Page 65 of Pipe Dreams
“Papers? No. I just... saw this pill bottle roll out of your bag at the pool. You told me to watch your stuff and your bag was tipping over. I didn’t mean to read the label.”
“Oh.” She let out a big breath. “Nosy much?”
He made his best contrite face. “I know it’s none of my business but I just didn’t understand. Are you with someone?” He cleared his throat. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have, uh...”had a lot of wild sex with you.
“No!” she said for the second time inside of a minute. “God. No! I’m not with anyone. You don’t need a guy to get pregnant.”
“Uh, technically...” He let out a nervous chuckle.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” She put her head in her hands. “There’s technology, Mike. Not that it’s any of your business. It’s between me and my doctor.”
“So...” His head was spinning. “You’re going to do it all alone?” He tried to picture Lauren bringing her newborn home to a quiet apartment. Those early days were rough, with the baby crying all the time. He felt a stab of something like fear for her.
“Seriously?” He looked up to see her staring daggers at him from. “You don’t think I can hack it?”
“I didn’t say that,” he said quickly.
“You knowyou’rea single parent, right? And yet it’s weird if I am?”
“Hell, Lauren. You’d be twice the parent that I am.”Not like the bar is set very high, though.
That’s when the car slid up to his corner and the driver cleared his throat. “Which house?”
“Uh, that one,” he said, pointing.
Lauren sat up a little straighter and stopped glaring at him long enough to peer out her window at the antique brick facade of his row house. “Nice place, Mike.” Her voice was sharp.
“Thanks,” he said, feeling more than a little embarrassed. It was a ridiculously nice house, and fancier than he’d really planned on buying. But when you needed at least three bedrooms and you’re in a hurry, you had to buy what was on the market.
He opened the door, wondering where she lived, and what it was like there. “Want to come inside for a beer?” he heard himself ask. He wished he could take back everything he’d said in the past five minutes.
Slowly she shook her head. “It’s midnight. And I’m already in the car.”
Right. “Good night, Lo. Thanks for the ride, and have a safe trip home.”
“Thank you,” she said stiffly.
He shut the door and stepped onto the curb so the car could roll away.
A moment later the car’s taillights turned out of sight.
NINETEEN
TAMPA, FLORIDA
MAY 2016
Four days later Lauren knelt in child’s pose on her yoga mat, which she’d unfurled on the wood floor in an exercise studio in the team’s Tampa hotel.
At the front of the room, Ari took the class through some breathing exercises. Lauren expanded her diaphragm on command, inhaling deeply. But she tuned Ari out in favor of indulging herself in a few private play-offs calculations.
The location of play-offs series games was always dependent on team standings. In this case, Tampa had entered the postseason with the higher ranking. So they’d enjoyed a home ice advantage for the first two games. Then there had been two in Brooklyn—the one where Mike fought Skews, and then another.
Which they’d lost, unfortunately.
The series was now tied 2–2, and Lauren was hoping her boys could win the next two in a row. According to the rules, game five was back in Tampa, which accounted for the location of today’s team yoga class. Game six would happenin Brooklyn. If the Bruisers could win two in a row, the series would be over then.
However.
