The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(36)
“He sounds like a runaway who’s turned to sex work to survive life on the streets.”
“So that’s a maybe, then,” she says cheerfully. “I like Kalamity for a girl. Spelled with a ‘k’, though.”
“At least we won’t have to worry about paying for college.”
She laughs, but then deflates only seconds later.
I follow her gaze to the girls walking past us in skimpy shorts and half-shirts. “Jesus Christ,” I say quietly after they’re gone. “I don’t want a daughter.”
Keeley sets the second half of her sandwich down on the brown paper wrapper.
“What’s the matter?”
She glances back at them and her face grows longer. “Nothing.”
“You’ll lose the weight,” I offer helplessly. “I know it’s—”
Her mouth falls open. “Oh my God, are you saying I’m bigger than those girls?”
And that’s when I know I’ve fucked up and there’s really no way to salvage this. “Well, obviously. You’re supposed to put on wei—”
“I’m not bigger than those girls!” she cries, though obviously she is. I mean, she must realize…but that’s not relevant right now.
I set my own sandwich down. “Keeley…you’re pregnant. It would be worrisome if you hadn’t gained…gotten...I have no idea what to say here.”
Her face is a storm cloud, eyes narrowed, mouth in a child’s pout. “It’s not about the weight, which is mostly in my rack and fucking spectacular at the moment.”
She isn’t wrong, but I’m not even going to touch that one. I scrub a hand over my face. “Then why are you upset?”
She stares at the uneaten second half of her sandwich, unable to meet my eyes. “I’m never going to go to Coachella again,” she whispers. “I just realized I’m never going to Coachella again. And also, that I have to learn to cook, and I don’t want to.”
“You can still go to Coachella. I mean, God only knows why you’d want to, but—”
“It’s not about Coachella, Graham! It’s that I’m never going to be one of those girls again, and I feel like I barely got started being one of those girls.”
It still sounds like it’s about the weight to me because what else has changed? But I know not to say it aloud.
Now. I know it now.
“I don’t understand. You will look exactly like those girls in a year. You’ll be able to go to Coachella. What’s the difference?”
She finally meets my eye. “When I meet Harry Styles and Machine Gun Kelly backstage and they’re like, ‘hey, let’s go to Amsterdam’, you know what I’ll have to say? ‘Sorry, Harry Styles. Sorry, Machine Gun Kelly. I have to go feed my baby.’”
I am at a loss for words. Mostly because I can’t imagine that she’s serious, and I’m a little worried she is.
“Sorry, Harry Styles and Machine Gun Kelly, but I’ve got to get home and sew a Pilgrim costume,” she continues. “Sorry, Harry Styles and Machine Gun Kelly, but I have to chaperone a school field trip in the morning.”
“Just out of curiosity, how long would you call them by their full names? At what point do you just call them Harry and, uh, Machine Gun?”
Her mouth twitches, a reluctant smile at last. “I’m pretty sure his birth name is not Machine Gun. And shut up. You see my point. I’m never going to be fun again.”
There’s a part of me that wants to say, “this is what I’ve been trying to tell you, dammit. Parenthood is serious. It’s time to stop fucking around.” But there’s this weird, unexpectedly soft thing in my chest that keeps me from doing it.
Keeley has spent her whole life rebelling against the status quo, refusing to let anyone tell her how an adult has to behave, and she still wants to refuse. It’s for the baby’s sake that she’s giving in. Maybe it feels like she’s losing her whole identity in the process.
“You’re still going to be fun,” I say, pushing her chips toward her. “You’ll be too fun. You’ll be the mom who suggests our kid teepee someone’s house and gets arrested for providing minors with alcohol. And I’ll be the boring dad who has to come bail both of you out of jail.”
“You’d only have to bail out me,” she whispers with a guilty shrug. “They don’t take you to jail for minor in possession. They just write you a ticket.”
I laugh, that soft thing in my chest growing a little bit more, though I wish it wouldn’t.
Because she has no idea how or why she married me—and she’d never have done it sober—but I’ve known, all along, exactly why I married her.
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23
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KEELEY
My father emails, reminding me about the invite Shannon sent last week. As if I want to go to this dumb party for Karl when all I got when I graduated from med school was an e-card.
But I suppose this is a golden opportunity to spring my new husband and future baby on them before one of those things disappears, as long as I can get my future ex-husband on board with the charade.