Marie Ferrarella - Your Baby or Mine?

“Asleep?”

It was a rhetorical question. If he hadn’t been, Marissa knew she would have heard him by now. He wasn’t a child who didn’t make himself known.

Jane nodded. “I think we tired each other out.”

She’d already called her father and knew he was on his way to pick her up. He’d be out front by the time she got down to the ground level.

Jane was at the door when she suddenly remembered. “Oh, and you had a phone call. I took the number down. It’s posted on the refrigerator.”

“Thanks.” Marissa handed Jane her money. “And good night.”

“Same time Thursday?”

“You bet.” Marissa locked the door and crossed to the refrigerator. Taking the paper from under the magnet, she stared it at. The number wasn’t familiar.

But the name was. Jeremy Allen. The man she was subletting the apartment from. Tucking the phone number into her jeans, she first crossed to the alcove to check on Christopher.

He was still asleep. She stood, looking at him, love swelling within her heart. During the day Christopher was sheer energy, but once he was down, he was down for the night. It was, she supposed, nature’s little way of compensating.

She was still smiling to herself as she dialed the phone number. A sleepy voice answered on the fourth ring and said what passed for hello.

“Jeremy? This is Marissa.” She glanced at the clock and realized what time it was in New York. She’d completely forgotten about the time difference. “Oh, God, did I wake you?”

“Yeah, but that’s okay.” She heard rustling on the other end, as if he was sitting up in bed. “I’ve got some news.”

Marissa didn’t know if she particularly liked the sound of that. It was the exact same way her father used to preface his announcements that they were moving yet again.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I’m coming home.”

She could feel her stomach sinking down to the floor. The apartment was a godsend for her. Located just a couple of miles from the campus and close to both her job and Jane, it made her life easy.

Easy was obviously not a word destined to remain with any permanence in her life. “When?”

“End of the week.”

“The end of. the week?” When she’d agreed to sublet the apartment, Jeremy had said that he was leaving for two years. It had only been nine months. “But you said—”

It was clear that he didn’t feel up to being hassled when he was half asleep. “That this was only temporary,” he reminded her.

She could barely afford to live here. How was she going to pay for a regular apartment and still go to school? “Yes, but you made it sound as if it was until the end of next year—at the very least.”

He didn’t sound any happier than she did about the need to return home. “It was, but the funding for the play ran out We closed today.” Jeremy let out a long sigh. “I could let you stay on. Of course, it’d be a little tight.”

In more ways than one, she thought. It was all right to deal with Jeremy when he was three thousand miles away. But she knew what close proximity would bring and she wasn’t up to the struggle involved with keeping him at arm’s length all the time. Jeremy believed that no woman should die without experiencing the pleasure of having slept with him, at least once.

“That’s all right,” she told him. “I’ll be out by the end of the week.” Oh, God.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” He yawned in her ear. “You’d better get some sleep,” she urged. “I’ll see you Friday.”

“Let me know if you change your mind. I’m a bighearted guy.”

“Right.” Marissa hung up, frowning. She had four days to find a place to live, work on her thesis, study for an exam and juggle all the other various parts of her life.

Marissa felt as if she’d just hit the legendary wall. And it had fallen on top of her.

Marissa hurried into the room, just barely making it in time. The clock on the back wall announced that it was exactly five-thirty.

Made it.

She was only vaguely aware that Christopher had his fingers tangled in the ends of her hair and was apparently intent on seeing how resilient it was. The tugging on her scalp registered peripherally and she moved his hand away. Undaunted, he went to work on the neck of her T-shirt.

A quick scan of the room told her that everyone seemed to be here. She had made class by the skin of her teeth. Again. This had to stop. Up until last month, she’d always been so organized.

Like a drill sergeant

She supposed, in a way, she wasn’t all that different from her father. Marissa raised her brow. Now there was a frightening thought She wasn’t anything like the Sergeant, she was just feeling slightly punchy, that’s all.

Concerned about having to look for a new place to live, she’d tossed and turned all night. And when she’d finally dropped off, Christopher had woken up, loudly announcing the beginning of a brand new day. A day that had three classes and a trip to the library crammed into it. The latter had turned into nothing short of a disaster. Every book she needed for her thesis had been checked out. There hadn’t been time to try another library.

Lately there didn’t seem to be enough time to do anything except rush.

The classified section she’d grabbed this morning on her way out the door was no closer to being read now than it had been when she’d left the apartment at eight. It had spent the day sticking up out of her purse, a constant reminder that she hadn’t had the time to look through it yet.

She was a little afraid of opening it. Afraid to see just what apartments within the area were going for now. Undoubtedly it had to be a lot more than she was able to wring out of her already-squeezed-to-the-limit budget. There was no way that she was going to be able to afford an apartment on her own. Though she hated the idea, she was going to have to find a roommate.

With her master’s thesis weighing heavily on her mind, the prospect of looking for an apartment and a roommate was almost more than Marissa could handle. She could feel it wearing away at her, eroding her optimism like a steady drip eventually erodes the surface of a rock.

It was beginning to seem, Marissa thought, as if life just never got easier.

Heads turned in her direction as the door behind her closed with a resounding slam. She hadn’t meant to let go of it. Marissa flashed a smile at those closest to her. Reaching over to set her purse on the floor, she accidentally dropped the folded newspaper. She felt disjointed and uncoordinated.

Marissa sighed, gathering her patience together. She was going to get through this, just as she had managed to get through every other bumpy segment of her life. If she’d gotten some sleep, she wouldn’t feel this frazzled.

Still, sometimes it would be nice just to have one thing to handle at a time. Like getting her thesis completed.

Securing Christopher on her hip, Marissa bent to pick up the scattered pages. She was definitely going to go through them right after class. Just before she collapsed into a boneless heap.

“Let me get that for you.”

Marissa glanced up to see that the offer had come from Beckett. She bit back the impulse to say that she could manage. Right now, she couldn’t.

“That would be very nice,” she murmured, straightening again.

With one eye on Andrea who was on the floor, communing with two other babies, Alec squatted and quickly gathered up the paper.

Marissa dragged her free hand through her hair. The damp air had made it curl like a plateful of curly fries. It felt hopelessly tangled. A little, she mused, like her life right now.

“Thanks.” She took the paper from him, then smiled ruefully. “I seem to be coming apart today.”