Page 32 of Home Run

“Burgers? Italian? Mexican? Thai? What about pizza? Salad?” she mused.

“Meh.”

“Come on, there must be something the baby wants besides chocolate.”

I thought about it hard. It was true I couldn’t live off chocolate no matter how much I wanted to. Running through her list again the only thing that really stood out was Mexican. Specifically, tacos. Soft shell tacos with lashings of pico de gallo. Maybe this baby liked sweetandspicy.

“What about the taco place down by Central Park?”

When her eyes lit up, I knew I’d hit gold. Pushing my arm through hers, I linked us together. “Perfect. Lead the way.”

Even though it had only been two days since I’d last been outside, the warmth of the sun on my face was enough to reinvigorate the parts of me that the brownies hadn’t quite reached. I hadn’t spent a summer in New York before,and I was yet to decide whether it was as stifling and sweaty as a summer in D.C.; today certainly was. Walking across Van Am, anyone who didn’t have summer classes was out on the lawns soaking in the rays.

My eyes focused on a couple reading together, reading thesame book.The girl was holding it and when they got to the end of the page, her boyfriend would turn it. Teamwork equals dream work.

“I think we should check off some of your list today.”

I tore my eyes away from the couple. “Like what?”

“After lunch, we should go to Brown’s and buy some pregnancy books. I was reading your leaflets and we both have a lot to learn. I figure if we split the load and compare notes, like we do for class, then we can cover more ground. I’m sure they’ll all say the same thing, but having a couple of opinions won’t hurt. Then we need to start looking for a new place to live.”

Instead of the waves of nausea, a wave of emotion appeared with little to no notice, enough that I needed to take an enormous sniff.

Radley leaned around to look at me. “Are you crying?”

Pushing up my sunglasses, I wiped my eyes. “No, it’s the baby.”

“The baby’s crying?”

“No, it’s makingmecry.”

“Whyis it making you cry?”

“I don’t know.” I sniffed as we waited at the crosswalk on Amsterdam Avenue. “Maybe because it knows how lucky I am to have you as a best friend. How lucky it is to have you as an auntie. And that you want to read my babybooks with me, even though I’m sure you’ll find them so boring.”

“Of course I want to read your baby books. And I’m going to be the best auntie. Just you wait.” Her smile beamed down at me. “I’ll be there for all of it. The ultrasounds, the baby classes, the birth…if you want that.”

I was about to answer when a lady exited Morningside Park in a flat-out sprint, and the Secret Service pulled us out of the way just in time, given there was no indication she was about to slow down. She was wearing the type of running attire only those familiar with marathons wore, with a little backpack and plastic straw for sucking down energy drinks on the go. The kind I’d seen Radley wear on her runs even though she swore blind she didn’t.

“You want to be there at the birth?”

Radley’s arm wrapped around my shoulder, and she pulled me into her side. I was a good six inches shorter than her, so I always ended up nestled into her chest. “Of course, ride or die. That’s what we are. You’re going to need someone to fetch you ice chips and tell you to push when you need to push. Unless your mom will come up.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I think we can both count on my mom coming up.”

In the week since I’d told her, my mom was coming around to the idea of becoming a grandma. The first thing she’d made clear under no certain terms was that she absolutely didn’t look old enough to be one. The last couple of days she’d been sending me pictures of when she’d been pregnant with me, and remembering how she’d felt.

It was becoming hard to tell who was messaging andchecking on me more—my mom or Tanner. Which reminded me?—

“I should probably ask Tanner what he wants. I think the ultrasounds are his, but you can fight it out with my mom on the birth.”

“I’m happy to hand it over to the grandma. I’ll take the pregnancy yoga instead.”

“Pregnancy yoga?”

“Yeah, have you not been through those leaflets yet?”

I shook my head. “No, I was too busy being sick.”

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