Month 2:
Santana waits patiently to hear from Brittany about whether or not she's pregnant. Even at work she's distracted by the phone on her desk and it seems like the only time she's not staring at it is when she's in court. She figures that Brittany would have called either way, but when she doesn't hear, she can't help but assume that it didn't take and they'll have to try again. The contract covers three rounds of IVF and the odds of it working on the first shot weren't necessarily the greatest.
She's sitting in her penthouse living room having a glass of wine and trying not to read too much into the fact that Brittany hasn't called when the buzzer goes off. Santana gets up and goes to the intercom and is surprised to see Brittany on the screen, a duffle bag slung over her shoulder and a Big Gulp in her hand. Furrowing her brow, Santana presses the talk button and announces to Brittany that she's on the other end.
"Can I come up?" Brittany asks and though Santana is sure this breeches some kind of professionalism in their arrangement, she buzzes her in.
"What are you doing here?" Santana questions when Brittany appears at her door.
"I'm pregnant."
"You're…really?" Santana's heart beats really fast in her chest and she feels like she's going to throw up with excitement.
"Nope, I'm kidding." She rolls her eyes a little.
"You could have just called, you didn't have to come all the way over here."
"Well, considering I have nowhere to live anymore, it wasn't exactly a big deal."
"What do you mean…you don't have anywhere to live anymore?"
"My girlfriend…ex-girlfriend threw me out. I've been crashing on people's couches, but when I started vomiting my guts up because of your baby, I wasn't exactly a welcome houseguest anymore. So I was thinking I could just crash here." Brittany plops down onto Santana's couch and put her shoed feet up on the coffee table. "Looks like you've got the space."
"That sounds…really inappropriate."
"Why do you do that?"
"Talk like…this."
"I'm taking some time to process what's going on here. You just showed up on my door step to tell me I was having a baby and then you invited yourself to stay with me. It's a bit much."
"I thought you were supposed to be happy to have a baby?"
"No, no, of course I'm happy. I've been waiting two weeks to hear from you. I just don't think you should stay here. I'd be more than happy to put you up in a hotel until you get yourself back on your feet."
"Jeeze, I'm good enough to grow your fetus but not good enough to stay here."
"That's not it at all—"
"I'd think you'd jump all over this chance, you get to feel your kid. Knowing your kind, you'd probably get one of those heartbeat machines, maybe have an ultrasound installed in the bathroom. Play Mozart and shit."
"I—" Santana pauses for a moment to think about it. She knows that this is probably the most foolish idea there ever was, but she can't help but be blinded by emotions. She'd felt really weird about a stranger having all of these experiences with her baby and now here this same stranger is, apparently homeless but giving her the opportunity to be part of all of the things she won't ever get to experience herself. "Just until you find a place?"
"Just until I find a place."
Santana has lived alone since college, so the adjustment of having someone else stay with her is really weird. Especially when that someone eats junk food and leaves the wrappers around, drinks soda like normal people drink water and somehow sleeps until noon. She still hasn't found out what Brittany does for a living, but it seems to be something with computers, considering she's always on it when Santana gets home from work. They're sort of like roommates who don't really talk to each other, but each morning Santana leaves Craigslist printouts of apartments on the table and every night she comes home to them still sitting there.
"Your kid is a monster." Brittany announces when Santana gets home from work one day. She's on the couch with a bag of Cheetos and a Coke and Santana fights the urge to grab both things away from her. "I've thrown up like…four times today."
"Well considering you're eating and drinking pure chemicals, that doesn't surprise me much."
"Um, these are Cheetos, it pretty much says in the name that there's cheese in them, therefore, healthy. And they don't put cocaine in Coke anymore so it's fine."
"Seriously? Did you see all the fresh fruit and yogurt that's in the refrigerator? I even bought sweetened coconut granola."
"Ugh, you're going to make me puke again, stop."
"Everything you put in your body goes in the baby's body."
"So why would you want to torture your baby by making it eat all that nasty stuff? Next thing, you're going to try to get me to eat broccoli." Brittany feigns a gag which turns into an actual gag which leads to her running into the bathroom to throw up. When she comes back out, she has her toothbrush in her mouth and she talks through it. "This puking is really messing up my schedule."
"What is it that you…do?" Santana asks, genuinely curious since she knew next to nothing about the woman who was staying in her house.
"Rifght nowgh?" She speaks through her toothbrush, then went back in the bathroom to spit. "I'm trying to get my dental assistant certification online."
"Oh. So you're going to school!"
"Yeah, I mean, trying to better myself or whatever. My ex was supposed to support me through school but she sucks, so now I'm pretty much living off the first installment of my surrogacy money."
"So you…don't really have money to find an apartment?"
"I mean…are you going to kick me out of I say no? I know I said this was just temporary, but I was kind of hoping it could be temporary until I have the kid and can go back to couch surfing. Seriously, you don't even know, no one wants a pregnant lady around."
"I mean…I do." Santana looks down, feeling a little bit of a sting about the idea that she can't get pregnant and yet here Brittany is, sort of taking the fact that she can get pregnant so easily for granted. "You can stay here, but we need to make some changes."
