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A tiny black furry flash tore out of the half-open sliding glass door and slid with a soft thud into the wall under Adam’s feet. Just barely righting himself, the Labrador puppy then collided into Adam’s chair leg, and jumped once to try to see what was in his owner’s dish. Then he bumped himself into the wall again, and ran back to Adam again, panting with the excitement of trying to figure out where the most fun was at that moment.
“Elmer,” Adam said. Elmer quivered, looking at Adam’s face, his hands, his dish, his feet. Adam chuckled. Elmer didn’t know his own name, but his exuberance at just hearing Adam’s voice was gratifying.
Adam hoped someone else would be just as happy to hear his voice, as soon as he got around to calling her to wish her a happy birthday. He wasn’t putting it off or anything. It wasn’t even dark yet. Technically, Molly’s birthday didn’t end until midnight.
Waiting until the absolute last minute would be kind of cheesy.
Well, they hadn’t talked to each other at all for approximately six months. She could certainly wait fifteen more minutes while he finished his pad thai. He put a forkful into his mouth. Elmer miniyelped and wagged his tail, watching Adam chew.
Besides, if Molly was so distressed at the six-month hiatus from his voice, she could just as well have picked up the phone and called him.
He shook his head at himself and took a long swallow of ginger ale. The truth was, a six-month hiatus wasn’t exactly unusual in their friendship. Even in college, living in the same dorm, they both knew—verbal acknowledgment unnecessary—that they couldn’t spend many consecutive hours in each other’s presence. Adam’s laid-back attitude got on Molly’s impatient nerves, and Molly’s constant running around gave Adam a serious case of motion sickness. Still, despite their obvious limitations, they each bestowed upon the other the title of best friend. For Adam—and he guessed for Molly, too—no one else had ever seemed to qualify for the position, and at some point soon after they met, the job was filled and no other applicants were considered.
After college, they’d gone their own separate ways, and drifted in and out of each other’s everyday lives. Some weeks, they chatted on the phone nightly. And sometimes months went by without an exchanged word or e-mail. The thing was, Adam always knew she was there, and that was enough. More than that was neediness, which sounded like a relationship, which was synonymous with trouble, as far as he was concerned.
The past six months were different, though, in that Adam had deliberately stayed away. The last time he’d seen her, she was leaving their ten-year college reunion with her long-unrequited crush, Zach Jones. Not just leaving with him, but leaving with his arm possessively around her waist, laughing up at him, her head thrown back so far her dark curls brushed the alluring curve of her behind.
Adam could have called her anytime after that. He could have said, “So. Zach Jones. You finally bagged that creep.” And she could have said, “Why do you care?” And maybe that’s why he’d never called—because he didn’t have an answer to that particular question for her. Or for himself.
She also could have said, “He turned out to be a jerk, just like you always thought.” And maybe that was one more reason he’d never called—because he didn’t want to give her the opportunity to not say that.
Whatever. Molly had a right to leave a party with anyone she wanted, even a schmuck like Zach Jones. And Adam had a right not to talk to her about it. So he’d limited his contact to a few random, somewhat impersonal e-mails—and her responses weren’t more than acknowledgments. Maybe she was avoiding him, too?
He shoveled in another mouthful of pad thai, slightly colder than the last bite. Elmer turned his puppy face up to the dark clouds in the distance and a stray raindrop blew into his eye. He blinked and shook and yelped again, wagging his happy tail.
The thing was, Molly had no idea Adam’s silence was anything but golden. She had no idea how inexplicably annoyed he was with her, with her uncharacteristically poor judgment. But if he failed to call her on her birthday, that was an egregious error. One that she would remember and hold over his head. That part, he could handle. But she’d be hurt, too, and that part he couldn’t handle. Hurting a woman like Molly Jackson by not calling her on her birthday would make him the schmuck.
Another bite of dinner was the deciding factor. “I think this is destined for the microwave, buddy,” he said, standing. Elmer leaped as high as he could, barely scraping Adam’s kneecap.
“Down, boy. I meant for tomorrow,” Adam said. “For lunch.” He stepped into his living room and Elmer trotted in behind him. Adam slid the door shut. “I have to make a call,” he continued, heading into the kitchen and reaching under the sink for the aluminum foil. “I have to wish Molly a happy birthday. I don’t know what else we’re going to talk about, but I know one thing is for sure.” He tore off a piece of foil, fitted it over the dinner plate and slid it into the refrigerator. “It’ll probably be a more interesting and complex conversation than these deep ones I have with you. No offense.”
Elmer wagged his tail, eyeballing the bottom shelf of the open refrigerator. Adam closed the door.
“You and I have fun, though, huh?” He rubbed his dog’s head. “Molly. Now that’s a girl who’s not about fun. She’s about work. Maybe she thinks work is fun.”
Elmer groaned and lay down on the linoleum.
“I agree. She’s nuts. People like that—” An image of his father floated to the front of his memory. Dad, who always did everything one-handed because the other hand was always clutching either a phone or a legal pad or his briefcase. “People like that—they die way too early,” Adam finished weakly. “They’re not for us.”
Elmer stared at him, uncomprehending.
“Molly is—well, Molly just needs to get out more,” Adam said.
Remembering that the last time he saw Molly she was going out and then he held it against her, he felt bad enough to finally grab the phone off the charger and dial her number. Before he got to the last digit, he hung up and tried to decide how he was going to musically deliver the happy birthday message. Traditional version? Beatles version? Finally deciding on the smelling-like-a-monkey version—even though he suspected he might have done that one last year—he redialed Molly’s number.
“Hello?”
Something was wrong. Molly’s voice was muffled, like she was speaking into the wrong end of a megaphone, or she was underwater, or she was…crying?
Molly? Crying?
“Molly?”
He was answered with a big, wet sniffle.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for the birthday blues,” he ventured.
No answer yet, but was that a sob? Sounded like a strangled something in the back of her throat.
Worried, Adam tried again with humor. “Come on, Moll, maybe you’re over the hill but you’re not totally decrepit yet. You looked pretty good the last time I saw you.” In that short black dress and illegally high heels, she’d looked better than pretty good, in fact. And he hadn’t been the only one who’d thought so.
“Thirty-two is not over the hill, Shibbs,” she finally said, petulance obvious even under the sniffling.
“Sure it is. It’s all downhill from here.”
“I’m not in the mood for jokes right now.”
That wasn’t what worried Adam, because Molly wasn’t exactly someone aligned to Adam’s constant levity. It was the tears that were concerning. “Come on. Didn’t your birthday wishes come true?”
“Actually, let me think,” she said, sniffling so hard she coughed twice. “You know, I guess they did come true after all. This morning I woke up and thought, ‘Oh, it’s my birthday. I think the best gift anyone can give me today is a nice big stack of walking papers!’ And I had to wait the whole day, but just as I was finishing up work, at the very last second, I got my wish!”
Adam’s mouth hung open, and he thought it was very possible he was just as surprised as Molly must have been. “You got fired?”
“Only by my biggest client. No big deal.” She sighed, and a little sob came out with it.
“I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”
“I never got fired before.”
Neither had Adam, but he considered it best to keep that to himself. Molly was well aware of his relaxed work style, and it wasn’t going to make her feel any better that she’d now been canned one more time than he had.
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened. It wasn’t me. It was budget cuts. They had to let a lot of people go. An outside consultant wasn’t someone they were willing to save at the expense of one of their full-timers.”
“Of course not.”
“I begged them to keep me. I told them I’d revise our plans, make it more affordable, anything. It was humiliating, the way I acted. It was even worse than the firing part.”
“Then why did you?”
“I’m losing a big chunk of income.”
“Listen, it wasn’t your fault.”
“Well, I can’t exactly write ‘Not my fault’ on my mortgage check.”
“No, but your business has been going well enough to land you that gig in the first place. M.J. Consulting has a great rep. You’ll get another job soon enough. And you’ve got other clients. So you’ll eat mac-and-cheese and Ramen noodles for a couple of weeks, and by then you’ll have recovered. Tighten your belt a little.”
“Trust me, that’s not even physically possible.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighed again, and this time it wasn’t accompanied by sobs and sniffles. Just noisy mouth breathing, caused by her now certainly stuffed nose.
“You know, I’ve been asking you for years to breathe heavy for me on the phone, babe, but you refused,” he joked.
“We can’t eat Ramen for weeks,” Molly said flatly.
“Sure you can. I can teach you 750 ways to cook that stuff—” Wait a minute. We? “We?” he asked. Was Zach Jones—there? Sitting next to her while she had this conversation? And if he was, why wasn’t he the one reassuring her, comforting her, trying to make her smile?
“Yeah. We. There’s two of us now, Adam. I haven’t— I suppose we haven’t talked in a while.”
“Well, I guess I should have known when you left with Jones at the reunion.”
She sputtered. “What? What do you take me for?”
“Just a woman who’s in love with a jerk.” Adam cringed. That just slipped out. He couldn’t help it. “Just tell him if he loves you, mac-and-cheese shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Oh, my God, Adam,” Molly said slowly. “If I didn’t know for a fact you’re smart, I’d call you an idiot. Zach’s not here. He dumped me when that weekend was barely over.”
“Molly, I’m—”
“Adam, I’m pregnant. It’s Zach’s.”
Adam opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and found he couldn’t stop doing it.
“I can’t believe I told you that. Actually, I’m glad I did,” Molly amended. “I’m sick of keeping it to myself. No one knows.”
“About the baby?”
“Well, it’s kind of hard to hide a baby when you’re six months pregnant. No one knows about where the baby came from. Everyone around here, all my neighbors and friends, sort of quietly assumed I went to a sperm bank.”
“And you sort of quietly didn’t correct them.”
“What’s your point?”
“No point. Getting it all straight.” So Molly, my-life-is-a-well-oiled-machine Molly, was single, pregnant and financially shaky. That would be all of it straight.
“So you were right,” Molly said. “Zach is a jerk.”
For some reason, Adam was missing the deep satisfaction he’d expected to have upon hopefully hearing those words.
“So,” Adam said, “what’s your plan for this? Molly Jackson has an answer to everything.”
A long pause. “I know. But my best answer is far from a sure thing.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Well, there’s this Dutch chemical company called ALCOP that’s ready to open up a big plant here in Rosewood in a couple of weeks. They’re looking for a consultant to implement their human resources needs.”
“That’s right up your alley.”
“I’ve got great experience, sterling references—including the firm who just fired me, by the way, because they actually did like me—and I know I’d be the best local person this chem company can find. And it will be about six times the size of any other firm I’ve done work for. It’s a yearlong commitment, so I can count on the money being good for at least that long.”
“What’s not the sure thing?”
“Well, see, I heard about ALCOP not too long ago, and I decided then not to go for it. I had that other big client and besides, I’ve heard that the company president, Pieter Tilberg, is notorious for not hiring women for key positions.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Illegal or not, the glass ceiling hangs in too many places to count. That’s the way it is. That’s part of the reason why I struck out on my own in the first place.”
“You are woman. I hear you roaring.”
“Funny, Shibbs. So I figured, I’m doing fine, I don’t have the time, and besides, if this ALCOP guy’s got an issue with women, I can only imagine the issues he’d have with a single, pregnant one. But now—”
“Now you’ve got to take that chance?”
“I got fired at four o’clock. And I’ve now spent about five hours putting together a proposal,” she said. “And you know what? It’s flawless. Anyone would hire me. Even I would hire me. But when I walk in there, Tilberg won’t see my brain. He’ll see my big belly. And he won’t want to see it again. I’ll lose this chance, not because of my résumé but because of my private life.”
She broke down again, sobbing hard. “I’ve hardly even had a private life,” she managed to add.
Adam’s mind raced to take Molly-like control. “All right. You have to calm down. Freaking out is not useful. It’s not on the to-do list.”
Molly, a historical fan of lists, ceased her sobs a bit. When he could count to at least five between them, Adam said, “Did you get yourself an interview?”
“At the very last second,” Molly said shakily. “By the time I pulled myself together and made my decision, it was nearly six o’clock. I think I caught the HR director as she was leaving for the day. I hope I didn’t sound too desperate.”
“You’re not desperate.”
“The hell I’m not.”
“You’re not. Desperate people are people without resources. You have plenty of those. You have your brains, your résumé, your references…and me.”
“Oh, you, huh? You work for Gibraltar Foods, which has nothing to do with what I do. And besides, you don’t even care about work. You’re not much help to me right now. No offense.”
“Listen,” he said, “you’re a woman, and although in this day and age you could certainly change that, you don’t want to. And you’re pregnant, and that’s not changing, either. But one element of your situation is changeable, flexible. Masqueradeable.”
“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about your being single. Why does anyone have to know that? Just during your big meeting, casually mention your devoted husband, Adam Shibbs.”
“What?” She pitched the word so high, she sounded like one of Alvin and the Chipmunks.
“Just tell the chem company honcho that you happen to be married. I’ll give you a ride from the interview and you can say your husband’s picking you up.”
“Adam, that’s not going to work. I appreciate the innovation behind the idea, but this place will undoubtedly do a background check. Then not only will I be exposed as single, but a big old liar on top of that.”
Adam blew a breath out from his bottom lip, and he felt the air on the tip of his nose. “So get married.”
Molly laughed an unamused, sharp laugh. “Oh, sure, no problem. Let me just run out right now and grab a man off the street.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Adam said, his heart beginning to pound a little faster even as his own words were falling out of his mouth. “I told you, you have resources, and I’m one of them.”
His heart was shocked at the decision his brain had made so hastily. Or, maybe his heart had made the decision without any brain input. Either way, Adam was not all together. He couldn’t be, or his ears wouldn’t have just heard his mouth say what it said.
There was an extended silence. Before Adam could use the empty time to question his own wisdom, before he could remind himself that Molly was precisely the kind of woman he could never make this sort of monumental decision with, he said, “I do believe this is literally a pregnant pause.”
“I’m just trying to take the time I need to make sure I did not misunderstand you,” Molly answered slowly.
“I apologize for not being totally clear,” Adam said. “What I meant to say was, let’s get married.”
He thought at first that the thud in his ear was his conscience trying to beat some sense into his skull.
A half moment later, he realized it was the loud echo of Molly’s abrupt disconnection.
Molly stared wide-eyed at the phone lying on the ground next to the wall, where she’d flung it as if it had spontaneously combusted next to her ear.
A second later, she scrambled over to snatch it off the floor and dialed Adam’s number. “Oops,” she said when he answered on the first half ring. “I, uh, I dropped the phone.” She shrugged one shoulder as if he could see it in his apartment twenty miles away.
“Of course.”
“So I missed the rest of your joke.”
“What joke?”
“You—you said, ‘Let’s get marr-marr—’” Molly cleared her throat. “You said—”
“Let’s get married.”
Hearing those words in Adam’s voice, did things as weird and foreign to her insides as the baby did. “Right, and then I hung up on the punch line.”
“There was no punch line.”
“Adam, can you cease and desist with the games right now? I had a hell of a day, and—”
“No games. I’m dead serious. We always said we’d marry each other anyway if we didn’t have better offers.”
Molly didn’t remind him that that agreement was supposed to go into effect when they turned thirty, and then in a semidrunken panic at his surprise party, they had mutually declared that pact null and void, at least until they hit forty.
What did it say about her that it was the closest she’d ever gotten to a marriage proposal? Well, until two minutes ago.
“Just for one year,” Adam went on. “The term of your job. What’s the big deal? Unless you have a boyfriend these days that I also have no idea about.”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t have a girlfriend at present. So I repeat, what’s the big deal? We’ll go to a justice of the peace, get married, you’ll get your great job, everyone’s happy.”
“What’ll you get out of it?”
He paused. “Helping you. We’re best friends. That’s my job.”
“This would have to be a serious secret,” Molly warned. “I mean, serious. I wouldn’t even tell my friends and neighbors the truth. I’m a terrible liar. If I tell one story to everyone, it’ll be easier.”
“Agreed.”
“Marry Adam Shibbs?” Molly mumbled. “Oh, that was meant to be internal dialogue,” she said, louder. “Sorry.”
“Hey,” he said, wounded. “I happen to know dozens of women who would love to marry me.”
“I’m sorry.” She paused. “I mean, we’d have to live together to keep this up. You’d have to live here.”
“You can come here, if you prefer.”
“No, there’s more room here and this is my—well, this is my house. I don’t want to be somewhere else. Especially while I’m pregnant.”
“Understood.”
“You’d be moving into my house,” she reiterated, and then she sank to the floor. She leaned her back against the wall and stretched her legs out in front of her. “We’re overlooking the small fact that we annoy the crap out of each other.”
“True. But I think this is important enough for us to compromise.”
“We can’t compromise our personalities, can we? For a whole year? We’re so different.” Which is why we’ve never even attempted to date, she added silently. Which is why we’re best friends.
Adam didn’t answer, and Molly realized he wouldn’t. He knew she could argue him into the ground on any point. So he’d rested his case, and it was now up to her.
Marry Adam?
It would be in name only. She knew he’d stick to the rules they set. But wasn’t marriage supposed to be something more, something about love?
She did love Adam. But not in the to-have-and-to-hold way. More like in the to-have-fun-and-to-hold-good-parties-with way. Right. She put a hand over her chest, felt the pounding of her heart. And that, that was merely because she was surprised.
It didn’t seem right to compromise on marriage. If she was ever going to bother taking this kind of step, it should be for the right, idealistic reasons.
“I can’t,” she finally said. “Adam, I can’t. Because you’re my friend, my real friend. Which you’re proving by offering to make this kind of sacrifice. And I will be grateful to you forever, but I just can’t.”
Adam still didn’t respond, and Molly thought for an impossible moment that she might have really hurt him, that he felt rejected. A little pain stabbed at her heart. Then he said, “All right. I thought it was a good idea, but it’s just as well. I’ve heard that you snore.”
It was a typical Adam comment, but the last word fell a tiny bit flat. “I’d better go,” Molly said. “I’m hungry again, which is not to be believed. And, Adam…thank you.”
“Don’t say thank you. Saying no to a marriage proposal is one thing. Saying ‘no, thanks’ to a marriage proposal is another.”
Molly said a hasty goodbye and hung up. She put her head in her hands, and didn’t realize she was crying again until she felt the tears leak out from between her fingers and drip down her wrist. Stupid hormones. If it hadn’t been for all her uncharacteristic boo-hooing, Adam wouldn’t have lost his mind and proposed, she wouldn’t have said no, and things wouldn’t be all strange between them now.
But she couldn’t do what he was suggesting. Even if it wasn’t really real. Adam was not the man she was supposed to marry. She was supposed to marry a man just like her—ambitious and career-oriented, someone who understood her goals not because she had to explain them, but because he had similar ones. That’s what her parents had in each other. That’s why Molly had been one of the only children in her small, elite private grade school with still-married parents. She’d emulated them in so many ways, so why not this important one?
“It’s worth waiting for,” she whispered to her baby, but why did it feel as if she were trying to convince herself? Her eyes overflowed again.
Plunk.
It was the sound of a large drop hitting the floor. A drop too heavy to be a tear.
Plunk.
This time, Molly was looking straight ahead and caught sight of the drop hitting her hardwood floor about six inches in front of her. She got onto her hands and knees, crawled to the spot, looked at the little puddle and sat back on her heels and tilted her head up to peer at the ceiling.
Plunk.
This drop didn’t hit the floor. It hit Molly’s large stomach. She stared at the spot on her sweater.
The ceiling was leaking. Leaking.
She jumped up awkwardly, scrambled into her office and turned over her wastebasket. Crumpled sticky notes and receipts skittered across the floor as she carried the bucket to the hallway, positioning it under the leak, which had quickened into a more regular plunk-plunk-plunk.
A freaking ceiling leak. This was going to cost—well, she couldn’t even guess. All she knew was, roof leaks were not cheap. She was really going to call that inspector she’d used and give him a piece of her mind.
She glanced down again at the wet spot on her shirt, and rubbed it with her hand. Her eyes welled up again.
No. This was going to be under control. She could do this. She was going to be an excellent mother. She was going to be as good at it as she was at everything else. And she was not going to let it rain on her little baby’s head.