We make our way through the freezing night air toward the back entrance—a grey metal door with cracked glass on one side that hasn’t been repaired since I moved in. I start shrinking internally, thinking about the state of my building’s hallways and lobby. The smoke-filled scent, the peeling flooring, the flickering lights, the… shit.
The broken elevator.
“Thank you.” I attempt to take my basket from him but fail when having to balance it with my purse, phone, and keys in one hand. Okay, just re-shuffle. I put my phone into my purse and use the keyring to hook my keys around my small hand’s thumb. There, now I have a free hand for the basket. Easy enough. “Okay, I’ll be on my way.” I take the basket and curl it against my left hip. “Have a good night!” I say, a little too peppy.
Bo’s tongue darts out as he narrows his eyes ever so slightly on me, then the lobby around us. “There’s no elevator here, huh?”
I wince. “Technically? There is. But it hasn’t worked in four years. So, no, sorry.”
“Which floor?” Bo asks, looking toward the stairs.
“Sixth,” I answer meekly.
A small inhale flares his nostrils. “That’s going to be quite the challenge.” He laughs without humour, scratching his eyebrow before placing that same hand on his hip.
I look over at the metal bench near the abandoned elevator and tilt my head for Bo to follow behind. Sitting, I lower the basket and plant to the floor and cross one foot in front of the other, shifting nervously in my seat.
“I’ve been so tired since I found out about the baby, but I’ve been meaning to look for a new place,” I say, looking at the floor. “This building kind of sucks, honestly. It’s not like I’d want to do six flights of stairs super pregnant either. I might end up giving birth on them if I do.”
Bo laughs quietly, more of a breath than anything.
“And, obviously, your ability to get inside of wherever I live is a necessity now too,” I say, gently sitting up to look at him.
He slowly tilts his head up toward me. His eyes are hesitant but appreciative, I think.
“I know we haven’t figured out a lot of our plan, or anything else really… but you should be able to come visit whenever you want and—”
“Not just visit, Win. I want…” He shakes his head, taking in a long breath. “I’m not sure how to say this without it sounding demanding, but I’d like to have the baby at my place too. Overnights or weekends. I’d like to be as involved in their daily life as you are.”
Well, the nausea is back.
A powerful maternal possessiveness falls over me. I know that I’ll need help with the baby, but no part of me has considered Bo to be anything but help until now. This, what he’s asking for, is so much more than that. I breathe through the influx of emotions rising up, waiting to calm down before I formulate a response. Logically, I know that what he’s asking is fair. That this baby is as much his as it is mine. But, perhaps a touch selfishly, I haven’t imagined any scenario where I’m not the main parent and Bo is the additional. The second, supporting parent not all of us got to have.
“I don’t know when that would be possible,” I stutter. “I’m hoping to breastfeed. For the first few months, the baby couldn’t be away from me for more than a few hours.”
“Maybe, er, well, could we do both? Bottles and breastfeed?” he asks, shyly. “I suppose I can only do one of those things.” He chuckles anxiously.
“I’ve heard that it can be confusing for babies to switch, and it can mess with the mom’s milk supply and…” I take a deep, sharp inhale. “Okay, let’s put a pause on this. We don’t have to figure it all out right now. I was just going to say that I’ll focus on getting a new place. Something accessible and nicer if I can cover the rent. This apartment was the only affordable one left in the city four years ago, so I doubt I’ll find something much better, but I’ll try. We’ll aim for accessible and see where we land.”
“How much do you make at the café? If—if you don’t mind me asking.”
“A little over twenty grand a year, after taxes. Then, usually, about six thousand in the summer from lifeguarding.”
Bo rests both of his elbows on his knees, then curls his arms to support either side of his neck, appearing deep in thought. His eyebrows are pressed together, creating a deep crease in the centre of his forehead, and his jaw is tight, his back teeth shifting against themselves.
“We will talk about all of this, Bo. I promise. It’ll be fair. To both of us. I don’t want to exclude—”
“Move in with me,” he says, interrupting, his eyes holding on me with a hesitant yet somehow certain stare. “I have a spare room and an office that we could turn into a nursery. My house is small, but it’s nice. If you move in, you can save money for a new place while pregnant, and we can get through the newborn stage together. I’d hate for you to be on your own for every long, sleepless night. I don’t want to mess with your routine or the baby’s feeding schedule so… yeah. What do you think?”
“I think you’re a stranger,” I say, taken aback, the words falling out of me.
“Not for long, right? What better way is there to get to know someone?” He clears his throat. “And, I mean, strangers move in together all the time and call themselves roommates.”
“What if we hate it? What if I’m a nightmare to live with? Or you are?”
“Then… you can move in with Sarah and Caleb, maybe. Or, hell, you can have my house and I’ll find a hotel or something.”
“I don’t know. It seems like we’re already way in over our heads, and then we’d be roommates too?”
“Think about it for as long as you need to, but I think it makes sense.” Bo swallows, his eyes darting down to my stomach and holding for a lingering, heavy pause. “I can’t do much else right now,” he says lowly. “I can’t help in any other way, but I can give you a place to live that will work for all three of us. If you moved in next month, we could agree to a year. Six months of pregnancy, six months of baby. Then we can reassess. You could save a lot of money during that time. It might even be enough to put a down payment on something. Or maybe you’ll want to stay a bit longer, or leave earlier… I don’t know. What I do know is that I want to help however I can, and this seems like a way for me to do that.”
I think about the last time I moved in with a guy. Jack said all the right things too. How we were starting the rest of our lives together. That we would save so much money by splitting everything. What do we have to lose? he asked me, dark eyes wide with excitement he never normally showed, his black hair sticking up on all ends. Sometimes it was like Jack was so filled with life it was firing out of him like bolts of electricity. He could charge me up just as easily as he’d burn me out. It was up to him each day which option it was going to be.
We had only lived together for a few weeks when Jack shouted at me for the first time. We’d gotten into arguments before, but nothing like that. I burned our dinner, and three hours later, he was still berating me for wasting his food and smoking up his house. It was like that from then on. Even though I was covering most of the bills, it was his place, his food, furniture, routine. I was infringing. A trespasser in my own space.