Page 41 of The Wrong Track
“Tobin! Are you all right? Does it hurt? Did you jar it or break the cast?”
“It’s good,” he said. “It aches a little now, but that’s it.”
“We should go to the doctor tomorrow.”
“We have the pediatrician visit,” he reminded me. “Which I’m attending because I want to, not because I think you can’t handle it.” He lifted the wet baby, which I was glad about because I was sure she was slippery, but I held the towel and he put her into my arms. “I’m also coming with you now to put a gown on her, not because you can’t do it alone, but because I like seeing her new belly button. It’s very cute.”
“And you were afraid she was going to get an outie, so you’ve been checking.” I knew it was true, because that was one of the three things he’d said he was afraid of. “Starfish, raw meat, and outies,” I recited. “You’re kind of a weird guy.”
I looked quickly over my shoulder at him but he only laughed, and he picked up a curl of my hair and tugged it. “Everyone’s afraid of starfish.”
Somehow, between the two of us, we also managed to put Ella in the crib by reading only eight books, doing an extra diaper change, and listening to a minimum of crying. “She likes the mobile,” Tobin said confidently. “I knew it would work.” He’d been in the garage the day before painting and stringing together pieces of cardboard and his creation was certainly eye-catching. And maybe the baby liked it, because when we turned up the monitor in the living room, we couldn’t hear anything but her breathing and making some little sounds that didn’t seem distressed.
“Maybe tonight is the night that she sleeps all the way through,” he said, but a lot less confidently. “I’ve been reading about when that might happen.”
He’d been reading a lot, I’d found, even though it wasn’t his favorite thing to do. He’d known all about labor and birth, for example, when I’d had no idea. I’d kidded myself into believing that neither of those things was going to happen to me, so I didn’t have to know about them. He’d also been on all kinds of websites about infant sleep, brain development, milestones, toys, and anything else.
“Maybe she will,” I said, and sounded even more doubtful.
“What should we do? Go to a bar? Hit a club? Fall asleep on our feet?”
I was almost already doing the last one. “Is there hockey on?”
“Are you serious?” he asked me. “Yeah, the playoffs are happening now. You really want to watch sports? It’s like you were trying to think of things to make me like you more.”
I had mostly been thinking of it as an activity where my mind could go blank, but when he said that about liking me more, I felt my heart thump. “I don’t mind sports,” I said carefully.
“Just wait until football season,” he promised. “The three of us will be on this couch wearing Woodsmen orange every weekend.” He kept talking about football as he searched for the remote.
Football season started in the summer, I thought, or maybe the fall. Did he really think I’d be here until then? My heart thumped again. What was my plan now? Arizona? California? Me, and Ella, alone?
“What? Why do you look like that?” Tobin asked.
“Like what?”
“I would say scared,” he said. “I won’t really force you two to watch hours of football.”
“I don’t mind sports,” I repeated. “I’ll be right back.” I snuck into my room and took a quick puff of the inhaler, and then I looked into the crib at the baby sleeping. She had her arms above her head, her little hands covered by the mittens of her gown, the sleep sack that Annie had given her zipped up over her chest. She was good here, very good, but I would try to make it ok somewhere else. Ideas spun through my mind about where we should go. I did still have one trump card to help me get there, in the form of Kilian’s packages. I’d taken them out of the lining of that brown chair and they were hidden again, but I could use them to start a new life for us.
Did I want one? It wasn’t fair to stay here with Tobin. If we left, he might start up with Lulu again or he could find someone else. It was unlikely that any woman would want him while he had us to shoulder. And really, it wasn’t even fair to have someone like me under his roof. His partner Bill already knew that. I’d seen him watching me, staring like someone needed to keep an eye on me, and he was right. No, we couldn’t stay here. My hand clenched on the crib’s railing as I thought about leaving, though, and so did everything in my chest.
“Is she ok?” Tobin whispered from the doorway, and I nodded and let the baby sleep. The hockey game did distract me, and it was very comfortable to sit with him on his couch even if the black leather upholstery was a little slick and cold.
“I could recover this for you,” I said, patting the cushion. “If you wanted.” It was the least I could do after everything he’d done for me.
“You can do what you want to this place. All of my furniture is hand-me-down and I don’t even really notice it. Icing,” he said, pointing at the screen. “They’re not going to call that?”
“Did Lulu ever think about moving in here?” I asked.
“Uh, no, not really. She wanted to get married before we lived together.” He glanced over at me. “I didn’t want to get married. She wanted us to move to Florida, actually, and I said no. I think that was the beginning of the end for us.”
“She’s different from what I thought,” I said. “Hazel described her to me as beautiful but kind of…”
“I know what Haze thinks of Lulu,” he told me. “Everyone thinks she’s immature. Childish. Petty. Manipulative.”
“But that’s not all there is to her, right? She really came through for me. And she really loves you, she still loves you even though you broke up.”
Tobin nodded, his eyes on the screen. “She wants us to get back together. She told me today.”