Hook, Line, and Sinker (Flirting with the Zodiac Book 1) Page 15

  The doctor scoffed and rolled away. “You’ll be thirty weeks pregnant, and you want to get on a space shuttle and go to Earth. That’s a terrible idea.”

  “My in-laws think it’s a good idea.” He pointedly didn’t bring up the fact his in-laws probably didn’t give a rat’s ass about him or their grandchild, so long as Lawrence came back to them.

  They didn’t even care about Lawrence, if he thought about it.

  “A good idea if you want to, I don’t know, get a cold or go into labor.” He rolled back, slapping a file folder down on the edge of the exam table. “You’ll only be a couple of weeks from delivering.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Space travel can interfere with development, and going to Earth where there’s all kind of different germs and viruses … you’re asking for trouble.”

  He clicked his pen.

  Ty glowered. “Can you do anything about my hands?” he asked finally, lifting them and flexing his fingers. His knuckles were almost invisible.

  “Probably not,” Dr. K said as he inspected the swelling. “Although, we’ll want to keep an eye on that. It’s not pitting so …”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Dr. K lifted his brows, then jotted something down. Ty sighed. “So you can’t do anything.”

  “Not at the moment. Let me know if it gets worse.”

  “It’s bad enough already! I can hardly hold a bow. How the hell am I supposed to play?!”

  Dr. K grinned over his shoulder. “Ty, you’re going to have your hands full for a while. Why not just relax, enjoy these last few weeks before things get busy?”

  “I’d enjoy them more if I could play,” Ty gritted out.

  Dr. K shook his head. “Get some more rest, relax. Drink some more water if you’re that worried.” He shut the door behind him, and Ty buried his face in his hands.

  ***

  They went to his parents’ for Halloween (or Samhain, as his mother insisted, even though she had no Celtic heritage of any sort). Ty struggled through the meal (it didn’t help that all he wanted lately were sweets), his swollen hands clumsy and uncoordinated. He could hardly hold a fork.

  He didn’t want to think about it getting worse over the next couple of weeks. He hadn’t played in over a week now, and he was pretty sure he was going to throw himself out a window if his mother cooed at him about how “healthy” he looked or mentioned a glow or whatever again.

  Pregnancy sucked, and he hoped Lawrence appreciated this.

  “So,” Mom said as Dad was clearing away some of the plates, “what do you want for Thanksgiving? I was thinking maybe goose.”

  Ty glanced at Lawrence, then back down to his lap. He wasn’t about to tell his parents he wasn’t going to be around.

  “Actually,” Lawrence said with a confidence that spoke volumes about how he had no idea he was walking into a trap, “we’re going to Earth for Thanksgiving, to spend it with my folks.”

  “With your folks?!” Mom bellowed, her hands crashing against the table, rattling all the silverware. “What about us?!”

  “We’re here now,” Lawrence protested.

  “You can’t take Ty to Earth,” Dad grumbled as he trekked out of the room.

  “Why not?” Ty fired back.

  Mom glared at him. “You are pregnant, Tydeus.”

  “Ugh,” Ty said, kicking at the table. He hated hearing that.

  Mom rolled her eyes and scoffed. Dad puttered back into the room with the teapot. “Your due date is December seventh, Ty. You can’t get on a space flight the week before.”

  “Why not?” Ty huffed. “A week’s a good amount of time, I’ll be back here in time to—”

  Mom sloshed tea over the rim of Lawrence’s teacup and smashed her fist on the table. Lawrence jumped back. “Do you have no regard for yourself or your child?!”

  “When have you ever heard of a baby arriving on time?” Dad huffed. “They arrive when they want to.”

  “It’s fine,” Ty said, still kicking at the table. “I checked in with Dr. K and he gave me the all-clear.”

  “You checked with a doctor?” Mom’s lip curled up in a sneer.

  Dad looked more concerned. “You should be resting,” he said.

  Ty shrugged. “Lawrence could go alone,” he said.

  “No!” his parents cried in unison.

  “That’s a terrible idea,” Mom said.

  “You shouldn’t be apart,” Dad said. “Being separated from your partner could …”

  “Could what?” Honestly, Ty wished the man would just be straight with him for once.

  Dad’s shoulders hunched up around his ears. “Stillbirth,” he practically whimpered.

  Ty stared at him for a minute, then tossed his head back, groaning. “Pisceans are the worst species!”

  “You’re telling me,” Lawrence muttered. Ty smacked him before either of his parents could protest, then lifted his head to glare at them.

  “We’re going to Earth.”

  Twenty

  November was a dull and dreary month. Ty had never liked it. The only good thing about it, in his opinion, was that Thanksgiving happened at the end of the month and that led into a ridiculous month of busyness and celebration until Christmas arrived.

  He would have preferred to stick with the vague magic of October and the Halloween season, but he also didn’t see why they had to have snow ever, so he supposed he’d just have to live with November.

  Didn’t mean he had to like it, of course, but he particularly didn’t like November this year, because he was having a hard time finding jackets that still fit around his middle, and putting on socks and boots was a lost cause most of the time.

  He felt like a little kid; he had to sit on the stairs and let Lawrence help him with his shoes. He’d be pretty happy if the baby came early, actually, because as far as he was concerned, the kid was already too damn big to be carrying around like this.

  His hands were still swollen, so he hadn’t played a note in weeks now either. He’d tried to take up knitting, but that was worse, so he’d just been baking a lot. He was terrible at it, but it kept him busy, and Lawrence was too nice to do anything but smile and choke down a couple of blackened cookies before Ty felt guilty and threw them into the compost. His back hurt almost constantly, so it was probably a good thing that the nursery was practically complete—no more bending over and lifting pieces of cribs and rocking chairs and bitching at Lawrence because the area rug was just a titch to the left, it needed to move right.

  Lawrence was painting this afternoon; they’d picked a soft yellow, very gender-neutral, because neither of them had remembered to ask Dr. K or the ultrasound techs about what they were getting, and honestly, Ty didn’t really care, so long as it came out of him sooner rather than later. He felt like there was no room anywhere in his body anymore; there were limbs everywhere—now against his kidneys, now his bladder, now ricocheting down his ribs, and he was pretty done with this whole being pregnant thing.

  Val rolled up right as Lawrence was taking the lid off the paint can. Ty had asked her if he could hang out at her place for a bit, because he didn’t want to smell the paint fumes and it was too cold to have the windows open.

  “Bye!” he called to Lawrence, then bundled himself down the walk, into Val’s beat-up hover. She lifted a brow. “Shut up,” he snarled, crossing his arms so that his coat was closed. “Nothing fucking fits.”

  “You could … buy a new coat,” Val offered.

  “For two weeks? Fuck it.”

  “Suit yourself,” she murmured.

  “Besides,” he muttered, “kid just keeps growing.”

  “I think they’re supposed to do that.”

  Ty leaned his head back against the rest. “Could do me a favor and get out here, do the rest of their growing on the outside.”

  Val snorted. “Careful what you wish for,” she muttered.

  He frowned as she turned into one of the university par
king lots. “Where are you taking me, Valerie?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Will you relax? I just have to drop off some forms, okay? C’mon.” She unbuckled her belt and slid out of the car.

  Ty sighed, then hefted himself out of the car. “Got a pretty good waddle going there, mama duck.”

  “Fuck off, Val.”

  “Love you too, rainbow roll.”

  They sloshed through a couple of puddles, then headed in to one of the older buildings. A radiator rattled away as they stomped through the anteroom. They barreled through the second set of doors, then continued on to the elevators. They rode up to the third floor and barged into one of the classrooms.

  “Surprise!”

  Ty stared at the room, the crepe streamers draped everywhere—a medley of pastel pink and blue. There were a bunch of balloons—also pink and blue—that spelled out “oh baby.”

  “The fuck is this, Valerie.”

  She blocked the doorway so he couldn’t escape. “What does it look like?”

  “Something you maybe should have told me about,” he huffed. He eyed Miranda, one of the grad students Lawrence was working with as she approached, a big smile plastered on her face.

  Val sighed. “Ty, if I’d told you, you never would have agreed.”

  “I maybe would have peed and changed my shirt before leaving the house,” he retorted. “Seriously, I gotta piss—the kid’s hammering on my bladder and—”

  “Ah!” Miranda almost screamed, grabbing his hands and squeezing as she practically bounced in place. “It’s so exciting, you’re so lucky! You—”

  “Do you mind!” Ty cried, yanking his hands back. “I just said I have to pee, you don’t need to shake it out of me!”

  “Sorry,” she said, closing her hands over her mouth.

  He sighed and shed his jacket. His mother bustled in from a door at the back of the room. “Sweetie!” She grinned at him.

  He picked at a stain on his hoodie. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Isn’t this nice? Valerie said she and a friend wanted to throw you a baby shower!”

  “Mm.” He really needed to pee. He glanced at the exit, then at Val. “Who else did you invite?”

  “Ali’s girlfriend Letitia, Raoul’s sister Josie, Tina from music theory, Laura from—”

  “Music theory two,” Ty murmured.

  “Right, Allison from astronomy.”

  “Mm, the other Piscean.”

  “Right, and Amanda. She was one of the other TAs.”

  “She’s working on her PhD with Lawrence,” Miranda chimed in.

  “And Brittany from high school.”

  Ty groaned. “Not Brittany. The hell did you invite her for?”

  “She made the cupcakes!” Mom said sharply. “She’s a nice girl—”

  “Seriously,” Ty hissed to Val, who shrugged.

  “She owns the bake shop, so I went in there, and I’m ordering this and she’s like oh, who is it for, and—”

  “You could have said a friend!”

  “Will you chill?” Val huffed, pushing him into a chair. “She’s cool now. Her husband’s like super into comics or whatever and …”

  “Doesn’t change the fact she was a dick to me for four years,” Ty grumbled, kicking his feet up. He definitely did not want to see her. Ever.

  “Oh, hush,” Mom said as she bustled by him. “Have you had lunch?”

  “No,” he murmured.

  She was already piling food on a plate. There was a rush of cold air as Josie and Letitia arrived, breathless as they apologized for being late. Ty accepted the plate from his mother, glaring pointedly around the room.

  He’d just wanted to spend the afternoon at Val’s. Relaxing. Maybe playing games or something.

  This was … too much. He stared down at cheese and crackers, grapes, some carrot sticks or something.

  “Ohmigosh, Ty! You look great!” Allison hugged him, too tight, and he gritted his teeth and tried to turn it into a halfway smile, because Miranda and his mother were watching expectantly.

  She was lying. He did not “look great.” But that was all anyone said to him these days.

  He gritted his teeth through some insipid games, through small talk and cupcakes, and then he tried to drown out the guests’ chatter about their own children, their “birth experiences” (he didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want to hear the words) with the crinkle of wrapping paper and ribbon and tissue.

  Why couldn’t he have just stayed home? Why couldn’t Val have just listened to him?

  He didn’t know what half of this shit was for. He was an only child; so was Lawrence. Neither of them had really been around kids that much, and he nearly slithered out of the chair, melted to the floor, because he was so unprepared for this.

  He had two weeks. And he knew nothing, had nothing planned, and he was convinced Val and his mother had done this to shove that fact in his face.

  “Ty?”

  He looked up at Miranda, but he couldn’t muster the will to be angry at her. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You’re crying.”

  “I am?” He sniffed, then dragged his hands down his face. Sure enough, his cheeks were wet.

  Val crouched down beside them, glancing surreptitiously at the other guests, who were laughing and talking near the punch bowl. “What’s up?”

  He shook his head, shoved wrapping paper off his lap. “I’m not ready for this,” he whimpered. “I don’t know anything, I’m not ready—”

  “Uh, yeah,” she said, “part of the point of this is to help you get ready.”

  He sniffled, then screwed his eyes shut. “How?”

  “Well, now you’ve got a bunch of stuff that you and Laz didn’t even think about buying, don’t you? And you can figure out how to use it.”

  “Val—”

  “And talking to the people who have already been through … y’know.”

  He looked at the ceiling. “I wish I could get high,” he murmured.

  “Ty?” Mom had wandered back over now, and he looked up at her, then at the group that had crowded back around the mess of ribbon and boxes. He wanted to sink through the floor. “Is everything okay?”

  “He’s freaking out,” Val said, and Ty glared at her. “What? You are. You just said you’re not in any way prepared for this—”

  “Can you at least let me lie when I want to?”

  Mom sighed. “You always were a procrastinator.”

  “Mom—”

  She jabbed a finger at him. “Which is absolutely why you should stay home.”

  “Are you kidding me?” he huffed. “Let it go already. I told you, I’m going.”

  “You should just stay home,” Mom reiterated. “Going off-planet is tempting fate, and—”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Metzler,” Val said, bumping the older woman gently back toward the crowd. “I think he gets it.”

  “He clearly doesn’t!” Mom barked. “Or he’d be staying here, where he belongs, leave off this whole crazy plan, and come by the shop, meet the doula, and—”

  Ty stood up so fast, he knocked the chair over. “Is that what this is about?! You’re mad, because I don’t want to do your herbs-and-incense-and-pray-it-goes-well ‘birthing plan’ or whatever the hell you called it?!”

  “It’s natural!” Mom roared back.

  “I don’t want it! I don’t even want to think about it, I just want to—”

  “You need to plan for these things!” Mom stomped her foot, and half the guests took that as their cue to leave.

  “Okay!” Val cried, pushing Ty into another chair. “Let’s just … calm down here. Mrs. M, Ty has to make his own choices—”

  “Valerie, he’s two weeks from delivering, and he hasn’t made any plans. He has to think about this, and coddling him isn’t going to do anyone any good.”

  “Neither is yelling at him,” Val sniped. “Especially not about how he should do things your way.”

  The room fell silent. Then, the sound of crumpling paper bro
ke it, and they looked at Miranda, who paused. “I was just … cleaning up,” she said, locking eyes with Ty.

  He sighed. “It’s fine,” he muttered.

  Val glanced between him and the other two. There was only the four of them in the room now. “You think it’s safe for you to go home?” Val asked.

  “Probably not,” Ty muttered. “Paint fumes take forever to clear out, don’t they?”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, nodding. She glanced at his mother again. “Help clean up?”

  “He shouldn’t do anything,” Mom huffed, “except sit his ass down and think about what he’s going to do.”

  “Mom.”

  “Mrs. M, it’s up to him what he does.”

  “He’s going to end up having someone do something he doesn’t like if he doesn’t have a plan.” She glared at him.

  “I’d rather be cut open,” he returned, “than try to do some hippie, ‘natural’ … whatever.” He stooped over to pick up some wrapping paper, then grimaced and put his hands on his back, slowly straightening out again.

  “Maybe … I will sit down.”

  “Good choice,” Mom said.

  ***

  Val brought him home with leftovers and the presents and take-out for Lawrence. The house still smelled vaguely of paint; it was cold too, indicating the windows had been open. Lawrence still had paint in his hair, on his cheek.

  “What’s with all this crap?” he asked as Val dragged in one of the boxes—a playpen or some damn thing, Ty didn’t know.

  “Baby shower,” she grunted, then kicked the box against the wall. “Damn, that’s heavy.”

  “You need a hand?”

  They disappeared back into the dark, cold of the outdoors. Ty made his way to the kitchen with his armful of food.

  “Okay, that’s the last of it.”

  “Thanks, Val.”

  “See ya!”

  Ty didn’t hear the door closing over the scrape of fork and knife on a plate. He fixated on dinner instead of Lawrence.

  “How’d that go?”

  “Like shit,” Ty muttered, dropped pizza on the plate. “Mom and I got in another fight.”

  “About?” Lawrence grabbed a slice from the box, eyes pinned to Ty.