Out on a Limb, page 15
“A month into treatment, Cora sort of announced to me that we’d be getting married. I know it makes me sound like an idiot, but I kinda just went along with it. Everything in my life felt unstable and untethered, and suddenly, there was this woman I love telling me she was choosing to stick it out with me. I wanted that stability.”
I feel a thrum of energy pass through me from head to toe. It hits my chest with a gentle but noticeable blow. Love. In the present tense. Bo loves Cora.
“But when the chemo wasn’t working and the cancer was progressing, amputation became the only option. And…the odds were looking bleak regardless.” We naturally fall back into walking at a relaxed pace toward the pier with a small lighthouse and empty docks where locals keep their boats during warmer months.
“At that point, I think it got to be too much for her. She stopped coming to appointments. Stopped coming over entirely. Eventually, she stopped answering my calls too. I got the message that she needed to step away from it all, and we haven’t talked since. Not a lot of closure, I know. But…part of me feels like that’s for the best, honestly. She was there for me when I needed her, and I think she did me a favor…in the long run.”
“I don’t think she did you a favor by leaving you when you needed her most. That’s a pretty cowardly thing to do. She should’ve at least told you to your face that she couldn’t handle it. Let you have that proper end.”
Bo shrugs. “She’d already ended things before, though. I was the one who tried to fix it every time—why we kept getting back together. Maybe she knew that was how it had to play out. She had to hurt me so I’d let her go. And I doubt many people would stick around when the worst-case scenario seemed inevitable.”
I would, I think. Then immediately berate myself for placing myself morally above Cora, even inside my own thoughts. Ultimately, I don’t know what I’d do in that situation. I doubt I’d have left him, though. I don’t really understand how anyone could do such a thing. Even imagining what that would have felt like has me near tears, has me wanting to reach out for his hand or tuck him against my chest and brush my hand over his hair. Protect him from it, shield him, as if I could change the past.
“When did you tell your dad?” I ask.
“About six hours before the surgery…” he says, then trills his lips, looking away from me sheepishly.
I groan. “Yikes.”
“Yeah…not my best work.”
“How did he take it?”
“Um, not great,” Bo says in a higher pitch than usual, some humor returning to his features. “He reverted to his native tongue to call me every name in the book, then got the first flight out. He stayed with me for three months after the surgery. I couldn’t have gone home without his help. I don’t know what I would’ve done, actually.”
“He sounds like a great dad,” I say as Bo reaches down and pockets something from the sandy shore. “And I knew he lived in France, but I didn’t realize he was French.”
“Yeah, my mom was from here, and Dad is from a small town outside of Paris. They met playing in the same orchestra in Toronto and got married ten days after meeting.”
“You’re kidding.” I snort.
“Nope, just ten days at nineteen years old. They didn’t have me until a decade later.”
“That’s…that’s wild,” I say.
“My dad says the moment he saw my mom, he just knew. He took one look at her and watched the rest of his life play out.” Bo stops, a sweet, longing look in his eye as he smiles softly at me. I imagine he’s probably thinking of Cora and what could have been.
“You must miss her,” I say, meaning his mother—but the possibility that it could have meant either Cora or his mother isn’t lost on me. Sometimes the people who haunt us are still alive. I understand that too.
“Yeah,” Bo agrees, turning back toward the path. “But I was really young when she passed.”
“I’m sorry,” I offer, matching his pace. “Do you remember much of her?”
“No,” he says plainly. “But Dad had a lot of stories and photos. He kept everything of hers—like her vinyl collection. Most of the records at the house were hers.” He stops, putting an arm out to block my next step.
I look toward the path ahead, expecting a skunk or something more nefarious to appear out of the bushes. But nothing does.
“Did you hear that?” he asks me urgently, his voice low. He spins, looking around us frantically.
“No?” I whisper-yell, leaning away from his floundering limbs. “What—”
“Shit, where is it?”
“What?” I ask, louder.
“I heard a goose.”
I stop abruptly, my shoes scraping against the stone-covered path. I stare up at him in disbelief, my lips parting into a grin that I have to stifle before it becomes a laugh. “We’re at a beach in Canada, Bo. You’re gonna hear geese,” I say, continuing to whisper for whatever absurd reason.
“They hate me.” Bo turns his head toward a sound over the water to our left, his shoulders up to his ears.
“They hate you….”
“They go for my leg every time. I don’t know if it’s because it’s shiny and they like that, or if geese are just little ableist fucks, but they’re always trying to attack me.”
I try to hold the laugh in. I really do. But I fail. Miserably. I burst. “Sorry, what?”
Bo bends to pick up a rock the size of his palm and waits to strike.
“You cannot use that,” I say, taking the rock from him and chucking it aside. Our fingers brush briefly, though by the way my heart thuds, you’d think the guy had pinned me to the nearest tree and ripped off my tights. Fucking hormones. “No geese murder today, my guy. I’m pretty sure it’s Canada’s most sacred law, and I’m not bringing the baby to visit you in prison.”
He hushes me, turning back toward the water and then in a full circle, like a bodyguard on watch.
I laugh at him, harder this time.
“Stop!” he whines, his own laughter breaking free. “It’s not funny!”
I shake my head, forging back toward Bo’s house. “C’mon,” I call, a few paces ahead of him. “I’ll protect you from any possible geese assailants.”
“I will throw you to them,” he says. “If it comes to it.”
“Only if you can catch me first.”
SEVENTEEN
When we got home from our beach walk, Bo took a call in his room while I got ready to go out. He was still on the phone when I left with Sarah, on a mission to get new art for my room and some lunch. And of course, because it’s thrifting, I found what I was looking for and many things I hadn’t known I needed.
Including a very cute rainbow stacking puzzle for the baby and a few bits and pieces for the living room’s mantel. Some framed watercolor art, a few pottery candle holders, some pretty candles for those holders, and one small turquoise shell frame that perfectly fits our ultrasound photo. That, I put front and center above the vacant fireplace.
Bo didn’t seem to mind the new additions. When I placed the final item and stepped back to admire the mantel, I turned to find him standing behind me. He was leaning up against the wall, as he seems to be often, and smiling fondly. Not at me, but at that little photo in its new spot.
I figured it would be good to have the photo out somewhere. A reminder of why we’re doing this.
Afterward, I took the pile of comic books Bo had left out for me to my room and read for a few hours. And now, I’m about six comic books deep out of eight, and my stomach has informed me that it is time for dinner. Thus began my spiral.
Sure, dinner sounds simple enough, but it is far from it. This is our first dinner under the same roof, and it seems to me that we’d be setting some sort of precedent with how tonight plays out. I have no idea what Bo does for meals. I’ve only ever seen the guy eat baked goods, crackers, or chips.
Does he only eat beige and brown food? Is he offended by vegetables? Does he like spicy food? What allergies does he have? Will I accidentally kill him if I use eggs, soy, nuts, or shellfish?
And is it presumptuous to cook for us both? Or would it be rude to just cook for myself? When does he normally eat dinner? Is it already too late? Too early? I haven’t left my room since four, so there is the possibility that he’s already eaten by now. Though I don’t smell anything wafting from the kitchen, and my sense of smell since getting pregnant is no joke. I’m like a bloodhound these days. People could use me to solve crimes. Decades-old unsolved cold cases.
If Bo did eat without me, would I be offended? I don’t mind if we do our own thing, but we should probably establish what our routine will be, right?
Then, there’s also the matter of how we get the food prior to cooking. Do we grocery shop together? Separately? What’s most economical? Will our system change when I’m on parental leave and my income is slashed in half?
“Win?” Bo calls through my door, knocking twice in quick succession.
“Hmm? Yeah?” I say, trying to present myself as calm. It’s unconvincing.
“Are you hungry? I made soup,” he replies, opening the door a crack and taking a step inside.
I pull my hair off my neck and swallow, feeling a hot flush across my chest and neck. This is all too much. There’s too much we haven’t discussed. Expectations I don’t know about and will inevitably fail to meet. Jack hated when I didn’t have dinner ready when he got home. He was strange like that…performing long-winded monologues about how society was set to work against women while continuously making me feel like I had to fulfill certain roles and expectations in our home. Everything about Jack was some sort of performance.
Is that what this is? Bo making soup? Is this some sort of…act?
“You okay?” Bo asks, his eyes bouncing around my face, his hand tight around the top of my door.
I release my lip from between my teeth as my knee begins bouncing. “Do you have any allergies?” I ask.
“No.” Bo walks farther into the room, presses his shoulder against the wall next to my dresser, and crosses his arms. “What about you?”
“No. Do you normally cook or order in? What time do you eat? About now?”
“I like to cook, but I’m not any sort of chef. I normally eat around six since I finish work at five. Are you okay? You seem a little—”
“I feel like I’m unraveling, maybe…a tiny bit. I appreciate you cooking, obviously, but I just don’t know what the expectations are moving forward. I guess it’s been a while since I lived with someone….”
Bo nods thoughtfully, his eyes holding on the lamp on the bedside table. “This seems like the same spiral I was having about an hour ago.” He points to the bed, and I nod, shuffling over so he can sit next to me. “I don’t want to overstep,” Bo says, resting his forearms on his knees and wringing his hands between his parted legs. “If you want to share this space like roommates—buy our own food, cook for ourselves, share some basic necessities, split costs down the middle—that’s cool with me. But I think a different arrangement would make more sense.”
“Different?” I ask.
“Less separate, I guess. I think I worked out a solution for the bills and money side of things. As far as the household chores go, cooking or whatever else, I think we should take turns.”
“So, like, every other night, I’ll cook dinner?”
“But sometimes you close at the café, right? So why don’t I cook, since my schedule stays the same?”
“Then what do I do?”
“Clean up after dinner?”
“And what about the rest of the house? Do you keep things super clean? Do you have some sort of routine I should know about? A task you hate that I could do?”
“After my surgery, I hired a company to send someone to clean once a week, so it’s more just that we have to tidy up after ourselves.”
I add that to the list of expenses and wonder how much this home, Bo’s lifestyle, costs to maintain. Does he shop at the type of grocery stores with butcher counters and organic produce or the kind where you can buy lawn furniture alongside your milk? That may be a determining factor in how we proceed. Can I even afford half of his life?
“So what about money? Splitting everything in half seems right to me, but I don’t know what your bills are.”
“My suggestion is a bit more complicated than that.”
I raise a brow, waiting for him to continue.
Bo rises off the bed slightly, taking his phone out of his back pocket. “I know you said you wanted to pay half, and I don’t want to dismiss that, but I think this solution is something we can both agree on.” He holds out his phone between us, showing me a pie chart with a list of numbers below it that mean absolutely nothing to me.
I stare at it for a few long seconds before I give up. “What am I looking at here?”
He moves closer, our thighs touching, as he enthusiastically shows me around the screen. “Okay, this is our total yearly household income.” He circles the entire pie chart with his finger. “And this is the percentage of that income that I make.” He points to the much larger portion of the chart, colored purple. His knee nudges mine, and I have to reset to focus on what he’s saying. I’m glad my math teachers weren’t as distractingly handsome as Bo. I’d have never gotten my diploma.
“This system splits everything proportionally. I put in our expected monthly expenses, including two additional savings accounts I’ve set up that we’ll both contribute to. One is for housing and moving costs you have in the future, whatever you decide to do. The second is for the baby—furniture, diapers, clothes, whatever else. I then multiplied the total of our expenses by each of our percentages to see how much each of us should contribute overall.”
I nod, looking at the screen when I spot my name below the chart, highlighted in green. “So this number, six hundred and seventy-four, that’s mine?”
“Yeah,” Bo answers.
“That’s way too low for housing, food, bills, and everything else. There’s no way.”
“The percentages do not lie.”
“You obviously fudged the numbers!”
Bo laughs softly. “I swear I didn’t. I can go over the math with you, but the only expenses I left off were my car’s costs—because I wasn’t sure if you’d want to use it or not. But I could figure that in too if you want to.”
“What do I do with all the extra money I make from the café? I should definitely contribute more, given how much I’ll have left over.”
“Well, I didn’t include your phone bill—I didn’t know it. Plus spending money, I guess. Another savings account. Invest some if you’d like.” He shrugs, as if to show his complete indifference. “And when you’re on parental leave, we’ll readjust the percentages of our income so it’s all still fair.”
I snatch the phone from him, scrolling until I see his number below mine. “Robert! Three thousand, nine hundred and ninety-two?” I sigh, glaring at him. “This is not even close to even.”
Bo’s eyebrows shoot up, widening his eyes. “Robert?” he asks, smirking. “I’m Robert now?”
“Well, Bo seems rather informal, considering you’re now my sugar daddy apparently!” I say, exasperated.
Bo rolls his eyes.
“I’m serious. I want this to feel fair.” I’ve been taken advantage of before. I know how it feels. How quickly you can begin to resent someone for everything they don’t do.
“It’s exactly fair, Fred. These numbers are proportional. It’s equity, not equality. Trust me. If it was solely up to me, your number would be a lot lower. Zero. Your income is about 15 percent of the household’s total, right? The expenses of having you live here only rose by an additional six hundred and thirty dollars, which your portion is covering. Now that doesn’t seem fair, considering you’re also growing our kid. This is me compromising.”
I whine, looking at the vast difference between our two numbers. I only make 15 percent of the household’s income. I’m not great at math, evidently, but that must put Bo’s income somewhere above one hundred thousand a year. I didn’t expect that to feel quite so mortifying. How little I have to offer.
“Bo, are you sure? Absolutely sure? This feels like too much.”
“Yes,” he nods desperately. “Entirely, definitely, absolutely, and whatever other adverb you’d like, sure.” His simple boyish grin levels me some. The way he tilts his head to catch my eyes, the way he nods as if he’s trying to get me to do the same. The way this all seems so…unimportant to him. As if he truly could not care less.
“I’m a mooch,” I say, sighing as we hold eye contact, our faces as close as our shoulders’ widths and height difference allow us to be.
“You’re not a mooch. You’re an asset.” He bumps his shoulder against mine, wrangling a smile out of me.
“An asset?” I ask, blinking up at him.
“Of course. You’ve definitely upped the house’s value by adding decor and giving this boring room a makeover. Not to mention you’re increasing the number of household members by 50 percent. Plus, you’re good for morale,” he teases with a wink.
“Morale, huh?”
“Yes. Your contribution to the vibe is worth at least a few hundred bucks.”
“Right.” I sigh, wrapping a hand around my grumbling stomach. Bo’s eyes follow my hand’s path and hold there, eyeing my belly with warm affection.
“Look, I know we don’t really know each other that well yet, and you don’t have reason to trust me with this, but I promise—this is fair. I can go over it with you some more, on my computer maybe, but regardless, this is as much money from you as I’m comfortable accepting. I’m very good at my job and typically honorable, but I did consider fudging the numbers when I saw your amount. I’d like to make things as easy as I can for you, Win. If I had it my way, you’d quit your job, put your feet up, and relax for the next few months.”
