Out of my chair and up on my feet in seconds, I was moving for the door, with my hand firmly entwined with his. “Oh, I am so with you.”
“Wait right there,” Mam called after us. “Don’t even think about wandering around town in the dark of night, in your condition. Take Joey up to your room, while we finish up here.”
“Upstairs?” Dad muttered. “Really, Trish?”
“What are they going to do, Tony?” Mam sighed. “Get pregnant again? They have to get this one out to put another one in.”
“Jesus, don’t give them any notions.”
“He has some goddamn nerve coming here,” Joey bit out, as he paced my bedroom floor. “Sanctimonious bastard thinking he has any right to lecture me on parenthood. Fucker never changed a nappy in his life, and he sure as hell never paid for one, either!”
Over an hour had passed since we came up to my room, leaving our parents downstairs to hash it out, and he was still pacing around like a madman.
“His entire side of the family is the same,” he continued to rant, as his hair stood up in forty different directions from the sheer height of pulling on it in frustration. “Assholes, the lot of them.”
Clad in his school uniform, and looking entirely too comfortable in my sleeping quarters, Joey stomped around my room like a powerhouse, stopping every few minutes to re-align a crooked poster on my wall, or to fold one of the many items of clothing I had strewn on the floor.
“If you ever met his asshole father and scumbag brothers, you’d know what I’m talking about,” he grumbled, folding another pair of my discarded jeans. “And his mother?” He shook his head and shuddered. “Don’t even get me started on that fucking demon of a woman.”
“Your nanny?” I asked, from my perch on my bed, as I gave my toes a dodgy French pedicure. “I thought she was nice.”
“No, no, that’s Nanny Murphy,” he corrected, bundling a stack of neatly folded clothes into my wardrobe. “She’s from my mother’s side. Nanny is nice. You’ve met Nanny.”
“With the cute perm?”
“Yeah, she’s the one who gave me that miraculous medal from Knock to give you for your eighteenth.”
“Oh yeah, I love Nanny.”
“Yeah, we should go see her,” he muttered, rubbing his jaw. “Tell her the news ourselves.”
“About the baby?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Nanny’s a saint. The witch is my father’s mother,” he fell back into explaining. “She’s a tyrant, Aoif. You’ve never met anyone as cold as—。 Hold up. Should you even be using that stuff?” He stopped his rant-induced pacing to swipe up my bottle of nail polish and eye it warily. “Doesn’t this shit have chemicals that might be bad for my baby?”
“It will be bad for you if you don’t back up from my top coat,” I grumbled, reaching up to swipe the bottle back. “Don’t get all anal on me, Joe.”
“Hey.” He held up his hands. “I’m only asking out of concern for the kid.”
“Such a law-abider.”
He rolled his eyes. “Back to the witch.”
“The witch,” I mimicked with a snort. “That’s a conversation I look forward to listening to you have with our child.” Cackling to myself, I feigned his deep voice and said, “Hey, kid, so this is your great-grandmother, the witch, and these are your great-uncles, the scumbags.”
“And this is your grandfather, the rapist, alcoholic bastard himself.” Groaning, Joey stopped pacing to bang his forehead against the wardrobe door. “Poor kid is fucked and she isn’t even here yet.”
“It might be a boy.”
“Christ, I hope not.”
My heart flipped. “You want a girl?”
“I just don’t want anything remotely like me,” he replied, and his honesty broke me. “Let it be all you, and I’ll be happy.”
“I do,” I replied. “Want it to be like you, that is.”
He paused to glare at me. “Be serious, Molloy.”
“What?” I argued back. “You’re loyal, you’re strong, you’re athletic, you’re talented, you’re beautiful.” I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I want our baby to be like you?”
“Because I’m a fuck-up.”
I smirked. “Only some of the time.”
“Oh, that’s alright then,” he shot back, tone laced with sarcasm. “If it’s just some of the time.”
“Not to mention the fact that you’re way smarter than me.”
He snorted. “You’re crazy.”
“You’re probably the smartest guy in our year, and if you had been born into any other family, you’d be in the brainiac class with Kev and the other swots.”
“I’m barely hanging on in school, Aoif,” he ground out, looking flustered. “I’m passing my classes by the skin of my teeth.”
“But you’re passing, which is exactly my point,” I reiterated. “Because if Kev, or Paul, or anyone else in our year had to deal with what you do on the daily, then I guarantee you that they would crumble,” I replied. “Deny it all you want, but there’s one hell of a sharp mind inside that thick skull of yours,” I mused, as I coated my baby toe with one final layer of nail varnish before resealing the bottle. “Now.” Smiling sweetly up at him, I leaned back on my elbows and wiggled my toes. “Blow.”
Joey looked at me like I had grown an extra head. “You are fucking crazy if you think I’m blowing on your toes.”
“Come on, Joe,” I whined, toes still wiggling. “I’m pregnant.”
“So?” he shot back, looking personally insulted.
“I don’t want the polish to smudge.”
“Then don’t smudge it.”
“Blow.”
“No.”
“Blow on my toes.”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
“Joey Lynch.”
“Aoife Molloy.”
“You said you’d be there for me.”
“As your boyfriend and the father of your baby,” he spluttered, throwing his hands up. “Not as your personal fucking groomer.”
“There were no stipulations spoken when you made your promises,” I argued. “Now come here and blow me.”
“That’s my line.”
“It won’t ever be again if you don’t do this for me.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Rolling his eyes, Joey sank down on the edge of my bed and pulled my feet onto his lap. “You have an eejit made out of me.”
“You’re the best,” I crooned victoriously. “I lucked out in the baby-daddy stakes.”
“Hm,” Joey grunted, entirely unimpressed with me, as he blew each one of my toenails dry before unceremoniously dropping my feet back on the bed, and stalking over to my window.
“Wow, good job, Joe,” I crooned admiring my toes. “Next time, you can help me paint—”
“Don’t push it,” he grumbled, shoving the window open and pulling a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. “I need a smoke.” Throwing one leg over the ledge to dangle outside, while keeping the other on my bedroom floor, he sank down on the sill, and sparked up.