I’d told Winnie I loved her, and if there was any place I could convince her I meant it, it was in Christmas Notch, Vermont.
Chapter Twenty
Winnie
The first thing I noticed when I walked through the door of the Dirty Snowball the following week was how awful it smelled. The very air was a poisonous stale-beer fume, and the ghost of every half-eaten basket of nachos, wings, and fried pickles lingered like a fog.
My mouth did that weird watering thing that happened whenever I was about to throw up, and I pressed my lips firmly together. Uh-uh. Not here. Not inthosebathrooms.
The second thing I noticed was the absence of a certain tall, bearded person—not that I cared, of course I didn’t! I only cared for logistical reasons, because we needed to talk about this dang baby, and it would be easier to do it tonight, during our “welcome back to Christmas Notch” mixer, rather thanwhile we were having fake Santa sex in a chimney or something.
And the fact that Kallum had told me he loved me at Got the Juice... the weird skip in my pulse whenever I thought about his pleading blue eyes as he’d said it... that had nothing to do with anything. It didn’t change things. It didn’t change that for all his boyish charm, he could hurt me again.
It didn’t change that from now on, my heart was reserved for the little lemon-size creature growing inside of me, and for no one else.
“Winnie!” said a voice from next to me. “Welcome!”
I turned to see Gretchen and Pearl standing by the door, Gretchen holding a craft beer and Pearl holding a kombucha bottle in one hand and a basket full of mini-Fireball bottles in the other.
“I would offer you a Fireball, but Steph told us about the bambino,” Gretchen said. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“Make sure you drink lots of red raspberry leaf tea now that you’re in your second trimester,” confided Pearl. “It makes the uterus strong.”
“Thank you,” I said, mostly breathing through my mouth to avoid smelling the horrible air in here. “It’s still early on, so you’re in a pretty small group of people who know. And I’m hoping this won’t impact the reshoots too much.”
“Not at all,” Gretchen said briskly. “You’re barely showing, and it’s nothing we can’t work with when it comes to angles and costuming. And besides, people get pregnant. It’s something we need to stop punishing actors for.” Her face softened a little, a small smile curving her mouth. “Also babies are great. I can’t wait to meet this one.”
“Thank you for being so understanding,” I said, and I meant it. So far, everyone had been so much nicer than I’d planned on—even Steph, who I’d been certain was going to fire me, because there wassexychaos like Nolan Shaw, and then there wasunsexychaos, like being a pregnant former child star. But she hadn’t fired me; in fact, she’d been weirdly delighted. (“Do you smell that?” she’d demanded. “Smell what?” I’d replied, confused, because I couldn’t smell anything bad, despite now being a human sniffer dog. “All those freshly printedPeoplemagazines, Winnie!” she’d exclaimed with unbridled glee. “With your glowing, maternal face on the front!”)
Turned out that Steph D’Arezzo’s new position on clients wasthe messier the better, and she already had a couple projects in mind that would dovetail with my visibly gravid lifestyle. And now that Gretchen, Pearl, and Teddy had been formally told, along with Jack Hart and Luca, who needed to know for intimacy coordination and costuming reasons, there were only my parents and Kallum left to tell.
I was doing a very good job not thinking about how my parents would react. Kallum? Not so much. I wanted to give him a chance to be a part of the baby’s life... but I also wondered how much a carefree guy like Kallum would want a baby and its neurotic, narcoleptic mother messing up his world.
Surely not, right? Surely the guy famous for slinging pizzas and boinking bridesmaids wouldn’t want to be bogged down with spit-up and mastitis and all the other unglamorous parts of parenting?
So I had to prepare for it being mostly—if not entirely—me, and I had to let go of all the fantasies I’d once held so closeto my heart. Fantasies of being cuddled while I nursed a tiny newborn. Of my now-estranged parents coming to stay and my mother rocking the baby while I napped nearby. Of a house full of people ready with a hug or a clean binky or open arms to take a beloved baby who hardly ever knew its crib because it was held so much.
But that was okay; I was a brave little toaster, and even though I wasn’t about to make Addison do threea.m.diaper changes just because Past Winnie hadn’t been smart enough to wait for a condom that hadn’t been baked like a pizza by a cell phone battery, I still wasn’t alone. I had Aunt Addy, and Steph hadn’t fired me, and I had Gretchen’s support, and things were going to be completely fine.
I just had to tell Kallum, that was all.
“Of course,” Gretchen replied, right as someone bumped into me from behind. I turned to see Nolan Shaw with his arms full of red plastic baskets, lined with paper and filled with things like jalapeño poppers and Tater Tots covered in a gluey, bright yellow cheese.
My stomach promptly climbed into my throat and prepared to jump off my tongue like a diving board.
“Winnie Baker!” Nolan shouted, the tousled hair emerging from his beanie hanging just so over his forehead. “Welcome to my favorite Vermont dive bar, where the martinis are dirty and the floors are even dirtier.”
“Hi, Nolan,” I said, a little confused. “What are you doing in Christmas Notch? I thought you lived in LA?”
“Nolan—and Bee—are here forDuke the Halls 2: A Ducal Wedding, which is kicking off after our reshoots,” Gretchen saidfrom behind us. “So we thought it would be fun to have the whole family here tonight.”
“Also the Dirty Snowball is booked all next week for a Disney Channel Original Movie trivia tournament, so we couldn’t do separate cast mixers,” Pearl chimed in.
“Ah, DCOM,” Nolan said with a wistful sigh. “I was almost in a DCOM with a Jonas brother once. But I got caught making out in a Disneyland bathroom with Prince Eric right before the movie was set to start filming, and the Mouse doesn’t do scandal. Even deeply, deeply understandable scandal.”
He gave a shake of his head and then flashed me a grin so crooked and mischievous that I flushed. No wonder Bee Hobbes had fallen for him while shooting a movie together. If he was this charming in a dive bar with a beanie jammed down around his ears, I couldn’t imagine what he was like dressed up like Mr.Darcy and smoldering at me.
“But where are my manners?” he asked suddenly. “Do you want a jalapeño popper?” He shoved one of the plastic baskets in my face, and a miasma of cheese and pepper fumes engulfed me.
