The kind who tells me I look like something the cat dragged in? Never mind.

“Anyway,” I say, “Monica will be leaving work soon, so I’ll probably hardly see her until the baby comes. Just at the appointments. And then in less than five months, we’ll have the baby.”

She grins. “And I promise—no baby showers this time.”

“Please no,” I say. “I can’t imagine anything worse.”

Except that’s not true. I can imagine something worse.

_____

Sam is sitting across from me on the couch, quietly working on his computer. That’s something we do—sit next to each other in the living room, both of us working. Sometimes we don’t say a word for an hour or more, but it still makes me feel close to him. Especially when I put my legs up on the couch, and he puts his hand on my calf, absently stroking it. And whenever I look up at him, he smiles.

Sam’s phone breaks the silence by buzzing with a text message. He picks it up and grins at the screen.

“Who’s texting you?” I ask, as casually as I possibly can.

“Monica.”

Of course. Prior to Monica entering our lives, Sam only got texts from me and from work. Now she’s his new text buddy.

He nudges me. “She found out the gender of the baby.”

“Oh.” I slide my laptop off my lap. “I thought we decided to wait until the birth to find out.”

He frowns. “We did?”

“Yes! We did!”

“Uh…” He looks down at his phone, then back at me. “So… she already sort of… told me.”

My mouth falls open. “She told you?”

“Well, I didn’t realize we were waiting to find out!”

I shake my head. “You knew I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“I didn’t know that.” He’s typing something into his phone as he talks, which is incredibly irritating. What is he saying to her? That his wife is being a bitch? “Seeing what the baby looks like will be enough of a surprise, don’t you think?”

I don’t know what to say. It’s too late to change the fact that Monica blabbed to him. Also, why would she text him and not me? I’m the one she works with. I knew her before he did. It’s because of me that all of this is happening.

“So what is it?” I finally ask.

“I thought you didn’t want to know.”

I let out an irritated huff. “If you know, then I want to know.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

He grins crookedly. “It’s a boy.”

“Oh.”

“We’re going to have a son!” His brown eyes are wide and excited. “Isn’t that incredible?”