The Knocked Up Plan(49)

That’s not weird at all.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” I say as I zip my bag and toss a scarf around my neck. December has fallen in Manhattan.

“Are you up for Ping-Pong tonight? Match against LGO.”

My eyes widen, and that oh shit I totally forgot feeling sweeps over me.

“You forgot,” he says, his lips twitching as if it’s cute I can’t remember anything.

I grab my coat from the back of the door. “Baby brain. I can start using that excuse already, right?”

“If you ask me, this is your chance to milk it. Use it for everything. For the next thirty-one weeks, right?”

I stop, with one arm in a sleeve. “You know exactly how far along I am?”

“I counted. Conception was mid-October, so that was two weeks. You were four weeks when you found out you were pregnant on November second. Now it’s five weeks later, and you’re nine weeks along.”

Endearing doesn’t cover it anymore.

Ryder steps behind me and finishes the job with the other sleeve, putting my coat on me. He faces me, adjusting the scarf and the collar. “Stay warm.”

“Wait! I’ll play tonight.”

His eyes twinkle. “You will?”

I hold up a hand. “Unless Rosemary attacks me again with another bout of nighttime sickness.”

“You named the baby? Are you having a girl?” His voice rises at the end with a touch of excitement.

I wave that off. “No. Rosemary’s Baby. Like the movie.”

“Ah. Got it. But Rosemary is a cute name for a girl.”

“It is.” I sling my bag over my shoulder, turn off the light, and lock my door.

We leave together, and before I know it, he’s walked me all the way to my home, twenty blocks away. At the entrance to my building, a pang of sadness darts through me. I desperately want to invite him upstairs. But for what? I’m not in the mood for sex, and I can’t stomach food, and besides, I’m seeing him in a few hours for Ping-Pong.

Still, I wouldn’t mind just hanging out with him, watching one of my favorite flicks. Gone With the Wind or Talladega Nights.

I part my lips to speak, but I yank the words back in. I might miss him in moments like these, but we had a deal. We had an arrangement. He did his part so damn well. He put the bun in my oven in a mere two months, and now I’ve got to do my job and bake it without being a psycho emotional pregnant freak who invites the baby donor upstairs for no reason other than she’s a weeble-wobble of out-of-control hormones. I remind myself that he was in it for the hot sex with a horny woman trying to get knocked up, and for the companionship on a work project. The work project is done, and now I’m anything but a horny woman.

“I’ll see you at eight at the Lucky Spot,” I say, bouncing on my toes, trying to muster all the chipperness I possibly can. “And I’ll bring my lucky paddle.”

“See you then, Nicole,” he says, then plants a chaste kiss on my cheek and leaves.

See? He’s completely content to be my Ping-Pong partner, and only my Ping-Pong partner. He’s not looking for a hormonal co-worker to watch Scarlett O’Hara with.

But he does need someone to help crush the opposition tonight. I can be that person for him. I head upstairs, determined to drag my sorry ass out of my apartment in a few hours’ time. I walk my dog, shower, pull on jeans and a pretty red sweater, and eat a few spoonfuls of rice.

I take my time with the rice, hoping to coax the grains to stay down.

But Rosemary has other plans.





Twenty-Six





Ryder

Sweat drips down my chest, and I breathe hard from the racquetball game as I walk down the hall of the club. Flynn grins like a fool. The bastard.

“You’re gloating,” I grumble.

“I know. But you have to know I’ve only beaten you nineteen percent of the time—”

I jerk my head. “Nineteen percent?”

“Dude. Math is my forte. We’ve played forty-two games, and I’ve won eight, including tonight’s.”

“No wonder you’re a rich bastard. That brain of yours is an impressive beast.”

“That’s nothing. You want to talk impressive math? Let’s get into irreducible polynomials with integer coefficients.”

I whistle in appreciation, and I’m about to hassle him some more when my phone rings. I grab it from the side of my gym bag. Nicole’s name flashes. I slide my finger across the screen in a nanosecond. “Hey, how’s it going?”

“I don’t know how anyone craves pickles in the first trimester.” Her voice is beleaguered. “I don’t know how any pregnant woman has ever craved anything in the history of being pregnant. I ate rice and I can’t even keep that down. I think I have a date with Grace, my toilet bowl.”

“You named the toilet bowl, too?”

“We’re besties these days.”

“Do you need anything? Can I get you anything at all?” I ask, wishing there was something I could do for her.

“No. Just go on without me,” she says like a soldier in a war movie telling his platoon to keep fighting.

“Seriously?”

“If I show up tonight, I might dry heave all over the opponents, so while that could be a great strategy for winning by default or scaring the daylights out of them, I should stay home.”