The Other F-Word Read online

  “He’s not going to have a heart attack,” Hollis said.

  “How do you know?” Milo said. “People have heart attacks every day.”

  “If we go up and introduce ourselves,” Noah said, “that could give him a heart attack.”

  “Guys.” JJ was walking back over, holding his camera. “You might want to see something.”

  “A heart attack would be tragic irony,” Abby said.

  “Can we stop talking about heart attacks?” Noah said. “My point is—”

  “I know what your point is,” Milo said. “And you don’t have to—”

  “Why are we arguing?” Hollis said. “We’re supposed to be—”

  “Yo!”

  Everyone looked at JJ.

  “You might want to check out Will’s wife.”

  HOLLIS

  If Hollis had been outside her body, observing this scene—if she had watched the four of them turn simultaneously, if she had heard the collective intake of breath and seen their eyes bug out of their heads like Wile E. Coyote—she might have laughed.

  But she was not outside her body.

  She was here, watching Gwen Bardo—dark jeans, high boots, Rapunzel hair—kiss Will Bardo on the lips. She was here, watching Will smile and place a hand on Gwen’s belly.

  “What the…” Noah spluttered. “Is that … is she…”

  “I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘plot twist,’” Abby said.

  Hollis blinked. Will’s wife was pregnant, right? She hadn’t just eaten a really big lunch?

  No. Hollis shook her head. That belly was freakishly large. Unlike the rest of Gwen Bardo, which looked pretty much the same as it had in the wet suit, on her bio page for the Eden Prairie Cooperative Learning Center. Now, she just looked like she’d swallowed a watermelon. A ginormous watermelon. A ginormous watermelon that Will was gazing at, rubbing with both hands.

  “What is he doing?” Abby said.

  And JJ—JJ Rabinowitz of all people—said, “He’s communing with the baby.”

  Communing with the baby.

  A thought popped unbidden into Hollis’s head. Pam had done this, too. When Leigh was pregnant with Hollis. There was a photo somewhere, of Leigh in a butt-ugly maternity shirt—God, what had been on that shirt? Cowboy hats? Sombreros? Hollis couldn’t remember. But she could picture that photo in her mind’s eye: Pam’s hands on Leigh’s belly, both of them gazing down, smiling.

  “We can’t go over there,” Hollis blurted.

  Milo looked at her. She realized that he hadn’t spoken a word. That he was still not speaking.

  “I mean—” Hollis hesitated. “Look at them.”

  Will and Gwen. She was handing him something now. It looked like one of those insulated lunch boxes.

  “Aww,” Abby said. “She brought snacks.”

  Hollis imagined Gwen standing at the kitchen counter of their little farmhouse, chopping up apples. Scooping Goldfish crackers into a baggie. And in that moment of imagining, something loosened inside her.

  “They have a life,” she said softly.

  Milo nodded. “I know.”

  “We can’t just—”

  “I know.”

  MILO

  They walked to the diner outside the University of Minnesota student center—not because any final decision had been made about Will, but because A) Abby thought they needed to “regroup,” and B) JJ Rabinowitz, event photographer, was so hungry he could “eat his camera.”

  Milo was just glad to take off his beard. The worst thing about the beard was that it itched. He’d wanted to rip it from his face the entire time he was in the dome, but now he was glad that he hadn’t. He was glad to have been a fly on the wall when Will’s pregnant wife showed up.

  A baby, Milo thought as they stood in line to order.

  He didn’t know how to feel. Gwen Bardo’s belly had brought everything to a screeching halt. Her belly had appeared without warning, announcing to the world that Will was going to be a dad. A real dad. A dad who would push strollers and change diapers and read bedtime stories and throw baseballs and have awkward conversations about sex.

  “How far along is she?” Noah said. His head was down. His thumbs were moving rapid-fire across his phone. “Josh wants to know.”

  “Far,” Hollis said. “Did you see the size of her belly?”

  “If the baby’s born by February eighteenth,” Abby said, “it’ll be an Aquarius, like me.”

  “Aquarius,” JJ said. “Which sign is that?”

  “The water bearer,” Abby said. “We are witty and clever. We dislike anything ordinary.”

  “Clearly,” Hollis said, flicking Abby’s porkpie hat with her finger. Abby was the only one still wearing a disguise.

  “Do you think he told her?” Noah looked up from his phone. “About being a sperm donor? Do you think she has any idea we exist?”

  “I was wondering the same thing,” Abby said.

  “So was I,” Hollis said.

  The musings continued as Milo ordered. He wasn’t very hungry. His stomach was churning just like the thoughts in his head. He didn’t want to eat, but he wanted something comforting. Like cocoa.

  “Do you have rice milk?” Milo asked the girl behind the counter, who was wearing a baseball cap and a U of M sweatshirt.

  “Sure do,” she said.

  “Do you have plain cocoa powder—the kind without milk?”

  “Yup.”

  “Could you please make me a nondairy hot chocolate?”

  “You got it,” the girl said.

  The cocoa was too hot to drink, so Milo sat at a table with JJ, who had ordered a double cheeseburger, fries, and a strawberry milkshake. Milo blew into his cup.

  “How you doin’, man?” JJ asked, stuffing a fry into his mouth.

  “Okay.”

  “Want to see pictures?”

  Milo wasn’t sure he wanted to see pictures, but JJ was already wiping his fingers on a napkin and reaching for his camera. “I got some great close-ups of Will. You can really see his bone structure…”

  “Let me see,” Hollis said, arriving with a grilled cheese and a Coke and peering over JJ’s shoulder.

  Good, Milo thought. Let Hollis marvel at Will Bardo’s cheekbones. He would sit here and think.

  Gwen Bardo and her stupid belly, Milo thought, taking a careful sip of cocoa so as not to burn his tongue. He hated her belly for showing up and ruining everything. He had been ready. He had wanted to meet Will. He still wanted to meet Will. And if not today, at the Indoor Hat Tournament, then when?

  Milo took another sip, a bigger one. It burned the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t care. He took another sip. He was starting to feel warm.

  “I’ll tell you another thing about Aquariuses,” Abby said as she and Noah sat down with their food. “We are rebels.”

  “Hey, rebel,” Hollis said, holding out the camera to Abby. “Tell me this doesn’t look like Milo in twenty years.”

  “Wow,” Abby said, looking and nodding. “It really does.”

  She passed the camera to Noah, who did a double take—“whoa”—before passing the camera to Milo. “Want to see yourself in twenty years?”

  Milo blinked at the camera in front of him, but he couldn’t see the picture clearly. His eyes were itchy. He could tell that Noah was saying something but he couldn’t hear the words because he was starting to cough and his arms were hot and everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Milo could see the cup falling out of his hand. He could see that Hollis was turning and pointing, and that JJ was shouting and gesturing to Noah, but there was no noise, no noise at all, not even the sound of his own breath, and Milo was wondering why this was, and he tried to ask but there were no words because there was no air, and he needed air, because oh shit he couldn’t breathe, and he suddenly realized, as he slid off the chair and his head hit the floor with a sickening thunk, that someone had turned out the lights.

  HOLLIS

  It took Hollis
a second to register what was happening. Milo was on the floor; his lips were blowing up. Brown liquid was everywhere. The hot chocolate. The effing hot chocolate! She didn’t have time to think about why, exactly, he was having a reaction. She had to … she needed … Milo’s backpack! Hollis pointed and shouted. EpiPen! Frankie’s tutorial came at her in one big rush, a tsunami of instructions. Orange tip down make a fist pull safety release outer thigh 90 degree angle hold hold hold. She was moving too fast to panic. She was rubbing Milo’s thigh too vigorously to consider how weird it was to be rubbing Milo’s thigh.

  * * *

  Only after the paramedics came, after JJ called Frankie and Suzanne, after Milo was rushed to Abbott Northwestern Hospital with a tube in his throat, after the girl behind the counter had her breakdown about mistaking almond milk for rice milk (The containers look the same! He said nondairy! All I was thinking was nondairy!)—only after, when they were sitting in the waiting room and the doctor came to tell them that Milo was going to be fine—did Hollis finally cry.

  MILO

  He didn’t want to wake up. At first, the images in his head had been sort of disturbing. Flying Frisbees. Giant bellies. Will Bardo’s widow’s peak coming at him, magnified a hundredfold. But now, here was Hayley Christenson. What was she doing, floating above his head like an angelfish? He couldn’t imagine. But she was smiling. Smiling at him, amazingly. And she was so beautiful. The side braid, the sapphire eyes, the shiny lips. She was reaching out to him, beckoning … beckoning …

  He woke up in a hospital bed, attached to an IV drip. The only person floating above him was Frankie, looking spiky haired and pale. Suzanne was straightening his blanket. Hollis, JJ, Abby, and Noah were across the room, sitting in a row along the window ledge.

  “Mi,” Frankie said softly. She bent down to kiss his cheek and then started to cry.

  “Ma,” he said. He could barely get the words out, his throat was so sore. “I’m okay.”

  Suzanne leaned over, kissing his other cheek, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her shirt.

  Then Hollis and Abby came sprinting across the room. “You’re awake! He’s awake!”

  Followed by JJ, squeezing Milo’s shoulder. “Dude. You sure know how to make an exit.”

  Everyone was gathered around him, like a force field.

  “Sorry,” Milo croaked.

  “Don’t apologize,” Hollis said fiercely. “We’re just glad you’re okay. You are okay, right?”

  Milo nodded. His head hurt.

  Noah patted his foot. “Do you remember what happened?”

  Milo nodded again, slowly. He remembered being hot. He remembered everything moving in slow motion. He remembered hitting the floor.

  “That bonehead behind the counter?” Hollis said. “She made your hot chocolate with almond milk instead of rice milk.”

  Milo raised his eyebrows.

  “She said the containers looked the same. Can you believe that shit?”

  “You should have seen Hollis in action,” JJ said. “She was a rock star.”

  “EpiPen?” Milo rasped.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Abby said. “She stabbed you in the leg and saved your life and everything, but you should have seen her when we got here, and the nurse was like, ‘family only,’ and she was all, ‘That’s our brother in there. And these are his moms. And if you don’t let us in that room—’”

  “Please.” Hollis smirked.

  “What?” Abby said.

  “I did not sound like James Earl Jones. ‘That’s our brother in there.’” Hollis made her voice deep and booming. “‘And these are his moms.’”

  Abby laughed. “You totally did. You went Darth Vader on her ass.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Hollis said to Milo. “She’s exaggerating for effect.”

  “You think she’s exaggerating now?” Noah said. “Wait until you read her memoir.”

  “Artistic license,” Abby said.

  Hollis rolled her eyes. Then, out of nowhere, she leaned down and kissed Milo’s nose. Lightning quick.

  He stared at her.

  “What? You almost died. I can’t kiss you?”

  “Speaking of kisses…” Milo swallowed past the pain in his throat. He glanced from Hollis to JJ and back to Hollis.

  “You look tired,” Hollis said. “Doesn’t he look tired?”

  JJ grinned. “We made out.”

  “Hey!” Hollis cuffed JJ’s ear.

  “What?” JJ grinned wider. “It’s true.”

  Milo smiled. “Good.”

  Frankie, puffy-eyed but no longer crying, reached out to smooth Milo’s hair back from his forehead. “You should be resting.”

  And Suzanne said, “They’re keeping you under observation for another few hours. Just to be safe.” She squeezed his arm through the blanket. “You sleep, honey. We’ll be back in a little while.”

  “Thanks,” Milo murmured. It wasn’t a bad idea, actually. Maybe, if he closed his eyes, Hayley would appear again.

  “We love you,” Suzanne said. “You know that?”

  “I know.”

  * * *

  The next time Milo woke up, it was just Frankie, sitting in a chair next to his bed.

  “Hey, bud,” she said. She held up a plastic cup. “You thirsty? The doctors want you to hydrate.”

  Milo drank. And drank. And drank.

  “More?” Frankie asked when he’d finished.

  He shook his head. He glanced around the room. “Where is everyone?”

  “Down in the cafeteria … how’re you feeling now?”

  “Better.”

  Frankie heaved a sigh. “You gave us a real scare, kiddo.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know you didn’t.” She grimaced. “That girl should be fired. Who mistakes almond milk for rice milk? If Hollis hadn’t found your EpiPen…”

  “She did.”

  “But if she hadn’t … we didn’t even know where you were … you could have been anywhere … Rice Park … Lake Harriet … the Mall of America—” Frankie’s voice broke.

  Her concern was so palpable that Milo felt bad—he felt horrible—for lying.

  “Ma.”

  “What is it, sweetie?”

  “That’s not … we didn’t go any of those places.”

  “What?”

  It took him a long time to tell Frankie what she didn’t know. About the Eden Prairie Cooperative Learning Center. About the Twin Cities Ultimate League. About Will’s lame email asking for time to “marinate.” About the plan they’d made to see him, even if he didn’t want to be seen. About Milo wanting to go rogue and meet Will.

  Frankie couldn’t believe it. Milo would actually do that? Put himself out there? Take that kind of emotional risk?

  Well, Milo said, yeah.

  And finally, Gwen Bardo’s belly. The showstopper.

  “I did not see that coming,” Frankie said.

  “Neither did I.”

  Silence for a moment and then she looked at him. “That must have been hard for you, seeing her pregnant. It must have brought up some complicated feelings.”

  Milo nodded.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I am, too … for not telling you the truth.”

  Frankie cocked her head. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I was afraid you would…” Milo hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Freak out. Think I didn’t love you or something. Just because I want to meet Will doesn’t mean I want to replace you or anything. I mean … you’re my mom.”

  “Right.” Frankie nodded and cleared her throat. “So … there was this girl.”

  “What?”

  “There was this girl, in college.”

  “And the non sequitur award goes to…”

  “Bear with me,” Frankie said. “This story has a point.”

  “It does?”

  “Humor your mother, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “So, J
ulie Catalano. She was in my sociology class sophomore year, and I had a massive crush on her. Huge. She was a senior, and she had this long, brown hair. Big, blue eyes. Great legs. I thought I would die if she didn’t go out with me.”

  “Yeah,” Milo said. He sat up straighter in the bed.

  “Wayyy out of my league, though. Sorority girl. Came from money. Her father donated a wing of the library, that kind of thing. And here I was, a scholarship kid. Working in the cafeteria just to pay for books. Living in the dorms because I couldn’t afford to live off campus. You get the picture.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So I’m nursing this crush on Julie Catalano all through sophomore year, until finally spring rolls around, and I realize … this is it. She’s about to graduate, and I need to make my move, you know, or I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “You need to make your move.”

  “Right. And it needs to be big. A grand romantic gesture. But to execute this grand romantic gesture, I needed to pull out all the stops. So I took all the money I had out of the bank, all my work-study money—”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yup. And I bought every romantic thing I could think of. Champagne, roses, caviar, stinky French cheese. I borrowed my roommate’s car, and I drove Julie Catalano out to this beautiful picnic spot by Lake Harriet, and I paid the marching band—”

  “Wait, the marching band?”

  “Oh, yes. I paid the marching band to show up and play ‘Baby, Baby’ by Amy Grant while I sang the lyrics.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. And then, when I was opening the champagne, I popped her in the eye with the cork.”

  “No,” Milo said, laughing. He couldn’t help it.

  “I swear to God. She had a black eye for graduation and she never talked to me again.”

  “Shit,” Milo said.

  “Yup.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not,” Frankie said. “Because you know who I met that night?”

  “Who?”

  “Erin Anderson. She was playing the snare drum in the marching band.”

  “Erin Anderson who introduced you to Mom?” Milo said.

  “Yup. Erin and I became friends. And then roommates in grad school. And then … she introduced me to your mom.”