Chapter Twelve

Rolling her eyes, Riley reached for the mustard and did her best to ignore the catalogue Shane was pushing at her.
"Riley! This is important! Which one?"

"What does it matter?"

"It matters to me! Now which one?"

"What's the difference?"

He gave a groan of annoyance. "This one's beech and this one is maple."

Riley looked down at the two cribs on the page and tilted her head. "If I can't tell, a newborn baby won't be able to tell."

Shane pulled the catalogue away from her and flipped the page over. "I can't believe I have two months to find a crib."

"Eight weeks is a long time to find a crib Shane."

"I know. I just can't believe I left it so long, after all the nursery's been finished for weeks."

"Shane, don't worry. When I was born I didn't had a nursery. I shared a bed with three other people." He raised his eyebrows in disbelief.

"Oh yeah. Me, Yvette, Sydney and whoever Yvette's flavour of the month was." She finished with the mustard and reached for the mayonnaise. Shane watched her scope it out and spread it on the bread. "What is that?" he asked. "Right now it's a salad cream, mustard, mayonnaise and cucumber sandwich."

"Pregnancy cravings are disgusting." He replied, looking away in disgust.

"It's not a craving. I'm so pissed at not having craving that I'm trying everything to see if I am and I'm just missing it."

She folded the bread over and lifted the sandwich to her mouth, but stopped at the last second.

"You know what, forget it." Riley picked the plate up and threw the sandwich away.

She was washing the plate in the skin when Shane came up behind her to clean his glass. When Riley turned around she found herself face to face with him, well as close as they could get with Riley's seven month bump in the way. For a crazy second, just as he moved towards her, Riley thought "He's going to kiss me." and her heart skipped a beat.
But Shane took a step back and said "

I thought you should know, I have a date tonight."

As of late, Riley had loved being seven months pregnant and being able to blame everything on hormones. But sitting alone that night while Shane was out, she was finding it very difficult to blame her anger on her hormones. Eventually, feeling like she was going to explode, Riley picked up the phone.
"He's out on a date! Can you believe that? I'm good enough for him to knock up, but not good enough for him to take out? Is that it?"

"Well," came Alice's quiet reply. "You are kind of fat now."

"I'm seven months pregnant Alice!"

"And huge. Which of course I'm taking great pleasure in. You use to be a skinny cow."

"Focus Alice!"

"Why does it bother you so much? Last time I checked, you hated him, you didn't want to be down there anyway."

"I don't anymore. I coming home."

Alice laughed. "Clarke you don't have a home, not here anyway."

"So what? I'm just suppose to accept that he's out with some other women?"

"Pretty much yes. Did you expect him to go eighteen years without so much as a date? Come on!"

"You know what Alice? You suck at this stuff!" Alice laughed.

"Whatever. Call me when you gain more weight Clarke."

She hung up and Riley gave a scream. She threw a pillow across the room and sat down. Alice did have a point, Alice always had a point. What was bothering her about the whole thing so much? Her and Shane didn't get married because they wanted to, they had to. Still, he could of at least talked to her about it. She hated men.

When Shane arrived home, Riley was sleep on the sofa, but woke up when she heard the door close. She looked at him with half closed eyes.

"Enjoy your date?" she asked with more then a little bitterness.

The truth was he hadn't. All night he hadn't been able to shake the feeling that something was wrong. He'd felt strange all night.

"It was alright, but I don't think we'll be going out again."

"Why?" Shane just shrugged.

"I think it's probably best if we focus on the baby for awhile. You know?"

Riley nodded and sat up. "Sure. Whatever. I'm going to bed." Why did she suddenly feel so different? She couldn't have feelings for Shane, could she?