Out On a Limb
: Chapter 17

When we got home from our beach walk, Bo took a call in his room while I got ready to go out. He was still on the phone when I left with Sarah, on a mission to get new art for my room and some lunch. And of course, because it’s thrifting, I found what I was looking for and many things I hadn’t known I needed.

Including a very cute rainbow stacking puzzle for the baby and a few bits and pieces for the living room’s mantel. Some framed watercolour art, a few pottery candle holders, some pretty candles for those holders, and one small turquoise shell frame that perfectly fits our ultrasound photo. That, I put front and centre above the vacant fireplace.

Bo didn’t seem to mind the new additions. When I placed the final item and stepped back to admire the mantel, I turned to replace him standing behind me. He was leaned up on the wall, as he seems to be often, and smiling fondly. Not at me, but at that little photo in its new spot.

I figured it would be good to have the photo out somewhere. A reminder of why we’re doing this.

Afterward, I took the pile of comic books Bo had left out for me to my room and read for a few hours. And now, I’m about six comic books deep out of eight, and my stomach has informed me that it is time for dinner. Thus, began my spiral.

Sure, dinner sounds simple enough, but it is far from it. This is our first dinner under the same roof, and it seems to me that we’d be setting some sort of precedent with how tonight plays out. I have no idea what Bo does for meals. I’ve only ever seen the guy eat baked goods, crackers, or chips.

Does he only eat beige and brown food? Is he offended by vegetables? Does he like spicy food? What allergies does he have? Will I accidentally kill him if I use eggs, soy, nuts, or shellfish?

And is it presumptuous to cook for us both? Or would it be rude to just cook for myself? When does he normally eat dinner? Is it already too late? Too early? I haven’t left my room since four, so there is the possibility that he’s already eaten by now. Though I don’t smell anything wafting from the kitchen, and my sense of smell since getting pregnant is no joke. I’m like a bloodhound these days. People could use me to solve crimes. Decade old unsolved cold cases.

If Bo did eat without me, would I be offended? I don’t mind if we do our own thing, but we should probably establish what our routine will be, right?

Then, there’s also the matter of how we get the food prior to cooking. Do we grocery shop together? Separately? What’s most economical? Will our system change when I’m on parental leave and my income is slashed in half?

“Win?” Bo calls through my door, knocking twice in quick succession.

“Hmm? Yeah?” I say, trying to present myself as calm. It’s unconvincing.

“Are you hungry? I made soup,” he replies, opening the door a crack and taking a step inside.

I pull my hair off my neck and swallow, feeling a hot flush across my chest and neck. This is all too much. There’s too much we haven’t discussed. Expectations I don’t know about and will inevitably fail. Jack hated when I didn’t have dinner ready when he got home. He was strange like that… performing long-winded monologues about how society was set to work against women while continuously making me feel like I had to fulfil certain roles and expectations in our home. Everything about Jack was some sort of performance.

Is that what this is? Bo making soup? Is this some sort of… act?

“You okay?” Bo asks, his eyes bouncing around my face, his hand tight around the top of my door.

I release my lip from between my teeth as my knee begins bouncing. “Do you have any allergies?” I ask.

“No.” Bo walks farther into the room, presses his shoulder against the wall next to my dresser, and crosses his arms. “What about you?”

“No. Do you normally cook or order in? What time do you eat? About now?”

“I like to cook, but I’m not any sort of chef. I normally eat around six since I finish work at five. Are you okay? You seem a little—”

“I feel like I’m unravelling, maybe… a tiny bit. I appreciate you cooking, obviously, but I just don’t know what the expectations are moving forward. I guess it’s been a while since I lived with someone…”

Bo nods thoughtfully, his eyes holding on the lamp on the bedside table. “This seems like the same spiral I was having about an hour ago.” He points to the bed, and I nod, shuffling over so he can sit next to me. “I don’t want to overstep,” Bo says, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands between his open legs. “If you want to share this space like roommates—buy our own food, cook for ourselves, share some basic necessities, split costs down the middle—that’s cool with me. But I think a different arrangement would make more sense.”

“Different?” I ask.

“Less separate, I guess. I think I worked out a solution for the bills and money side of things. As far as the household chores go, cooking or whatever else, I think we should take turns.”

“So, like, every other night, I’ll cook dinner?”

“But sometimes you close at the café, right? So why don’t I cook, since my schedule stays the same?”

“Then what do I do?”

“Clean up after dinner?”

“And what about the rest of the house? Do you keep things super clean? Do you have some sort of routine I should know about? A task you hate that I could do?”

“After my surgery, I hired a company to send someone to clean once a week, so it’s more just that we have to tidy up after ourselves.”

I add that to the list of expenses and wonder how much this home, Bo’s lifestyle, costs to maintain. Does he shop at the type of grocery stores with butcher counters and organic produce or the kind where you can buy lawn furniture alongside your milk? That may be a determining factor in how we proceed. Can I even afford half of his life?

“So what about money? Splitting everything in half seems right to me, but I don’t know what your bills are.”

“My suggestion is a bit more complicated than that.”

I raise a brow, waiting for him to continue.

Bo rises off the bed slightly, taking his phone out of his back pocket. “I know you said you wanted to pay half, and I don’t want to dismiss that, but I think this solution is something we can both agree on.” He holds out his phone between us, showing me a pie chart with a list of numbers below it that mean absolutely nothing to me.

I stare at it for a few long seconds before I give up. “What am I looking at here?”

He moves closer, our thighs touching, as he enthusiastically shows me around the screen. “Okay, this is our total yearly household income.” He circles the entire pie chart with his finger. “And this is the percentage of that income that I make.” He points to the much larger portion of the chart, coloured purple. His knee nudges mine, and I have to reset to focus on what he’s saying. I’m glad my math teachers weren’t as distractingly handsome as Bo. I’d have never gotten my diploma.

“This system splits everything proportionally. I put in our expected monthly expenses, including two additional savings accounts I’ve set up that we’ll both contribute to. One is for housing and moving costs you have in the future, whatever you decide to do. The second is for the baby—furniture, diapers, clothes, whatever else. I then multiplied the total of our expenses by each of our percentages to see how much each of us should contribute overall.”

I nod, looking at the screen when I spot my name below the chart, highlighted in green. “So this number, six hundred and seventy-four, that’s mine?”

“Yeah,” Bo answers.

“That’s way too low for housing, food, bills, and everything else. There’s no way.”

“The percentages do not lie.”

“You obviously fudged the numbers!”

Bo laughs softly. “I swear I didn’t. I can go over the math with you, but the only expenses I left off were my car’s costs—because I wasn’t sure if you’d want to use it or not. But I could total that in too if you want to.”

“What do I do with all the extra money I make from the café? I should definitely contribute more, given how much I’ll have left over.”

“Well, I didn’t include your phone bill. Plus spending money, I guess. Another savings account. Invest some if you’d like.” He shrugs, as if to show his complete indifference. “And when you’re on parental leave, we’ll readjust the percentages of our income so it’s all still fair.”

I snatch the phone from him, scrolling until I see his number below mine. “Robert! Three thousand, nine hundred and ninety-two?” I sigh, glaring at him. “This is not even close to even.”

Bo’s eyebrows shoot up, widening his eyes. “Robert?” he asks, smirking. “I’m Robert now?”

“Well, Bo seems rather informal, considering you’re now my sugar daddy apparently!” I say, exasperated.

Bo rolls his eyes.

“I’m serious. I want this to feel fair.” I’ve been taken advantage of before. I know how it feels. How quickly you can begin to resent someone for everything they don’t do.

“It’s exactly fair, Fred. These numbers are proportional. It’s equity, not equality. Trust me. If it was solely up to me, your number would be a lot lower. Zero. Your income is about 15 percent of the household’s total, right? The expenses of having you live here only rose by an additional six hundred and thirty dollars, which your portion is covering. Now that doesn’t seem fair, considering you’re also growing my kid. This is me compromising.”

I whine, looking at the vast difference between our two numbers. I only make 15 percent of the household’s income. I’m not great at math, evidently, but that must put Bo’s income somewhere above one hundred thousand a year. I didn’t expect that to feel quite so mortifying. How little I have to offer.

“Bo, are you sure? Absolutely sure? This feels like too much.”

“Yes,” he nods desperately. “Entirely, definitely, absolutely, and whatever other adverb you’d like, sure.” His simple boyish grin levels me some. The way he tilts his head to catch my eyes, the way he nods as if he’s trying to get me to do the same. The way this all seems so… unimportant to him. As if he truly could not care less.

“I’m a mooch,” I say, sighing as we hold eye contact, our faces as close as our shoulders’ widths and height difference allow us to be.

“You’re not a mooch. You’re an asset.” He bumps his shoulder against mine, wrangling a smile out of me.

“An asset?” I ask, blinking up at him.

“Of course. You’ve definitely upped the house’s value by adding decor and giving this boring room a makeover. Not to mention you’re increasing the number of household members by 50 percent. Plus, you’re good for morale,” he teases with a wink.

“Morale, huh?”

“Yes. Your contribution to the vibe is worth at least a few hundred bucks.”

“Right.” I sigh, wrapping a hand around my grumbling stomach. Bo’s eyes follow my hand’s path and hold there, eyeing my belly with warm affection.

“Look, I know we don’t really know each other that well yet, and you don’t have reason to trust me with this, but I promise—this is fair. I can go over it with you some more, on my computer maybe, but regardless, this is as much money from you as I’m comfortable accepting. I’m very good at my job and typically honourable, but I did consider fudging the numbers when I saw your amount. I’d like to make things as easy as I can for you, Win. If I had it my way, you’d quit your job, put your feet up, and relax for the next few months.”

“You want a kept woman,” I tease.

“I certainly want to keep you.” He blanches as soon as the words leave his mouth. “I mean, I want to keep you happy. Here and happy and—”

“Okay,” I interrupt. “Fine. I agree with your arrangement, but if anything changes… if at any point you start resenting me or—”

“That’s impossible.”

“All right, but… if.”

His shoulders fall on a long exhale. “Thank you.”

“I don’t know why you’re thanking me. I’m rich now. I have an ice machine and an extra thousand bucks a month to play with.”

He laughs, his face pointed up at the ceiling. “Okay, big spender, now that we got that sorted… soup?” He stands, offering me his hand to follow.

I place my smaller hand in his and don’t miss how his eyes crease on either side when he wraps his full hand around it, covering it completely.

Not a chef, my ass. When I’m done with my third helping of Bo’s butternut squash soup—that he made from scratch, I might add—I begin cleaning up.

I know it sounds ridiculous, because there is a dishwasher, but I decided to do the dishes by hand. I think part of me feels like it’s only right to do it the old-fashioned way, considering Bo just made soup like a pioneer woman.

Halfway through washing our dishes, a scratchy guitar solo starts playing in the adjoining room, the music slowly being turned up.

“This okay?” Bo says, popping his head around the corner.

“Yeah!” I shout over the music, nodding along. “Who is this?”

“Rush—they were one of my mom’s favourite bands.”

“Your mom had good taste,” I say, smiling over my shoulder as I scrub my soup bowl clean.

Bo’s eyes hold on my hands with one raised, quizzical brow, but he doesn’t say anything. And I appreciate that. I despise being micromanaged. Even if what I’m doing is nonsensical. Little doses of control are what I need right now.

I put the bowl onto the drying rack and grab a glass from the counter. I smile to myself as I shove my little hand into the water glass with a sponge. It’s basically the best feature of having an underdeveloped hand. If it had an infomercial, it’d say I have a built-in scrubbing brush. Or, if I was a toy, it would say I’m karate-chop ready at all times.

“When you’re finished up, I thought maybe we could do one of those question cards Sarah got us,” Bo says, scratching the back of his neck. “You know, if you’re not too tired.”

“Sure!” I chime, smiling over my shoulder.

We’re killing this, I think to myself. Day one, and we’ve already communicated the shit out of our arrangement, opened up about our exes, and established a routine. I can’t help but smile as I keep cleaning, humming along to the music until I’m finished up.

Drying off my hands, I take a quick detour to my room to throw on some sweatpants. My body hasn’t changed all that much so far, but I certainly notice how tight my jeans have started to feel in the evenings.

Once cosy, I replace Bo in the living room, sitting pensively with a sudoku puzzle book in hand. The turntable paused itself once the needle reached the end of the record, leaving nothing but a quiet electrical hum of the speakers.

“Did you want me to turn the record over?” I ask, approaching the end of the couch.

“Oh, hey, sorry.” Bo gently tosses his book and pencil onto the coffee table. “Didn’t hear you come in… and no, that’s okay.”

“You don’t have to stop on my account,” I say, sitting on the opposite end of the couch from him.

“I already did one. I was just killing time.”

“I’m so full of soup, I could die happy.”

“How’ve you been feeling the last few days?”

“Before moving day, a lot better. I think the trips up and down stairs did me in, but I’ve been feeling great since too. No nausea.”

“Maybe it’s on its way out. That’s what the doctor said, right? Second trimester, it might just go away?” Bo relaxes into the couch, his arms spread on either side of him along the back. I turn sideways to face him, tucking my feet under me.

“Hopefully.” I look at him expectantly, spotting the cards behind him. “Shall we?” I ask.

Bo reaches for the arm of the cushion, where the unwrapped white box of twenty questions sits. Opening the box, he pulls out the instructions and reads them over. “There’s a suggested order. Do we care?”

“Nah, chaos mode. Shuffle and deal.”

He smirks, nodding as he begins shuffling the cards.

And I know it’s ridiculous. But the way Bo shuffles is very sexy. His massive hands dwarf the cards, the ease with which he trills the cards with his thumb, sliding them together. Maybe strip poker could be fun.

No… no, Win.

“All right,” he says, lifting a card from the top of the pile. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” I say, tugging my shirt away from my neck before clasping my hands in my lap.

“Would you like to be famous? If so, in what way?” Bo reads. “I’ll go?” he asks.

“Sure.”

“I wouldn’t want to be famous. I don’t hold a lot of weight to my opinions, and I think these days, famous people are expected to have a stance on everything. Twenty years ago, celebrities were just celebrities. Now, they’re visiting the United Nations and talking about nature conservation as if there aren’t more qualified people to do that.”

“But aren’t they just using their platform and position to help? They have the public’s attention. Why not use it?”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with trying to help… and I get that they hold a lot of public influence, so they probably should. I just don’t think I’d want that sort of attention on me. I’d rather just be mega-rich but not famous so I could give my money to the proper channels. To people who know how to use it for the most good. I’d like to stay behind the curtain.”

I nod slowly, my eyes fixed on my lap as I reconsider my answer.

“Unless…” Bo says, dragging my attention back to his face. “I could be Andy Serkis.”

“Who on earth is Andy Serkis?”

“Exactly,” Bo says, grin tilted. “He’s an actor mostly known for performance capture roles for computer generated films. He was Gollum in Lord of the Rings and Snoke in Star Wars. And he’s been in a bunch of Marvel movies as well. He has all of these dream roles, but I bet he can go for a walk with his family and not be disturbed because no one really knows what he looks like.”

“They’d have to drag you off those sets,” I say.

“I’d still be there. I’d live in the walls. Or I’d have stolen everything that wasn’t nailed down.”

“Oh wow. Imagine the state of your bedroom with all those collectibles.”

“See? It could be worse.” Bo exhales gently, his smile holding. “What about you?”

“I think I’d like to be famous but like more of the creative, lesser-known side of things. Like a director or a screenwriter or something where I get to go to all the events and meet cool people but mostly get to focus on the work and not the publicity of being famous. Like you said—it’s way too much public perception.”

“I could see you being a director,” Bo says.

“Yeah? How so?”

“You have an air of authority about you.”

I snort. “Me?”

“Yeah, you,” Bo says, narrowing his eyes playfully. “You’re steady… like you have a calm under pressure way about you that I admire.”

“Calm…” I say incredulously. “Me? Did you happen to miss my spiral about dinner a few hours ago?”

“But that’s the thing. You communicated it all and we got on the same page. Now we’re a better team. That’s what a good director does.”

“Oh, and you’d know that. From all your experience on set.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s it, then?” I say, looking over at the deck as Bo tucks it away inside the box. “We finished the first question?”

“Yep.” He places the cards down on the coffee table. “Guess in nineteen more questions, we’ll be in love.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively before checking his watch. “Want to watch a movie or something?” he asks. “I could grab my laptop.”

“Sure,” I say. “You can introduce me to this Andy fella.”

“Well, which one of his movies haven’t you seen?”

I stare back at him blankly.

“Which one haven’t you seen, Win?” Bo asks, concerned. I scrunch my face, looking up at the ceiling. “Have… have you not seen Lord of the Rings?” he asks, his voice slow and near cracking.

I shake my head, a small whisper of a laugh escaping me when his face quickly switches from pure horror to shock to amusement. Bo checks his watch, then looks back at me, then the coffee table, as if he’s calculating something. Then he looks back to his watch again. It’s strangely endearing how much this information has rocked him.

“Okay, if we start now, we can make it through the extended edition of Fellowship of the Ring before midnight.”

“Midnight?” I ask wearily. “How long is it?”

“It’s probably better that you don’t know.” He stands abruptly, moves to circle the couch, then stills. “I cannot believe I’m having a baby with a Lord of the Rings virgin.” he says, near whispering. “This is amazing…” He takes off jogging toward his bedroom.

“I swear you were less excited to have sex with me than you are right now!” I call after him.

“Honestly? Maybe!” he shouts back from down the hall.

I made it two hours into the movie before I rested my head on Bo’s shoulder and drifted to sleep.