Page 75 of Method for Matrimony

“Can’t you just be mean and cold and heartless like you have been for the past like four months?” I whined.

Kip grasped my chin, moving it from where it was curled up to my chest.

He forced me to meet his eyes. Or he would’ve if I hadn’t childishly squeezed mine shut. As if me closing my eyes would mean he didn’t see my red-rimmed gaze, my splotchy face, and my overall pathetic and vulnerable appearance.

Kip stroked my jaw. “Open your eyes,” he requested. Again with that familiar yet strange softness to his voice.

It was the softness that had me obeying his command, despite everything.

Gone was the hard, unyielding gaze. His irises swirled like the ocean once more.

“Why are you crying?”

I took a deep breath. Then another. “I don’t know,” I replied honestly.

“You don’t know?” he repeated evenly.

I shook my head. “One moment I’m happy. The next I’m furious… mostly at you.”

Kip’s mouth turned up at that. Almost a smile.

“Then I’m horny,” I continued. Something moved in Kip’s eyes, but I didn’t have the energy to dissect it. “Then I’m this!” I gestured to myself, a new sob racking my body. “And I’m feeling all of this while also being vaguely nauseous but at the same time craving fucking brownies. And I don’t have brownies in the house. I have the things to make brownies because Nora is often here, but I don’t make fucking brownies,” I ranted. “And I can’t call Nora to tell her to come over here and make brownies because she has a family of her own to take care of, and I’m supposed to be a grown woman. And I’ve been considering driving to the bakery because I know we have a stash of brownies that Nora baked yesterday, but I’m too tired to drive over there. I’m too tired to go pee.” I was damn near hysterical now. Almost shrieking.

Some distant part of me knew it was just the hormones, but that part of me was a whisper in a fucking hurricane. The rest of me thought it was completely logical to be sobbing uncontrollably about brownies.

Kip stared at me for a few beats, maybe to see if I was done, maybe gauging how sane I was. I waited for him to lapse back into that cold person who was utterly disgusted by the responsibility of a pregnant wife and then a child after that.

“Okay,” he said, face staying open and somewhat warm. He leaned forward to the coffee table and grabbed the remote for the TV. “First, we’re going to put onHarry Potter,” he said. “Because that’s what you need when you feel sad.”

My hysterical sobs paused. “How do you know I like to watchHarry Potterwhen I’m sad?”

Kip switched the movie on. “Because you told me, and I remembered?”

I racked my brain to think about when I might’ve told Kip about how the safety of my childhood movie made me feel protected and far away from all of my problems.

Hadn’t we been all about sex? No learning about each other. No liking each other.

There had been a lot of sex. A whole lot. But there were also long dinners. With wine. And talking. Not about our pasts. Well, harmless tidbits here and there… about the fields where I’d passed out drunk in high school and the experiences I had before I ended up here. But I went pretty shallow on the details before Jupiter. Mostly teenage binge drinking, and the minor car crashes I’d survived as a result of teenage binge drinking.

Kip was the same. He’d speak a little about Deidre, the shit she’d pull, when she bought him condoms and erotic novels instead of porn because she wanted him to read things written by women instead of consume trash made by men exploiting women.

The mere memory made me smile.

I missed Deidre. She kept in touch—a lot of texts, pictures, and missed calls. I’d always text her back, but I had yet to tell her I was pregnant. Though I didn’t know the woman well, I got the sense that as soon as Deidre found out she was going to be a grandmother, she’d drop everything to come visit. She’d be excited. We’d go shopping.

Nora, Calliope, and Tiffany had all tried to get me to go shopping for baby things, especially now that I was in the relative ‘safety’ of the second trimester. I’d fought them off. Yes, the risks of something happening now were greatly reduced, but they weren’t zero. And I only had experience with loss. It was ingrained in my muscles. I was still waiting for it, still bracing. Buying baby things was tempting fate.

My friends here had understood this, had respected my boundaries.

Deidre, bless her, would not respect my boundaries. She’d blow in and have a nursery built and decorated within the week. And she’d expect her son to be a loving, doting,realhusband. We’d done well at pretending before things got complicated, but I feared we’d fail miserably this time around. And fuck if I didn’t want to see the disappointment on her face when she found out her son and I were in a sham marriage.

“I’m going to make brownies,” Kip said, jerking me out of my fast-spiraling thoughts. “You’re gonna watch this.” He nodded to the screen showing title credits and playing a soundtrack that made my tense muscles relax.

“You’regoing to make brownies?” I asked him.

He nodded.

I sucked my teeth. “Have you made brownies before?”

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