Out On a Limb
: Chapter 9

Ten Weeks Pregnant. Baby is the size of a strawberry.

“Happy tears?” Sarah asks, flipping a chair onto a table for me to sweep under. She’s been stopping by the café at the end of my shift for years. Returning like a stray cat, knowing the leftover pastries must go somewhere. But she usually ends up cleaning alongside me. I like to tease her that she’s cosplaying as a woman who has to pay her own bills. She jokes back, disturbingly, about how she earns her lifestyle in the bedroom.

“Happy tears, Sar.” I flash my eyes at her, hand resting at the top of my broom. “Truly the last thing I was expecting.”

“But that’s good, right?” She lifts the opposite chair, placing it upside down on the table.

“It felt good in the moment but—”

“But you went home and started overthinking,” Sarah interrupts me. I glare at her. She sighs, her eyes mustering some amount of patience, but her expression tired. “Win, sometimes good things are just good things. Bo was happy about the kid. Let’s celebrate that.”

I make a sceptical whining sound from the back of my throat. “I thought Jack was sweet at first. He did all the right things too.”

I notice it each time. The little flicker Sarah’s eyes do when I bring up Jack. She performs a quick surveillance of my face to determine how upset I am just at the mention of his name. My own mention, mind you.

“Bo is not Jack,” she says carefully.

“You haven’t even met Bo,” I point out.

“Caleb vouches for him, and I trust my man,” she says, reaching for another chair to stack for me.

I stop sweeping, thinking about how wrong I’ve been before. How well some men hide their ugly side and how quickly they can turn. “I need to get to know him more, right? Like, he wants to be involved and come to all the appointments and stuff. But we’re basically strangers. What if he wants to be in the delivery room? He’ll see everything,” I say, grimacing.

“Bo seeing everything”—Sarah gestures wildly with an open palm toward my hips—“is how you got into this situation.” She takes the broom from me, as I’ve apparently lost the ability to speak and sweep at the same time. “I think you’ll be fine.”

I shudder. “There’s a difference between a dimmed bedroom after a few drinks and a handsome stranger standing between my stirrup-parted legs and looking into the eye of the storm.”

“Did you just refer to your vagina as the eye of the storm?”

“In that delivery room? Yes. That is what it will be.”

“He doesn’t have to be there if you don’t want him to. But for the record,” she pauses, putting a firm hand on my shoulder, “I love you, but I will not be there.”

“Sarah, you faint at nosebleeds. I won’t let you near me while I’m in labour.”

“Even just thinking about it makes me ill,” she whispers, her attention lost over my shoulder.

“Yes, thank you.” I stare at her blankly. “That’s very helpful.”

She rolls her eyes, then follows me to the next table, sweeping around the counter next to it as I wipe the table down. “The ultrasound is Friday afternoon, right? If he’s free afterward, you should invite him to our place. We’ll do a game night. If we all team up, we can see how he reacts to losing. That’s like a fundamental test of stability.”

“He’s probably travelling this weekend for the holidays. His dad lives in France.”

“See? You do know stuff about him!” She sweeps up the mess into a dustpan. “Just invite him. If he’s busy, he’s busy. But I doubt he’ll say no to an extra bit of time with his sexy baby mama.” She shimmies her shoulders at me, waggling her brows. “Maybe he’ll try to knock you up again.”

“There will be absolutely none of that.”

“What are you worried about? Twins? That’s not how it works.”

“We have to…” I say, trying to formulate words as Sarah dances against me suggestively. “We have to remain entirely professional. We’re colleagues now.”

She stops dancing, mid-pelvic thrust. “Colleagues?”

“Fine, not colleagues. But you get my point. We have to still like each other in nine months. Hell, we have to like each other for the next eighteen years. Minimum.”

Sarah nods, standing slowly and folding her arms across her chest. “But,” she says tentatively, “would it be so bad if maybe you were like co-parents with benefits? Obviously, you have chemistry. And the sex was good.”

“I never said the sex was good.”

She points to my face, barely stopping short of poking me with the tip of her acrylic nail. “But that does. Every time Bo has come up, you blush a little. You’re betrayed by those sweet, supple cheeks of yours yet again.”

“Don’t say weird shit like supple cheeks while you’re this close to me.” I swat her hand away. “Fine,” I give in, “the sex was good.” Possibly the best ever. Though I don’t add that aloud. “But it would still complicate things,” I argue.

“Or make things fun? From where I’m standing, Bo is a hottie with nice clothes, baby-news happy tears, a great sense of humour, a good job, and a house of his own. All your words; not mine.” She stands straighter and sticks her nose up, acting like a sit-com character from the fifties. “Oh golly, what trouble! I sure do hope you don’t fall in love with a man such as this!”

I resist the urge to flick her nose right out of the air. “You’re incorrigible.”

“And you’re not thinking of all your options here, babe.” She hops up onto the counter and brushes off her hands. “Just, don’t close yourself off to getting to know him in more ways than one,” Sarah says, surprisingly earnest. “You deserve good things. Let’s see if he’s a good thing. That’s all I’m saying.”

“He is a good thing, Sar. For the kid.” I lift to sit next to her on the counter. “He’s going to stick around, and that’s all I need from him.”

“Okay, I hear you.” She lets a few seconds of weighted silence pass, but I know she’s not done. Sarah rarely backs down. “But…” There it is. “Stop me when I’m close to the size of his dick.” She places her palms together in front of her and slowly starts separating them. Her mouth continues to fall farther open as her hands drift farther apart.

“Yep. There,” I say with a satisfied smile.

“Seriously?” Sarah whispers, eyes playful.

“Seriously,” I answer, feeling awfully proud of myself for something that is certainly not an achievement. At least not my achievement.

“No wonder you got pregnant. The guy had a direct line of sight to your ovaries! A clean shot!”

“I’m buying you an anatomy book for Christmas.”

“I blame our health class teacher,” Sarah sighs.

“Do not bring Mrs. Forestein into this. She tried her best.” I look around the café, cleaned and prepped for the morning shift to take over. Still, I replace myself not wanting to leave just yet. We do this sometimes, linger long past closed. Going home can be hard, admittedly. It’s a touch lonely there.

“I’ll invite him Friday.” I attempt—and fail—to gracefully lower myself off the counter and nearly roll an ankle. “But don’t pull anything. No shenanigans.”

“It will be purely an investigative mission on the behalf of my future niece,” Sarah says, hands clasped over her heart.

“Or nephew,” I add, reaching out my hand to help her down.

“Hey, uh…” Sarah gets uncharacteristically timid, looking at our hands pressed together. “Have you considered whether they’ll have a little hand too?”

“The baby?” I ask. “Oh, uh, no. I think it’s random. Not genetic.”

“Right, but, like, the theory was that it’s because of your mom’s uterus, right? Like your hand was pushed up against the side of it? Her uterus was a weird shape or something?”

“That’s what Mom always said, but… who knows?”

“So, like, are uteruses-eses genetic?” she fumbles.

“I don’t know,” I say, zoning out over her shoulder. “I’m not sure.”

Sarah’s smile is small but reassuring as she leans into view. “You’d have wicked secret handshakes.”

I take a deep breath, bringing myself back into the room. It is that simple, I suppose. Nothing to worry about, because we won’t know until we know, and even if that is the case, it’s not a bad thing… right? “We would,” I agree.

“Let’s get you home.” Sarah throws her arm around my shoulders and guides me toward the back door.