Stefan and I glanced at each other. “Not yet,” I said before Stefan could reply. “This is my boyfriend.” For some reason, it felt incredibly good to say, freeing. We’d lied to the whole world for too long, and being able to say it just once, even if it was to this stranger, was just what I needed.
“Darn,” the woman said. “I was hoping he was your brother or something. My boyfriend left me when I told him I was pregnant and I’ve been looking for a real man.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, not knowing anything better to say. Seriously, this was getting damn weird. Was she working at the store or looking for another man?
“It’s okay,” the woman said, resting a hand on her belly. She sighed dreamily at Stefan. “You both look pretty young. How old are you?”
“We just graduated college,” Stefan replied smoothly. He chucked a thumb at me. “Good DNA, that’s all. She has a degree in biology and I’m an assistant coach.”
“Oh. Well, that’s nice.” She smiled again at us, mainly at Stefan, as another costumer walked into the store. “Well I wish you both good luck.”
She waddled off to greet the new costumer and I turned to Stefan. “Kind of desperate, wasn’t she?”
Stefan grinned. “When you need it, you need it.”
I scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we’re having a boy.”
I slapped him on the arm. “Are not!”
We continued looking around the store for several minutes until I had my fill.
“Can I buy this?” I asked Stefan as we were about to walk out of the store. I was still holding the baby girl jumpsuit and had forgotten about it.
Stefan peered at me skeptically. “You sure you want to do that without really knowing the sex? And what if Evelyn were to find it?”
“I’ll hide it where she’ll never find it. I just want to have it to look at whenever I’m sad.”
Stefan made a face, like he knew I was being nuts. “Fine. If that’s what will make you happy, go ahead. You just have to promise that Mom will never see it.”
I grinned, happy to have gotten my way with him. “I swear.”
We walked up to the counter and prepared to pay for the little outfit. I was overcome with giddy excitement. This would be our first official purchase as parents and I couldn’t be happier.
When the cashier asked for payment, I suddenly turned and took off toward a section of the store.
“Bella, where are you going?” Stefan called.
“I’ll be right back,” I sent over my shoulder.
I ran and grabbed the item and rushed back to the counter, breathless.
“Here,” I said, setting the baby blue outfit on the counter next to the pink one. I smiled up at Stefan and winked. “Just in case.”
Chapter 20
Bella
I spent the next few weeks doing chores and running odd errands for my mom. Since I wasn’t going to school, she said, I needed to make myself useful in the meantime.
She felt so strongly about this that she fired the housemaid so that I'd have to do more work. Now, under normal circumstances, this would've made me go flip mode on my mom because I felt she was being absolutely hateful.
But, given the circumstances, I didn’t want to argue. I didn’t want any more stress put on my body than I was already dealing with.
So I became Mom’s personal slave, doing any and everything she told me to. I was to clean both floors of the house, wash the dishes, do everyone’s laundry, take Terry’s suits and her dresses to the cleaners, go pick up take-out, and anything else that struck her fancy.
I supposed this was her way of punishing me for daring to quit college in the middle of the semester, but if she really knew what was going on with me, maybe she wouldn’t have been so quick to make me her slave.
Or, maybe she'd just kill me?
I sure didn’t know. Just how bad was Mom’s temper?
On top of working me like a dog, Mom would pester me with incessant questions. I’m sure she was only trying to figure out what happened back at college, but some of her questions were downright bizarre.
I had no idea where these questions were coming from. Maybe the shrink had talked with her or something, but I was relieved that she wasn’t hounding me about NSU.
The other problem I had was eating. My appetite had seemed to more than double since being back home. I wanted to eat anything and everything. To make matters worse, I developed odd cravings for things like oysters and scallops when I had never been a big fish eater.
But I knew such things were perfectly normal. In my free time, which was very little, I read up on pregnancies and the changes a woman’s body will go through during it. A changing appetite was one thing that popped up again and again, but it only made me more nervous. I knew that if I kept eating like I was, I might wind up as big as a barn.