In the Unlikely Event

Kathleen and I turned from sometimes-shagging to always shagging soon after we found out she was pregnant. I stopped calling her Rory, but still couldn’t face her when we were doing it. Thankfully, there were enough positions from which all I could see was her naked back.

After the ceremony, we go back to our house. Kath can’t drink, and I’ve been cutting back on alcohol, too. Mam and Elaine decided to move in together, since they’re friends and since Kathleen and I apparently need our privacy, especially since we’re about to welcome little Glen into the world.

About that name.

Aside from me being surprised and confused by the choice, Glen is a terrible name for anyone under sixty-five years old, and our Glen is expected to hit that mark sixty-six years from now.

We burst into the cottage, and Kath is taking off her big, white dress, groaning as she does. She looks like a cloud in that white thing, but I know better than to say that to her.

“Have you given any more thought to selling your songs?” she asks, removing the bobby pins from her hair one by one and clutching them between her teeth as she speaks.

I shake my head and fall to the sofa with a sigh.

“Mal,” she pleads.

I turn on the telly, crossing my legs. Cash in the Attic.

Bloody hell, Glen. You’re laying it thick, now, aren’t you?

“I don’t understand you at all.” Kiki sulks, removing her bracelets and jewelry with sharp, frustrated movements. “You’re a brilliant writer. We could get good money for them instead of relying on my da’s inheritance, which is already dwindling. We could actually buy real, expensive furniture for Glen’s room, as opposed to the secondhand crap we have now. I just cannot for the life of me fathom why.”

“Because my songs are mine.”

And Rory’s. She inspired them. No part of me wants to show the world what went through my head that day I spent with her, the day she left, and everything after. All the other songs I wrote and got offers for before her are no longer relevant. Rory changed me.

Kath doesn’t know any of this—not the story behind the songs, and not that being asked about them constantly feels a lot like being stabbed in the chest.

“You’re being so unreasonable.” She gales into the bedroom.

It used to be Mam’s bedroom. Now it’s ours. We moved all our furniture in yesterday. Well, I did. Our nightstands, bed, and Kath’s huge mirror that’s tilted so she looks skinnier. (“Don’t judge, okay? Ha-ha.”)

I’ve just closed my eyes to take a few moments to breathe when I hear a shriek from the bedroom. I jump to my feet immediately. My first thought is—the baby.

“What’s going on? Is the baby okay?”

“What in the ever-loving fuck is this?”

I’m temporarily taken aback by the fact that Kathleen has said the word fuck. I wasn’t even sure she was aware of its existence, let alone able to produce it from her good, Catholic lips. Of course, we’ve done the deed countless times, and in less than Christian positions, but…

Wait, what the feck is this?

A napkin. She is holding a napkin. The napkin.

The contract.

I snatch it from her hand and mentally kick my own arse for not putting it elsewhere when I arranged our nightstands by the bed. She must’ve gotten them mixed up and opened it to take out one of her gazillion hand creams, finding this instead.

“It’s nothing.” I shove the thing into the back pocket of my suit pants. Kathleen’s eyes are two big planets, pregnant with misery. She slaps my chest, then covers her mouth, her face twisting in anguish behind her hands.

“You two had a deal?”

“She doesn’t want me,” I say—a spur-of-the-moment reaction and definitely up there among the dumbest things to say to your newly wedded wife, who by the way, is also heavily pregnant.

But in my mind, I know this is the most efficient way to assure her the napkin means nothing.

Which, clearly, is also a massive problem.

The napkin shouldn’t mean anything, but not because Rory buggered off to another continent to shag other people and take pictures of them and write on the back of those pictures how much they suck in bed and in life and in small talk. (I’m paraphrasing here, of course.)

The napkin shouldn’t mean anything because I’m about to have a baby with my childhood friend, turned lover, turned wife.

Yes, arsehole. Wife.

I advance toward my wife. My patient, saint-like partner who groaned and took it when I called her something else again and again and again for months.

“We both moved on. And we are married, in case you failed to notice.”

I clasp her arms, draw her close.

She pushes me away. “Get rid of it,” she barks.

I let out a dark chuckle. “What?”

“You’re not deaf, Mal. Get rid of the bloody thing. It shouldn’t be in the house in the first place. I cannot believe you.”