A stillness follows, the kind of stillness I sense only when he’s not around.

That’s when I tuck my face into my pillow and bawl my eyes out.

NINE

A RAINBOW IN SEATTLE

Melanie is the best thing about Seattle, and anyone who thinks otherwise can just kiss her ass. Mel is like a permanent rainbow in a city that’s eternally gray. From her flashy earrings to the line of bracelets up to her elbow, she clinked and clanked her way into my room in an explosion of colors, trying to cheer me up when my world had just walked out my apartment door and it took all my willpower to keep from running after him.

Mel took the merest second to assess the situation before taking action. She spotted the bawling mass on my bed, which was me, and she quickly pried my pillow free and replaced it with her big-breasted chest, and now her designer top is soaked from my tears as she waits for me to run out of them.

It’s been at least a half hour, or more, and I’m still going strong. Every couple of minutes, I just seem to need to pause for air.

Now, in one of my breathing moments, she pushes me away to stare into my eyes with a saucy curve of her lips. “You weren’t lying when you said Riptide Tate wanted you to be the mother of his sexy babies, were you? You two got right down to work, didn’t you! Huh?” She shoulders me a little and peers down at my stomach. “So when are you going to show? I want to see a little bump somewhere!”

“I know! Me too!” A smile tips my lips as I think about this baby. Oh, baby, the things you’re asking us to do to prove that we love you. “I want to show so bad, Mel.”

She grins at that, then examines me with assessing green eyes. “Hmm. Pregnancy glow. You’ve got it in spades, even with those weepy eyes. I can’t wait to be pregnant—I think it’s so sexy!” she cries. “What most makes pregnant being sexy to me is the fact that the baby daddy is sexy. It’s just sexy having a part of them inside you! How does it feel? Chicken, you have to feel like a woman now; you got the sexiest baby daddy there is!”

Oh god, I can’t even talk about Remington with my best friend without feeling my bones turn liquid inside me. Even my voice takes on a different tone—the exact same tone it seems to take when I’m alone in bed with him and loving him. “It feels amazing, Mel. Like he’s with me. Like we’re bound. Like I was supremely, royally fucked.” I groan and lie back in bed and rub my lips, and I love that I can still taste my Riptide on them.

“Brooke, let me just say . . .” Mel drops down on her back next to me and stares at my ceiling. “When I saw him just now, I felt like dying a little inside. He’s so big and so hot my heels almost melted and I instantly felt four inches shorter.”

I can’t control my sudden burst of laughter, and Mel kicks her shoes off and rolls to her side, smiling at me in signature Melanie mischief. “His mouth was all red like he’d just French-kissed you to death. Riptide is a bit of a Neanderthal, isn’t he? He’s so fucking primal, ohmigod! I bet you guys do anal sex.”

“We do not! He’s animal but protective!” I squeal, squirming a little at the thought.

“Doggy style for sure?”

“Yes, but stop reminding me!” I cry good-humoredly. Then I close my eyes and spread my hands open on my abdomen savoring his baby inside me. “There’s truly something extremely sensual about being pregnant by him,” I admit. “I’m so hyperaware of my body, how it feels, how it is changing for this little baby. I feel my ribs and hips expanding to make room for it, my breasts changing, all of me . . .” I sigh, then turn my head and stare at my best friend. The only one who ever really “got” me until Remy. The only one who likes me in any form I’ve come. “Mel, I can’t lose this baby.”

The smile she had been wearing vanishes, and she squeezes my hand over my still-flat abdomen. “You won’t. It’s Riptide’s baby.”

“We didn’t know there was a pity party here, but we’re glad we didn’t miss it!” says a male voice from the open door.

Sniffling, I lift my head to see my best male friend, Kyle, in Dockers and a polo shirt, standing right next to Pandora, her dark hair held back in a careless knot that sends spikes out of her hair everywhere. “You’re preggo?” she demands.

“According to tons of lab work and pregnancy tests, yes. But my body still hasn’t gotten the complete memo, aside from the throwing-up part.”

Kyle heads to my desk and flips the chair around, and Pandora jumps on the bed with shoes and everything, her leather jacket suddenly all I can smell.

“Pan-Pan, I don’t really feel like your vibe is babyish enough for Brookey, so you sit over there.” Melanie pats her side so she gets me all by herself, but Pandora reaches over me and shoves her playfully.

“Shush up, let me hug her.”

Pandora looks at me, with her dark eyes and dark lipstick. People don’t know that goths are extremely sensitive people—at least, Pandora is. You turn goth for a reason. I think she’s just naturally dramatic and angsty, and it was all after some asshole broke her heart. It’s a miracle, Mel says, that Pandora didn’t turn lesbian.

“You okay?” Pan asks, and before I can nod or speak, she pulls me into her leather jacket, and I feel Melanie snuggle my back too. Melanie can’t ever resist a hug. She even says hmmm.

“It’s gonna be all right, Brookey,” Mel says. Then she adds in my ear, “I promised your man I’d take care of you. He asked me to make sure you were not alone, were well fed, and taken care of. Riley told me he and Pete will need a daily report from me so they can keep Remington appeased, and he also told me you’ve been puking and that your baby daddy wants you to fucking eat!”

I groan in protest and ease away from their hug. “I’m all right. When I get hungry, I’ll eat something. If my body wants food, it will tell me. Guess what hunger was designed for?”

“We don’t care if you want to eat or not. We’re your man’s minions on a mission, and we already got you something, in memory of old times,” Kyle informs me as he gets up from the chair and returns with a Jack in the Box bag. That instant, I vividly remember how these three dopes teased Pete and Riley before in the drive-through, ages ago, the night Remington hired me. And I think of that fateful evening, and how he’d already changed my life without me even realizing. All my feelings crowd around my chest, and as Kyle brings over the bag, a surge of nausea overtakes me.

“Get that out of here!” I plead as I pinch my nose, which only alters my voice to the ridiculous. “I’m not doing so well with certain smells. Plus I need veggies for this baby. I need folic acid and calcium—stuff that shit doesn’t have, I guarantee. What kind of friends are you?”

He laughs triumphantly. “We knew you’d say that or you wouldn’t be you, so the Jack’s for us. We got you something else.” He leaves the room, then returns and reveals a brown bag from Whole Foods. “Likey? You wanna talk about good friends now?”

I toss him a pillow. “Bring that over!” I peer into the bag and spot a turkey wrap, the kind I like, and suddenly my friends’ gestures and support enfold me like the hug they just gave me, snug and tight.

“You guys are so good to me,” I say, setting the bag on my nightstand.

Melanie tugs my ponytail. “Have you noticed you’re mush now?” She squeezes my arm and when my little bicep responds to her, she amends, “Uh, on the inside.”

I burst out laughing, then close my eyes and see blue eyes, spiky hair. I want to squish him so hard, but he’s so far away. I wrap my hands around his baby instead. Then I look at my phone. Remy isn’t as dependent on phones and Internet as other people are. Neither am I, but now I’m clinging to my phone as my thread to him. He’s not even the type to text, but I don’t freaking care. Call me tonight if you want to?

It takes over an hour for him to answer, but I grin like a dope when he answers: Just landed. I’ll call.

We watch a movie, then Melanie hops up from the bed. “Hey, Chicken! Did I tell you? Next guy I sleep with is in for a treat. I just took pole-dancing classes!” She grabs my floor lamp and proceeds to show us just what she learned, moving sinuously with her body, one jean-clad leg wrapped around the stem. “Kyle, that get your motor running?”

“Dude, it would be like incest if it did,” Kyle says, from where he straddles my desk chair.

“Why? You’re not my brother!” she protests. “Come on. Does it get your motor revving?” She moves her tush for him to see.

Kyle sits there, looking exactly like Justin Timberlake, and he says, hesitantly, “It’s . . . sputtering.”

“Pan, come here. Peter Pan, move with me so Kyle can get his rusty motor up and going. I’m going to teach you what I learned for free.” Pandora goes to the iPod dock and sets her phone on the base. A rock song immediately blasts inside my bedroom.

“All right, let’s get Kyle hard over there!” Discarding her leather jacket as if she’s stripping for the poor man, she heads over to Mel. And then she and Melanie start bumping asses and having a blast, and I find myself listening to the song, trying to find the lyrics through all the noise, wondering if it’s even something I’d ever play to him.

It’s useless, so I grab Remy’s iPod and put in my earbuds and listen to Avril Lavigne’s “When You’re Gone.” It’s so nice to listen to a song that you get. Or that gets you. That makes you realize what you’re feeling is human, and normal, even if it may be a feeling you wished you didn’t have.

I text him the YouTube link. He doesn’t text back, and I assume he’s in the gym, punching his bags unrecognizable.

How is he going to cope these two months apart?

I can’t shake off the thought that, even though I’m the more emotional one, this will test him more than it will test me.

I’m still wondering about it when the cramps begin. I shift on the bed as my friends keep talking and all my awareness hones in on the god-awful cramps that make my fight or flight surge to life. If feels like someone is hurting my baby. My own body is hurting my baby. I search the iPod for songs that calm me, and the only song that succeeds is “Iris.”

But the pain intensifies. I quietly remove my earbuds and slowly get up from the bed. My friends fall completely quiet when they see me walk, folded over, to the bathroom. I shut the door and when I check, I realize the blood is back. And heavy.

For a moment I just breathe roughly through my nose and lean my head against the tile, trying to calm down. I touch my stomach lovingly and try to talk to my baby in my head, telling him that nobody is going to hurt him. That he is very wanted and already very loved.

I imagine looking into the blue eyes I love while having to tell Remy that I lost his baby. A well of emotion seizes me again, and tears I thought I no longer had threaten to surface once more.

“Mel,” I shout through the door. “Mel, I don’t know if this baby is going to make it.”