Unless he was entertaining, and by entertaining, he referred to hosting poker night, or the times when the ball team hung out, he hated the place. In fact, he hated everyplace he’d lived. It didn’t take hundreds of thousands of dollars and decades of therapy to know why. No place ever felt like home.
Flopping onto the sofa like a gawky rag doll, his clasped hands hung between his knees while his forearms rested on his thighs. He stared at his feet.
Head hanging, Arnie vigorously scraped his hands back and forth through his hair. He needed to catch a break. A sign of some sort … something, anything.
Settling in, he propped his feet on an ugly ottoman and breathed deeply to clear his thoughts.
His eyes drifted closed.
Each breath took him deeper.
Fog clung to the edges of his mind, but the dense, opaque haze was impossible to see through.
Inhale—hold—exhale.
The faint sound of water drew him deeper. He had the sensation of movement even though his immobile body felt lethargic and heavy.
He wandered deeper into the dense mist. Almost out of earshot came the sound of a charming giggle. Arnie followed it.
Every minute his beating heart got louder until he heard it thundering in his chest.
The haze enveloped him. He panicked when his orientation scrambled. A voice told him to be still.
Motionless and hardly breathing, he heard the air whisper his name. A shiver ran through him when the fog enveloped his body.
Words he couldn’t hear clearly enough remained out of reach.
Suddenly, a whooshing noise split the silence, and he felt himself sucked into the present.
Gasping like a dead man brought back to life, his eyes flew open. Clutching a hand above his heart, Arnie dropped his jaw.
Three words. The universe gave him three words. Three words to hang his entire future on.
Find. Please. Hurry.
20
She looked like shit.
Summer stared at her face in the bathroom mirror. There were dark smudges beneath her eyes. The blotches on her skin resembled a map of the moon.
Her hair wasn’t faring any better. The long, sleek, sun-kissed California blond style she’d sported since forever was a thing of the past. She didn’t have the energy to break out all her hair products and give herself a smooth blowout. The waves she tried so hard to tame took over like crabgrass, and her usual sunny blond color was washed-out and dull—another side effect of pregnancy.
Leaning closer to the mirror, she grimaced. The stories she read about ‘pregnancy nose’ seemed like bullshit until she noticed her once perky schnoz spreading like melting butter.
Oh well. What was one more indignity on top of the previous dozen? Once you explosively fart in public and become an expert on hemorrhoids, a bit of fat-nose barely raised her heart rate.
Flushing the toilet, she capped a bottle of poo deodorizer and tossed it into a basket with several others. The QVC impulse buy started out as a bathroom accessory. That was until the past couple of days of stomach distress became the new normal. Now she was obsessed with spraying the bowl—just in case—and praying for odor containment.
Padding barefoot from one corner of her little apartment to the other, she straightened up, fluffed the sofa pillows, and double-checked her overnight bag. Summer over-prepared. It gave her something to do and helped alleviate her growing anxiety.
Uber and Lyft were in her phone’s contacts list. So was the number for an emergency transport option available through the clinic.
With four days till her due date, she was more than ready even though everyone kept telling her most first pregnancies go longer.
Caressing her baby bump, she ate half a dozen Fig Newtons straight from the package. The baby was quiet—a sign of what was coming.
Another sign was the dull ache low, low, low in her belly. It felt like Tink’s head was pressing against Summer’s pubic bone.
Cy asked her to check in every day instead of once a month, even if all she did was leave a voice message. He seemed agitated the last time they spoke. When pressed about his demeanor, he’d only say he had a lot on his mind.
As she placed the check-in call, the words she’d rehearsed danced in her mind. It didn’t matter whether Cy or Joanne answered. She had something to say no matter who it was.
“You’ve reached the Westmoreland headquarters. State your business and be brief about it.”
Summer cleared her throat. “Hi, guys. It’s me, calling to check in. All is quiet here in hot and steamy Sherman Oaks.”