Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 89536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
The brothers Wallace are being ridiculous, and if our mother were here, she’d make them stop talking stupid, stop this nonsense, stop quarreling.
But she’s not, because they remain in Florida vacationing.
I have to deal with these fools myself.
“Um hi. Hello!” Great, I’m quoting Buzz now. “Listen up, both of you—neither of you are coming to this appointment. Not this one, not any after that. Ever—so get it out of your heads.”
“She’s so cute,” Tripp tells Buzz.
“Look at how mad she’s getting.” Buzz chuckles. “She’s all red.”
“Knock it off, you jackasses! You are not coming to the doctor with me!”
Tripp hums in disagreement. “Um. Technically are you even going to see the doctor, or just the tech doing the ultrasound?” He sounds offended by me, like I know nothing and he’s the expert and he’s going to win this argument on a technicality because I suck at arguing with these idiots.
Well he is wrong.
They are not going to win this one.
I am about to lose my damn mind. “Tripp, it doesn’t freaking matter—you are not coming!”
“Fine,” Buzz says under his breath. “We’ll draw straws so only one of us goes. Whoever wins has to promise to video-chat.”
This is getting worse and worse.
“Okay, let’s draw straws,” Tripp says.
“Rock paper scissors?” Buzz counters back, always having to have the last word.
Eye roll. “Fine.”
They begin rock, paper, scissors, smacking their closed fists and flat palms and scissors fingers against their open hands, shouting “BEST TWO OUT OF THREE!” when they tie.
Which they’ve done twice now. This never-ending bullshit has become the story of my life, and someone should make a movie about two grown men—both professional athletes—who act like children and terrorize their family.
“No one is coming!” I yell, already worked into a snit, my blood pressure no doubt skyrocketing past healthy and normal. “Listen to directions, both of you!”
They both come when I have my twenty-week appointment.
Both of them, plus Mateo’s little sister Glory, plus his sister Rosie, and his mother, who wasn’t about to be left out once she heard the appointment was turning into a family affair.
I glance around the room, spread out on the exam table, clothed in the ugliest gown I’ve ever seen: threadbare, open to the back. I’m freezing my ass off and dying of embarrassment.
“Has espacio para tu madre.” Make room for your mother, Mrs. Espinoza demands, Mateo translating for her, squeezing into the exam room, the sonographer perched on her stool, looking curiously entertained.
It was easy for the guys to bribe the technician to let everyone sit in the room for the circus show—not many people say no to famous athletes, certainly not three of them in one room.
Once they were bribed with a few hundred-dollar bills and the promise of autographed merchandise—plus a box of it for the receptionists too—it still wasn’t easy getting everyone back to the exam room.
Jeez, and they were so loud, too.
Like elephants stampeding down a hallway.
I throw an arm over my eye to block them all out, wanting to fade away into the dimly lit room. Disappear into the table.
They ooh and ahh when the sonographer—Jennifer—pulls my gown aside to display my belly.
“Looks like a beer gut.” Buzz laughs.
Tripp smacks him in the arm. “Now is not the time.”
“Sorry.”
I can’t tell if he’s sorry or not because my attention is suddenly drawn to the small screen next to my exam table, and Mateo takes my hand.
It’s the baby.
Our baby.
Baby Wallace it says in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
I stare at that name, feeling slightly pink in the cheeks.
Baby Wallace.
Baby Espinoza.
I wonder if his mother has noticed; if she has, she hasn’t mentioned it.
The room is blessedly quiet, everyone’s eyes glued to the tiny black and white monitor, the small outline of the teeny baby inside my belly projected onto the screen.
“There are the hands,” Jennifer tells us.
“I’m getting her her first baseball glove,” Buzz announces. “A pink one.”
“We don’t know if it’s a girl,” Gloria says.
“I don’t see a wiener,” my brother tells her. “Trust me, I’m the expert on those.”
Could he not?
“Are we sure we want everyone to know?” Jennifer asks. “Did you want me to just write it down so you can do a gender reveal party?”
“Dear god no, we’re not having one of those,” Tripp grunts.
“That’s not your decision to make, asshole.” Buzz nudges him hard enough with his elbow that I see it from where I’m lying. “Don’t you think it would be kind of neat to do the giant balloons filled with confetti? We can each pop one.”
I hear Tripp’s “Eh…maybe.”
“Jennifer, you’re going to have to give us some time to discuss it as a group before we decide.”
“Ignore them, Jennifer,” Mateo says. “They have no say in this.”
“Eh,” Tripp says again, earning a laugh from Mateo’s mother and sisters and a groan from me.