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SEVEN

MILLIE

“Hey, Tanner wants to know if you’re still being sick,” Radley shouted, waiting until she had confirmation, namely the sound of me hurling my guts up. “I’ll tell him yes.”

I slumped down on the floor of the bathroom.

I’d spent so much time in here recently that I’d considered dragging my bed in here, or at least a small cot.

In the two days since I’d officially accepted the pregnancy, all this future baby had done was punish me with wave upon wave of sickness.

Given it was already one p.m., it clearly wasn’t limited to morning. It wasn’t limited to any time.

It was all the time sickness.

I don’t know how long I had been lying there, but the sensation of a cold washcloth being placed over my forehead had my eyes opening.

Radley slid down next to me and leaned against the pedestal of our bathroom sink. “It’s amazing you’ve got anything left.”

“Right.” I groaned. “They should take pictures of pregnant women like this, it’s the most effective form of birth control I can think of.”

“Too late for you though.” She grinned, causing a smile to lift the edges of my mouth. “On the plus side, you look better than you did yesterday, which is something.”

Ugh, yesterday I’d been in bed almost the entire day.

I only had to think about leaving the dorm and I was sick again.

I ran my hand over my stomach. It was hard to tell, but it was possible I felt a little better than I did yesterday, and even though I’d spent most of my waking hours with my head in the toilet, I was hungry. Really hungry.

“If I shower quick, can we go for lunch? I’m starved.”

“Absolutely, and something arrived for you, which I have a feeling will tide you over until we find you some proper food.”

That had me perking up. “Something arrived? What?”

Radley stood and held her hand out to pull me with her. “Come and see.”

I followed her into our dorm room, immediately spying a large pink box sitting on my desk, wrapped with a wide pink satin ribbon.

The bizarre thing about pregnancy sickness I’d learned was that feelings of nausea could immediately disappear, unlike food poisoning, which left you feeling queasy all day.

And that’s what happened because I knew exactly where this box came from—The Darling Bakery on West Tenth Street.

This baby might be turning me into the girl from The Exorcist , but it was also turning me into a chocolate fiend.

I liked chocolate as well as the next person, but right now I could murder for it and be quite content with the repercussions.

The only thing that had settled my stomach yesterday was a bar of Swiss milk chocolate Radley had run out for.

I couldn’t have ripped the ribbon off quicker. “Did you DoorDash these?”

Radley shook her head. “No, they’re not from me.”

Lifting the lid off the box, I inhaled the buttery, sugary, chocolate scent of freshly baked, still-warm brownies and chomped down on half of one before I could ask who they were from.

Removing an envelope I hadn’t noticed in my haste to open the box, Radley took one look at my chocolatey, sticky fingers and opened it.

Thought these might help.

Tanner x

“Aww. That’s cute.” Radley simpered. “I tell ya, I’ve been very impressed with his response to the situation. Unexpected.”

I nodded as a second brownie followed the first. I guessed this was part of his plan to prove himself, either that or distract me with chocolate.

If it was the latter, the plan could well be working.

Perhaps that’s why it felt so much less annoying than it used to, back when Tanner’s attention always made his end goal appear to be getting in my panties.

Yeah, yeah, I know .

I debated on gobbling up a third brownie but decided against it. I’d been sick enough this morning, and instead, hurried into the shower. I suddenly felt much better.

“Decide where you want to go for lunch. I’ll be ten minutes.”

I t ended up being half an hour by the time we made it into the sunshine, accompanied by Jake and Ethan, two of Radley’s Secret Service detail.

The delay was mostly down to the fact that the button on my jeans kept popping open, so I gave up, threw on a pair of shorts and a loose button-down, and tried not to think about replacing my entire closet.

Radley still hadn’t come up with a place to go for lunch and was running through a list of food options to see if there was anything I wanted or, more importantly, didn’t want and wouldn’t likely be sick at the thought.

“Burgers? Italian? Mexican? Thai? What about pizza? Salad?” she mused.

“Meh.”

“Come on, there must be something the baby wants besides chocolate.”

I thought about it hard. It was true I couldn’t live off chocolate no matter how much I wanted to. Running through her list again the only thing that really stood out was Mexican. Specifically, tacos. Soft shell tacos with lashings of pico de gallo. Maybe this baby liked sweet and spicy.

“What about the taco place down by Central Park?”

When her eyes lit up, I knew I’d hit gold. Pushing my arm through hers, I linked us together. “Perfect. Lead the way.”

Even though it had only been two days since I’d last been outside, the warmth of the sun on my face was enough to reinvigorate the parts of me that the brownies hadn’t quite reached.

I hadn’t spent a summer in New York before, and I was yet to decide whether it was as stifling and sweaty as a summer in D.C.

; today certainly was. Walking across Van Am, anyone who didn’t have summer classes was out on the lawns soaking in the rays.

My eyes focused on a couple reading together, reading the same book. The girl was holding it and when they got to the end of the page, her boyfriend would turn it. Teamwork equals dream work.

“I think we should check off some of your list today.”

I tore my eyes away from the couple. “Like what?”

“After lunch, we should go to Brown’s and buy some pregnancy books.

I was reading your leaflets and we both have a lot to learn.

I figure if we split the load and compare notes, like we do for class, then we can cover more ground.

I’m sure they’ll all say the same thing, but having a couple of opinions won’t hurt.

Then we need to start looking for a new place to live. ”

Instead of the waves of nausea, a wave of emotion appeared with little to no notice, enough that I needed to take an enormous sniff.

Radley leaned around to look at me. “Are you crying?”

Pushing up my sunglasses, I wiped my eyes. “No, it’s the baby.”

“The baby’s crying?”

“No, it’s making me cry.”

“ Why is it making you cry?”

“I don’t know.” I sniffed as we waited at the crosswalk on Amsterdam Avenue. “Maybe because it knows how lucky I am to have you as a best friend. How lucky it is to have you as an auntie. And that you want to read my baby books with me, even though I’m sure you’ll find them so boring.”

“Of course I want to read your baby books. And I’m going to be the best auntie. Just you wait.” Her smile beamed down at me. “I’ll be there for all of it. The ultrasounds, the baby classes, the birth…if you want that.”

I was about to answer when a lady exited Morningside Park in a flat-out sprint, and the Secret Service pulled us out of the way just in time, given there was no indication she was about to slow down.

She was wearing the type of running attire only those familiar with marathons wore, with a little backpack and plastic straw for sucking down energy drinks on the go.

The kind I’d seen Radley wear on her runs even though she swore blind she didn’t.

“You want to be there at the birth?”

Radley’s arm wrapped around my shoulder, and she pulled me into her side.

I was a good six inches shorter than her, so I always ended up nestled into her chest. “Of course, ride or die. That’s what we are.

You’re going to need someone to fetch you ice chips and tell you to push when you need to push. Unless your mom will come up.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I think we can both count on my mom coming up.”

In the week since I’d told her, my mom was coming around to the idea of becoming a grandma.

The first thing she’d made clear under no certain terms was that she absolutely didn’t look old enough to be one.

The last couple of days she’d been sending me pictures of when she’d been pregnant with me, and remembering how she’d felt.

It was becoming hard to tell who was messaging and checking on me more—my mom or Tanner. Which reminded me?—

“I should probably ask Tanner what he wants. I think the ultrasounds are his, but you can fight it out with my mom on the birth.”

“I’m happy to hand it over to the grandma. I’ll take the pregnancy yoga instead.”

“Pregnancy yoga?”

“Yeah, have you not been through those leaflets yet?”

I shook my head. “No, I was too busy being sick.”

“Well, one of them is a pregnancy yoga class at Hudson Yards, which is perfect as it’s by the boys’ apartment. I say we go to a class, and then visit them for snacks afterward. They have all the good food, and you’re going to need it now you’re eating for two.”

Eating for two was something I could get on board with. “Is pregnancy yoga like regular yoga?”

Radley shrugged. “Who knows, but I say we try it.”

“Sure, why not.”

“There’s also this app we have to download. It tells you what happens every week and how big your baby is.”

“How big it is?”

“Yeah, like it’s the size of a grape, or a sweet potato. Things like that.”

“Oh,” was all I replied while I imagined a sweet potato growing inside me, before I decided it was too weird.

Also, sweet potatoes came in all different sizes; some were small and fat, others were long and thin.

Then there were the ones that were long and fat.

Then I decided it was too confusing and probably better not to overthink it.

I had a feeling I’d be doing a lot of overthinking this year .