Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(38)
In the morning, Rake woke to Lizzie staring at him, wide-eyed, and looking more than a little alarming.
“All right, let’s do it,” she said, before he even had a chance to offer her a good morning.
“Do what?” he asked, still half asleep.
“Live together. Coparent. All that jazz.”
Rake blinked as her words soaked into him. A slow smile broke across his mouth. “Really? This is great, I’ll—”
“But I have one rule,” Lizzie said, placing a finger against his lips, her eyes level and serious. “You can’t fall in love with me.”
Rake jerked his head back, bashing it against the headboard. He tried to say something—anything—but the words got stuck in his throat and he started spluttering and coughing.
No. No, no, no. Absolutely not, he thought. I won’t fall in love. I doubt I’m even capable of it. But he couldn’t get any of this out as he choked on his own tongue.
Lizzie’s stern mouth suddenly broke into a grin, and she started to laugh. “Oh my God, you should see your face.” She snorted as she laughed harder. “Calm down, I’m messing with you. I couldn’t let an opportunity to drop a classic rom-com line pass me by, though, could I?”
She let out one more laugh before sitting up and getting out of bed, buzzing around the hotel room in a flurry of energy that seemed to have a distinct Lizzie signature to it.
Rake let out a silent sigh of relief. Good, he thought. Good, good, good.
They were on the same page. No relationship. No love.
Purely platonic coparenting.
Nothing could go wrong.
Chapter 20
Week six, baby is the size of a rainbow sprinkle.
A few hours after Rake left for the airport to catch his flight back to Australia, Lizzie was thanking the goddesses above and below for finally sending her a job interview. After hanging up with a cranky-sounding woman named Bernadette and jotting down the address to the aptly named Bernadette’s Bakery for her interview in a few hours, Lizzie squealed then spun in a quick circle around the kitchen floor before ransacking her pantry.
Maybe things will actually work out, she thought as she stood at the stove, whisking her Bad-Ass-Bitch Banana Pudding into luscious smoothness, the soft and delicate scent of vanilla and bananas wrapping around her like a comforting blanket.
Maybe.
As long as she actually got the job, kept the job, figured out how and when to ask for time off for doctor’s appointments, magically secured health insurance, and got adequate maternity leave.
The joys (logistical nightmares) of motherhood were filling her already.
The front door opened as she took her mixture off the stove to cool, and Indira, Harper, and Thu’s voices filled the apartment. They stopped in their tracks as they rounded the corner to the living room, obviously not expecting Lizzie to be there. She instantly felt so awkward that she did an odd little toe-ball-heel shuffle across the floor to grab a box of vanilla wafers and expel the energy pulsing through her.
“Hi,” Lizzie said at last, giving them a flap of a wave with the cookies in hand.
“Hi,” Indira said back, crossing the space to wrap her arms around Lizzie in a hug. “We’re sorry,” she added, placing a kiss on Lizzie’s temple.
Lizzie pulled back, tucking her hair behind her ears as she stared down at the floor. “Nothing to be sorry about,” she said. “I’m the one that’s the idiot.”
“You’re not,” Harper said, giving Lizzie a similar hug. “We were surprised and caught off guard and definitely didn’t say the right things … Right, Thu?”
Lizzie glanced over at Thu, who still hovered across the room, looking down at the ground. After a beat she looked up, meeting Lizzie’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. And Lizzie almost fainted from the shock of it. Thu wasn’t one to apologize, whether she was wrong or not.
“You really don’t have to be,” Lizzie said, waving her hands to dispel the tension. She would rather not talk about it. She would rather avoid revisiting the words said between them until the day she died. Then she wouldn’t have to feel them.
“No, Lizzie, I do. I was judgmental and bitchy, and I know that … Harper and Indira have made sure I know that,” she said, flashing the friends a sheepish grin. “But I … I worry about you … That maybe you won’t make the best decisions for yourself, and the last thing I want is to see you hurt. But it isn’t my place to judge you. I’m supposed to be your cheerleader, not your mother.”
Lizzie swallowed past the lump in her throat, doing a full-body shake to rid herself of the choked-up feeling. She walked across the apartment and gave Thu a giant hug.
“Thank you, Thu-Thu.” Lizzie pulled back, looking around at her friends. “I’m really fucking scared,” she admitted.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Harper asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee at the counter then moving to the couch. The rest of them followed suit.
Lizzie plopped down on the cushions, all the air leaving her body in a massive sigh. She launched into how she met Rake and their resulting two-night stand. She explained about the condom and taking the pregnancy tests and calling Rake. She told them everything except for the teeny-tiny, minuscule, probably-just-indigestion pangs of feeling in her chest for him. Because Lizzie didn’t do relationships. She’d been told her whole life what a burden her feelings were to others, and she’d rather die than subject a partner to that.