Size 12 and Ready to Rock (39 page)

Over by his car, Detective Canavan rolled his eyes. “Kids,” he said as he unlocked the door. “Lord knows I love my own, but if I had to work with ’em all day, I’d shoot myself in the head.” Then, with a glance at Cooper, he says, “Oh. Sorry. Aw, what am I apologizing for? You got the guy in the chest. Nice shot, by the way. Remind me to buy you a drink.”

Back in my room, Cooper stops pretending to smother me, rolls over with a sigh, and looks up at the dolls from many nations. “It’s nice to have your bed back.”

“It is,” I say. “Although I can’t stop thinking about what they might have done in here.”

“Like what?” he asks. “Besides pilfer your best doll? Gone through your diary? Is that the secret you’re so worried I’m going to find out? Don’t tell me Jordan knows it now and I don’t. Although we all know even if he knows it, he probably put it in his Crazy File—”

“No,” I say. “I meant what they did in here sexually.”

Cooper looks appropriately disgusted. “Do we have to discuss my brother’s sex life? I know you’ve been there and done that, but it’s really not a subject I enjoy visit—”

“We’ve all made decisions that we’re not so proud of,” I interrupt quickly. “Even you. I’ve met some of your ex-girlfriends. And what Jordan lacks intellectually he makes up for in good intentions. He has a very kind heart. He also has a very big—”

Cooper picks up the pillow again and holds it threateningly over my face.

“—ego,” I finish, laughing. “And I don’t have a secret diary.” I sit up, growing serious. “But there
is
something we need to talk about. I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago, and she said . . .”

I don’t know where I find the courage. Maybe from the same place where Tania found the courage to tell Gary Hall he wasn’t on the invitation list to her Rock Off and so he needed to leave, even though he was pointing a gun in her face. In any case, somehow I manage to tell Cooper what the doctor said about how if we want to have a baby, we need to get busy . . . and how it probably isn’t going to be that easy.

When I’m finished, he doesn’t appear to understand.

“
Baby?
” he says, shaking his head. “Who said anything about wanting a
baby?
”

I’m confused. “Cooper. Don’t you want kids someday?”

“We already
have
kids,” he says, pointing toward Fischer Hall, though the windows of my room face the opposite direction so he ends up jerking his thumb at the wall behind my bed. “We have an entire
dorm
full of kids. Every time I turn around, you’re rushing over there to help one of them out. Gavin, that Jamie girl, that one who was going to have to go back to India, the other one whose dad hates him because he’s gay, not to mention an entire basketball team—”

“Those are
other people’s
kids,” I remind him.

“It doesn’t seem like it to me,” he says. “We see them more than their own parents do.”

“Cooper,” I say. “Most of them are in their early twenties. They hardly qualify as kids.”

“Then why do I always have to pay for dinner whenever we go out with them?”

“Cooper—”

“Let’s say the odds aren’t really as bad as you think and you don’t have to get this operation, or whatever it is,” he says, growing serious. “Let’s say you somehow end up with a baby. Are you going to quit working at Fischer Hall to stay home to take care of it?”

I have never thought of this before. In my fantasies, I always magically have three children, and they’re five, seven, and ten, delightfully self-sufficient, and dressed in charming navy blue plaid school uniforms. “Well,” I say, “I don’t know—”

Quit working? I haven’t even gotten a chance to look at Lisa’s wedding binder yet. She’s the first fun boss—aside from Tim, who doesn’t count, because he was never officially my boss—I’ve ever had.

And what about Sarah? Even though she and Sebastian seem to have reconciled, I’m sure he’s still going to Israel. Who’s going to hold her hand through that? Not like I’m going to get pregnant and have Jack, Emily, and Charlotte right away—it will probably take years—but still, there’s a lot of stuff I have to do, none of which involves staying home with a crying baby . . .

“Because,” Cooper says, “and I don’t mean this as an insult or anything, so don’t get mad, but I don’t really see you as the stay-at-home mom type. I know
I
am definitely not the stay-at-home dad type. I love my job . . . on the days when people aren’t trying to kill one of us, that is.”

“Most people can’t afford to quit their jobs when they have a baby,” I explain to him. I realize that many of Cooper’s friends don’t have children yet, because they’re either incarcerated or famous rock stars, so it’s possible he doesn’t know these things. “They hire nannies or find day care. But yes, you’re right, I do love my job, and I have to finish school. So I don’t want to stay home to take care of a baby either. But—”

“Well,” he says, “if neither one of us wants to take the time to stay home and take care of it, it seems to me like neither of us actually
wants
to have a baby yet. Or am I wrong on this point?”

I try to digest this, but it’s extremely difficult, since everywhere I go, it seems, I’m bombarded with images of women my age pushing baby strollers or showing off their baby bump or telling interviewers that they never knew what true love was until they “looked into the eyes of their newborn.”

“But if we don’t try to have one now, we may never be able to have one. And doesn’t
everyone
want a baby?” I ask. “Isn’t it a primal urge?”

Even as the words are coming out of my mouth, however, I remember what Lisa said in our office. She doesn’t want kids. I know Tom doesn’t either. Is there really a chance Cooper feels the same way?

“Parenthood is the most difficult, demanding job in the entire world,” Cooper says. “Even if you do it right, you could end up with a kid like . . . well, I think over the last few weeks we’ve both seen plenty of evidence of the kind of kids you could end up with. I think the worst thing anyone can do is have a baby because they think it’s what’s expected of them, or because it’s what everyone else is doing, or because they don’t know what else to do with their lives. If you decide to have a baby, you’ve got to be 100 percent committed to the job. But if you ask me, Heather, you already
are
committed to it.” He points again in the direction of Fischer Hall. “Whether you’re willing to admit it or not, you’ve already got a bunch of babies. They just came pre-toilet-trained. And you didn’t have to have an operation or risk your health squeezing them out.”

“Okay,” I say. “Fair enough. But I can’t really see Gavin or any of those guys supporting us in our old age, can you?”

“Heather,
no one
should have a kid so it can support them in their old age. That’s one of the worst reasons in the world to have a baby . . . almost as bad as having a baby to save a broken marriage. People are supposed to support themselves. Are you and I going to support
our
parents in their old age?”

“God no,” I say, shocked at the idea.

Cooper reaches out to take my hand, then gives it a squeeze. “So you see? There are no guarantees. We could have kids, and they could turn out like Cassidy Upton or, worse, Gary Hall.”

This is another thing I had never before considered . . . that Jack, Emily, and Charlotte might turn out to be total and complete assholes.

“This is true,” I say. “But they could also turn out to be like us.”

“Heather,” he says, “need I remind you that we hate our parents’ guts?”

I burst out laughing. “But our parents suck. We don’t.”

“Look.” He squeezes my hand again. “I’m happy the way things are . . . happier than I’ve ever been in my life. If having a baby will make
you
happy, then that’s fine, I’ll have a baby with you. But I’m also fine—
more
than fine—with being . . . what do they call it again? Oh, yeah. Child free.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Are you only saying this to make me feel better, because the odds against me ever being able to conceive without medical intervention are so huge?”

“ ‘Never tell me the odds,’ ” he says.

Relieved, I squeeze his hand back. “That’s the worst Han Solo imitation I’ve ever seen,” I say. “But thank you.”

A tightness I haven’t even realized I’ve been feeling seems to lift from my shoulders, and tears have filled my eyes. I’m not sure if they’re tears of joy, sorrow . . . or relief.

It doesn’t mean I’ve turned my back on Jack, Emily, and Charlotte, I realize. If they happen someday, that’s great. But the pressure of them
having
to happen someday or I’ll somehow be incomplete or a failure is gone. And that feels almost as good as when Gary Hall took the muzzle of that gun away from my head.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Cooper says. “I think I have a pretty good idea how this is going to go, and if you think I’m going to let you adopt every misfit toy you meet in Fischer Hall, you’re nuts.”

“They aren’t toys,” I say, pulling my hand from his and furtively wiping the tears from my eyes. “They’re young adults who only need positive role models and some guidance and direction in their lives. And room and board in exchange for twenty hours of work at the desk or in my office.”

“Well, whatever they are,” Cooper says, “we’ve got more pressing things to worry about right now. Like what are we going to do about Miss Mexico?”

“Oh, don’t worry about her,” I say. “I already checked online, and there are a million Spanish flamenco dolls like her that I can buy for about seven dollars. But I decided I’m not going to replace her.”

“Oh yeah?” He’s reaching into the nightstand drawer again—for the remote, I assume.

“I’m going to let Miss Ireland have a little breathing room,” I say. “I think Miss Mexico was giving her an inferiority complex.”

“I think they should do a docu-reality show about you,” Cooper says, placing a small blue velvet box on my lap. “And call it
Freaky Doll Collectors.
”

I stare down at the box. “What’s this?” I ask suspiciously.

“Open it and see,” he says.

I open it. It’s an oval sapphire on a platinum band, with a cluster of tiny diamonds on either side.

I glance from the ring to his face and then back again in astonishment.

“I-it’s . . . it’s the ring from that antique store on Fifth Avenue,” I stammer, feeling myself turning red. “H-how did you know I wanted it?”

“Sarah told me when I called the office one day looking for you,” he says. He looks pleased with himself. “You weren’t picking up on your cell. And it’s
not
the ring from that store on Fifth Avenue. I went to the store on Fifth Avenue to look at that ring. Do you know how much it cost?”

I feel absurdly let down. “Oh. A lot, I’ll bet.”

“Three hundred and fifty dollars,” he says. “That ring was fake, costume jewelry. I went to my friend Sid who works in the diamond district—
legally,
by the way—and I had him make you an exact replica, but with
real
jewels, on a
real
platinum band—”

I inhale, shocked. “Cooper,” I say. “You shouldn’t have. It’s too much! It’s too fancy.”

“No, it isn’t,” he says firmly. “You should have more fancy things. Put that on and tell anyone who asks that we’re engaged. I want everyone to know, especially my family. And we’re not eloping, not anymore. After you get done billing the pants off Cartwright Records Television for my services, we’re going to be able to afford a wedding at the Plaza. How many people do you want to invite? More important, where do you want to go for our honeymoon? What dolls do you need to add to your collection? Paris? What about Venice? How about—”

I fling my arms around his neck, holding him so tightly that he finally says in a strangled voice, “Heather, you’re choking me,” but I don’t care, because I’m so happy, I never want to let go.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to:

Beth Ader, Nancy Bender, Jennifer Brown, Benjamin Egnatz, Jason Egnatz, Carrie Feron, Michele Jaffe, Lynn Langdale, Laura J. Langlie, Ann Larson, Michael Sohn, Pamela Spengler-Jaffee, Tessa Woodward, and most especially, all of Heather Wells’s amazingly supportive fans . . . rock on!

P.S.
Insights, Interviews & More . . .

About the book

Five Questions for Meg Cabot
Creator of Heather Wells, the Heroine of
Size 12 and Ready to Rock

1. First and foremost, will Cooper and Heather
ever
get married?

Yes, unless something goes terribly wrong. Read on for some hints.

2. Let’s talk about Heather. Not very many authors write about plus-size . . . sorry, average-size heroines, since in the United States, 12 is the most common size. Why did you? Where did Heather come from?

I grew up in a super-size family. My brother is six feet eight inches tall, and by the time I was twelve, I was five feet eight inches, making me one of the tallest people (of either sex) in my middle school. It also caused one of the cutest boys in my class to loudly remark in the lunch line, “Cabot, if you get any bigger, they’re going to have to bury you in a piano case, like Elvis.” (Elvis was not buried in a piano case, FYI.)

I immediately embarked on the first of what was to be many unhealthy crash diets. It was called the Sunshine Diet, and it involved eating only oranges and hard-boiled eggs. Although I lost ten pounds, I gained them all back, plus ten more.

Years later, I discovered that I had celiac disease and had to cut a substantial number of foods from my diet or else risk getting stomach cancer. This included all of Heather’s favorites, such as beer, bagels, pizza, and anything fried. It sucks, but as a fellow celiac sufferer once told me, “Lady, stop complaining. You can still have nachos.” (He was seven at the time.)