mean, he’s a total dick, but we’ve all known that for a very long time. He was surprised I was pregnant and even more surprised to find out that the baby wasn’t y—” I clear my throat. “That I’m not with the father.”
We step off the escalator and I realize that Shep hasn’t kept walking. I look back and he’s staring at me, a look in his eyes I can’t quite interpret. He catches up to me, his eyes burning into me. “So, what did you say?”
“It’s not worth repeating.” I have to get off this topic or else I’m going to do something reckless, like ask Shep if it’s killing him that I’m pregnant with Ethan’s baby.
The ticket kid scans our phones and we head into the theater. It’s not crazy crowded, but in another few minutes it’ll probably be tricky to get seats all together. The first preview has just started.
Shep and I slip down an aisle and sit down. There are a few free seats on either side of us.
I busy myself with taking off my coat and pink hat and arranging my bag at my feet and when I look up, I almost scream.
Because Shep has also taken off his coat. And his hat. And he’s sitting next to me, eyes on the screen, with a brand-new haircut.
And I mean, this thing is a h.a.i.r.c.u.t.
A tiny bit shaggy on top, but really, very short, faded on the sides, and look, there are the cords in his neck and who knew that foreheads were, like, so hot? Sleepy Shep is nowhere to be found.
I immediately face forwards because I physically cannot look at him and keep my tongue in my mouth at the same time. I feel his eyes on the side of my face so I quickly glance at him.
“Everything okay?” he leans in and whispers.
I feel his words in my ear and it’s all I can do to nod.
Popcorn. I need copious amounts of popcorn. I’ll stuff it into my mouth in handfuls and de-sex-ify this moment.
Right now, all I can do is pretend I’m super into this preview (which features a bunch of cartoon hamsters performing some sort of heist). But on the inside my mind is whirring. His hair had been getting awfully long. So maybe he just needed one. Maybe it had already been scheduled. He went at his regular time to his regular guy and just happened to get a really dramatic haircut. Or maybe this is how short he always gets it cut and I just happened to have never seen him in the immediate aftermath.
Or.
Or maybe I told him that men with fresh haircuts were absurdly hot to me and he went out and got one. And now he’s sitting there in a button-down shirt that I’ve never seen before, with the sleeves rolled up, forearms out, and he’s watching me watch this dumbass preview.
How does one get to the bottom of such a haircut?
Does your haircut mean you love me?
I may or may not be experiencing some difficulty with playing it cool.
A last-minute crowd of people surge up the aisles and they all seem to know one another, they’re talking up and down the stairs, shining their phone flashlights to keep from tripping and scanning the theater for open seats.
Willa and Isamu are there too, logjammed behind a group. Willa is holding an enormous vat of popcorn over her head and trying to poke her way around them.
But she can’t. They flood into the seats and almost instantaneously both the seats on either side of Shep and me are taken.
“Oh, I was saving those,” I say to the teenage girl who has just sat next to me. Her face falls and she glances to her side. There is a very cute boy sitting there. Her eyes immediately go puppy-pitiful.
“Please,” she whispers.
I turn to Willa, who’s watching from the aisle, and she shrugs and leans across some people to hand over the popcorn.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll sit down there.”
She points where there are a few empty seats still and then, would ya look at that, Shep and I are alone in a crowded room.
I spend the first twenty minutes of the movie attempting not to hyperventilate as I consume a Thanksgiving turkey’s quantity of popcorn. He gets up and slides out of the aisle and comes back four minutes later with a bottled water. I gratefully take it and drink half in two gigantic gulps.
There’s no chance he’s finding any of this attractive, and that’s good. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
I finally lower the trough of popcorn to the floor and as I’m screwing the water bottle into the cupholder between us, Shep catches at my hand.
My heart stops.
He lifts my hand towards his face and inspects the Daffy Duck Band-Aid on my thumb.
“What happened?” he asks, his breath in my ear and my hand cradled in his.
I turn, he presents me with his ear, and I would like very much to trace that line of freshly trimmed hair. “Stapler,” I manage.
He frowns and lifts his head, his fingers gently pressing at the edges of the Band-Aid.
“Was it bad?”
I shake my head.
We’ve pretty much covered all the Band-Aid ground that one can cover, so I fully expect him to rescind my hand to me. Instead, he turns it over, palm down, and starts fiddling with the two rings I wear on my pointer finger.
They’re simple. Thin gold bands with one tiny stone apiece. They nest neatly together. He toggles them against each other, making the gems kiss.
I’m holding my breath as he lifts my hand closer to his face to inspect them.
“Are these new?” he leans in and whispers.
I blink at him. It’s an interesting question. One that implies that he regularly notices my jewelry. “Yes.”
“Did you buy them for yourself?” We’d be disturbing the people around us if he weren’t whispering so quietly. He’s gently placing each word into my ear. His warm breath making me shiver, his nose touching the shell of my ear.
I nod and point at the first one. “First trimester.” I point at the second one. “Second trimester.”
His face lights up, and he studies them with renewed interest. I haven’t told anyone else that I’ve bought myself good-job jewelry. Two little milestones. But then again, no one else notices enough about me to ask.
He curls my fingers under and inspects the rings, and then he flattens my fingers straight, palm against palm. “You’re tense,” he whispers. And then proceeds to torture me. He massages the big muscle at the base of my thumb and slides up each finger. He wiggles the knuckles and gently kneads and prods and opens and closes my hand.
Wordlessly, I reach across myself and present him with my other hand and I swear he swallows down a smile. When I get tired of leaning, I pull away with a little smile and he automatically picks up my first hand again. He twiddles the rings again and does a tiny bit more massaging. It isn’t long until that’s dissolved into him drawing designs against my palm. He’s not even pretending to watch the movie.
My eyes close and my whole world spirals down into focus. The only thing I care about is whatever the hell he’s drawing on my palm.
A square with a triangle on top and then a few small stars atop that. Maybe a house with a night sky.
He runs his fingers over my palm and I get the idea he’s wiping his canvas clean. Next comes waves and a palm tree. A desert island, clearly. I think he might add two stick figures. There’s a pause and then something small that I can’t decipher.
Next are two circles, one big and one little. Next comes…a dog maybe? A cat? Then, finally, as the credits roll, one last shape. An arrow. And it’s pointing up my arm, straight towards me and—I fear—straight towards my heart.