The Baby Plan by Kate Rorick (16)

THE AMOUNT OF CRAP LYNDI HAD TO PUT UP with at work the week of Valentine’s Day should have earned her a six-day, seven-night all-inclusive spa vacation with cabana boys who could double for Ryan Reynolds feeding her plate after plate of eggs Benedict.

Instead, she’d gotten to deal with delayed orders of flowers, last-minute reorganizing to accommodate extra orders, a minor website crash, and taking on customer service duties the day after the Big V, which meant she mostly dealt with first and/or sole time customers completely flummoxed by the return policy, when their declarations of love didn’t go how they had hoped.

On the one hand, this was invigorating—she handled everything with grace and aplomb, and in a timely fashion. She didn’t back down with their wholesalers. She held her ground with the arrangers. She got in and got her hands dirty, showing everyone what she was capable of doing, even if her stomach was starting to poke out a bit and her boobs leaking ever so slightly. (Seriously, how did that happen? There wasn’t going to be a baby for another four and a half months, but by God, there would be milk ready for it.)

On the other, it also allowed Lyndi—or forced her, depending on your perspective—to ignore Marcus for the time being.

And what he had done.

He had not done anything as banal as forgetting Valentine’s Day—indeed, with Lyndi stressing about rose orders, he could hardly forget. In fact, they had promised each other no gifts—Lyndi was thoroughly hearted-out, and Marcus had been so busy putting the finishing touches on a new article that he’d only had time to rub Lyndi’s feet twice a day instead of the usual five.

And then, Valentine’s Day arrived.

And Lyndi finally got to read the article Marcus had been working on.

So did the rest of the world.

TELLING MY EX-BOYFRIEND I GOT MY ROOMMATE PREGNANT

It had been a small article, intended for the listicle website’s cynical, millennial-focused Valentine’s Day coverage. It was buried among a dozen other articles by the website’s usual late-twentysomething contributors, most about the hazards of modern dating, the perils of swiping left or right, and the bewilderment of parents who had helicoptered their children’s entire lives, but somehow could not helicopter them into long-term satisfying relationships.

Needless to say, Marcus’s article had stood out.

And stood out far enough to end up on the phones of her co-workers, as they loaded bouquets into cars and onto bikes.

Exactly what she needed to be dealing with on such a crazy day.

When she took the phone from Judy and she saw the title of the article, it was like she couldn’t remember how to read. She knew she was looking at letters, and words, but they didn’t translate in her brain. For the first time that day, she didn’t know what to do.

Luckily it only lasted a few seconds. Then she handed the phone back to Judy and said, “If you ladies have so much time on your hands these deliveries should already be loaded.”

She’d said it in her best Paula-inspired Boss voice, her best Nathalie-teacher voice. And it worked. Everyone went back to loading up the deliveries. And if they shot Lyndi the occasional hooded look, well, that’s what the boss got, right? No point in making a big deal out of it. It would blow over. Much like everything else on the internet, Marcus’s article would be forgotten and replaced with the next thing . . . likely a timely article written by another millennial about how St. Patrick’s Day is really about community and green artisanal beer and not about that month’s excuse to drink yourself stupid.

(That was an unkind thought, Lyndi said. But she was a little disappointed that she was going to have to sit out her friends’ green beer meet-up this year. Not that she’d gotten the invite yet.)

Yes, she was convinced the article would be forgotten. So when she got home that night, she let Marcus rub her feet, and tell her excitedly about how the article had been received. About how it had gotten more clicks than any other Valentine’s Day article they posted that day. And about how he’d gotten such positive feedback on his writing.

“An agent even called me! A literary agent!” he’d said, unable to hide his grin. She let him clink his glass of sparkling apple cider up against hers, as he leaned in for a kiss.

And she knew what type of kiss it was.

Usually, she was reciprocal, if not actively initiating sex. For real, since she’d gotten pregnant (and past the constant-nausea stage) her main pregnancy symptom was unending randiness. A circumstance which Marcus was bemusedly more than happy to take advantage of.

But at that moment, she really couldn’t celebrate with him.

“Sorry, babe,” she’d said, gently pushing him back. “I’m exhausted from today.”

She knew they’d get their groove back, just as she knew Telling My Ex-Boyfriend I Got My Roommate Pregnant would disappear into the ether, before anyone in her family or friends circle could find it. No one read Marcus’s listicle website—or at least, they didn’t admit to it.

Then, it got picked up for the New York Times’ Modern Romance column.

And suddenly, everyone had read it.

“Lyndi!” her sister exclaimed when she called. “I just read Marcus’s article. It’s, um . . . very honest. I didn’t know he’d been in such a long-term relationship.”

“Oh, honey!” This from her mom. “I’m just so proud of that boy of yours—the New York Times! I’ve told all my friends . . . although you think they would have fixed that typo in the title! It’s the New York Times, after all.”

Lyndi did not have to guess what her mother thought the typo was.

But hey, at least it got her friends—or at least Elizabeth—to reach out to her via text.

Yup. Proud. That was totally what she was.

It was only at this point that she could bring herself to read the article.

There was nothing in it that wasn’t true. It detailed a lunch Marcus had had with Frankie, his ex-boyfriend. A lunch she’d even known about. Marcus and Frankie had been together all through college, and for a little while after. When Marcus made the move to LA, Frankie made the move to the East Coast. They’d decided to split, but still remained close friends.

When Frankie was coming through town, Marcus had been so excited. Lyndi had been, too—she’d wanted to meet Frankie ever since she learned about his existence. But Marcus had suggested, with a glance at Lyndi’s slightly expanded waistline, that he go and see Frankie on his own. Their relationship was pretty complicated, after all. Which Lyndi accepted.

Sure, she might be curious about the man who had loved Marcus before she did. And that curiosity might have led her to do a couple of Google searches in the past, but she wasn’t jealous. There was no reason to be. She knew that now she and the baby were the center of Marcus’s life.

At least, that’s what she’d thought, until she read the article.

Of course, she couldn’t say this to Marcus. Because Marcus was riding an unanticipated career high.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, as he threw shirts onto their bed, trying to figure out which ones were fashionable enough for his purposes. “I thought they were going to read the book proposal and laugh their heads off. And not in a good way.”

Marcus had indeed talked to that literary agent. And that literary agent had convinced him to put together a book proposal based on his two memoir-ish articles about his life. A twenty-something writing his memoirs was laughable, as Marcus himself said, but this literary agent seemed adamant that he had a voice that needed to be heard.

So, he took a week off of listicle writing, and pounded out a ten-page document outlining the basic shape of the book, as well as a sample first chapter. That, along with his two articles, was submitted to the agent. Who apparently submitted it immediately to a few publishers. And now, the agent was flying him to New York to meet with the publishers individually, to “see if they clicked,” as the agent put it.

“I’m just sad that I’m going to have to miss the baby shower,” Marcus said. He was planning on being in New York for a week. Unfortunately, it was the week that her mom had planned—down to the last pink napkin—to have her baby shower.

Invitations had gone out formally in January. Like, real invitations. On paper. Lyndi hadn’t gotten a paper invitation to a party . . . ever, that she could remember. Even her one friend who got married right out of college had sent the invites via Instagram to the masses. And held the event in a bar.

The baby shower—rather, the joint baby shower with Nathalie—would be held in a bar, too. The Ora Café, to cater to Lyndi’s vegan-esque pregnancy tastes. While glad that they wouldn’t have to trek all the way up to Santa Barbara again, she was a little worried that none of her friends would have the easy excuse of the party being too far away, so they would have to come up with something even more lame to avoid her.

And since Marcus would be in New York, Lyndi was 100 percent certain she would be standing at her baby shower alone.

“I know, it sucks,” she said, picking out her favorite red shirt of his, folding it, and putting it in his suitcase. “But you have a really good reason. Not even Kathy could argue against it.”

Marcus grinned. “But she tried.”

“She did,” Lyndi agreed. Now that she was building her own family, it felt like her mom saw her differently—and she was starting to get some of the frustration Nathalie was always complaining about. “But I’m so jealous you’re getting a week in New York! If I was going I would spend the entire week just walking around Brooklyn.”

“Sounds like something you wouldn’t want to do in winter.”

“Ugh, I always forget it isn’t seventy-five degrees and perfect everywhere.”

“I wish you could come with me,” Marcus said, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her on the nose. She let herself slide into his embrace. Time had passed, and she was feeling a little bit more sentimental. Maybe not back into their groove, per se, but well on their way.

“Me, too. But can’t miss the shower—not to mention work.” Ever since Valentine’s Day, they had kept a surprising amount of their new customers, which meant more work, which meant Paula needed her more than ever. “But I was thinking . . . I could come over the next weekend? We could change your tickets, you could stay another couple days. I did glance at flights, and they’re pretty reasonable this time of year.”

“That’s an idea,” Marcus said. “I’ll ask Frankie.”

Lyndi froze. “Frankie?”

“Yeah—ask if he’s willing to put up with the two of us for a day or two.”

“You’re . . . you’re staying with Frankie?”

“Of course. The agent is covering my tickets, but I couldn’t let her put me up in a hotel, especially when Frankie’s couch is right there.”

And with those words, something in Lyndi—something that usually kept her quiet, and kept the peace—broke. The pain that had been fomenting inside of her ever since she read that article a week ago spilled out.

“Are you serious? You’re staying with Frankie?”

“Well, yeah,” Marcus said, finally looking up at her distraught tone. “He’s basically my best friend.”

“The best friend you used to sleep with.” The spite dripped from her words in ways she didn’t mean it to.

But it certainly got his attention.

“Yes. Are you telling me you’re not friends with any of your exes?”

“Not best friends. Not ‘stay on their couch’ friends. Not write an entire article about having lunch with said friend.”

“Okay,” Marcus said, closing his suitcase with a forceful thud. “Let’s do it.”

“Do what?”

“You’ve been weird since the article came out in the Times. What the hell is bothering you about it?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure doesn’t feel like nothing. I’ve seen you swallow the congratulations I’ve been getting. You turn the conversation away every time it comes up.”

“Maybe I’ve got other things on my mind, ever think of that?”

Apparently he had thought of that, or more so, he didn’t care, because he laughed in a broken, harsh way.

“Come off it. You know what’s bothering you, and so do I.”

“Oh really? If you knew what was bothering me about the article, I doubt you would have written it that way.”

“You know, I can’t change the fact that Frankie was the first person I ever loved. And that loving him changed my life. But the fact that you would rather I hide that about myself is really, really disappointing.”

“What?” she replied, blinking in shock. “That has nothing to do with it.”

“You pretend to be this open-minded, thoughtful person, but really, you’re just a sheltered suburban little girl at heart.”

“Wow.” She couldn’t contain her shock. “It’s almost like you expected this fight. Dare I say you’re spoiling for it? Could it be that this trip to New York is a chance to rekindle an old romance?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If I were going to be with Frankie I’d be with Frankie. We didn’t work out. But Frankie was and is important to me! You don’t get to be mad that I’m seeing him!”

“I’m not mad that you’re seeing him!” Lyndi replied, hot. “I’m angry that you decided to tell the whole world that—”

“That what? That I’m bisexual? I wrote my first article about that, too! I’m not hiding it. But now that everyone you know knows it, suddenly it’s shameful!”

“Don’t you dare put those words in my mouth!”

“I’m not going to say I’m sorry that I loved him because it makes you more comfortable. I’m not going to say I’m sorry for writing it, either!”

“I don’t hate the article you wrote because of what you said about Frankie. I hate what you wrote about me!”

Marcus’s hands went to his hair, nearly pulling it out. “What on earth did I say about you in the article?”

“Nothing!” she cried. “And that’s the problem. Nothing beyond calling me your ‘roommate.’”

Marcus opened his mouth to reply, but something stopped him. Perhaps, Lyndi thought between gulping breaths, he had finally heard her.

“The entire article, I’m your roommate. Not your girlfriend. Not even your ‘baby mama’ as much as I despise that term. That’s what Nathalie calls us—roommates. Never to my face. But she does. I could take it from her because I thought she just didn’t get it. But I never expected to hear it from you.”

Again, nothing from Marcus.

“That’s what you told the world. What you told my family and friends. I thought I was more than that.”

“You are.” He moved toward her, his arms open.

“Since when?” she asked, stopping him in his tracks. “When in your mind, did we stop being roommates and start being together?”

“ . . . I . . . I dunno. Around the time—”

“Around the time I told you I was pregnant?”

His silence was all the answer he needed to give.

“I thought we’d been more a lot longer than that,” she said sadly. “I guess Nathalie was right. I guess you were always just my roommate.”

“Lynds—I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else. Before the baby I mean. I just . . . it’s hard for me to place my trust in a relationship. Any relationship.”

“Would we even be together without the baby?” she asked.

“Yes!” he answered immediately.

“You seem awfully sure for someone who thinks I’m a closed-minded suburbanite at heart.”

“Lyndi.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I do want you. I want this baby. I want us.”

“Which do you want most?” she asked. It was an unfair question. But it was one by God she needed an answer to.

And it was an answer he apparently could not give, because he remained heartbreakingly silent.

“You know what, have fun in New York,” she said, defeated. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

“Where are you going?” he asked, as she moved to the door to grab her jacket and her helmet.

“I’m just going for a ride. Clear my head.”

“Are you sure you should—”

But before he could get the worried sentence out, she was through the door.

And she made it all the way down the stairs, out the front door, and nearly onto her bike before she burst into tears.