That’s when it hit him: not only was Margot missing. His boat was moving.
Someone was driving Annabella without him.
“Margot!” Her name slipped from his lips in a shout. Eddie rolled out of bed and quite literally hit the deck; he struggled upstairs, dragging the sheet with him as an afterthought. He was in a blind panic thinking his boat was stolen...thinking that someone had boarded while he slept and gotten hold of Margot, or the baby...he had forgotten to mop last night. What if she put her foot down wrong and slipped on a puddle of water? What if she tumbled overboard?
His fears were like a runaway train with an endless number of cars in tow, but as soon as he surfaced from below deck, he breathed a temporary sigh of relief. It was Margot behind the wheel; he could see her curvaceous silhouette posted up and steering Annabella with an easy, expert hand.
Then he woke fully, and the reality of the situation registered with him. Margot, pregnant with his child, was piloting his boat – no easy, or relaxing, feat. Eddie shouldered his way onto the deck and crossed to her quickly.
“Margot,” he repeated, voice a bit more even this time; at the very least he wasn’t shouting in a blind panic. “What the hell is going on? Where are we? How long have you been out here alone like this?”
“Relax, Eddie!” she laughed as she stepped back to let him take over at the wheel. “I’m not going to crash it. I’ve been driving my father’s boat since I was five years old.”
“You shouldn’t be driving anything at all!” he exclaimed. He didn’t care if he sounded like a raving lunatic; he didn’t care if he looked like one, barely wearing a sheet like he had just woken after an all-night toga party. He had one hand on the wheel, and one holding his makeshift garment up to conceal himself from any other boats they might pass out on the harbor. “This is exactly what the doctor warned us against doing right now.”
“I thought I would surprise you.” Margot’s brows drew together in confusion, and she frowned. “It’s no fun having a boat if you just let it sit around moored all the time. I thought you loved sailing.”
But I love you more! The remonstration came unbidden into his head, and nearly escaped past his lips. Eddie blinked in surprise at the unfamiliar inner voice that reared up so unexpectedly. Margot’s look of puzzlement
was slowly morphing into a glare as he sat with himself and introspected, but he couldn’t pull his brain away from what it had just shouted at him.
He loved Margot. He wanted to keep Margot safe. If that much was true, and he was suddenly certain that it was, then that included keeping her safe from herself.
“I love sailing.” He felt like a complete Neanderthal echoing what she had just said, and decided to try again. “But navigating the boat around here can be stressful, and we’re supposed to be minimizing the stress in your life. Wouldn’t you rather sit down and look over, uh…” What hadn’t they done yet? “...nursery furniture with me? I’ll turn the Wi-Fi back on.”
“You’re starting to sound like my mother,” Margot said through her full-blown scowl. “I’ll tell you what I told her, and it’s that I have no interest in painting a room up in my apartment right now. Besides, we don’t even know if the baby is a boy or a girl.”
“You seemed pretty certain last week that it was a girl,” Eddie pointed out quickly.
Margot shrugged. “It was just a hunch. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Now Eddie could feel his own temper starting to rise at this, and he quickly stamped it down. He didn’t want to get in any sort of argument with Margot. Still...he had wondered before if she was being too flippant about this whole ‘go with the flow thing’, and had chalked it up as nothing more than a normal contrast to his own sudden, passionate need to take charge. But if she wasn’t taking his concerns seriously, did that mean she wasn’t taking other important matters – matters of her own health – at all seriously as well? He couldn’t be there to watch her twenty-four-seven, no matter how hard he might try.
“Come on. It’ll be fun,” he said stiltedly. Eddie had no delusions of it being ‘fun’, but he needed to put on a brave face for Margot if she wasn’t feeling it. “Go grab my laptop and I’ll show you my Pinterest board.”
“Really, Eddie? A Pinterest board?” She seemed willing enough to entertain him on this front, though, and disappeared below deck to grab his computer. He shouted down instructions to her on how to reconnect the Internet; by the time she resurfaced, he had steered the boat into a spot where he felt safe enough to idle while they spent some quality planning time together.
“See? We can go gender neutral, if you like,” he mentioned as he clicked open his browser. “There’s pastel yellows, greens...hell, we don’t have to stick to any sort of heteronormative idea of what our baby colors should be.”
Margot smiled as she settled in on one of the deck cushions beside him. “Such a way with words,” she commended. Then: “I’m not worried about colors, Eddie. But you know most of this stuff won’t fit inside my apartment.”
“Of course,” he agreed. He was eager to troubleshoot now that she had voiced a personal concern, and he was proud to have an easy answer for her. “All this will go in the classic six.”
“What do you mean?” Margot stared at him, uncomprehending, and Eddie closed the laptop slowly.
“I meant to surprise you officially last night,” he explained. “Margot, I bought the classic six for us to share. I thought maybe you suspected that’s what I…” He cut himself off when he saw the look of horror that passed across her face. “Surprise,” he concluded weakly.
“Eddie. You didn’t.”
There it was again: that flare in his chest, that feeling of wanting to get into an argument and knowing he had to suppress the urge. “Of course I did. I bought it for the three of us. Did you think I wouldn’t plan for us to live together? Maybe the old Eddie wouldn’t have–“
“I don’t care about the old Eddie!” Margot exclaimed. She leapt to her feet with incredible agility for a boat-bound pregnant woman, and Eddie followed suit with a hand ready to stabilize her. She recoiled as if his touch was enough to sizzle her flesh; the way she wrenched her arm away from him was like a punch in the gut. “Did you think I would be happy to hear you made such a massive decision for us on your own? That you didn’t even think to consult with me seriously about where I should live?”
“You should live with me, Margot!” Eddie exclaimed. “I didn’t think it was that big a leap that you might want to live with your husband!”
And the man who loves you more than anyone. There was that voice again, that unfamiliar mental cadence that had appeared like a lightning bolt that morning and seemed insistent on stunning him again and again with the revelation that he had fallen for his childhood friend.
And there was said childhood friend, glaring at him like he had betrayed her worse than anyone to come before him by even attempting to put his money where his mouth is and provide for her and their child. Had he been wrong to purchase the apartment without her consent? He had thought Margot liked the classic six. But maybe this wasn’t a matter of like, or love. It was a matter of something else...and it was something he had just fucked up royally.