“We were waiting until after the wedding. Not long after. But after.” Jase tossed back the shot Brek had poured. “It’s not that I don’t want a kid. I just don’t want to deal with planning the wedding and planning for a baby all while wrangling the insanity that is my family. I like my insanity in nice tidy boxes. All separate from each other.”
“It’s not that bad.” Brek leaned against the bar top. “The planning a baby and a wedding. Velma and I did it.”
“Your family is not my family. You have a very sane mother. Velma has two totally normal parents. Have you met Babushka? My mother? My sister? You might as well call in the ringmaster now, because my life is about to become a full three-ring circus.”
Eli had met them. Jase was right. He was fucked.
“How’d Babushka find out before you?” Brek asked.
“Said she caught Heather taking pregnancy tests at Rite-Aid.”
Eli had heard the stories of Velma testing for a baby in the bathroom stall at Target. At least now he knew where Marlee’d gone. Why she hadn’t responded.
She’d been too busy helping out a friend.
Jase would be a great dad; Eli had no doubt. Just like Brek. And Dean, if that’s what he and Claire decided they wanted to do. Eli? Eli was barely ready for his first real relationship. Did he want kids? He let that thought ferment in his mind.
Maybe.
Yes.
Someday.
If it was a little girl and she looked like Marlee.
Shit.
This is why he didn’t think too hard about things like this.
He was two inches away from nailing down his restaurant. This was his dream, and he was finally following it. He wasn’t going to screw it up by losing focus.
“This is gonna be awesome,” Brek said with a grin. “Let’s hope your kid is blessed with the beauty that is Heather and not…” He gave Jase a once-over.
Jase gave Brek the finger.
Eli smiled down at the bar top. His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen. Marlee. His chest went warm.
“Mar,” he said into the receiver.
“Hey.” She sounded breathless. “Sorry. I had to go with the girls. I was thinking I’d just head home from here.”
“Where are you?” he asked. “I can come get you.”
She’d left her car at the apartment. He’d seen it when he ran home for a quick change of clothes before meeting-not-meeting her at Brek's.
“Already called a car.” Her voice got muffled as she said something to someone in the background. “I’ll see you at home.”
His gut turned funny when she called his apartment home. And not in the sour way. In the warm way his chest had also felt when he saw she was calling.
Fine. Eli liked that Marlee referred to his apartment as home.
Yes, he was making progress.
* * *
Marlee waspregnant with Eli’s kid. A dozen pregnancy tests confirmed it. So she resolved to do what any sane woman would do when faced with the knowledge she carried the baby of Eli Howard.
Marlee: I’m not telling him yet.
