Emma's bent over the sink in the women's bathroom at the store, trying to spew her lunch as neatly as possible. The night crew has enough work as it is. There's a koala changing station right behind her in the mirror. It's mocking her.
Sweat soaks her face, and her heart is thumping a million times a second.
How could this have happened?
That's a stupid question. She's pretty damn sure she knows exactly how it happened.
They were always so careful though! Well...they were sometimes so careful. Condoms weren't the easiest thing in the world to steal, but one of them could usually get their hands on some.
And the times when they couldn't...well by the time either of them realized, neither would be keen on stopping.
Good God, how could she have been so stupid?
She splashes some water on her face, dries it with a paper towel and steadies herself to leave.
She leaves the bathroom to find Suzy still waiting outside, twirling a curl around her finger.
"Heard you barfing all the way out here, you pregnant or something?"
Hearing the word causes Emma's heart to catch in her throat. Her tongue fumbles around for a few moments before uttering;
"...I think I might be".
Suzy shuts up at that, and Emma gets her bag and leaves for home without another word.
When she gets home that night, Neal is sitting on the couch in front of the TV news with the yellow legal pad open on his lap and a mug of hot chocolate on the table.
"Hey" she says, throwing down her bag on the kitchen table and moving to flop beside him.
He has a pencil in his hand and is focused intently on the page.
"What are you drawing?"
"Pirate ship" he replies.
"Planning on taking up a life of plundering now?" she says with a nudge to the shoulder.
He does laugh "No, I just loved Treasure Island as a kid". He puts the pad aside on the couch before getting up and heading towards the kitchen.
"Want the leftover grilled cheese I made for dinner?"
"Sure"
He grabs the plate off the back of the stove and hands it to her before sitting back down.
"Good news!"
Emma pauses imperceptibly over her mouthful of grilled cheese. If only he knew.
"I was in the basement doing the laundry today, and I was talking to the woman from 3B- her name's Susan Rodriguez by the way- and she asked if I could watch her two sons tomorrow night because she has to work late and her old babysitter had an emergency. I said yes, so when you get off tomorrow I'll be up there"
"That's cool" Emma says over a mouthful of sandwich, "I'll grab some deli stuff from work and meet you there for dinner. What's she paying you?"
"Seven bucks an hour"
Emma almost loses her bite.
"She said that's what she paid the other girl"
"So let me get this straight...a job that they give twelve year old girls pays more than what I make? Why exactly did we not think of this before?"
"Cause no one wants a couple of homeless ex thieves to watch their kids"
Neal's tone is joking, but it cuts Emma to the core.
Because he's right. They're practically kids themselves. She works in a crummy service job and he's unemployed and neither of them graduated and they both have criminal records and it's not like she knows how to be a mother at all, how would she...
She throws up later that night again. And for all that she tries to tell herself that it could be the nerves, in her bones, Emma knows.
The truth is confirmed, the next day when she sequesters herself away in the bathroom, and stares at the little plastic stick as the two little pink lines that seal her fate appear.
Her secrets must be all over her face, because when she comes back to the floor, Judy notices right away.
"OK Emma, what's going on"
Judy really did have the penetrating mother's gaze down pat.
She sucks up her breath before finally blurting out everything in a speil that she's sure is borderline incomprehensible. She's really very lucky that it's the middle of a weekday and there's no customers in her line.
"Maybe it's OK" Emma said, reaching for straws even now "I mean, how accurate are those things anyway?"
"Pretty damn accurate" Judy says with a cocked eyebrow. "Do you know what you're going to do?"
Emma's slumped over in her aisle, fiddling with a left behind WIC brochure. The woman on is has very straight teeth. "I don't even know Judy. I just don't know"
"Have you told your boyfriend about it yet?"
Emma snorts. Neal had come by one day to bring her her lunch, and he'd immediately turned the charm on her coworkers. He really could when he wanted to.
"I don't even know how I would start"
"'I'm pregnant' usually works pretty well" Judy says wryly.
"It's just..I know he's had a life at least as hard as I have. Maybe even harder. But he's still got so many romantic ideals. He still thinks that things...that things could be perfect for us, no matter what gets thrown in our way."
She touches her stomach idly. There's someone growing in there, inside her. It still doesn't seem possible.
"And when I'm with him, I feel like it too. But then you get me alone and the truth just rushes up on me. And I don't know if he'll be able to see that side of things".
Emma's slumped back against her register, chin tucked protectively to her chest.
"I don't even have a doctor" she says "Could I even afford one? Terry said I would get insurance when I get bumped to full time..."
"That won't start until next year at the earliest" Judy explains. She pulls a strip of register tape out and scribbles something down on it before handing it to Emma. "This is the number of a women's clinic across town. I went there when I got pregnant with my first. It's pretty understaffed, but they do what they can. Whatever you decide, they should be able to help".
Emma takes the number, and she spends the rest of the day trying to wrap her head around what she should do.
She gets home at 6, and realizes she'd forgotten the conversation with Neal the night before. She runs back to work to pick up the sandwich stuff, and doesn't get up to 3B until nearly 7.
The door is open, and she enters quietly to the noise of loud laughter and the world's fakest pirate voice.
"Argghh! Fail me again men and I'll make you all walk the plank!" is the first thing she hears, coming out of the mouth of a small boy no more than five, standing on the arm of a couch over both Neal and another older boy of maybe eight. Both boys had longish, floppy, dark hair and big smiles. The oldest "boy" had a smile almost to match right now.
Emma drops her bag and flops on the couch behind Neal. The apartment is laid out quite like their own, and furnished in much the same way. Clean, but cluttered, furniture, clearly secondhand. And family mementos covering. Photos, drawings, toys spread amok.
"Real pirates never walked the plank, they tied you to the mast to scare away sea monsters, what kind of pirates are you supposed to be?"
The smaller boy puts his hands on his hips defiantly and insists. "We're not just pirates, we're pirate ninjas! And pirate ninjas make people walk the plank!"
Neal stands and plucks the boy up off the chair arm and puts him on the ground "Pirate ninjas that need to take a break for dinner now, this is my girlfriend Emma, and she brought us sandwiches.
The little boy says "ewww" when Neal uses the word "girlfriend", the older one sticks his face in the shopping bag and wants to know if Emma brought bologna.
She did. And the four of them sit at the kitchen table eating the sandwiches and a bowl of potato salad. Well, a bag of chips for Neal, who still stubbornly refuses to eat anything with mayonnaise.
A fact that which the younger boy (Juan. His name is Juan, Emma tries to remember) finds of great personal offense.
"But it's so goood. It makes everything yummy!" he insists over an overful mouthful.
"Nu-uh" Noah (Noah the older, Emma notes) "You told mommy that once and poured it all over your bananas and oranges and then wouldn't eat them and she got mad".
Emma giggles as the boys start to argue. Boys all three.
It's like that pretty much the rest of the night. Neal's a natural, manages to get both of them bathed (and only has to threaten Juan with the hose once), dressed in their PJs, and off to bed with almost no problem at all.
They're both sitting on the couch (or slumping in Emma's case, who would have known little kids were so exhausting?) watching TV when Susan gets home from work.
Susan's maybe twenty five, going on forty. Dark hair swept back off her neck and a name tag from the dry cleaner's at the strip mall a few blocks away.
When she asks Neal to take the trash out to the dumpster downstairs, she takes the opportunity to ask Emma a few things.
"I hate to ask you this, but do you think this could be a more regular thing? Charlotte called this morning and said she wouldn't be able to work the next two weeks either, and she's just a kid...It would only be a night or two a week, we're only open late Thursdays and Fridays to prepare for everyone needing everything nice for date night." She gets a look in her eyes that Emma knows too well.
"I know some friends would say I was foolish leaving the kids with a man I'd barely met, but I was desperate and he did seem so friendly".
Emma smiles wryly "You really didn't have any reason to worry, Neal's one of the best and most guileless men I've ever met- possibly the only one honestly. The worst you were probably going to be in for were some inappropriate pirate ninja stories and mayonnaise overdoses".
There is relief on Susan's face, but still trepidation.
"So you don't think it will be a problem..."
Emma lowers her voice a touch "Honestly, Neal's been having trouble finding any work at all, he'd probably jump at the chance. Neither of us finished high school, and" she pauses, and kind of kicks at the ground "Neal doesn't have any documentation. No SSN, no birth certificate, his driver's license is fake. I don't know the details but he left a really bad situation and doesn't have any ability to go back. We could really use the help, and if you knew any one who needed a babysitter or yard work, or anything else that they'd be willing to pay in cash..."
Susan gets a look of understanding on her face, and smiles.
"I'll ask around".
When they get home, and Emma makes her lunch for work the next day, Neal sits at the kitchen table, drawing again.
"Susan asked if you'd be willing to watch the boys again next week, and maybe more regularly." Emma says over her shoulder".
"Sure" he says "They're good kids. Barely any bloodshed at all, even when I had to make them come in when it got dark".
She sits beside him and looks over his shoulder, she sees him embellishing the pirate ship from the night before. Now it's under a huge full moon and sailed by four figures, two large, one with a long pony tail, and two tiny figures climbing the rigging.
"Is that something you've thought about?" Emma asks hesitantly. "A family?"
Neal sticks the pencil behind his ear and rubs the back of his neck.
"I guess, I mean...my own family was never something to write home about...but I guess I thought I could find something like that again. A home, people who loved me."
She blurts out "Don't you ever get scared? Scared that everything we have, as little as it is, could just disappear over something stupid? That we could try so hard and still fail?"
He scoops her up into his lap, notepad on the table forgotten, pencil toppled to the floor.
"Anywhere I've got you, that's good enough. Even if we end up selling matches in the street"
"I don't think they do that anymore".
He doesn't even acknowledge her interruption.
"Home is where you are for me."
His voice is so certain, so sincere. Emma feels the back of her neck redden. No matter how many times she hears him say it, it still amazes her that he could actually want her.
He strokes the side of her face with one finger. His voice has taken on a soft, serious tone.
"A home, and at least one person who loves me," His voice switches back to his usual easy going manner "So I'm already halfway there. Besides, as you saw today, kids love me"
She squirms against his squeezing arms, "You're going to have to get a new move, someday this one might not work."
He leans up and captures her earlobe between his lips. "Seems to be working fine now".
His kiss is warm, and solid, and he feels so good underneath her that Emma lets herself drift away.
But no matter how happy she feels right now, every time she looks at his face, all she can see is him leaving.