None of it seemed real.
“Camdyn.”
I looked at César. “This is seriously a baby,” I told him, and held up the ultrasound pictures in my hand to demonstrate.
He sighed. “I know. We need to talk more, but do you have to go back to work?”
“It’s a baby,” I said again. “Like, inside me. Here.” I indicated the place. Oh, Jesus and Mary. The world turned a little grey.
César bent down. “Camdyn, are you all right?”
I shook my head, trying to clear out the cobwebs. “I need to go to the winery. I said I’d be right back and it’s like three o’clock. My boss is going to be super angry.” God, I didn’t want to have to deal with Euna right now.
“Then come to my house later, after work. We can figure some things out.” He was still staring at me. “I don’t know if I should let you leave. You don’t look right.”
“You don’t look so hot yourself,” I retorted. He still hadn’t completely gotten his color back since the nurse had called him Dad, but I was wrong, he did look totally hot.
Wait a minute. If he was Dad, then I was…I was going to be Mom.
“Camdyn? Camdyn!” He grabbed both my arms. “Are you going to faint?”
“No, I’m fine!” I gasped. I yanked myself away from his hands. “I’ll see you later. Leave the gate open for me.”
César walked me to my car and he stood in the parking lot watching me pull away from the medical building. I drove my usual speed—warp—for a few miles before I remembered him asking me about climbing over the gate and what other crazy things I had been doing. Seventy miles per hour on an icy road suddenly seemed to qualify as one of those crazy things. I took my foot off the accelerator and frowned, considering the rest of my habits. It was all going to have to change, every single bit of my life. I looked over at the black and white pictures lying on the passenger seat and had to breathe pretty carefully so I wouldn’t hyperventilate.
My supervisor Euna certainly wasn’t happy about how long I’d been away from my desk, our lack of work projects notwithstanding. She was unhappy to the extent that she pulled in the winery’s general manager and they sat me down for a long chat about my sick days, doctor visits, and extended timeouts in the bathroom (which was a word that Euna couldn’t say, instead referring to me frequently “powdering my nose.”)
Usually, I relished a fight. Public speaking had been my favorite activity in school and I had run in class elections just to do the debates in the gym—I didn’t actually want to be the student body president and had been happy to cede my duties to the VP after winning. But today, I just sat and listened to them go on about my problems and I nodded instead of arguing. I didn’t have it in me to defend myself, not even to point out how well the New Year’s party had gone, and how we were already booked up for the summer.
“I understand that you are suffering from feminine issues,” Euna said significantly, her thin nose pinching in and whitening. “But we can’t let our female problems interfere with our jobs.”
“Right. Of course. They won’t anymore,” I answered shortly, and they let me return to my desk after I had to sign a paper indicating that we had spoken and I was aware of the shortcomings in my work. As far as I could tell, that was the first step on the way to firing me, but I didn’t let it stop me from practically bolting from the building at five o’clock on the dot. Then I plodded home in my car, unable to believe how long it took me to cover the distance if I went at the speed limit.
My roommates were already fighting in the living room when I came in. “That sucked, Kaya!” Morgan told her angrily. “It was totally uncalled for! You owe me for a new rear derailleur! You destroyed it when you threw my bike like King Kong! I’ll take it out of my rent.”
“The rent that was due last week?” Kaya asked. She held out her hand. “Pay up, bike boy.”
Since I hadn’t paid her either, I decided to sneak past them through the kitchen to my bedroom. It didn’t work.
“Camdyn!” Kaya barked at me. “Come sit down. It’s time for the house meeting.”
“Item number one on the agenda is destruction of property and pending lawsuits,” Morgan told her. Neither of them sat.
I sunk onto the couch, wanting to put my hands over my ears because I couldn’t deal with them right now. We had all been friends before, but living together hadn’t bonded us further. Right at the moment, in fact, Kaya looked like she was going to take Morgan out. If it came down to something physical, I put my money on her, even though he was in great shape from all the biking he did. Well, all the biking he had done before someone tossed his transportation into a snowbank.
“Morgan, shut the hell up about a lawsuit,” Kaya told him sharply. “You left it in the garage. That space is mine, for my car, which I use to go to work. Your bike apparently only brings you to bars. Which is why I don’t have a rent check from you!”
They continued to fight and I suddenly had insight into my sister’s feelings, when she had complained that
