Belly Up Page 16

“You are most welcome, turdlet.”

  * * *

  “You look awesome,” Devi said, standing behind me to fuss with my hair. “That cat eye is rocking.”

  It was similar to Erin’s, with bold thick lines and a flirty flick at the end. Devi had gone lighter on the other stuff, not a lot of shadow or blush, because she wanted the focus on my eyes, she said. It was the right call. It and a little shimmery lip gloss and I looked Kardashian glamorous.

  If Kardashians could be glamorous while pregnant and wearing combat boots, then so could I.

  “I’m not changing them,” I said, answering Devi’s earlier call for a change in footwear.

  “Oh, come on. You own cute shoes! It’s not too awful to wear sandals in October. I guess.”

  “He likes me how I am. Including combat boots.”

  “I’ll give you a pedicure!”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “You are the worst.” Devi sprawled on my bed and eyeballed her phone. “I suppose I should get going, too. You’re not the only one with plans tonight.”

  “Oh?” I glanced her way, my brow raised. “That’s news.”

  “Not really. It’s a video-game hangout. Some guy I’ve been talking to on my message board. He’s ace and I’m discovering I like his non-creepiness, particularly as it pertains to killing demons.”

  “I hope you have a great demon-killing time together.”

  “People who slay together, stay together, I guess?” Devi grinned and hauled herself up. “You ready for this, buttercup?”

  “No, not really, but I’m going to go, anyway, because I’m stupid.”

  We headed downstairs. Mormor was knitting in front of the TV. Mom was running around looking for her second shoe, the first already donned. She had a tendency to walk around the house kicking them off wherever, so most days leaving the house involved her searching for the other shoe while Mormor berated her for being irresponsible this far into her thirties.

  Eventually, she found her other oxford, and we were out the door. Devi was dropped off first, leaving me with a kiss and a pinch for good luck. I gave Mom the directions for Leaf’s house straight from his text message. He lived about fifteen minutes away from me, in a single-story yellow ranch house with white windows. We’d know it was his house, he’d said, by the blue-and-green flag with the red wagon wheel hanging next to the doorway.

  Mom pulled into a short empty driveway. The garage was dead ahead of us, the entrance to the house—the side door, Leaf had said—wedged between the garage and the house body. The shrubs were tidy, the grass recently trimmed with no evidence of the brown and orange autumn leaves polluting my own side lawn. I grabbed my phone and my purse from the back seat of the car and turned to go. Before I left the car, Mom snagged my wrist.

  “You need anything, you call me, okay?” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want a token lecture for old times’ sake?”

  “...Mom. No. You dink.”

  “Oh, he’s handsome.”

  “Who—oh!” Leaf stood in the front window of the house smiling out at us, all six feet something of him, dark hair pulled back, his thick body covered by a...pink frilly body apron with Kiss The Chef stitched on the front pocket.

  “So are you gonna?” Mom asked.

  “What?”

  “Kiss the chef?”

  I groaned and climbed from the car. Mom leaned over the passenger’s side seat to shout at me. “I love you. Don’t get doubly pregnant. Mormor might make you live in the shed if you defy science.”

  I slammed the door shut. I could hear her laughing as I walked up to Leaf’s side door. Suddenly, the nerves about our first date weren’t so bad. Anything was better than listening to my hag mother continue doing her hag thing.

  At least, that’s what I told myself as he opened the door to welcome me inside.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I didn’t know the name of the French food goddess who’d birthed Leaf, but I wanted to offer her tribute. He was a gift unto normal people when it came to kitchen technique. We sat at a small, tidy square table in his kitchen, shoes off, sock-clad toes bumping into one another below. I devoured my thin strips of steak sautéed with green and red peppers and onions. I inhaled my flatbread and spicy rice and a squash side dish full of garlic.

  It was incredible.

  Stinky, but incredible.

  If I kiss any chef, it’s only because I know he reeks as bad as I do.

  “This is so good,” I said. “Like, I can’t even boil water without burning it.”

  Leaf beamed. “Thank you! I take pride in my cooking. One day, I’d like to have my own restaurant, I think. What about you?”

  “You wouldn’t want to eat at my restaurant. My daily special would be hot boiled garbage.”

  Leaf chuckled and spooned rice onto his flatbread, wrapping it up and tucking it between his lips. “Do you know what you want to do for a living, I mean? After school?”

  I ran my napkin across my lower face before replacing it on my lap. Soon, there would be no lap, only the bulbous protrusion that was my growing offspring. “I dunno. I thought I’d go to an Ivy League, maybe become an English professor because I’m a cliché. But with the kid, I may look at a state school. Way cheaper, accessible for mom hours. Boston’s a long train ride.”

  “I could see you being a teacher. You could be Weller Junior.”

  “I’m not that mean,” I said. “I don’t actually lure children into my gingerbread house to eat them.”

  “If you try hard and believe in yourself, anything is possible,” he retorted.

  I stared at him.

  And then I laughed. He joined in before reaching over to pat the back of my hand.

  We finished dinner a few minutes later. Leaf cleared the table, talking more about Romani customs, including how he washed his utensils separate to avoid contamination—they went in his mouth, other dishes did not. I asked if he wanted any help but he declined. There was a ritualistic aspect to handling china, he explained, and I assumed it had to do with that term he’d taught me in the library: mochadi. I’d do more harm than good messing with things, and so I sat at the table, my fingers toying with the lace edging on the pink apron he’d folded and put on an end table.

  “Was this your mom’s?” I asked.

  “Hmm? Oh. No. Not exactly.” He shook his head and smiled, his towel swirling over a plate before he put it in the stack with the rest. “It was supposed to be, but she died before I could give it to her. It’s a keepsake. We don’t—it’s bad luck to keep the possessions of the dead, so we tend not to hold onto much. Photographs, but other than that, we gave her things away to Goodwill.”

  I nodded, eyes skimming the small house. We were alone, Leaf’s father was working that night as a security guard at a nearby factory, but the guitar leaning against the wall was his, Leaf said, as well as the stack of video games. “I don’t play,” Leaf said. “But Dad’s a COD monster.” There were family pictures on the wall with Leaf, his father—whom he resembled not only in features but in stature—his sister, Miri, and his niece, Elana. There was also a picture of Leaf’s father with a tall, willowy pale woman with auburn hair.

  Leaf had her nose.

  Her name was Michelle, he told me.

  The furniture was well cared for but mismatched—a striped armchair next to the fireplace, a floral couch with a stack of colorful blankets on one cushion pushed against a teal-painted wall. Braided rugs, a bookshelf with fantasy novels, a leather ottoman and a coffee table filled the rest of the space. The flat-screen TV was held up by brackets, the wires hidden behind a shallow entertainment center housing the PlayStation, DVR and DVD player.

  A solid collection of Blu-rays filled the bottom shelf alphabetized for easy plundering. I got up from my sea
t and walked over to crouch before them, pulling out Young Frankenstein and holding it above my head.

  “Is your dad home at all tonight?” I asked Leaf, who was on the other side of the half wall in the kitchen finishing dishes.

  “Not till midnight. Why?”

  “Do we want to skip the movies and hang here? You’ve got a lot of good stuff. I’m cool with going to the theater, too, if you had your heart set on it. It’s just, we can talk here.”

  Leaf towel-dried his hands and moseyed out to the living room, plucking the DVD from my grip and grinning. “This is one of my dad’s favorites. Mine, too.”

  “Same! I’d be down if you are.”

  “Sounds good. Great, even.” He paused. “I didn’t make a dessert, though. I figured we’d be getting popcorn.”

  “That is what convenience stores were designed for,” I said, standing up and heading for the kitchen to grab my sweatshirt from the back of the chair. “Onward, to victory. And by victory, I mean crap food.”

  * * *

  An hour later, crunching on Doritos and drinking root beer, we were situated on Leaf’s couch, our feet side by side on the ottoman, a stash of disgusting food piled up between us. Young Frankenstein played on the flat-screen. We hummed along to the violin theme. We neighed when Frau Blücher’s name was said. We giggled at Marty Feldman’s Igor. By the time the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” song and dance routine was up, the junk food had been packaged away for another day and we were sitting side by side, holding hands.

  He didn’t even mind my orange cheesy fingers.

  “I feel like we’ve been doing this forever,” Leaf said quietly.

  “Huh?”

  “Hanging out.” He turned on the couch to look at me, smiling softly. “You’re an easy person to get comfortable with, I think.”

  That surprised me. The ex-boyfriend had said the opposite—that I was prickly and hard to warm up to. Of course, Aaron had said that after he’d asked if Samantha could hang out with our group of friends and I’d pushed back. I’d known early on that she had a thing for my boyfriend; that’s why she wanted to hang out. But Aaron made me feel like I was being a bitch and wasn’t giving her a chance, so I’d relented and she’d become part of our circle despite my never really liking her.

  We know how that all went. Apparently, though, the idea that I was prickly had lingered long after Aaron had made his exit.

  “I can be kind of a douche,” I said. “Devi says that all the time.”

  “Hardly. You’re funny! But it’s not mean funny. You’re just sarcastic, that’s all. I like that type of humor. I like you.” He reached up to finger a curl of my hair, pulling it long and watching it boing back up into shape. He did it again.

  I let him.

  “I like you, too,” I said. “I’m just worried that this whole baby thing will be too much.” I paused, then frowned. “I don’t mean I’m looking for you to take responsibility or anything. Just that I’ll have to sink a lot of time into being a mom, so I’m hoping that won’t be a problem for you. I won’t be around as much as other girls.”

  He nodded over at the picture on the wall of his niece, Elana. “I think I’d be more put off if you didn’t take it so seriously. Do you know how angry I’d be if my sister neglected Elana? They’re babies. They need parents who love them.”

  It was such a sweet thing to say, my breath hitched. Leaf’s gaze dropped to my mouth. Mine dropped to his. He had a ridiculously pretty smile, higher on one side than the other, thick-lipped. I just wanted to—

  Him? Yep, okay, him. We’re clear. All systems are go on Leaf.

  “Can I, uhh. Can I kiss—” I managed to get out, but then he was there, his head tilting my way. His nose bumped mine as he closed the gap between us. I could smell his breath, sour from dinner and snacks, and I didn’t care, not one bit as he pressed his lips to mine. They were warm and full. They felt good. We were interlocking in a totally organic, lovely way. Not vacuum sealed. Not slurping on one another. It was light touches of soft skin. Brushes. It was a gentle push, a light suck. Nothing wet until he flicked his tongue at me and I opened up and then it was wet, just a little, and then I was wet because apparently second trimester hormones were no joke. I went from zero to hornball crazy in two minutes.

  My whole body was warm. I thrummed in all the fun places. I had to ball my hand into a fist to keep myself from going too fast—from touching without permission. The kisses were perfect. Sublime. Letting myself enjoy them at a leisurely pace was so, so difficult but also so, so rewarding.

  Leaf’s big hand cupped the back of my head, his fingers threading through my hair. I reached for his ponytail, giving it a gentle tug, and he groaned into my mouth, pulling me closer. Chest to chest, heartbeat to heartbeat. He leaned back, taking me with him as he notched his body into the corner of the couch, the armrest at his back. I was sprawled out on top of him. I liked his size and how small it made me feel. I liked how it felt when his hand settled in the small of my back to hold me close, too.

  I liked how he looked when he pulled away from me, with a flush in his cheeks. With his eyes big and glassy. With his pulse pounding.

  “You are beautiful,” he said quietly, his fingers tracing across my shoulders. “Your skin. Your hair. Your nose. I like the tilt of it.”

  “You are, too,” I said, then quickly corrected. “Handsome, I mean. Even my mom said so when we pulled up.”

  He nuzzled at my hair. I willed my frantic heart to quiet. I wasn’t ready for anything more with him yet, despite the screaming of my quivering bits. Lucky for me, Leaf wasn’t looking for anything more, either. He was content holding me against his body, stealing occasional kisses and whispering how pretty he thought I was. We spent two and a half movies like that, twined together like cats, until I dozed off on top of him, comforted by his warmth.

  And when my phone beeped at eleven thirty to remind me to go home, stupid, your curfew is at twelve, he woke me up from my nap and piled me into the car like a sleepy toddler. We pulled into my driveway ten minutes early, so we spent ten minutes kissing and making plans for Saturday, at his place again, with more movies and cuddles.

  I walked into the house in a daze. It had been, without a doubt, the best date of my entire life.

  PART THREE:

  Fat pants,

  Oops Redux and

  “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  One date became two. Two became three. Three became four. Four became officially a couple. We rejoined our friends at Morgan’s house to watch movies on Fridays—Devi was brought into the fold easily—while Saturdays became “our night.”

  “Our night” consisted of dinner at his place followed by more movies, which became a bunch of kissing, over-the-clothes groping and me falling asleep on him because incubating a tiny human was hard work.

  It was pretty simple.

  It just didn’t stay that way.

  Because.

  “Are you ashamed of us?” Mormor asked over dinner, ever combative.

  “What?” I looked up from my plate and stared at her. “Where is this coming from?” We’d been talking about my impending Teen Mom social group for most of the meal, but apparently, Mormor had something else she wanted to talk about, and she broached the subject with all the grace of a bull elephant.

  “You have a boyfriend. You’ve met his father, but you’ve not brought the boy here.”

  It was true. I had met Mr. Leon the previous week, before he was out the door to go to his security job. He was as quiet as Leaf was chatty. He seemed really nice. The only problem was he was a listener instead of a talker, to the degree that I felt the need to fill the quiet with noise because, otherwise, he was just looking at me and smiling a lot and it made me nervous.

  So I talked about the baseball card collection I’d started at seven. I’d collected
for two years, and then promptly lost the binder at school and was so emotionally traumatized I’d given up baseball for good. But that was okay because I’d organized the cards by which players I found the cutest and not by any stat that any real baseball fan would care about, so I wasn’t a “real” fan, anyway, apparently.

  Mr. Leon had apologized to me. For misplacing what had been basically a binder of pretend boyfriends.

  ...it hadn’t been my finest moment.

  Bull elephant runs in the family.

  “The boy has a name, Ma,” my mother said. “It’s Leaf.”

  “Leaf. Yes. Now invite Leaf over for dinner,” Mormor said. “Unless you are hiding us away like some dirty secret. Is it because I’m a Republican?”

  “What? No. It’s not—I don’t know if he likes Republicans, but he’s never said—I just hadn’t gotten there yet is all, Mormor. I’ll invite him when I talk to him later.”

  “Good. You are a good girl. I’m simply interested in the boy who may end up being near my great-grandchild is all. Little Star can’t fend for herself yet.”

  “Little Star” was the nickname Mormor had taken to using in lieu of my chosen name which, on one hand, was incredibly insulting because it disregarded my wishes about my kid’s name. On the other hand, it was possibly the cutest nickname ever so I was willing to let it slide.

  “She really can’t.” Mom winked at me and slid the potatoes over so I could take my seconds. She was good about the changes going on in my body, realizing not only was I eating like a horse, but the night sweats had turned into day sweats, too, so she didn’t give me garbage about how I was dressed at the dinner table. She’d warned Mormor off giving me any trouble, too. We were careening toward a Massachusetts winter, complete with frost on the plants in the morning and puffs of clouds emanating from our mouths when we talked. But there I was, walking around in a tank top and shorts with my hair up because I felt like I was cooking from the inside. It didn’t do a lot to hide my big fat butt or my expanding midsection, but I didn’t care. I was comfortable.