I sigh. “Probably somewhere in between — thinkCrossroadspress-tour Britney.”
“Ahh,” Chrissy murmurs in complete comprehension. “Gotcha.”
“I’d invite you to come here but…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Preterm laborbad, bed restgood. I know the drill.” She huffs. “I really don’t think I can manage two and a half more weeks of this. My love for daytime TV is vast, but even it has its limits. Ellen is great, but at this point even her daily dance parties aren’t enough to cheer me up. And I’ve watched so many telenovelas, I’m practically fluent in Spanish, now.”
“Maybe the baby will pop out bilingual. That’d be cool.”
“Truth.” She pauses. “Damn, now, I’m craving Mexican. Maybe Mark will get me a burrito or four fromAnna’son his way home from work…”
I snort. “Goodbye, Chrissy.”
“Wait!” she snaps. “You’re not getting off that easy. You still owe me details, woman!”
I should’ve known she wouldn’t be easy to shake.
Sighing, I rack my brain for something I can tell her. I don’t want to get into the saga of my father — it’s way too early in the day to unpack that much familial dysfunction — so instead, I take a deep breath, make my voice as casual as possible, and say, “Chase bought me an easel and replaced all my supplies. It was nice.”
Total silence from the other end of the line.
“Chrissy?” I ask. “You still there?”
“Ohmigod,” she breathes.
“What?” I ask, my heart pounding a little too fast.
“You love him.”
“What?!” I screech. “Where did you possibly get that from? All I said isit was nice!”
“I know!” she screams. “You totally love him!”
“Chrissy! Did you fall and hit your head? Because if you don’t have some kind of cerebral hemorrhage, you’ve definitely gone insane.”
“Gemma, honey, don’t bother denying it…” She makes atsksound. “I can hear it in your voice. You’re totally falling for him. No — you’ve totallyfallenfor him.”
“That’s not possible. I’ve known the man a week! I can’t possibly—” I shake my head in denial. “No. No way.”
She giggles. “It’s cute — you trying to talk yourself out of this.”
“Chrissy!”
“Gemma!”
“People don’t fall in love in a week.”
“I fell in love with Mark in five seconds,” she reminds me, her voice a little dreamy. “All he said was ‘I’m Mark, I’ll be your TA for the semester’and BAM! I knew, right then, that I was in love with him.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“He made me look forward to biology.” I can almost hear her shrug through the line. “True love is being so excited about seeing someone, you don’t even care if you have to dissect a frog to do it.”
I laugh. “Well, it’s not like that for me.”
“Do you have butterflies?”
“No,” I lie immediately, pressing a hand to my stomach where the fluttering creatures have practically taken up residence since I met Chase.