Page 46 of Own the Eights Maybe Baby
They continued, weaving their way past couples and families strolling down the sidewalk when a chorus of shrieks and squeals caught their attention.
“Is that dog eating a baby?” trilled a distraught woman with a scrap of white material in her hand.
Oh no! She had Faby’s diaper!
“There he is!” Jordan exclaimed as a blur of black and white fur shot down the street, leaving a slew of horrified people in his wake.
They took off running, and Jordan gestured to the woman.
“Grab it, babe!” he said as the chase shifted into high gear.
Passing the shocked Tennyson Street patrons, she snagged the diaper out of the woman’s pinched grip. “Thank you! And don’t worry. It’s not a real baby!” she called over her shoulder to the slack-jawed lady as they closed in on their targets.
The diaper bag jostled up and down, bumping Jordan’s elbow, then her arm, then Jordan’s elbow, then her arm again in a bizarre pre-parental masochistic motion. Could they stop and reposition the bag? Sure, if they wanted to spend the rest of the night searching for a dog and a doll. But they were losing daylight by the second, and there was no time to hesitate. Jordan glanced over, and she met his gaze, then nodded.
Like Zen-master mind readers, without a word spoken between them, the choice had been made.
They’d endure the punishing blows from the devil of a diaper bag to capture their dog and save their fake baby.
“This baby stuff weighs a ton, and that’s saying something. I spend my days in a CrossFit gym flipping tractor tires, and that’s nothing compared to this,” Jordan said through tight breaths as the wrecking ball of a diaper bag pinballed between them.
“We can’t stop! We have to endure the pain,” she answered, suddenly craving a tall glass of pineapple juice and a slice of pineapple cheesecake.
Damn these pregnancy cravings, popping up at the worst possible moment!
“It looks like he’s headed to your bookshop,” Jordan bit out as the diaper bag continued its bumpy assault.
The dog showed no signs of slowing when the door to Jensen’s Books opened, and a surprised customer exiting the establishment shrieked as she held the door for the runaway fake baby-snatcher.
“It’s not a real baby!” Georgie cried as they crossed the street and barreled inside the shop to find over a dozen pairs of eyes bouncing between them and Mr. Tuesday.
Her longtime family friends Gene and Marjory Gilbert, along with Irene and her husband, Will, sat on barstools that wrapped around the café portion of the shop. Jordan’s father, Denny, and Maureen, their accountant and also Denny’s girlfriend, had settled themselves nearby in a cozy seating area along with Maureen’s eleven-year-old twins Mya and Mia. Their high school volunteers, Simon and Talya, turned teenagers in love, cuddled across from them in an oversized chair. Even the blue-haired brigade, the octogenarians who enjoyed frequenting her store under the guise of enjoying a place to do their needlework when all they wanted was to get a good look at Jordan running past the shop shirtless—and honestly, who could blame them—were in attendance, their knitting projects halted by the canine kerfuffle.
Everyone was there—all assembled to get together to hear about their honeymoon.
Becca, her sassy friend who managed the bookstore, came out from behind the counter and scratched between the dog’s ears.
“What’s Mr. Tuesday doing with a naked baby doll?”
“Yeah, that’s a freaky chew toy, son,” Denny offered, sharing a look with Maureen.
Jordan leaned forward and pressed his hands to his thighs, working to catch his breath.
“It’s not a chew toy. It’s Faby. Our fake baby. Georgie and I have to keep it in one piece so we can prove that we’ll be able to take care of our baby when he or she arrives in June,” the man bit out between deep, punctuated breaths.
Running while carrying a diaper bag was clearly not for the faint of heart.
Gene Gilbert reached behind the counter and grabbed a bottle of water. “Coming at you, Jordan,” the man said, tossing the bottle across the shop.
At the sight of a thrown object, Mr. Tuesday dropped the doll and followed the bottle’s trajectory. But he wasn’t quick enough. Like a hydration-deprived gladiator, her husband swiped the bottle out of the air, ripped off the cap, and downed the liquid as Mr. Tuesday pranced around him in circles.
Quickly, she rescued Faby from the hardwood floor, cradled the doll in her arms, and checked for punctures before counting to make sure the doll’s plastic fingers and toes were intact.
“Faby’s okay—just a little slobbery,” she said as Jordan came to her side.
Her husband cradled Faby’s head in his massive hand, doing his own scan. “Thank God! We should get Faby’s diaper back on and see if there are any clothes in the diaper bag.”
Relief washed over her. Despite the wild baby doll goose chase, Faby was no worse for wear. Even better? Mr. Tuesday was safely corralled in the bookshop, and at least for the moment, they weren’t the worst fake parents on the planet.
