First Comes Baby

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“I didn’t say that!”

“But you meant it!”

Her lower lip stuck out in a way that was familiar to him from the thousand maddening arguments during their PLU years. “Maybe I did.”

Ready to yank on his hair in frustration, Caleb was struck by a sudden thought: he hadn’t seen Laurel look so stubborn, even combative, so alive, since they’d hugged goodbye at Sea-Tac Airport the summer she saw him off to Ecuador.

His Laurel, who had felt powerless since even the choice of life and death had been taken out of her hands in that parking garage, was grabbing for control, because something mattered a whole hell of a lot to her.

Next to that, his hurt feelings didn’t count.

He stopped midroom and shook his head. “Listen to us. We haven’t squabbled like this in years.”

She sniffed. “We never squabbled. We debated. And I usually won.”

“Yet another subject open to argument.”

She bit her lip to hide her smile. Seeing it, he couldn’t help laughing.

“Okay, okay. This one you can win. I understand why you felt you had to convince your dad that you’re superhuman.”

She gave a queenly inclination of her head. “Thank you.”

Anger gone, Caleb dropped into her single easy chair and slid low, spine curved. “Just…don’t forget I’m here, Laurel. For you, any time. You know I mean that.”

Abruptly, tears sparkled in her eyes. She swiped at them impatiently. “Darn it, Caleb! I’m trying to be mad at you!”

“Yeah? You can quit any time.”

“I don’t want to quit! I am competent to raise this baby alone. I swear my father relaxed the minute you stepped in.” She lowered her voice to a gruff note that failed to echo her dad’s. “‘Ah, she has a man after all. I don’t need to worry.’”

She looked cute trying to scowl at him, her lashes still damp, her hair sagging sideways from the elegant topknot she’d earlier achieved.

Caleb found himself smiling. “You do have a man. You don’t have to worry.”

“Aargh!” Laurel jumped to her feet.

“Now, now,” he soothed. “Don’t upset the baby.”

She picked up a pile of magazines from the coffee table and flung them at him.

Caleb laughed as they rained down on him, slithering to the floor and to each side of him in the chair. “Temper, temper.”

She stamped her foot. “Nobody could ever make me as mad as you do!”

“Isn’t that what best friends are for?”

“No! They’re supposed to support each other!”

His amusement vanished, and he was dead serious when he said, “That’s what I’m trying to do. But I can’t support you if you won’t lean, just a bit.”

Her expression changed, and they stared at each other for a wondering moment. She moaned. “I knew I shouldn’t eat dinner,” she said, then dashed to the bathroom.

By the time Caleb got to his feet, she’d dropped to her knees in front of the toilet and was heaving up what she’d just eaten. Even as she puked, she was poking behind her with one foot trying to shut the bathroom door.

He didn’t let her. Because he couldn’t get into the bathroom, Caleb sank to his haunches behind her and laid a gentle hand on her back. He waited until she was done and her body sagged, then rubbed.

She groped with one hand until she found the lever and flushed the toilet. “I’m disgusting!”

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen you puke,” he reminded her.

Laurel never had handled booze well. They hadn’t been friends a month when she’d drunk too much beer at a kegger and hadn’t made it back to the dorm before she’d had to vomit. Caleb remembered the night, the day’s heat lingering, lights in dorm buildings around them, Laurel’s soft whimper as she sank to her knees beside a towering rhododendron. Him leading her home, taking her to the bathroom and helping her rinse her mouth before he tucked her into her bed and left her already falling asleep.

“Don’t remind me,” she mumbled now.

“Yeah, but just think.” He kneaded her shoulders as she slumped against the toilet. “That time you were sick because you’d done something stupid. This time, it’s because you did something smart.”

“You think?” she whispered.

“I think.”

After a moment, she said, “I liked what you said to Dad. About how I’m embracing life.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

Again, she was silent for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I hope so.” Her shoulders rose and fell in a deep sigh. “Thanks, Caleb.” She began to struggle to her feet. “I’ll feel better once I’ve brushed my teeth.”

He hated taking his hands from her, but rose, too, and let her shut the bathroom door this time.

Outside, in the tiny nook that passed for a hall in her house, Caleb realized he was going to be shut out often. He had to let her shut those doors, real and metaphorical, or she might believe that he didn’t have faith in her ability to cope.

On the other hand, he wasn’t going to be waiting for her to invite him in, either. Or she’d be raising his kid alone, and he’d be wondering how it happened. Because if there was one thing Laurel had become good at, it was shutting other people out.

Through the door, he asked, “You ever call Nadia?”

Silence. Water ran, then was turned off. Laurel finally came out of the bathroom. “No, but I will,” she said, gaze sliding from his. “Do you want another cup of coffee?”

“Doesn’t the smell make you sick?”

“No, now that my stomach is empty, I’m starved again. Coffee would smell good.”

He patted her on the back. “Six, seven more weeks. You’ll make it.”

On her way to the kitchen, Laurel cast him a look that verged on dislike. “Easy for you to say. You’ll be out of the country for most of it.”

“I don’t have to be,” he repeated. “I can delegate.”

Still prickly, she said, “I’m not very good company these days. You might as well travel now. If you plan to be around more after the baby is first born.”

If he planned to be around. Caleb counted silently to ten.

“I plan to be around. But I think I’ll skip the coffee tonight, head on home.”

“Oh?” She didn’t sound as if she cared. “I’ll walk you out.”

“No.” Once upon a time, he might have wrapped her in a hug or kissed her cheek. Now he only nodded toward the refrigerator. “Get yourself something to eat. But call me if you want me, Laurel. I mean it.”

Her voice softened, or at least he imagined it did. “I know you do, Caleb. Thank you for coming tonight.”

“Any time,” he told her, and let himself out.

Time to tell his own parents.

HIS FATHER SET DOWN his drink so hard, liquid splashed onto the table. “Are you crazy?”

Caleb had braced himself for their questions and concern, but he hadn’t anticipated the genuine shock on their faces when he told them right before dinner at their house.

“You know how long Laurel and I have been friends.”

“Friends don’t impregnate friends.”

“Clay.” His wife shook her head in warning.

“What?” he asked her. “I’m supposed to smile and say, Isn’t that nice? Do you think it’s nice that some woman who isn’t married to our son is going to be raising our grandchild?”

“Some woman?” Caleb’s temper sparked. “Laurel’s a hell of a lot more than that! You claimed to like her!”

“We do like her…” his mother began, but was interrupted by her husband.

“What does liking her have to do with anything? She’s not our daughter-in-law. Hell, she could decide we shouldn’t see the baby if she feels like it.”