“Saylor!” I turned to see Trinity, in the doorway of room four with the vacuum. “Are we working or are we flirting?”
My face went red-hot, but Roo just laughed. “Some buddy you are,” I said. “What happened to support?”
“I’m supporting,” he said, folding up the ladder. “You’re the one flirting.” Then he grinned at me, stuck it under his arm, and started toward the office. Again my face was flushed. But for different reasons, now.
“Now, what I want us all to do is to breathe together,” Kim, the leader of the birthing class, was saying from the front of the room. “Okay? Inhale on three. One, two, THREE.”
I drew in a shallow breath, not sure how me doing this would actually help this process. Trinity, who was leaning back against me, sucked in enough for both our lungs, before letting it go when instructed with a whoosh that blew her bangs sideways. Impressive.
“When the baby comes,” Kim was saying now, “there will be moments to push and moments to rest. But no matter what, you want to be breathing.”
“Seems like a good rule for anytime, really,” I muttered.
“Hush.” Trinity shifted her position, elbowing me in my stomach in the process. “You’re supposed to be the Sergeant, remember?”
“He doesn’t make jokes?” I asked.
“Not stupid ones, no.”
Originally it was Celeste who had been Trinity’s partner, as the Sergeant’s delayed homecoming meant he wasn’t around when the birthing classes began in early June. But then Celeste’s boss at the grocery had quit, so she’d had to take over running everything, and Mimi stepped in. With the season beginning and the hotel still down a housekeeper, though, soon she too had her hands full. The only other ones with free time were me and Oxford, who claimed he’d faint at even the mention of the worduterus, much less a whole class about its capabilities.
So here I was, in the partner position, breathing and reassuring and watching incredibly disturbing birth videos that I could not forget despite really, really trying. If all went well, the Sergeant would be home by the end of July, in time for the birth itself, if not the last few classes. I didn’t know him at all, but I was still pretty sure he’d be better at it than I was.
Until then, though, it was my job to tote the nursing pillow, water bottle, and pad that Trinity used to jot down notes. She was so big it was all she could do just to drive us there and walk in, and that day, she’d decided maybe she couldn’t even manage that.
“You drive,” she’d said as we’d come out to Mimi’sToyota, parked by the Calvander’s office. “It’s just too hard for me these days.”
I hesitated. “I can’t.”
Already at the passenger door, she glanced over at me. “You don’t have a license?”
Lie, I told myself. But out loud I said, “No, I do.”
“Great,” she said, starting to ease herself into the seat. It was a multiphase process: backing in her rear end first, then a pivot to a sitting position, followed by pulling in her legs. When she finished and I still hadn’t moved, she said, “What’s the problem?”
“I don’t like to drive,” I said, or rather blurted. “It makes me nervous.”
“Nervous?” she repeated. “This is North Lake. We’ll be lucky if we even pass another car.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’ve never liked it, and then I backed into a car in the parking deck—”
“That happens to everyone,” she replied, shifting to get both feet more in the center of her floor mat. “Rite of passage. Now get in, we’re going to be late.”
She shut her door. I stayed where I was. A moment later, she rolled down the window. “Are you serious about this?”
“I don’t like driving,” I said again.
“Well, I don’t like that my fiancé isn’t here for birthing class, but I’m doing it anyway,” she replied. “You have your license on you?”
“Yeah.”
“Then come on.” She tossed the keys into the driver’sseat. “If I can get in the goddamn car at my size, you can do this.”
I wasn’t sure what it was about Trinity, exactly, that caused me to find myself doing things I normally thought impossible. Maybe that it wasn’t her faith in me as much as her frustration. She just had no time for my neurosis, which made me wonder if maybe that was an option for me, as well.
I walked over and pulled open the driver’s-side door. “I’m going to be nervous.”
“Great. You’ll drive carefully. Let’s go.”
