and worry while we’re apart?
Would it change him going on the show? Or instead would telling him right now look like my own desperate attempt to keep him from doing it so I could get my way?
I feel like there’s no way to win here.
If I don’t tell him, I’m the awful bitch who kept a child from him.
If I do tell him, I’m the awful bitch who tried to hold him back from something he had already committed to doing.
Either way...I come out the bitch.
And that’s not fair.
But I don’t have much time left to sit on it and think about it before I’ll have to wait another thirty days.
So I bring my problem to the one person I’ve brought all my problems to since I moved to Milwaukee with my asshole ex.
I knock tentatively on my boss’s door.
“Hey ho, it’s Danielle Preg-o,” he sing-songs, and I roll my eyes.
“Patrick Patrick, don’t be a dick,” I sing-song back.
“My parents had to name me something that rhymes with dick,” he says.
I giggle as I collapse into one of the chairs facing his desk. I set a hand on my stomach even though the only thing I’ve really felt from this pregnancy so far is a bunch of nausea and a bit of morning sickness.
“What’s up, buttercup?” he asks. He sets down the pen he was holding poised over the paperwork on his desk when I walked in.
“I don’t know what to do.”
He laughs. “So how is this any different from the eighty-seven-thousand conversations we’ve had over the last two months?”
I lift a shoulder, and my voice shakes with emotion as I speak. “He’s going on some reality show and he’ll be gone up to a month with no way to get in touch.” I swipe at a stray tear that tips over my lids and splashes down onto my cheek.
“Oh,” he says. He stands and walks around his desk. He sits in the chair next to me and grabs my hand. He squeezes it. “I’m so sorry, Danielle.”
I draw in a deep breath. I hate crying any time, but at work is the worst. “We got into a stupid fight about it and I said things I regret but I’m too stubborn to apologize because I think he’s stupid for doing it.”
“Doing what? The show?”
I nod. “And we won’t even get the chance to see each other before he’s going to be locked in some house for weeks and I’ll be fat as fuck by the time he gets out.”
“Uh, babe, you won’t be fat as fuck. You’ll be showing your pregnancy. Do you even realize how incredible your body is that it can do that?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “I thought you said women’s bodies were hideous.”
“Not pregnant ones.” He laughs. “Those are beautiful. You are beautiful.”
“I love you,” I say. “And your cheesy compliments. But I’m still looking for an answer here. Do I tell him before he goes into lockdown for up to thirty days?”
“They’re not cheesy. They’re sincere. And since you’ve been sketchy about the details of this show, I don’t have much to go on. Still, my advice would be no. If you two are on the outs about him going on it, it makes you look petty to lay this nugget on him right now. Besides, you’ll still be pregnant when he gets out. Tell him then.”
“I mean, yeah. Hopefully. God willing.” When I first found out about this pregnancy, I was scared. That hasn’t changed. It took a minute before I started to get excited. And now...well, I’m at a point in my life where I’m ready for this. I’m excited. I’m in love with this thing growing inside me. I feel like I know this baby better than anyone in the world, yet I’ve never even met him or her.
I’m just so damn terrified to do it alone, but that’s the reality whether or not Tyler knows about it. He’s gone thirty days here for a reality show, six months there for a tour...what’s next? It’s the life he leads.
I realize none of that warrants me keeping this news from him forever, but ultimately I think I agree with Patrick. I’d rather go it alone like I have been for weeks than have the burden of guilt on me that I chose the worst possible time to lay this news on him. And maybe that’s my own way of apologizing to him for my stubbornness.
I nod resolutely. “You’re right.”
“I’m always right,