“Oh, you have no fucking idea—” Heidi starts to shout, but she’s cut off before she can finish whatever vile words were on the tip of her tongue.
“Stop! Just stop!” Rocky yells, shoving herself to standing from the couch. “God, I can’t take it anymore. I don’t want to listen to this argument for another second! It’s like I’m in fucking Groundhog Day, but the casting department didn’t even have the decency to hire Bill Murray.”
Heidi’s glare is powerful and oppressive, but me…well, I’m actually smiling. Rocky looks a little like she’s not sure which one scares her more, but I don’t care. I’m so fucking proud that she’s finally, finally standing up for herself.
She can yell at anyone she wants. Me included.
“Just…stop, okay? We all get it. You don’t want him involved, but he’s here. And more than that—”
Heidi walks out of the room before she can finish, and Rocky’s face turns a horribly bright shade of red. She looks like she’ll explode at any second, but instead of spewing her guts everywhere, she storms out of the room in a rush, her hand at her stomach.
I go after her.
I may be a source of her upset, but by God, I’m sure as hell also going to be a source of comfort.
Raquel
Where’s Calgon when you need it? For the love of God, someone take me away.
Light-headed and with the weight of an elephant on my chest, I sink down onto the edge of the bed and take a deep breath.
My emotions feel like they’re pulsing through me, an actual electric shock sending waves throughout my entire body. I’ve never felt this before—this staggering, unsettling lack of control over every fiber of my being.
It’s not like Harrison and Heidi haven’t argued before. It’s not like it was unexpected. But I feel inexplicably overwhelmed. If my baby were a cannonball, I’d be ready to fire it as heavy artillery any second now.
The door opens with a whoosh and then closes with a tight click behind Harrison as soon as he gets a look at my face.
Not wasting any time, he does something reminiscent of a slide into home plate to settle between my knees and look up at me.
“Rock, breathe, okay?”
I shake my head sharply, and he reaches up to put his hands to the sides of my face to steady it. I bat them away like a lunatic, but the feel of them there makes me feel like I’m going to explode.
A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as he raises them both like a criminal under arrest. “Okay, okay,” he soothes. “Touching does not bring you joy right now, and Marie Kondo says to get rid of anything that doesn’t spark joy, so consider the touching dunzo.” He rakes a dramatic hand across his throat, and even under duress, I can’t help but smile. He’s gone from the guy who doesn’t know shit about showbusiness-y type stuff to the guy who is quoting Marie Kondo in his everyday life. And he’s done it for me. “What can I do?”
I shake my head because I don’t know the answer. I don’t know why I feel the way I do—I can hardly explain it at all—and that in and of itself makes it nearly impossible to know the antidote.
“All right. What has you upset? What are you feeling right now? Are you mad at me for the thing with Heidi? Wanna throw some raw pasta in my face?”
“It’s not that!” I snap. “I mean, it’s partially that, I guess, but not really. I just… I feel crazy! Like I can’t control myself or my emotions.” I pull at my face with one hand while putting the other to my ever-tightening chest. “The anxiety feels crippling, Harrison. I mean, what if the baby isn’t okay? Or the baby is okay but I’m a terrible mother who knows nothing about mothering whatsoever?”
His face melts into another position, one I’m way too self-involved to understand at the moment.
I shove to standing and pace back and forth before turning to face him again. “I don’t know anything about taking care of another human. I’ve barely even taken care of myself. I’ve been in this business since my sixth birthday, and there’s always, always been someone there telling me where to be and what to do and what’s expected of me. Motherhood doesn’t come with a manual, you know? It’s, like, a giant, horseshitty mess of trial and error where you hope you don’t raise a murderer or psychopath or whatever. How do I know I’m not going to raise the world’s next terrorist, Harrison? How? I just feel like I need to scream for an hour and a half or so. Run through the streets or something.”
By the time I’m done with my rambling tirade, my breaths are coming out in erratic pants, and I still don’t feel better. If anything, I feel worse. More anxious, more amped up. My body is a bottle, and there isn’t a fucking genie inside. Just enough boiling crazy to create an actual explosive.