“I need to tell you a secret. But if you tell anyone before I do, I will tell Maxim that you’re annoying me and he will never look at you the same.”
“Harsh,” he mutters. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Can you keep my secret or not?”
“You know I have to tell Vanessa, she’s?—”
“Your wife, your muse, whatever, I get it. You can’t tell her. Just for like a couple of days.”
“Mary.” He sounds exasperated.
“I’m pregnant,” I confess. He’s the first person I’ve said the words to, and in the silence that follows, he looks as gobsmacked as I’ve felt about the whole ordeal. He goes through no less than four emotions in less than a minute; confusion, then shock, he almost looks excited, but then it’s back to the shock.
“You are?” he whispers.
“Yes,” I whisper back, though it’s just us here.
“Have you told anyone?”
“Yes,” I say, and he looks relieved. “You, just now.”
The stress returns to his face in an instant. The toaster pops up one of the bagels and Nate jumps like there’s another attacker.
I hand him a plate and a butter knife.
“Please be chill about this, I am too nauseous to fall victim to one of your anxiety attacks.”
“You’re sick? Like morning sickness?”
“Yes, like morning sickness, stupid.”
“Is it Maxim’s baby?” he whispers again, as if my husband might hear us from across the city.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. I want to hit him, but I want him to help me more, so I hold back.
“Obviously.”
“I knew it. Youdidhave a hickey on St. Patrick’s Day.”
“Nate,” I warn. I forget, at times, that my brother-in-law is the single most intrusive person on the planet once he feels like he really knows someone. “Whatever. Yes, we had sex at least one time, yes, it was a hickey, yes, his penis is massive, yes, he is a generous lover. Now are you ready to focus on the problem at hand?”
Nate’s mouth snaps shut and then he nods solemnly. The toaster pops up with the second bagel, and he retrieves it, burning his fingers immediately and cursing.
“What’s the problem? The baby? Like, what, you don’t want it?”
“No.” My hand covers my stomach as if to protect the cluster of cells from thinking that. “That’s not it.”
“How many weeks are you?”
“I think seven.”
Nate gets out his phone and taps at the screen before sliding it to me. I see a pastel colored app, a beating number7at the top of the screen and a blueberry below next to what looks kind of like a tadpole.
Baby is the size of a blueberry!it reads. My eyebrows cinch in the middle of my forehead. I was envisioning something much more abstract, less like a tiny creature.
I exhale and put the phone face down on the counter before I can get distracted reading the information the app offers about the little thing growing in me.Focus.
“The problem is that I can’t keep food down. But when I’m hungry, I feel even more sick, and it makes doing anything very difficult.”
