And it was the one Winnie—and our soon-to-be child—deserved.
I looked at five apartments within three blocks of Addison’s house and took the only one with a shower I could stand in without crouching over like Gru fromDespicable Me. The real estate agent, who drove a Porsche so small I opted to drive myself to our listings, looked at me like I was playing an elaborate joke on her when I told her this place would do the job.
After I signed my lease and put down my deposit, I met with Steph’s cousin who happened to be in commercial real estate. It was like meeting Steph if Steph were a fifty-eight-year-old man named Lenny in Danny DeVito’s body. Turned out that finding a location for Slice, Slice, Baby’s West Coast debut was a hell of a lot more difficult than finding an apartment.
We toured properties for three days straight. If I saw another poorly maintained kitchen, I was going to just get a van to sell slices out of.
On the third day, we ended up in a familiar place just across the street from Got the Juice. I couldn’t tell if it was a good or bad omen, to be honest. Either way, I read the parking signs this time.
“So your pizza,” Lenny said as he typed in the door code. “It’s not that Chicago shit, right? People in LA want their pizza to be gluten-free, taste-free, and with a sprinkle of microgreens and Twitter threads or whatever on top.”
“Now, Lenny,” I said as we walked into the vacant space. “That’s not entirely true. Carbs are universal. Besides, I make a killer side salad.”
He grumbled about something under his breath. I’d never met a real estate agent who tried so hard not to sell real estate and that actually made me trust him even more.
The space was small. Just enough room for a couple booths, some barstools by the window, and a carryout line. I flipped the light switch as I stepped behind the counter where there was an old slicer and a moldy-looking drinks fridge. It was gross, but definitely one of the least offensive things I’d seen in the last few days. “What was this place? A deli?”
“What wasn’t it?” he said with a grunt. “A deli, a gluten-free bagel shop, a kebab place. Nothing’s really made it more than a year in this space.”
“The location’s good, though.”
He shrugged. “If it’s a commercial listing in LA and it’s not structurally compromised and there’s not a rodent problem, the location is prime.”
We walked through the kitchen, which needed work, but was usable. “What’s back here?” I asked as we walked down a narrow hallway past a single-stall restroom.
Pushing through the back door, I expected to find a dark alleyway, but instead, there was a huge overgrown patio with vines crawling up the backside of the building.
“Oh,” Lenny said. “A beer garden. Whatever the hell that means.”
I took a look around. Broken furniture. Weeds. String lights hanging dangerously low.
But I could see exactly what this space could be. I could practically hear my family right here. The sound of little feet running down the hallway and out onto this patio where I’d put in a little swing set and a playhouse for kids while adults sipped on a cold beer over one of my pies.
Back here you could barely even hear the chaos of the city. It was perfect.
“Ya know, it’s not smart business to open up in a place that’s been a revolving door of companies. I’ve got one more place to show you today.”
“I like this one,” I told him. And he was right about the revolving door. People’s eyes started to glaze over when a location constantly changed hands, but in a way, it reminded me of my constant stream of bridesmaid hookups. Every time I thought it would be different and that maybe I’d found The One. But if I’d just given up on love, I never would have opened myself up to Winnie and the thought that we could be more than a good time.
And sure, Winnie wasn’t ready for me. But I was building a life for us... and I would be here, serving up pies, when she was ready.
I turned back to Lenny. “Let’s put together an offer.”
Chapter Thirty
Winnie
“Is that cold? It sounds cold,” observed Kallum as the sonography tech squeezed a clear goo onto her transducer and pressed it to my stomach.
“It’s been warmed,” the tech assured him right as she dug into my very full bladder. She must have noticed my thighs tense under the sheet, because she said to me, “You’re at twenty-four weeks now, this will be the last ultrasound we need a full bladder for, I think. Oh look! There we are.”
On the screen, flickers of staticky baby emerged—head, legs, spine—until finally we could see almost all of them at once.
“Oh my God,” Kallum breathed, his eyes glued to the screen. “And that’s really the baby? Right now? That’s what the baby is doing right now?”
The baby was doing nothing but kicking its legs right into my cervix, but Kallum looked like he was watching his firstborn paint the Sistine Chapel inside my uterus.
“Look at them kicking!” he said excitedly, pointing. “You can even see their toes! And oh my God, is that their heart? Their tiny, little heart? Doing tiny, little heartbeats?”
