3

THE THING ABOUT THE FUTURE

NORA

AFTER A COUPLE weeks at Cameron’s, I’m able to relax enough to set some goals and finally land a bartending gig. I didn’t want to work at any of the places Sophie and most of our friends frequent. Not that I’m ashamed—far from it. I think I’d just feel too guilty getting tips from them. And potentially get irritated if any of them stiffed me. Not to mention, I want to keep some places safe from workplace ruin. That way The Post and such bars will remain my own personal oases.

A bar named The Fly Trap, where I am now employed, sounds kind of dive-y. I don’t mind dive bars, but working them is another story. Thankfully it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. And though they serve some pretty good food, the waitresses handle all the kitchen flow. I get to keep my station at the bar and direct the bar backs. Lord knows I can stand to boss some newbs around. I’ve already got one puppy sweet on me. Haven’t decided if I’ll play with him yet.

After my first week of shifts, the owner moves me to a weekend-centric schedule. I’m stoked because that means more tips. And I must have impressed him to bump me up so quickly. Like I said, I can hustle when I need to.

A month later, I’m pulling down some decent cash, but I’m also exhausted. I forgot how much energy it takes to deal with people on that level. When I wake up Monday afternoon to three missed texts and a voicemail from Sophie, I realize I’ve turned into a shitty friend. We were supposed to do lunch at one. It’s three.

“I’m so sorry!” I say in greeting when she answers.

“It’s okay,” she replies with a sigh.

It’s not a good sigh. She’s upset.

“It’s not like we were going anywhere fancy.”

Fuck. “This was going to be your first outing with Henry,” I say, as if she doesn’t know. “I messed that up. I… Fuck, I’ve just been so exhausted. Who knew turning thirty meant you lose so much steam?”

“Who you talkin’ to?” she quips. “I haven’t slept in months.” Her voice changes to a coo, and I know she’s talking to Henry. “Yes, I’m talking about you, coconut. You need to sleep more than an hour at a time.”

“I can pick up some tacos from Old Mex and be there in twenty,” I suggest. It’s a tiny place, nothing fancy, but their food is heavenly. “What do you think?”

“Deal.”

Forty minutes and a bag of free tacos later (Old Mexico is amazingly generous to regulars when they screw up), Sophie and I set up on the back deck under the shade. Their dog Flowerkraut—a German Shepherd rescue—lays guard next to Sophie’s chair, so she’s half on the deck, half in the sand. Henry is in his sling, sound asleep.

“He sleeps on me for amazing stretches of time,” Sophie laments. “Then if I try to put him in the bassinet, it’s a max of an hour. If Fox is home, though, he curls up with him and sleeps a little longer.” She grins, all dopey in love. “It’s so fucking cute.”

She whips out her phone and proceeds to show me an entire album of pictures of Fox and Henry asleep.

“He’s a drooler,” I say, straightfaced.

“He’s not even three months old.”

“I meant Fox.”

Sophie lets out a laugh like a donkey’s bray. Henry startles and screams until she whips out a nipple. Baby boy is on it.

“I guess he’s a tit man,” I joke.

“Funny.” Sophie grabs a taco with her free hand. “So, we’re looking at doing the baptism next month. They have a group scheduled at my mom’s church, so we can kind of piggyback into that.”

“I thought you had to be members.”

“My mom is, so we’re good. And we’re not Catholic like your freak ass,” she says throwing me a teasing side-eye, “so they’re a little more lenient. Plus, they take mercy on the little babies.”

I shake my head. “Okay, so give me a date so I can ask for the time off, as I’m assuming it will not, in fact, be during the week.”

“Six weeks from tomorrow,” she says. “And it’ll be the late service, so you’ll have time if you need to work that night. Or take the night off and get drunk with most of us at the after after party.”

“After after?” I ask.

“Yeah. There’s the actual ceremony, then Grandma Margs and Abuelo Ruben are popping for the brunch at Canyon Green. Then whoever’s left is following us back to our house for a typical fiesta de Monkhouse gig.”

“Except that you still can’t drink,” I remind her.

“I did say ‘most of us.’” She glares.

I pull up the calendar on my phone and tap away, logging the date and making a note to take the day off. I’ve been so MIA lately, I figure spending some celebratory time with my sister-from-another-mister and her spawn—I mean, kid—warrants sacrificing a shift or two.

“You never did tell me who you guys chose as the godfather,” I tell her as I save all my entries and set my phone down.

She fidgets. “Um...”

Oh, no. “You’re kidding me.”

“What?” She’s defensive enough that I don’t even have to ask.

“You chose Doc?!”

Sophie puts a hand over Henry’s head to block his ears from my shouting. I inhale quickly and try to relax into my deck chair. I’m sure my position reflects how uncomfortable I am, given that every muscle in my body has gone tense. Why do I let the mere mention of him get to me?

“For crying out loud, are you ever going to tell me the full story? What was so horrible that putting you two in a room together is now a travesty?”

I sigh, forcing my shoulders back and down. “It… Nothing. It was just… I…” I swallow to cut myself off. My stomach jumps around and punches my heart in the process. “Another time.”

I see Sophie’s minute headshake out of the corner of my eye. I’ve skirted her on the details of this situation for far too long. Ultimately, it’s bigger than Doc. That said, there’s only so much I can bring myself to talk about. So I’ll go the easy route.

“Okay, okay, I thought I was pregnant,” I admit, and it feels horrible all over again. It feels worse because I was considering an abortion before I realized it was a false alarm. “We were casual, and I freaked out because I knew he was seeing other people, and so, uh, I was the one who called it off.”

I look up from the spot where I’ve been focused to see Sophie staring at me. “What?”

“You broke it off?” she asks. “You’ve led me to believe for the past couple of years that he was the asshole. How does that make him the asshole?”

“Because he’s infuriating!” My hand flies to my mouth, far too late to save me from the words that have already escaped.

Sophie’s entire body slumps. “Nora.” Her chastisement feels a thousand times worse than it sounds. Even more so when she doesn’t follow up with anything else.

“I’m sorry, I just… I felt abandoned when he was seeing other people, and I tried to tell him, but then he wasn’t returning my calls,” I blurt, recognizing ninety-nine percent of these accusations as lies. So I sprinkle a little bit of truth because… I’ll feel better if I do. “I was falling for him, and he wasn’t falling for me, and I knew it.” Okay, still half lies.

I should have given my friend a bit more credit.

“Bull. Shit.” Carefully, she brushes her three taco wrappers off her lap and stands, not waking the little man. Flowerkraut jumps to attention like a canine bodyguard, following Sophie into the house.

“I panicked when I thought I was pregnant,” I call through the screen door. That actually is the truth. The problem is I can’t tell her why I panicked. I haven’t been able to admit to myself why I panicked, though I can say it was not a potential baby.

I don’t hear anything else, so I follow them inside and close the door behind me.

Sophie rocks back and forth on her feet. “Why did you panic?”

“I couldn’t handle being pregnant at the time. I—it was a commitment I could not make. It terrified me,” I say, feeling the deeper truth of the statement, which sends a chill through me. I shake it off as quickly as I can. “I’m so sorry I never brought it up. And then when your shit hit the fan, I felt bad bringing it up since you wanted to get pregnant. For the short time I thought I might be, all I could think of was—”

“I know,” she says, stopping me from saying it out loud. “You don’t have to say it. I know you hate the thought, but you shouldn’t feel guilty about having to make a choice that’s right for you.”

I exhale, relieved. “I’m Irish Catholic. It’s built in.”

She smirks. “So why didn’t you tell him? Why not try to patch it up?” she asks innocently.

“He’d already moved on,” I say, remembering the next time I saw him, the busty redhead he was flirting with. My lip curls in an automatic snarl.

“But he talks about you so fondly, almost like you were the one that got away—”

The thought breaks me a little. I always assumed he’d moved right on without a problem. “I love you, Soph, but can we change topics? It’s too late. Past. It’s okay, right? I’ll be all civil and pleasant for the baptism. Downright friendly, even. Yay! Team Godparents!”

I grin when she throws me side-eye. “If you say so.”

“Brilliant.”