Page 6 of Wicked Things
“I’m not going to. I just feel so bad. I can’t sleep for more than an hour without getting up and puking. I can’t smell bacon without wanting to burn the house down, and I keep snapping at you like a grade-A bitch. I’m a hot mess.” I stick the straw in my mouth and pull. It’s a miracle; as soon as the thick strawberry deliciousness hits my tongue, my body stops freaking out. My stomach quits its incessant heaving and pitching, and my desperate need to cry simply ups and vanishes in smoke.
Ahhhh, MacDonald’s strawberry thick shake. Fixer of all problems. How I love thee. Zeth laughs down his nose when he sees the look of sheer bliss on my face.
“Youarea hot mess. But the very best thing about you is that you’remyhot mess. Besides. This is temporary. You’re not always going to be on the verge of stabbing me in the neck with a toothbrush. Are you?” He looks slightly worried.
“No, baby. This, too, shall pass.” The old adage seems appropriate right now. Zeth doesn’t look completely reassured, but his smile does widen.
In some ways, this is all still so foreign to me. Him, being able to kiss me. Him, being able to tell me that he loves me. Having him actually being able to share a bed with me and not try and kill me when he wakes up. The thing is, it’s just so easy to forget how things used to be. He makes thisfeelnormal, when it’s anything but. We met under such dangerous circumstances. We went through so many perilous ordeals together. And now I’m having his baby, and he’s willing to leave the house in the small hours of the morning to do something he doesn’t particularly agree with, because he knows it will make me happy.
“We just have to get through the next few months. Everything will be fine,” he says.
“Hmm.” I take another draw on the thick shake, the cold penetrating my brain, throbbing at my temples in the very best way. “We have to get through telling my super religious parents you knocked me up first. If we survive that, we’ll be able to survive anything.”
THREE
ZETH
She falls asleep on me, her fingers twitching as she slowly slips into unconsciousness. She barely seems to sleep at all these days, which is perplexing. Doesn’t she need extra sleep because of the baby? Shouldn’t she bereallyfucking tired all the time? I’m not saying I spent any time on Google, researching how she should be behaving at the moment, or how her body should be reacting to the changes its going through, but…fuck it. So what? IdidGoogle it. Sue me. I’m not a goddamn mind reader. I don’t know the first fucking thing about pregnant women. Aside from the fact that the one I’m currently living with seems to be losing her mind, of course.
I carry her to bed, careful not to wake her. She’ll be waking up for work in a couple of hours; the hospital have cut her down to four eight hour shifts a week, which Sloane considers a grave injustice, but I’m secretly glad she’s not spending thirty-six hours at a time on her feet, forgetting to eat, running around a trauma center like nothing has changed with her. I’d never say that to her face, though. She’d probably lynch me for trying to wrap her in cotton wool when she’s perfectly capable of doing whatever the hell she damn well wants to. She’s so fucking stubborn. It’s hilarious, and worrying, and intensely fucking sexy all at the same time.
I never thought a chick with the beginnings of a baby bump could be a turn on to me.Never. Turns out I was wrong. Turns out, the woman just needed to be Sloane, and she just needed to be knocked up withmychild. I place a sheet over her and I sit in the chair by the window, listening to the rain coming down outside. I try not to stare at her stomach. Sometimes it feels like the motherfucking walls are closing in around me, all of the air suddenly sucked out of the room. I’m going to be a father.Me. I am going to be someone’s father. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s a terrifying prospect. I’m worried a lot of the time these days, which feels shitty. My head isn’t in the game. I just can’t seem to concentrate on anything other than the obvious: how am I going to be a stable, worthy role model for an infant? Am I going to be able to keep him or her safe? Am I going to drop the poor kid on its head the moment Sloane gives birth and hands me our child? And then there’s the most worrying of all the questions that are constantly ricocheting around the inside of my head:Am I going to be able to love it?
Loving Sloane is easy. It’s as simple as drawing breath. My feelings for her were an unstoppable force of nature I couldn’t have held at bay even if I’d wanted to. She started out as an enigma, and then an addiction. After a while she became a part of me, and there was no me and her. There was just us. But this baby… God. This baby is an unknown entity. I already know I’ll die for the tiny soul forming little by little, day by day inside of the woman I love. I am certain of it. The strength of my conviction is actually a little fucking frightening, because it’s so unexpected.
Dawn arrives, pale, weak sunlight spearing through the clouds down into the valley, the forest below the house coming alive with color as the light touches it: orange, green, brown, yellow, all blending together to create one bright, bold tapestry of autumnal color. Sloane stirs, but she doesn’t wake. Carefully I get up out of the chair and cross the room to her, looking down on her as she sleeps. Her skin seems lit from the inside, glowing and warm. She refuses to see how extraordinarily beautiful pregnancy has made her, but I see it clearly. She’s stunning. Slowly, I reach out a hand and allow it to hover her stomach, just an inch above the tiny swelling that’s only just recently started to protrude.
“You’re in there. You’rereallyin there, huh?” I whisper. I don’t know who this baby will be, or how it will affect our lives for the better or the worse, but I know how its existence makes me feel, and it’s not what I would have expected. Not even close. I’m glad he or she is slowly growing, getting strong, forming one cell at a time inside of Sloane. I’m glad. It seems beyond right.
I hold my breath, lowering my hand even further, so that I’m almost touching her stomach. My fingertips brush the soft cotton of her Snoopy nightshirt…
Vrrrrrrnnnn vrrrrrrnvrrrrrrrn. Vrrrrrrnnnn vrrrrrrnvrrrrrrrn.
I jerk my hand back, adrenaline crashing through my veins. On the dresser, my cell phone vibrates angrily as a call comes through, a cold, pale blue light washing up the walls. I cross the room quickly and grab it, checking the screen to see who’s calling so early. It’s Michael. Normally I’d ignore him, but he wouldn’t be trying to get a hold of me at this time of the morning unless it was super important.
Sloane hasn’t woken yet, hasn’t even stirred, so I quietly slip out of the bedroom and down the stairs, holding my cell to my ear. “What is it?”
“Insurance adjustors,” Michael says. “They showed up at the warehouse in the middle of the night.”
The warehouse. My former residence. The building the Italians burned down not too long ago, because I refused to work for them. I had Michael set up a perimeter alarm in the hollow shell of the building shortly after the fire gutted the place. The alarm must have been tripped or something.
“What are they looking for?”
“I don’t know.” Michael sounds pensive. “Could be they suspect arson. They were grumbling that the place wasn’t coded for habitation.”
“Good thing no one was living there then.” This is actually true. With Lacey gone and me spending nearly every waking hour with Sloane here at her place, the warehouse was sitting empty for a while there. Still, all of my belongings were there. I’m sure it would be easy enough to come to the conclusion that the place was being used as a residence.
“If they do find out the fire was set on purpose, they’ll open a full investigation. They’ll want to interview you.” Michael obviously knows how little I am going to enjoy the prospect. He sounds apologetic, as if this is all somehow his fault. “I’m going to go and pay the fire chief a visit later on this morning,” he advises. “I just wanted to check in, make sure you were okay with that?”
A visit from Michael isn’t something most people ever wish for. He’s a charming motherfucker with a killer sense of style, but he’s also stone cold when he needs to be. He gets the job done. He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t flinch. He’s basically an extension of me.
“I don’t mind. See if you can’t persuade the guys down at the firehouse that this was an electrical fire after all. Rats chewing at cables.”
Michael grunts. “There’s something else.”
“What?” I don’t really even need to bother asking, though. I already know what it’s going to be. We’ve had the same, repeating problem for a while now, and it’s getting really fucking old.
“Mason,” Michael says tightly. “Found him drunk, asleep in the middle of the cage just now. He threw up all over the canvas. He was covered in blood. I think he’s been street fighting again.”
