Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Once she leaves us, I quickly clean myself up. Then, as I get dressed, I finally work up the nerve to ask Garrett the question hanging in the tension-thick air between us.
“What do you want to do about it?”
41
Garrett
Hannah pulls on her leggings with her back to me while I stare at this monochrome image in my hands. My kid. Inside there. Growing. No idea who he is or what’s waiting for him out here. Just this little gooey thing that’s about to change our lives forever.
“What do you want to do?” she repeats, slowly turning to face me. Her green eyes are lined with fatigue.
My head starts spinning. How the hell am I going to keep this kid alive? Who in their right mind would trust me with a living thing entirely dependent on me for its survival? Not to mention not royally screwing him up emotionally.
“Fine, I guess I’ll go first.”
As my mind races in a thousand directions, Hannah’s voice cuts in and out. I vaguely hear her saying something about me being gone during the season.
“I’m not thrilled about the idea of being home all alone, raising a baby by myself.”
Everything suddenly feels urgent. A loud clock ticking down to the enormity of this new reality. A baby. Our child. How do they just let people have these things? I failed the written portion of my first driver’s test, for fuck’s sake.
“It’s intimidating,” she’s saying. “I’m not sure if I’m ready to handle that, you know? Like it’s a lot. Especially without any family support…”
I start doing math in my head. Thinking about pre-season and doctor visits. Traveling to away games. The baby coming in the middle of the run-up to the playoffs. As panic starts churning in my gut, I wish I had a functional family to tell me how I’m supposed to do all this stuff. Someone to teach me.
“Okay then, apparently I’m talking to myself. Let’s go.”
My head snaps up, jolting me back to the present. Hannah’s standing at the door with her purse. I’m still clutching this picture in my hand, daunted.
Hannah is upset with me, and now I feel like a total dick for getting into a fight with her on the way over. My system just didn’t know how to process all that information at once, and I’m a little burnt out, if I’m honest.
“I’m sorry. I’m just…” I trail off.
“Let’s go,” she says again, turning away from me.
Although it’s early evening when we get home, Hannah says we can talk in the morning and goes right to bed. Rather than follow her, I sit at the kitchen table with a beer, staring at my kid. Wondering what he’d think of me. Or she. Could be a girl. But knowing my luck, it’s a boy. A son who’ll unearth all my daddy issues and make me doubt every parenting move I make, for fear of screwing him up. I sit there for hours, imagining all those ways I could mess up, and wake up an exhausted mess the next morning, having barely slept.
Hannah’s still withdrawn as we brush our teeth beside each other at the sink. I want to fix it, but when I shut the water and open my mouth to speak, she leaves the bathroom abruptly. While I’m making coffee in the kitchen, she just sits at the counter eating a piece of toast, watching me. The silence is making the back of my neck itch. Again, I’m about to speak, when her phone rings and she wanders into the den to answer it. I don’t catch much of the conversation over the bubbling of the coffeemaker. I peek around the corner to see her write a number down on a pad of paper.
“What was that?” I ask when she returns to the kitchen to finish her breakfast.
Hannah shrugs, not meeting my eyes. “Nothing.” She shoves the last piece of toast in her mouth, chewing quickly as she grabs her purse and keys from the side table across the room.
I feel a pang of alarm. “Where are you going?”
“I need to get some stuff from the studio if I’m going to work from home for the next few days.”
“You want me to drive you?” I offer.
“No.” She ducks into the hallway toward the door, answering over her shoulder. “I’m fine.”
Yeah, right. She’s far from fine. It’s like she can’t wait to get away from me. Granted, I was sort of an ass yesterday, but we’ve got a pretty serious conversation to have. I’d be happy to apologize if she’d stand still long enough to hear it.
After I eat some breakfast and put away the dishes, I give Logan a call. My best friend is hit-or-miss when it comes to giving advice, but God help me, I’m desperate.
“Hey, G,” he says. “Good timing. I just got back from the craziest lunch with Grace and her mom. Josie took us to a café near the Eiffel Tower where all the waitstaff were—not shitting you here—goddamn mimes. Can you imagine a worse nightmare scenario?”