Read Online Bundle of Joy? by Ariella Papa - Free Book Online Page B

would be like on Block Island. I was glad that she didn’t bring up the baby stuff, because I wasn’t really hearing anything she was saying and I don’t think I would have been supportive. I was too busy thinking about Warren Tucker.
    Back home, I stared at the tape. I didn’t feel like bringing it out into the living room where Kelly and her bad-boy cameraman might stumble across me. I wasn’t sure I could watch it.
    Warren Tucker.
    I wasn’t prepared for this. Warren bartended at the pub where Jamie and I waitressed the summer after our junior year of college. We lived in her parents’ Block Island house for the summer. All of the Jacobs children got the house for the summer after their junior year, and I tagged along. Jamie’s parents took themselves on a cruise those summers and only came out for Memorial Day. It was the longest I had ever been away from home. After the traditional Jacobs reunion that Memorial Day, Jamie rented out the extra rooms and we lived with four other girls. I imagined that that was what going away to school mustbe like. It felt like I was having a normal life, even though I still maintained all my abnormalities.
    But there was Warren Tucker. As soon as I showed an interest in him (and it took me to the Fourth of July to admit it to anyone, including myself), Jamie declared him off-limits to everyone in the house. It wasn’t really a problem, because almost everyone but me had paired up with someone. Jamie had a constant stream of boys that she dated.
    There was just one night with Warren Tucker. Oh, I didn’t want to think about it. I never talked about it. It had been my thing. My moment with the boy I’d wanted all summer.
    Now that boy was going to be cheapened on network television. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t watch Warren Tucker pandering to nameless producers.
    I climbed into bed and read the last of The New York Times Magazine. I should have fallen asleep dreaming of writing for The New York Times Magazine, but instead I thought of sitting on the jetty with Warren Tucker….
     
    Warren smiled as he opened his picnic basket. It seemed pretty loud for Block Island. It sounded like New York City. I was wearing a heavy wool coat even though the sun beat down on me. My face was sweating, but Warren didn’t seem to notice. He just gestured inside the picnic basket and I saw rows of beautiful spicy crunchy tuna. Before I knew it, Warren had lit a match and set the sushi on fire. I smelled it burning. There was a lot of smoke—
    I woke up, disoriented. There was smoke in my room and Armando was screaming and banging on my door.
    “Our apartment is on fire!”
    I grabbed a sweatshirt and slippers and opened the door. Immediately, my throat filled with smoke, and Armando grabbed my arm and led me through the hall.
    “My laptop, my laptop,” I said.
    “No, Voula, no. I call fireman. They coming. We mus go.” Armando pulled me out of the apartment. The sirens were so close they seemed like they were inside me.
    “Kelly! Kelly’s still inside,” I screamed.
    “No, she not here. I open door, I look. Non preoccuparti. Let’s go!”
    As we started down the stairs, crouching to avoid the smoke, we saw the firemen. There must have been four of them with axes and giant backpacks running up the stairs to the fire. They were so fearless, running toward what we were fleeing.
    “Go right downstairs,” a voice behind a mask boomed.
    And I ran with Armando still pulling on me—all the way down the four flights that the firemen had raced up.
    Outside, it was cold, and a blond woman came up to us immediately. She was wearing a thin T-shirt and a pair of Armando’s silk pajama pants.
    “Voula, dis is Nadia.”
    “Hello,” said Armando’s latest conquest. “Nadia.”
    “Hi,” I said. I was still kind of in shock. I looked up to our floor. There were flames in Armando’s room and smoke coming out of my window. I watched as the firefighters fought it out. In addition to the men