Ready or Not

by Cara Bastone

“I…am probably going to say some really dumb shit by accident…” he says after a long moment. “I…don’t know what to say…and…I’ve never been a fast…please, just, don’t make any decisions based on what I do in the next…little while…okay? I can’t…I won’t…be good at…”

Carol is really…well, she’s a piece of work. And my mom always, always spent time with her on Sunday afternoons. But it was always terrible and she’d come home in a bad mood. But towards the end, my mom was too sick to do it. Her body just wouldn’t let her go there. At first, she felt terribly guilty, like she was failing somehow. But then, eventually she realized that…sometimes…”

“Sometimes our bodies take charge of us. My mom’s body just knew that she didn’t need to be prioritizing Carol in the last few months of her life. It helped her let go of that crappy relationship. And for you…your brain wanted to keep talking to Ethan tonight, to get everything hammered into place, but your body knew that it wasn’t the time. You got tired and had to leave. Maybe that’s your body taking care of you.”

“I just…I know, from my sisters, how…intimate pregnancy can be. And I…I’ll let you take the lead on the when and where of my involvement.”

Now I also have to figure out beforehand whether or not to invite Ethan? I know he’s trying to be thoughtful, but all I actually want is for one of us to know exactly what to do next and to take us there at top speed.

“Like I said, you’re in charge, so…I’m asking in general, if it’s okay for me to check in with you.” “Yes,”

“It’s…kind of a long story actually.” When people say that, they actually mean that it’s a regular-length story that they don’t want to tell you right now.

“I listen when you talk, Eve.”

Thank you for kicking in the first place and thank you for kicking when I was flat up against someone who loves me. Thank you for letting someone else remember this moment, treasure it with a hand against my body. “That was a kick, Shep,” I whisper to him, emotion clogging my throat. “I thought so,” he whispers back, a huge grin on his face. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever experienced.”

You acquire a whole new set of interests when you have kids. Whatever they’re into, you kind of have to get into yourself, otherwise you have nothing to talk about with them.

everyone feels at some point or another when they’re about to have a kid.” I peek out from behind the napkin. “Really?” He nods boisterously. “If you’re not at least fifty percent Oh, shit, then you’re probably not thinking about it hard enough. I mean, it’s a human, Eve. A whole human! You’re entitled to freak out about that.”

That’s the whole trick with kids. You just do what works today. Today is not so scary, right?”

He’s already up and grabbing scratch paper and a pencil. He’s only been to my apartment twice but he draws an almost perfect floor plan from memory.

Shep has always had this…thing where he feels like everyone’s sidekick. He never tries to be the main event. I think it’s probably because of the way he was when we were growing up.”

“Do…do you do that a lot?” I ask quietly. Willa said that he’s always felt like a sidekick. When do sidekicks get the spotlight? “Not tell people when you’re hurting?” “I’m trying to get better at it.”

“Honestly, I’m trying to learn from you. You’re so good at saying how you feel. At feeling how you feel.” “Only with you. With everybody else I only say about one-tenth of what I’m feeling.”

“Shep…I’d like to be a person you can tell how you’re feeling. Even if you aren’t proud of the feeling, you can tell me and it won’t change how I think of you. Especially if you’re having a hard time. I want to know. I know that Heather took care of you, but I would have…”

“Because you being comfortable in my house is pretty much the only criteria I’m currently using for picking a place.”

It’s all about you at the beginning because, for everyone else, your life changes once the baby is born. But for the mother, your life changes as soon as you find out you’re pregnant. And for a while, you’re the only one who really gets it. Because it’s happening to you. So yeah, don’t be too hard on yourself for putting yourself over your friend at the beginning…Besides. That all changes, doesn’t

“Most people are self-centered. And I’m not talking about selfishness. I mean it literally. Their center is their own self. Like yours was in your first trimester. They understand the world only through their own experiences. Whatever happens around them, they ask, What does that mean for me? But then there are a select few who are other-centered. And when things happen around them, they ask themselves, What does this mean for everybody? And that sounds like Shep. It doesn’t surprise me that you’ve come to have a crush on someone who considers you.”

That your children are like your heart walking around outside your body.”

“It hurts to realize that the world is so much bigger and more complicated than you thought it was. It’ll always hurt.”

That I wasn’t going to be doing this alone. Because the baby would be there. And he’d be there too.

He was telling me, all those months ago, that he wanted me. Infinitely kind words in a dark moment. I’ll never leave you whispered in a secret code that he was content for me to never solve. That’s what wanting without taking looks like. Other-centered as he is, maybe he’s been waiting for me to do the taking.

“I took off work today and I really, really wanna see you. Like right now.” “Yes. Done. I’m there.” Is there any compliment higher than someone dropping everything for you?

“Instead of panicking about possible endings…I wonder if…maybe we should…”

“Do you really not want to?” he asks. “Or are you scared of change?” “I’m scared of everything,” I tell him, and for some reason that makes him smile. “Okay. I’ll help.”

“I’m right here,” he tells me. If it’s scary, he means. He won’t leave me, he means. This isn’t something I’ll be doing on my own, he means. He’ll be here with me. As always, Shep is here with me.

“Eve, for as long as I can remember I have always wanted to be as close as possible to you.”

“Eve. If you want to see me every day, you want someone to measure your belly, I’m clearly game.”

“Of course I know how you feel. You’re a handsome, successful guy who is usually very nice, and you got the love of my life pregnant. You wanna talk about insufferable?”

“But…working full time, school at least half time, when would I get to be with the baby? And how would I ever pay for that much childcare?”

“I hate those questions because it keeps women who are clever and levelheaded in low-level positions in order to be able to see their kids.” Spritz, spritz, spritz. “It eliminates so many qualified people from jobs they deserve to have. That’s why I do not want to leave the finance department to a man.”

“Falling asleep with you like that, it’s the closest I’ve ever felt to someone. And it was a door, that moment. Don’t you think? We opened that door and then all the other moments cascaded in. Eating dinner at your house, just the two of us. Flirting at the movie theater. Falling asleep in your bed. Unbraiding your hair. Apartment shopping. And then, and then, and then…the park. All of that was possible because this little person, right here”—he smooths a hand over my belly—“chose that exact moment to kick. It was the most special moment of my life.”

“If it’s not totally obvious…I’ll say it because I’ve really, really needed to say it for a long time…but, Eve, I love you more deeply than I’ve ever loved anyone else. I’m bananas for you. So in love I…”

“I’ll never love anyone the way I love you,” he says, his tongue a warm, tasting press against mine. “Being with you is the only thing I’ve ever really wanted.”

“Me being decent to the father of your child. It’s not because I’m, like, so great. It’s—it’s a strategy.”

Look, are you ready for the long answer that I didn’t really give you before? Well, here it is: pretty much all the choices I make around you all serve one purpose. I…want to be part of your life forever. And Ethan? The father of your baby? He’s likely not expendable. But me? Childhood friend who throws a fit over choices you made that have nothing to do with him? Probably expendable. So…yeah. You’re not going to get any fits from me. I definitely don’t want to make anything harder for you.”

I wouldn’t have had any idea what to do with you that night, if you had gotten into my cab. I needed to meet you little by little. In this new way. You know?”

just kept it to myself. I think that I thought it would make you uncomfortable to tell you. And I wanted to always be your friend no matter what.”

love, if you keep it all closed up and try to stuff it down, it turns into resentment and anger. It turns sour. And that if I never, ever told you how I felt, eventually I wouldn’t be able to be your friend anymore. She told me I’d lose you if I wasn’t brave.

“Some people learn how to do this from books, well in advance, and some people learn on the fly. I figured since you’re one style I should be the other style.”

“Is it possible,” he starts, strong-thumbs my arch, and then keeps going. “That you haven’t unpacked any of that baby stuff yet because you don’t think this is the right place to unpack it?”

“I want to do what’s best for us, Eve. I want to help as much as possible, especially in those first few months when you and the baby are still figuring everything out. And if that means sleeping over all the time and changing diapers and feeding you and taking the baby on walks while you nap, then great. If that means holding down the fort over here while you and the baby figure each other out over there, then great.”

“You can do this,” she tells me. “You’ve been through the birthing classes. You’ve got your support system. And at the end, you’ll hold the love of your life in your arms. Trust me. You can do this.”

“You’re a love letter too,” I whisper to her. “Without Ethan, you wouldn’t exist, and without Shep, you wouldn’t have made it into this world. That’s because they love us so much. You’re here because we all love you so much.”

That the most meaningful romance doesn’t wait to arrive once you feel ready. It doesn’t wait for your bangs to grow out or your skin to clear up. Romance doesn’t love you more because you are (almost) perfect. Romance loves you because you are (charmingly) imperfect. Romance sees you trying your hardest at a very difficult point in your life and thinks, you know what, I think she could probably use a sandwich right now.

I will forever cherish this novel about pregnancy that I started while pregnant with my first and finished while pregnant with my second.

Even when I feel ugly, let the love in. Let someone care for me, tenderly, because they love me, not because I can’t do it myself. Feel creativity with an urgency and thrill that literally gets me out of bed. Put half-baked ideas down on paper and work hard to round them out and rejoice when it works. Remember that change, opportunity, a new day; it’s always growing inside me, and the best thing I can ever do is let it out into the world.