Yesterday’s had been: P.S. Are you even human?
The day before: P.S. You remind me of porridge.
Today’s: P.S. You’re intolerable.
Then, like I always did, I precisely sliced that strip off the bottom, slid it inside an envelope with all one hundred and one of the others, and returned it to its place at the back of my desk drawer beneath my box of tampons. In my current condition, I absolutely did not need them, but I’d found tampons were the best deterrent for most men. Though I regularly questioned if Elliot was a cyborg, I couldn’t picture him willingly touching feminine hygiene products either.
This was my only form of rebellion. Those postscripts allowed me to release a tiny drip of the anger I swallowed down on a daily basis. When Elliot’s demands became unbearable, I took out my envelope, ran my fingers over the one-inch strips of “fuck you very much,” and immediately calmed.
The therapist I’d been forced to see when I was a teen would have been proud…ish.
Once that was complete and my desk was back to its pristine condition, I ran through the routine I did before Elliot arrived for the day. Lately, it had been: bathroom, break room, bathroom, emails, bathroom, bathroom, bathroom.
The bean was more of a cantaloupe now and seemed to think my work time was her party time. She used my bladder as a bouncy pillow, which meant I spent far too much time running to the restroom.
If Elliot had noticed, he hadn’t said a word.
That was unusual for him since he never held back his opinions on my work.
Davida was in the break room, dipping a tea bag in a mug and chatting with another exec assistant, Raymond, who worked for LD’s chief lawyer.
Davida wasn’t who I’d initially pegged her to be. Beneath her cool professionalism, she was a sassy, foul-mouthed mother hen. We’d become allies then friends, despite our thirty-year age gap and the fact that Davida was a freewheeling, unmarried, and happily childless lesbian, and I was a soon-to-be single mother.
I’d quickly learned the assistants on the executive floor stuck together. We were the only ones who understood each other’s haunted looks weren’t from seeing some “fucked-up shit,” as Raymond said, but from putting up with our bosses’ demands.
And lately, Davida had started covering for me when I needed to dash to the bathroom for the seventeenth time of the day.
Davida and Raymond stopped talking at the sight of me. They couldn’t have looked more different. Davida was a silver vixen, while Raymond was a slim, twentysomething Black man with a smooth, bald head, horn-rimmed glasses, and an affinity for tweed and comic books, but their wide-eyed expressions were identical.
“Darling,” Davida drawled. “You’ve popped.”
My hands flew to my belly, which had barely fit in my dress this morning. Most of my clothes were a tight squeeze, and I still had more than two months to go.
I’d been lucky I hadn’t gotten very big yet. That all flew out the window over the weekend. Little Girl had made herself known.
“You look good, though,” Raymond assured me. “Not a cankle in sight.”
As I made myself my one cup of coffee for the day—we’d reconciled my second week of working for Elliot Levy—I huffed a laugh.
“Come see me at the end of the day. It’s very sexy,” I told him.
Raymond shuddered. “Thanks, sweetie, but I’ll pass. Pregnancy is a mystery to me, and I plan to keep it that way.”
Davida propped her hip on the counter. “But is it a mystery to Elliot? Or have you finally talked to him about it?”
Pressing my lips together, I shook my head. “Not yet.”
Raymond snickered. “You’re wilding. Surely that man can see with his own two eyes there’s a baby on board.”
I shrugged. “He doesn’t look at me, so no, I don’t think he’s noticed.” I smoothed my palm over my stomach. “Besides, I think I’ve hidden it pretty well.”
I’d never appreciated the extra padding around my stomach and hips until it had hidden my pregnancy for several months. The bean had been growing just fine, nestled snugly behind my softness, but she was finally making herself known. Davida and Raymond were right.
Davida gave me a long look, her eyebrows rising over her glasses. “I noticed you were pregnant months ago, darling. That man has traveled all over the world with you. I find it hard to fathom he hasn’t noticed the change in your shape.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
I should have already informed Elliot since he’d have a temp working for him while I was on maternity leave, but he was almost impossible to talk to despite the amount of time we spent together. I’d traveled with him to Switzerland, Dubai, and China, as well as New York and Chicago. When we were home, we spent time visiting sites all over Denver. And during car and airplane rides, hotel stays, business dinners, and site visits, Elliot had remained a wall of marble, so smooth and impenetrable, everything rolled off him.