Out On a Limb

A soft knock is drowned out by the sound of the toilet flushing.

“You okay in there, champ?” Sarah asks from the other side of the door.

I groan, letting my forehead hit the cool tiled wall next to the toilet seat.

“Do you need anything? Water?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say, reaching for the toilet paper to wipe my mouth, my throat dry. “Water, please.”

“Okay, Bo’s coming in.”

What? No! He can’t see me like—

“Hey,” Bo says, his voice full of sympathy as he opens, then immediately shuts, the door.

I whine internally as I imagine what I must look like, tucked in an upright foetal position against the wall. Sarah’s aversion to anything bloody or gross is turning out to be extremely inconvenient. She could have at least sent Caleb in instead.

“I have water and some of those ginger candies. Sarah said they might help.” He hands me the glass of water, then twists open the paper candy wrapper. “Do you want one?”

I nod, avoiding eye contact, and present my palm to Bo. He drops the golden candy into it, then tosses the wrapper into the garbage next to the toilet.

“So this is an everyday thing, huh?” he asks, opening a drawer under the sink.

“A few times a day lately.”

“Shit, Win. I’m sorry,” he says. I look toward him when I hear the sink turn on. He’s holding a washcloth under the water, letting it soak. Seconds later, he turns off the tap and wrings it out twice before folding it into a neat rectangle.

With a firm grip on the corner of the bathroom’s vanity, Bo supports his weight as he lowers to one knee. “Here,” he says, delicately pushing my hair aside and placing the cool cloth on the back of my neck.

I have to admit, it feels amazing. Though Bo’s far-too-big body is far too near in Sarah’s far-too-small half bath. I can’t tell if the nausea is residual or a sign of more to come, or if it’s overwhelm due to Bo’s looming proximity.

“Can you open the door?” I ask, letting myself look into his eyes as I take the washcloth from him and bring it to my cheek. They’re such nice eyes. Gentle. “I think I need some… space.”

“Yeah, of course.” He twists to stand with a groan. “Let me know when you’re ready to go. Sarah gathered up all your things, and I’ll be just out there if you need anything else, okay?”

“Yeah, thanks,” I say as he bows his head and shuts the door.

I press the cool cloth to my forehead, letting it also fall against my closed eyelids and the bridge of my nose. Another fun symptom. Whenever I throw up, my head starts aching. Eventually, a pressure headache forms behind my eyes, making my vision blurry and every sound all too intense.

My next appointment with Doctor Salim is in five weeks. I’ve set that as a benchmark for how long I’ll tolerate feeling like a walking vomit factory. If it goes beyond that, I may simply let the illness take me. I’ll go to the seaside like all the sick or slightly insane women used to, and I’ll will myself to either be done with it or enjoy an early grave.

Or, perhaps, I’ll ask Doctor Salim to prescribe that medicine she suggested.

One of those two things.

When my stomach finally rests and my glass of water is empty, I slowly stand, wash my hands, and rinse out my mouth. Leaving the bathroom, I offer polite murmured goodbyes to Sarah and Caleb as Bo carries all my things out to his car.

The crisp winter air helps slightly, and I don’t even attempt to put my coat on before getting into the passenger seat, enjoying the cool air on my clammy, hot skin.

“Are you warm enough?” Bo asks, shutting his door behind him, a cluster of snow falling and melting instantly inside his car.

“Balancing out,” I answer, resting my cheek on the headrest.

“Okay. Mess with the dials however you’d like,” he says, opening the GPS on his screen. I give him my address, and then we’re off.

At some point in the twenty-ish-minute drive between my house and Sarah’s, I fall asleep.

I’m woken up by the sound of gravel under tires in the back parking lot of my building. I lift my forehead away from the window and attempt to subtly wipe the drool off my chin. Bo pulls into a visitor’s spot as I blink awake like a startled creature.

The tiny nap and cool air did help, though. I feel a lot better.

“Sorry, uh, I fell asleep.”

“Yeah, I figured that out halfway through my drawn-out tale of my own public puking incident in middle school.” He smiles at me, his hand on the gearshift between us. “Probably for the best,” he says, putting the car in park.

“Ah, well, next time.” I unbuckle and look at the back seat with all my items. “Thanks for the ride,” I say, beginning the mental calculation of how I’ll balance the gift basket, my purse, and the plant Sarah begged me to take and revive. I’m a pro at this point—you’d be amazed what you can do with one-and-a-half hands and a bull-like stubbornness.

“I’ll walk you in,” Bo says, already turning off the car. I don’t bother to argue, though I probably should. I haven’t cleaned my apartment other than some dishes and laundry in a few weeks between the exhaustion and the not-so-morning morning sickness. Work pretty much takes up all my energy, and by the time I’m home, I just fall asleep. I can barely muster up the desire to bathe.

We make our way through the freezing night air toward the back entrance—a grey metal door with cracked glass on one side that hasn’t been repaired since I moved in. I start shrinking internally, thinking about the state of my building’s hallways and lobby. The smoke-filled scent, the peeling flooring, the flickering lights, the… shit.

The broken elevator.

“Thank you.” I attempt to take my basket from him but fail when having to balance it with my purse, phone, and keys in one hand. Okay, just re-shuffle. I put my phone into my purse and use the keyring to hook my keys around my small hand’s thumb. There, now I have a free hand for the basket. Easy enough. “Okay, I’ll be on my way.” I take the basket and curl it against my left hip. “Have a good night!” I say, a little too peppy.

Bo’s tongue darts out as he narrows his eyes ever so slightly on me, then the lobby around us. “There’s no elevator here, huh?”

I wince. “Technically? There is. But it hasn’t worked in four years. So, no, sorry.”

“Which floor?” Bo asks, looking toward the stairs.

“Sixth,” I answer meekly.

A small inhale flares his nostrils. “That’s going to be quite the challenge.” He laughs without humour, scratching his eyebrow before placing that same hand on his hip.

I look over at the metal bench near the abandoned elevator and tilt my head for Bo to follow behind. Sitting, I lower the basket and plant to the floor and cross one foot in front of the other, shifting nervously in my seat.

“I’ve been so tired since I found out about the baby, but I’ve been meaning to look for a new place,” I say, looking at the floor. “This building kind of sucks, honestly. It’s not like I’d want to do six flights of stairs super pregnant either. I might end up giving birth on them if I do.”

Bo laughs quietly, more of a breath than anything.

“And, obviously, your ability to get inside of wherever I live is a necessity now too,” I say, gently sitting up to look at him.

He slowly tilts his head up toward me. His eyes are hesitant but appreciative, I think.

“I know we haven’t figured out a lot of our plan, or anything else really… but you should be able to come visit whenever you want and—”

“Not just visit, Win. I want…” He shakes his head, taking in a long breath. “I’m not sure how to say this without it sounding demanding, but I’d like to have the baby at my place too. Overnights or weekends. I’d like to be as involved in their daily life as you are.”

Well, the nausea is back.

A powerful maternal possessiveness falls over me. I know that I’ll need help with the baby, but no part of me has considered Bo to be anything but help until now. This, what he’s asking for, is so much more than that. I breathe through the influx of emotions rising up, waiting to calm down before I formulate a response. Logically, I know that what he’s asking is fair. That this baby is as much his as it is mine. But, perhaps a touch selfishly, I haven’t imagined any scenario where I’m not the main parent and Bo is the additional. The second, supporting parent not all of us got to have.

“I don’t know when that would be possible,” I stutter. “I’m hoping to breastfeed. For the first few months, the baby couldn’t be away from me for more than a few hours.”

“Maybe, er, well, could we do both? Bottles and breastfeed?” he asks, shyly. “I suppose I can only do one of those things.” He chuckles anxiously.

“I’ve heard that it can be confusing for babies to switch, and it can mess with the mom’s milk supply and…” I take a deep, sharp inhale. “Okay, let’s put a pause on this. We don’t have to figure it all out right now. I was just going to say that I’ll focus on getting a new place. Something accessible and nicer if I can cover the rent. This apartment was the only affordable one left in the city four years ago, so I doubt I’ll find something much better, but I’ll try. We’ll aim for accessible and see where we land.”

“How much do you make at the café? If—if you don’t mind me asking.”

“A little over twenty grand a year, after taxes. Then, usually, about six thousand in the summer from lifeguarding.”

Bo rests both of his elbows on his knees, then curls his arms to support either side of his neck, appearing deep in thought. His eyebrows are pressed together, creating a deep crease in the centre of his forehead, and his jaw is tight, his back teeth shifting against themselves.

“We will talk about all of this, Bo. I promise. It’ll be fair. To both of us. I don’t want to exclude—”

“Move in with me,” he says, interrupting, his eyes holding on me with a hesitant yet somehow certain stare. “I have a spare room and an office that we could turn into a nursery. My house is small, but it’s nice. If you move in, you can save money for a new place while pregnant, and we can get through the newborn stage together. I’d hate for you to be on your own for every long, sleepless night. I don’t want to mess with your routine or the baby’s feeding schedule so… yeah. What do you think?”

“I think you’re a stranger,” I say, taken aback, the words falling out of me.

“Not for long, right? What better way is there to get to know someone?” He clears his throat. “And, I mean, strangers move in together all the time and call themselves roommates.”

“What if we hate it? What if I’m a nightmare to live with? Or you are?”

“Then… you can move in with Sarah and Caleb, maybe. Or, hell, you can have my house and I’ll find a hotel or something.”

“I don’t know. It seems like we’re already way in over our heads, and then we’d be roommates too?”

“Think about it for as long as you need to, but I think it makes sense.” Bo swallows, his eyes darting down to my stomach and holding for a lingering, heavy pause. “I can’t do much else right now,” he says lowly. “I can’t help in any other way, but I can give you a place to live that will work for all three of us. If you moved in next month, we could agree to a year. Six months of pregnancy, six months of baby. Then we can reassess. You could save a lot of money during that time. It might even be enough to put a down payment on something. Or maybe you’ll want to stay a bit longer, or leave earlier… I don’t know. What I do know is that I want to help however I can, and this seems like a way for me to do that.”

I think about the last time I moved in with a guy. Jack said all the right things too. How we were starting the rest of our lives together. That we would save so much money by splitting everything. What do we have to lose? he asked me, dark eyes wide with excitement he never normally showed, his black hair sticking up on all ends. Sometimes it was like Jack was so filled with life it was firing out of him like bolts of electricity. He could charge me up just as easily as he’d burn me out. It was up to him each day which option it was going to be.

We had only lived together for a few weeks when Jack shouted at me for the first time. We’d gotten into arguments before, but nothing like that. I burned our dinner, and three hours later, he was still berating me for wasting his food and smoking up his house. It was like that from then on. Even though I was covering most of the bills, it was his place, his food, furniture, routine. I was infringing. A trespasser in my own space.

“I’d want to pay rent. At least a little bit,” I say, my eyes shifting from side to side as I think. “And I’d also like to have something in writing. Something legally binding that says we are committing to at least a year, and that if something happens where one of us has to leave before then, we will help with that person’s costs of moving or finding something new.” I mean me. There’s no way this guy would move into a hotel before kicking me out of his home.

“Sure, whatever you’d be most comfortable with.”

“And I’d like to be able to have friends over. Sarah and Caleb. I’d want to feel like it was my space too.”

Bo’s eyebrows push together again, his head tilting. “Of course, Win.” He stares at me a little too long. “It would be just as much your home as mine. You could paint the entire thing neon green for all I care.” He laughs. “Okay, well, maybe run it past me first. But you could.”

“I’m going to sleep on it,” I say, moving to pick up my gift basket. I offer him a tight-lipped smile as I stand. “I appreciate the offer, though. Thank you.”

“We’re in this together, Win.”

“I know,” I agree reflexively. I don’t truly know whether I believe it. Right now nothing feels certain at all. Not a single thing.

“Let me know when you get in safe.” He points to the stairs.

“Between here and the sixth floor?” I ask dryly.

“Yes.” He leans back farther on the bench. “Because I’ll be sitting right here until you let me know,” he says stubbornly.

I roll my eyes, shuffling the basket against my hip. “Fine.” I make my way across the lobby and onto the bottom step before I turn to ask, “Do you have your own washer and dryer?”

His smile is slow forming but entirely optimistic. “I do.”

I nod. “And how do you feel about plants?”

“Love them,” he fires back without hesitation.

“Okay,” I say, turning back around and bracing myself for the climb ahead.

“Okay,” he repeats, the optimism in his voice echoing around the lobby. “I have a good feeling about this, Fred!”

“Uh-huh!” I highly doubt I’ll be calling him my roommate anytime soon, but it doesn’t hurt to think it over.