"Fergus. I said no." I stood up to stop him, but the thing about being eight and a half months pregnant is that nobody tells you the waddle is involuntary.
I’d been telling myself it was a choice. A power move, even. I was simply taking up more space in the world, as one should. But the truth was, my center of gravity had relocated to somewhere around my kneecaps, and my body had decided the best way to transport itself from the bed to the kettle was a side-to-side lurching motion that made me look like a penguin having a crisis of faith.
Fergus just looked at me, his paw on the slipper..
"Fergus, that is the only pair I own that still fits my feet.”
I’m sure he smirked before his teeth sank into the slipper, and with all the might he could find, he shook it as if he thought it was alive and he had to kill it.
I groaned as I sat back down on the bed. My back ached, reminding me that the human spine was not, in fact, designed to carry a bowling ball at the front. And my baby felt like a number sixteen.
The little… darling kicked. It wasn’t a polite little flutter. It was a full-on, studs-in, someone-call-the-referee kick that connected directly with my ribcage and made me gasp.
"Brilliant," I wheezed. "You’re going to be a footballer. Or a cage fighter. Or one of those people who kicks down doors for a living. What are they called? Firefighters.” He kicked again. “Yes, you’re going to be a firefighter."
The baby kicked once more, probably letting me know he was sick of being in there too.
My phone buzzed on the pillow. I already knew who it was without looking. I picked it up.
"How are you?" Presley asked before I’d finished saying hello.
"Everything is fine."
"Maeve."
"Everything is mostly fine." She’d worked out I had lied to her about being a successful bookshop-cafe owner. Take away theword successful, and the lie wasn’t so bad. Truth was, I was lucky to break even after my lease costs were paid.
"Maeve Porter."
"Oh, she’s using my full name." At least the name I’d told her I was called. I glanced at my dog. “That’s how you know it’s serious, Fergus.”
Fergus was too busy destroying my slipper to care.
Presley lived with her pack and children in Kensington. She had more than one room to move around in, and a sofa that didn’t have springs poking through the left cushion. Her pack had built her a tiny cottage in the garden that was bigger than the place I called home. She had it all.
"How’s the shop?" she asked.
"Thriving."
"Is 'thriving' the word you use when you mean 'breaking even on a good day and hemorrhaging money on a bad one'?"
"Thriving is the word I prefer to use when I don’t want to talk about money, Pres."
"And the baby?"
I looked down. The bump was extraordinary. I’d always been slim, so the pregnancy had nowhere to hide. It just... announced itself. “I look like I’ve shoplifted a watermelon and was hoping no one would notice.”
Presley laughed. “It won’t be long now. Are you prepared? I sent a little something in the post.”
I looked around my room. “I’m fully prepared.”
“Are you sure? You sound…”
"I’m fine. The baby is perfect," I said. Something warm moved through my chest. That part wasn’t a lie. "Though he is currently trying to relocate my liver with his feet, but otherwise perfect."
"And you? How are you?"
This was Presley. She knew there was something wrong, so she asked the same question in a different way. And that question landed in the room like a rock thrown through glass.
