I don’t have to check the speedometer to know she’s right. I’m nervous about how she’s going to take the whole “maybe the seventh is your baby” thing. We’ve driven all day, about to find a hotel for the night, and still I haven’t worked up the nerve to broach the subject.
“I didn’t know you had a speeding problem,” she remarks. “You’re usually a decent driver, when you’re not crashing into angels, that is. You’re a rule follower.”
Which of course she makes sound like an insult. “Gee, thanks.”
She returns to the parenting magazine she’s reading. She’s been researching this baby thing with the same kind of passion she usually reserves for angel stuff. What she keeps stashed under her pillow lately is a dog-eared copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. And a three-hundred-year-old tome that has a passage about a woman giving birth to a Nephilim. Just a little light reading.
“So, how was your break?” she asks, and smiles suggestively. “Did you get to blow off some steam with Christian?”
I ignore her obvious innuendo. “We spent some time at the beach.”
She gazes at the window wistfully, where outside the sky has darkened to a deep, beguiling blue; her hands rest on the swell of her stomach. I wonder when the last time was, when she did anything but worry.
“Ange, we need to talk.”
“We could talk about why you’re not with Christian,” she suggests.
“How about we not talk about that, but say we did?”
“What’s the holdup, C?” she continues like she didn’t hear me. “He’s hot, he’s hot for you, he’s available, and wait, hold on …” Her golden eyes widen theatrically. “Aren’t you available now?”
I hate that I’m blushing.
“And let’s not forget that he’s your destiny. Your purpose or whatever. Your guy. So make out with him already. Just be, with him. In a horizontal sort of way, like you said.”
“Thank you, Angela,” I say wryly. “This is so illuminating.”
“Sorry,” she says, although she’s clearly not in the least bit sorry. “I get annoyed watching the two of you torture yourselves.”
Here I started out determined to talk about her, and we’re talking about me. I let her change the subject for the moment, but I’m determined to get back around to this whole baby situation.
“We’re not—” I sigh. “It’s complicated. We don’t want to be together because somebody told us that we have to be.”
“And by ‘somebody’ you mean God, right?”
Of course it sounds insanely arrogant of me, insisting on a relationship on my own terms, when she puts it like that.
“It’s not so complicated,” she says. “You want to be together all on your own. It’s obvious, especially for him. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the way he looks at you, like he’d kiss the ground you walk on if he thought it would win you over.”
“I know,” I admit softly. “But—”
“But you’re still hung up on the cowboy.”
I check my mirrors. “I don’t want to bounce out of one relationship and right into another. Christian and I have time to become whatever it is that we’re meant—that we decide to be.”
“You don’t want him to be your rebound,” she says thoughtfully. “How very adult of you.”
“Thanks. I’m trying, here.” I change lanes, then speed up to pass a motor home that’s moseying along the freeway.
“But maybe you don’t have time,” she says, the first time she’s acknowledged what I told her about my vision. “And it’s been months since you ended it with Tucker, hasn’t it?” she points out.
Okay, that’s it. Enough discussion about me. “So how come you get to mandate that we don’t talk about your love life and then jump straight into talking about mine? That hardly seems fair,” I say.
Her whole body tenses. “I don’t have anything to say about Pierce. He’s a sweet guy.”
“I’m sure he is. But you’re not in love with him. And he’s not the father of your baby, right?”