What was not awesome was that Thanksgiving came and went, and Jack was still giving me the quasi–blow off. He kept in touch, letting me know he was still around, but they were one sentence texts of apologies and excuses about how hard it was and that his family was going to get upset and he was afraid to talk to them. It was confirmation he hadn’t ripped off the Band-Aid yet. I was sympathetic to a point—not everyone’s families were as supportive as mine—but I was losing patience, too.

I had the much harder job in the vast scheme of brewing the kid.

Nut up, Jack.

The second week of December, when I was sitting in the living room, holding Leaf’s hand, staring at Mormor’s color-coordinated Christmas tree because she only decorated with Sweden’s colors, I said as much. It wasn’t out of the blue or anything. Rudolph didn’t start playing and I had a crisis of paternity, but he’d sent me another text that said, gonna tell parents after X-mas. Have a good 1.

My fingers were moving before I could think better of it.

Don’t bother. Clearly too hard for you.

Yes, it was witchy, but I was thirty weeks into the pregnancy and he’d been told over a month ago. I was in a Saturday morning teen support group and had started Lamaze with Devi. I’d read two books about pregnancy. I knew things about mucus plugs—don’t ever Google image search that. And the meconium—especially don’t Google image search that. I was working my fat pregnant butt off to make sure that my kid came into the world with a half-functioning mom.

And he couldn’t tell his father?

Whatever.

I’d been patient enough.

“Are you okay?” Leaf asked.

I grumbled something that wasn’t really words, more just a mishmash of frustrated animal sounds.

“You look like you want to eat the phone,” he said.

“I kind of do. Jack just told me he wasn’t going to tell his family until after Christmas. I guess he doesn’t want to ruin the holidays.” The bitterness was there, lacing every word. Leaf snorted and rubbed the back of my neck, hissing when he felt how tense my muscles were. His fingers kneaded at them in vain, attempting to get me to uncoil.

Good luck, buddy.

“He’s being dumb.” He motioned for me to lean forward, and I did the best I could, resting my boobs on top of my belly. His hands moved from my neck to my shoulders and spine. “You’ve been patient. If he can’t appreciate that, he’s not worth your time.”

“I know, right? I’d hoped he wouldn’t be an asshat about it, but I guess that was too much to ask.”

“His loss,” Leaf said.

Damn right, it was his loss.