Love Promises (Sully Point, Book 4) (18 page)

Back at the apartment, she began wrapping
presents. It was a mindless job, one that let her brain slow down, and was
quite restful. Before she knew it, she had a pile of beautifully-wrapped gifts
on the work table in the living room. She started stacking them in the closet
on a shelf when Eric came in the door.

"Maggie," he said, sounding relieved.
"You're here."

"Where else would I be?" she said,
feeling suddenly very tense...and angry. She was turned facing the closet.

"I just thought...never mind. We need to
talk."

"Yes, I think we do. Is that a sausage pizza
I smell?" She closed the closet door and turned to face him. He was
holding a pizza in his hands.

"Yeah." He held up a bag with a bottle
of soda in it. "And I brought you some more ginger ale."

"Eric--"

"Just wait, Maggie. There are things I need
to say to you. Things you need to hear."

"Eric, wait--"

"The thing is, I was shocked. I was literally
in shock. I'm sure you're upset with me--"

Maggie dashed for the bathroom with her hand over
her mouth.

Eric followed her after a minute. "Do you
need me to do anything?"

"Get. That. Pizza. Out. Of. Here," she
managed to say through clenched teeth.

He glanced down to still find the pizza box in his
hands. "Oh--sorry--I didn't know--I'll just go."

She watched him run for the door and got sick
again.

Finally, it was over and she was ensconced on the
sofa, head propped up on a pillow. Eric brought her a glass of ginger ale over
ice.

He sat down at the other end of the sofa and put
her feet in his lap. "I'm really sorry about that. I had no idea it would
affect you so."

"Neither did I. Some smells just get to
me."

"It must be terrible."

"It's what it is, Eric, part of the process.
Anyway, what did you want to say?"

"I think we should get married right
away."

"What?" she raised her head to sit up
and then fell back against the pillows. "I thought we were going to talk
about the baby."

"We are. So Doc Watson said you are
definitely pregnant?"

"Yes."

"Then I think we should get married soon,
like maybe on Christmas or something."

"Why? Because it's the right thing to
do?"

"Well, yes. But Maggie, you knew I wanted to
marry you before this thing happened."

"This 'thing' is a baby." She was
feeling more upset by the moment.

"I meant to say baby." He ran a hand
through his hair, looking flustered as he ripped the tie from it so that it
fell down to his shoulders. "I'm not saying anything right tonight. I was
so shocked before. I wanted to apologize for my behavior."

"Apology accepted."

"And I wanted to say that of course I'm happy
about it. I mean, the baby."

"You are? You certainly haven't sounded like
you are."

"Well, I was surprised. I'd seen our lives
going in a different way, but this is good too."

"Eric, you told me you didn't want any kids
for a number of years. Now you're all happy about it being now? I find that a
bit unreal."

"The thing is, this is a creature made of
both you and me and--"

"A creature? What is your problem? A creature
sounds like something alien."

His face turned red. "Listen, if you're going
to pick on every little word I say--"

"They're all words to not say the word
'baby.' It seems hard for you to say that word."

"Maggie, you need to listen to me. I figured
it all out. You don't need to be so emotional."

"Maybe you don't, but I have hormones that
say differently. So, what did you figure out? Did you think about it all
logically?"

"Of course I did. Why would I think any other
way?"

"Ooh, man, if I wasn't feeling sick, I'd--you
can't just make sense out of things logically. Sometimes your feelings have to
come into it. You have to go by your gut instincts."

"Look, I came here to say I was sorry, not to
get into an argument that makes no sense."

"No sense?" she yelled.

"Maggie, calm down."

"Stop saying 'Maggie' in that tone of voice.
It's utterly patronizing."

"The issue here is that we should think about
getting married sooner than we planned."

"That is so not the issue!"

He looked at her blankly. "What?"

"The issue is that I want this baby. I'm
going to have this baby. Your baby. Our baby. You're all caught up in doing the
right thing, but you haven't even been able to say that you want this baby I'm
carrying."

"I didn't? Of course I want the baby. Why
else would I--"

"You need to leave."

"What?"

"It's time for your choir practice, and I'm
pretty mad at you right now, so I think it's best if you just leave."

"Maybe I should skip the practice."

"No, I think you should go. And Eric, why
don't you stay at your place tonight? I'm feeling sick and I just want to go to
sleep. We can talk tomorrow."

"Maggie...don't do this."

"I'm tired, really tired. It's been a long
day. Let's just talk tomorrow."

And to her surprise, and despair, he turned and
walked out of the apartment.

Chapter 7

The next morning, Eric woke up angry. He felt that
Maggie had gone off the deep end. She had been completely unreasonable last
night, and he was in no mood to talk to her. So he didn't call her to set up a
time to get together. If she wanted to talk, she could call him.

Naturally he had not said things exactly right
when they talked. He was flustered and she had just gotten sick which threw
him. He'd known what he wanted to say, but once he was with her, it had all
flown out of his head because he was so nervous. He could probably have said
things much better.

But her reactions had been totally nuts. Twisting
his words, implying meanings he hadn't intended--it was all so unlike the
Maggie he loved. She was never like that! Could it be due to the pregnancy?
Somehow he didn't think so.

By the time he arrived at Julia's Place for the
second day of computer deliveries, his mood was terrible. Julia took one look
at the scowl on his face and hurried to get him a cup of coffee. Then she sat
him down on one of the couches in the sitting area.

"What's going on?" Julia asked, as she
sat down opposite him on the other couch.

"Nothing."

"Eric. You look like you're ready to kick a
puppy. What's happened?"

"Have you heard anything? I'm not sure what I
should say."

"If you mean about Maggie being pregnant, then
yes. Anna told me."

"Well, we had this huge argument last
night."

"I'm assuming about the pregnancy?"

Eric's brow wrinkled in a frown. "How the
hell do I know? It was crazy. I was trying to apologize because I'd been so
stunned when she first told me that I hadn't reacted well at all. But then she
flipped out on me. I said I thought we should get married soon, maybe at
Christmas and she didn't take that well."

"Um, did you lead with that?"

"I don't know. Sort of, I guess."

"Well, that was probably a bad move."

"Why, what's wrong with it?"

"She probably thought you were saying you
guys
had
to get married right away because of the baby. Like it was
something to hide."

"I was only thinking that it was better for
the child, when he grew up, for there not to be, you know, that difference in
dates."

"But Eric, why didn't you start by
apologizing and telling her that you were excited about the baby?"

"I tried to tell her I was happy about it,
but she didn't believe me. And, she got all picky about the words I was using.
Said I was calling it 'it' instead of 'baby' like I was a terrible
person." He stood up and began pacing. "Nothing she said made sense
to me. She was lying there glaring at me--"

"Hold on. She was lying down? Why?"

"She'd just gotten sick. The smell from the
pizza I'd brought got to her."

"Oh my. You were doomed from the outset. Sit
down here and listen to me."

Eric sat down and watched as Julia flipped her
very long black hair over her shoulder. She seemed to gather her thoughts and
then speared him with her dark blue eyes.

"When a woman is pregnant she has a ton of
hormonal changes happening. Just that alone can make things unsettled. She's
not crazy or incompetent or stupid, which some men seem to think. But her
emotions are more stirred up. Then you take the nausea. I remember it well.
Even after you get sick, you still have the nausea for a while, sometimes all
day. Nothing, I repeat, nothing is going to make you happy when your body feels
like that. To expect that you two could have a rational conversation, with her
feeling like that, was delusional."

She paused and took a drink of her coffee. Eric
felt his body relaxing as she talked in her calm, steady voice.

"Plus, both of you are trying to adjust to
this unexpected event in your lives. I'm sure you hadn't planned on this happening
for a while at the very least. Suddenly, you're both scrambling, trying to do
the right thing, trying to deal with your world being turned upside down. I'd
be amazed if either one of you had any understanding and awareness of the other
person's needs at this point. You guys were asking way too much of yourselves
to try and discuss all of it under those conditions."

"I never knew she could be so
unreasonable!" Eric said with some heat.

"Let me guess. This was your first
fight?"

Eric thought about it. "Sort of. She wasn't
happy when I bought the building for her. We kind of argued about that. Mostly
it was her telling me why I was wrong. And me realizing she was right. It
wasn't much of an argument."

"So you hadn't really experienced arguing
with a touch of unreasonable behavior thrown in? You know, in most arguments,
they tend to degenerate into illogical and rather stupid things being said to
each other. I would have been astonished if you had managed to talk about the
baby coming without disaster happening, given all these factors."

"Who was at fault then? I woke up angry at
her."

Julia shook her head. "You both said and did
things yesterday that you wouldn't have done under other conditions. It doesn't
mean either one of you was at fault. You both reacted from where you were
coming from in that moment. Today is a new day. You've both had time to sleep on
it, and to think a bit. You're talking to me, and hopefully Maggie is talking
to someone, maybe Anna. At some point, you'll be ready to sit down together and
hash this all out."

"She threw me out, last night. She told me
not to come back there after choir practice," Eric said quietly. He
realized that this was what had hurt the most. "How could she do
that?"

Julia reached across the coffee table and patted
his hand. "Probably because she was hurt too, by something you said or
did."

Eric felt his face flush. "Uh, well, yeah. I
did sort of walk out on her when she first told me she was pregnant."

Julia bent her head and he suspected it was to get
her face under control. She was smiling and looking rueful when she looked up
at him. "You guys really did a number on each other. It's amazing how
easily we can hurt the people we love the most. And you do love her, I can see
that."

"Well yeah, of course I do. I don't see why
she doesn't remember that."

"There are times in a woman's life when it is
very important that she hear those words, often. This would be one of those
times."

Eric supposed that she was right. The more he
thought about her words, he realized she was very right. He decided to make the
first gesture.

"Julia, I'm going out for a few minutes to the
florist. I'll be right back." He ran out the door before Julia could say
anything else to him.

* * * *

"So then he just left!" Maggie said to
Anna.

"But hadn't you told him to leave and not to
come back after practice?"

"Yes--but he didn't have to just agree to it
so easily, like he wanted to go."

Maggie got up to make some more chamomile tea. It
seemed to settle her stomach this morning. They were sitting at her kitchen
table, eating scones. Although, her plate was mostly filled with crumbs as
she'd demolished her scone instead of eating it.

"Look, you both said and did things that you
probably shouldn't have. You're going to have to forgive each other and move
past this."

"How? He was talking about us having to get
married, like it was the 1950s or something. Oh you should have heard that
patriarchal tone he got in his voice. 'Maggie' he said, all patronizing like I
was crazy, or a child." She'd tried to imitate the tone of voice he'd used
but evidently it hadn't worked, because Anna had started chuckling.

"I'm sorry to laugh," she finally said,
wiping the corners of her eyes. "But you remind me of a conversation I had
with Sam when I was pregnant. It was amazing to me how patronizing he could
sound. I would never have believed he could sound that way when talking to me.
I think something happens to men when they find out they're going to be a
father. Yes, as I recall, we had a bit of an argument before we straightened
that out."

"Well, I don't see why he couldn't have just
said he was happy about the baby, and told me he loved me madly," Maggie
said, feeling pretty grumpy about it.

"He probably was trying to say those very
things. But men can sometimes tangle themselves up when it comes to babies and
love--the mushy stuff. You'd both had a pretty momentous day. Men try and make
sense of these big events by being all logical and rational. That's their
coping mechanism. Usually. Women often don't respond well to that
approach." She quirked an eyebrow at Maggie, who blushed and looked down.