Page 103 of Own the Eights Maybe Baby
But he wasn’t about to make his wife feel bad about her spider phobia.
As far as he was concerned, after alpacas, spiders were the next asshole creatures on the asshole creatures list.
He opened the passenger side door and helped her in. He wanted to keep this light. But the slump of Georgie’s shoulders and the tremble of her bottom lip spoke volumes. This was more than a failed challenge. It was even more than an unfortunate interaction with an arachnid.
He got in the car, handed Faby to his wife, and started the engine.
“Where to, Spider-man?”
“Oh, stop!” she huffed, staring out the window.
“You never mentioned that you had an irrational phobia,” he teased.
“Let’s just say, I totally understand why Little Miss Muffet took off when the spider intruded on her tuffet,” she replied, but there wasn’t any sass or sarcasm in his wife’s reply.
He watched her out of the corner of his eye. From her pinched expression, he knew not to take it any further.
She shook her head as if trying to push something from her mind. “Let’s hit the grocery store first and then head home. I’m warning you now. We’re buying every can of pineapple juice, every pineapple fritter, every pineapple yogurt, and I may even throw in a few Hawaiian pizzas.”
Holy pineapple bender! This was not good.
“You may be blowing this up in your head, babe. It didn’t look as bad as you probably think it did,” he said as they started down the gravel drive back toward the interstate.
She turned in her seat and pinned him with her gaze. “Did it look like a screaming pregnant woman attacking a bug the size of a nickel followed by said pregnant woman dragging an infant simulation doll across a dusty, hay-covered floor?”
She had him there.
“Technically, yes.”
She sank into the seat and pressed her fingertips to her eyelids. “It’s a sign.”
“What’s a sign?”
“All of it. All the relief I felt after we picked the gender reveal as the date to tell my mom about the baby. It was a facade, hiding what we both know is true.”
He frowned. She was being damned hard on herself.
“What are you talking about, Georgie? What do we know is true?”
She waved him off. “And we don’t even know the baby’s gender.”
That was an easy fix.
“We can call Dr. Beaver’s office,” he replied.
“And say what?” she asked, her voice going up an octave. “They know this was supposed to be the big reveal for the Battle of the Births. We signed a waiver saying the office could share the information with Lenny and Stu. How do we tell them that I obliterated a spider to defend a fake baby and dropped the envelope with the gender information only to have it get eaten by an asshole goat! Do things like this happen to other people? Is there something wrong with us?”
“There’s nothing wrong with us. We can pull over and call the doctor’s office now. We’ll know the gender of our pineapple surprise in minutes,” he said, doing his best to ease her anguish.
“No, this is the universe telling us something. We’re not supposed to know the baby’s gender. I don’t even know if we’re supposed to be parents,” she added, back to shaking her head.
“Georgiana, you’re upset, and you’re low on pineapple. That’s all. In a day or two, we’ll probably be laughing about this.”
He swallowed hard, feeling her gaze bore into him.
Yep, probably not a good time to throw out the wholelaugh-about-it-latercomment.
“We don’t know the gender, so we can’t tell my mom,” she said, biting out the words.
