Out on a Limb, page 11
My next appointment with Doctor Salim is in five weeks. I’ve set that as a benchmark for how long I’ll tolerate feeling like a walking vomit factory. If it goes beyond that, I may simply let the illness take me. I’ll go to the seaside like all the sick or slightly insane women used to, and I’ll will myself to either be done with it or enjoy an early grave.
Or, perhaps, I’ll ask Doctor Salim to prescribe that medicine she suggested.
One of those two things.
When my stomach finally rests and my glass of water is empty, I slowly stand, wash my hands, and rinse out my mouth. Leaving the bathroom, I offer polite murmured goodbyes to Sarah and Caleb as Bo carries all my things out to his car.
The crisp winter air helps slightly, and I don’t even attempt to put my coat on before getting into the passenger seat, enjoying the cool air on my clammy, hot skin.
“Are you warm enough?” Bo asks, shutting his door behind him, a cluster of snow falling and melting instantly inside his car.
“Balancing out,” I answer, resting my cheek on the headrest.
“Okay. Mess with the dials however you’d like,” he says, opening the GPS on his screen. I give him my address, and then we’re off.
At some point in the twentyish-minute drive between my house and Sarah’s, I fall asleep.
I’m woken up by the sound of gravel under tires in the back parking lot of my building. I lift my forehead away from the window and attempt to subtly wipe the drool off my chin. Bo pulls into a visitor’s spot as I blink awake like a startled creature.
The tiny nap and cool air did help, though. I feel a lot better.
“Sorry, uh, I fell asleep.”
“Yeah, I figured that out halfway through my drawn-out tale of my own public puking incident in middle school.” He smiles at me, his hand on the gearshift between us. “Probably for the best,” he says, putting the car in park.
“Ah, well, next time.” I unbuckle and look at the back seat with all my items. “Thanks for the ride,” I say, beginning the mental calculation of how I’ll balance the gift basket, my purse, and the plant Sarah begged me to take and revive. I’m a pro at this point—you’d be amazed what you can do with one-and-a-half hands and a bull-like stubbornness.
“I’ll walk you in,” Bo says, already turning off the car. I don’t bother to argue, though I probably should. I haven’t cleaned my apartment other than some dishes and laundry in a few weeks, between the exhaustion and the not-so-morning morning sickness. Work pretty much takes up all my energy, and by the time I’m home, I just fall asleep. I can barely muster up the desire to bathe.
We make our way through the freezing night air toward the back entrance—a gray metal door with cracked glass on one side that hasn’t been repaired since I moved in. I start shrinking internally, thinking about the state of my building’s hallways and lobby. The smoke-filled scent, the peeling flooring, the flickering lights, the…shit.
The broken elevator.
“Thank you.” I attempt to take my basket from him but fail when having to balance it with my purse, phone, and keys in one hand. Okay, just reshuffle. I put my phone into my purse and use the keyring to hook my keys around my small hand’s thumb. There, now I have a free hand for the basket. Easy enough. “Okay, I’ll be on my way.” I take the basket and curl it against my left hip. “Have a good night!” I say, a little too peppy.
Bo’s tongue darts out as he narrows his eyes ever so slightly on me, then the lobby around us. “There’s no elevator here, huh?”
I wince. “Technically? There is. But it hasn’t worked in four years. So, no, sorry.”
“Which floor?” Bo asks, looking toward the stairs.
“Sixth,” I answer meekly.
A small inhalation flares his nostrils. “That’s going to be quite the challenge.” He laughs without humor, scratching his eyebrow before placing that same hand on his hip.
I look over at the metal bench near the abandoned elevator and tilt my head for Bo to follow behind. Sitting, I lower the basket and plant to the floor and cross one foot in front of the other, shifting nervously in my seat.
“I’ve been so tired since I found out about the baby, but I’ve been meaning to look for a new place,” I say, looking at the floor. “This building kind of sucks, honestly. It’s not like I’d want to do six flights of stairs super pregnant either. I might end up giving birth on them if I do.”
Bo laughs quietly, more of a breath than anything.
“And, obviously, your ability to get inside of wherever I live is a necessity now too,” I say, gently sitting up to look at him.
He slowly tilts his head up toward me. His eyes are hesitant but appreciative, I think.
“I know we haven’t figured out a lot of our plan, or anything else really…but you should be able to come visit whenever you want and—”
“Not just visit, Win. I want…” He shakes his head, taking in a long breath. “I’m not sure how to say this without it sounding demanding, but I’d like to have the baby at my place too. Overnights or weekends. I’d like to be as involved in their daily life as you are.”
Well, the nausea is back.
A powerful maternal possessiveness falls over me. I know that I’ll need help with the baby, but no part of me has considered Bo to be anything but help until now. This, what he’s asking for, is so much more than that. I breathe through the influx of emotions rising up, waiting to calm down before I formulate a response. Logically, I know that what he’s asking is fair. That this baby is as much his as it is mine. But, perhaps a touch selfishly, I haven’t imagined any scenario where I’m not the main parent and Bo is the additional. The second, supporting parent not all of us got to have.
“I-I don’t know when that would be possible,” I stutter. “I’m hoping to breastfeed. For the first few months, the baby couldn’t be away from me for more than a few hours.”
“Maybe, er, well, could we do both? Bottles and breastfeed?” he asks, shyly. “I suppose I can only do one of those things.” He chuckles anxiously.
“I’ve heard that it can be confusing for babies to switch, and it can mess with the mom’s milk supply and…” I take a deep, sharp breath. “Okay, let’s put a pause on this. We don’t have to figure it all out right now. I was just going to say that I’ll focus on getting a new place. Something accessible and nicer if I can cover the rent. This apartment was the only affordable one left in the city four years ago, so I doubt I’ll find something much better, but I’ll try. We’ll aim for accessible and see where we land.”
“How much do you make at the café? If—if you don’t mind me asking.”
“A little over twenty grand a year, after taxes. Then, usually, about six thousand in the summer from lifeguarding.”
Bo rests both of his elbows on his knees, then curls his arms to support either side of his neck, appearing deep in thought. His eyebrows are pressed together, creating a deep crease in the center of his forehead, and his jaw is tight, his back teeth shifting against themselves.
“We will talk about all of this, Bo. I promise. It’ll be fair. To both of us. I don’t want to exclude—”
“Move in with me,” he says, interrupting, his eyes holding on me with a hesitant yet somehow certain stare. “I have a spare room and an office that we could turn into a nursery. My house is small, but it’s nice. If you move in, you can save money for a new place while pregnant, and we can get through the newborn stage together. I’d hate for you to be on your own for every long, sleepless night. I don’t want to mess with your routine or the baby’s feeding schedule so…yeah. What do you think?”
“I think you’re a stranger,” I say, taken aback, the words falling out of me.
“Not for long, right? What better way is there to get to know someone?” He clears his throat. “And, I mean, strangers move in together all the time and call themselves roommates.”
“What if we hate it? What if I’m a nightmare to live with? Or you are?”
“Then…you can move in with Sarah and Caleb, maybe. Or, hell, you can have my house and I’ll find a hotel or something.”
“I don’t know. It seems like we’re already in way over our heads, and then we’d be roommates too?”
“Think about it for as long as you need to, but I think it makes sense.” Bo swallows, his eyes darting down to my stomach and holding for a lingering, heavy pause. “I can’t do much else right now,” he says lowly. “I can’t help in any other way, but I can give you a place to live that will work for all three of us. If you moved in next month, we could agree to a year. Six months of pregnancy, six months of baby. Then we can reassess. You could save a lot of money during that time. It might even be enough to put a down payment on something. Or maybe you’ll want to stay a bit longer, or leave earlier…I don’t know. What I do know is that I want to help however I can, and this seems like a way for me to do that.”
I think about the last time I moved in with a guy. Jack said all the right things too. How we were starting the rest of our lives together. That we would save so much money by splitting everything. What do we have to lose? he asked me, dark eyes wide with excitement he never normally showed, his black hair sticking up on all ends. Sometimes it was as if Jack was so filled with life it was firing out of him like bolts of electricity. He could charge me up just as easily as he’d burn me out. It was up to him each day which option it was going to be.
We had only lived together for a few weeks when Jack shouted at me for the first time. We’d gotten into arguments before, but nothing like that. I burned our dinner, and three hours later, he was still berating me for wasting his food and smoking up his house. It was like that from then on. Even though I was covering most of the bills, it was his place, his food, furniture, routine. I was infringing. A trespasser in my own space.
“I’d want to pay rent. At least a little bit,” I say, my eyes shifting from side to side as I think. “And I’d also like to have something in writing. Something legally binding that says we are committing to at least a year, and that if something happens where one of us has to leave before then, we will help with that person’s costs of moving or finding something new.” I mean me. There’s no way this guy would move into a hotel before kicking me out of his home.
“Sure, whatever you’d be most comfortable with.”
“And I’d like to be able to have friends over. Sarah and Caleb. I’d want to feel like it was my space too.”
Bo’s eyebrows push together again, his head tilting. “Of course, Win.” He stares at me a little too long. “It would be just as much your home as mine. You could paint the entire thing neon green for all I care.” He laughs. “Okay, well, maybe run it past me first. But you could.”
“I’m going to sleep on it,” I say, moving to pick up my gift basket. I offer him a tight-lipped smile as I stand. “I appreciate the offer, though. Thank you.”
“We’re in this together, Win.”
“I know,” I agree reflexively. I don’t truly know whether I believe it. Right now nothing feels certain at all. Not a single thing.
“Let me know when you get in safe.” He points to the stairs.
“Between here and the sixth floor?” I ask dryly.
“Yes.” He leans back farther on the bench. “Because I’ll be sitting right here until you let me know,” he says stubbornly.
I roll my eyes, shuffling the basket against my hip. “Fine.” I make my way across the lobby and onto the bottom step before I turn to ask, “Do you have your own washer and dryer?”
His smile is slow forming but entirely optimistic. “I do.”
I nod. “And how do you feel about plants?”
“Love them,” he fires back without hesitation.
“Okay,” I say, turning back around and bracing myself for the climb ahead.
“Okay,” he repeats, the optimism in his voice echoing around the lobby. “I have a good feeling about this, Fred!”
“Uh-huh!” I highly doubt I’ll be calling him my roommate anytime soon, but it doesn’t hurt to think it over.
THIRTEEN
Fifteen weeks pregnant
Baby is the size of an apple.
“Moving day!” Sarah shouts excitedly the second I open my door. Caleb stands behind her, alongside two men I don’t know, both tall and muscular, with shoulders that barely fit through the doorway. They smile and nod politely as they enter my home.
“Who are they?” I ask quietly as Sarah pushes past me. She drops a shallow produce box in front of my window and turns toward me. She’s wearing leggings and a cute, oversized sweater with the word Velaris written across it. I think that’s from a favorite book of hers, but if I ask, we’ll never get out of here on time.
“Michael and Levi,” she says, her voice uneven. Caleb sets into motion behind us, directing the two men toward my purple dresser. They pick it up effortlessly and exit before I can even admire their…capabilities.
“Did you hire movers?” I ask her, clearly annoyed. I explicitly told her not to.
“No!” She has the audacity to sound offended. “They’re friends of ours.”
This is exactly why Sarah enjoys playing strip poker so much—she’s a terrible liar. Hence why I had to pull her naked, drunk ass away from so many parties as a teenager while Caleb was at home studying.
I level her with a scowl. “I told you not to hire movers, Sar. If I could afford it—”
“Let me stop you right there, preggo. You can’t be making trips up and down six flights of stairs all day. Plus, Caleb and I are not exactly in fighting shape, so what were we supposed to do here? Suffer? I’ve spent a few hundred bucks on way less necessary shit.”
“I’m perfectly capable of going up and down stairs,” I argue.
She rolls her eyes, beginning to untangle the leaves of my pothos plant. “Puked yet today?” she asks, her ponytail swinging violently as she turns to me with a do-we-want-to-go-there blank stare.
I open my mouth to argue but stop myself with a deep breath. Honestly, I have been really dreading today and the multiple trips up and down the stairs. Packing up over the last few weeks has been tiresome enough. So has going through all my things, making donation runs, and getting supplies. Sarah has been here most days, and I really shouldn’t be so ungrateful. She’s already done so much to help me get out of here before the end of the month. It’s just, I wish I could have hired the movers myself and left Sarah and Caleb out of it. I hate feeling like a burden.
“Fine, just, don’t let them touch my plants.”
“That’s like half of the shit you own,” Caleb says, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “Happy moving day.” He pats my arm. “Can’t say I’m not glad to never have to see this place again.”
“Snobs,” I tease, reaching out a hand for Sarah. She steps closer, until the three of us are wrapped around one another like the tangled plants on the windowsill. “Thank you, guys,” I mumble into Sarah’s shoulder. “I love you both, and I really do appreciate your help. I’m sorry I’m crap at accepting it.”
“We love you too,” they answer in unison.
“Now teach us how to carry your plants safely so you don’t end up murdering our nice new mover friends,” Sarah adds.
The rest of the morning goes smoothly. Michael and Levi take my small selection of furniture down piece by piece—with help from Caleb on the monster that was my pull-out couch. She now lives on the curb until a new home is found, since Bo’s spare room comes equipped with a queen-sized bed.
Sarah, Caleb, and I do two trips with my plants while the rest of my boxes are taken down. Everything I own is packed up in just over two hours. Caleb pays the guys and waits with the truck as Sarah and I make our way upstairs for one final look-through.
“Fuck these stairs,” Sarah says, opening the top of her water bottle on the landing to the fourth floor. “Fuck these stairs so much,” she says breathlessly, bending at the waist.
“Last time,” I say, standing straighter to pull a candy out of my fanny pack. It’s stocked with saltine crackers, ginger candies, heartburn tablets, and gum—all little nausea hacks I’ve discovered over the past six weeks. None of which are helping right now. Other than today, I have been starting to feel better.
Eventually, we collapse onto the floor next to my door, on the peeling beige-brown linoleum used for the few square feet of the entrance and kitchenette. I take small sips from Sarah’s water bottle and try to focus on my breathing, but it’s no use. I suppose it’s only right to throw up here one last time.
Once I finish up in the bathroom, I check under the sink and all around it for any leftover stuff. I, of course, find another bobby pin and tuck that away in my pocket, but everything else is gone. Sold, donated, or on the truck outside.
“It’s really happening, huh?” Sarah says, patting the floor next to her as I near.
“It is,” I say, sliding down the wall to sit.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better now,” I answer, throwing a stick of gum into my mouth.
“I meant about moving in with Bo.”
“Oh…” Right, that.
“Still worried?” she asks.
“Yeah.” I sigh. “Hard not to be.”
“At least you’ll be closer to our place. I looked it up. It’s only an eighteen-minute walk.”
I nod absentmindedly, chewing like I have a vendetta against my gum.
“You can move in with us any time if you need to. But I do think this is a good thing. Maybe it’ll be awkward for a bit, but it’ll be easy to get to know each other. And once the baby arrives, you’re going to need another set of hands.”
I wince.
“Sorry…you know what I mean.”
I nod, offering her a relaxed smile.
When it became obvious, five weeks ago, that I couldn’t remain at this apartment any longer, I considered taking Sarah up on her offer to move in. But ultimately, I decided I couldn’t. Sarah and Caleb have very consciously chosen not to have kids. I never would have shaken the feeling that I was ruining their child-free existence. I’d have felt so guilty.
