THE CRADLE WAS finished on Friday afternoon.
Artie was jubilant that they’d completed it with only one trip to the emergency room to get his forearm stitched.
Matt had been jubilant because he’d thought it looked fucking amazing...until he saw it in situ and by comparison to Romy’s pristine paint job on the walls, realized it was in fact fucking crap.
He pictured Romy coming into the room in all her chic neatness and zeroing in on that drip of silver paint that he’d thought was unnoticeable but could now see would be visible from Jupiter using nothing but the naked eye. He envisioned her comparing his amateurish jigsaw-cut stars to the perfection of the ones painted on the wall. He imagined her waiting impatiently for Matt to leave London before she threw it out.
And then it sank in that he probably wouldn’t know what she did with the damn cradle, because given the way things were going between them the chances of her inviting him anywhere near her for the rest of their lives seemed remote.
He thought back to what he’d said to her when she’d put Plan C to him—that whatever outcomes her Plan C covered, she’d be in his life no matter what. The truth was he needed that guarantee; it was what had driven all his decisions about Romy from the night he’d met her. Her, in his life somewhere.
And not the way they were at the moment. That wasn’t having her in his life; that was losing her from his life—piece by piece, a little more every day. And it was going to have to stop.
He was going to fix whatever was wrong. Change the dynamic between them. There could be no more meaningless conversations over dinner. No struggling to keep their limbs separated on the couch. No more scheduling of morning showers to avoid contact. They had to have contact! They’d always had contact. Except for those four weeks after she’d flown home from San Francisco when he’d heard nothing from her, and he couldn’t take another month like that. Nor could he wait another nine days to find out what sort of contact they’d have in the future. He had to know now, tonight.
Babies needed certainty, she’d told him. And he was ready to do his bit to guarantee their baby had it, via parents who would never give up on each other! If his gruesome parents could stay together for thirty years, he and Romy had to be able to manage some kind of longevity, didn’t they?
Restless, he gave the cradle a gentle push with his fingertip to check the way it rocked on the nursery floor. Another push. Another. Picturing his tiny daughter in it.
He wondered if Romy had any names picked out. He kinda liked the name Rose... Similar to Romy, and yet...different. Pretty. Sweet. A little serious. He liked the idea of a serious kid.
Okay, it was a little crazy to be thinking so far ahead. The kid was still only a blastocyst, if she was here at all!
Still, he wondered what Romy would look like pregnant. As chic as ever. Beautiful.
He hoped she wouldn’t get morning sickness. That would suck after all the pain she’d already been through. Morning sickness could be serious if you got it bad—like that type the Duchess of Cambridge got. She’d have to move in with her mother if she got that kind because it would be impossible to live alone and suffer like that. Or she could go into the hospital.
He’d better check out the hospital she’d chosen for the birth, now he thought of it. In case other serious shit happened. Blood pressure problems. Gestational diabetes...
Miscarriage. Twenty percent of women had miscarriages.
Or—hang on—did women still die in childbirth?
Jesus, he hadn’t researched that one! He was going to have to look into it.
Because fuck.
Like...fuck.
No. Just no. Not going to happen.
He realized he’d stopped rocking the cradle and looked down at the sweaty palm he’d been gripping it with. He swallowed, breathed deeply, but the questions wouldn’t leave him. Pregnancy, childbirth, the things that could go wrong. He was going to have a stroke thinking about this stuff when he was back in San Francisco.
Which...meant...ooooh. Holy shit! He was going to have to not be in San Francisco—he was going to have to be here for the next nine months to make sure nothing went wrong.
For a moment, he felt disorientated, and had to sit on the edge of the bed and breathe through it. Ha! Anyone would think he was having sympathy contractions nine months early!
Nine months. Living with Romy for nine months...
Was it possible?
Well, yeah! Perspective! He’d lived with her for three and a half years, hadn’t he?
And all right, that was different. He hadn’t even caught an accidental bathroom flash of Romy’s body in all that time, and now he’d had sex with her twice and could visualize every damn inch of her skin. That made it a little harder to maintain a hands-off friendship.
Also, he was having a kid with her, for Christ’s sake, so...so...ooooh. He was sleeping in the nursery, and he’d have to get out of the nursery so he and Romy could get the nursery finished, which meant there was only one place to sleep and that was with her.
He stared around the room, seeing nothing, as he assembled thoughts and then disassembled them. He wasn’t flavor of the month with Romy—she’d told him sex was out of the question and she looked a lot like she wasn’t intending to back down on that anytime soon. And he had no intention of backing down on it, either.
But...but...would it be so bad? If they put strict rules in place? It was only nine months, just until the baby arrived, and she could put together whatever legal documents she wanted to regulate the arrangement, couldn’t she?
He had to shake his hands at that point to release some tension, then rub them on his jeans because his palms were sweaty again. Oh God. God! Whichever way you sliced it, this was a big deal. Huge! This was not a hookup. This was an affair. A real, bourgeois affair. He had to think this through. Maybe...maybe set the arguments out the way Romy did and try them on her tonight, easiest to hardest, no rushing his fences the way he usually did. He’d call it a Plan D.
He got up, went over to the cradle, set it rocking again, picturing a little tuft of red hair, a mini version of Romy’s pursed duckbill lips.
He smiled. That kid was going to be cute!