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Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl



Some people can’t wait to have babies. They’re ready for it—with their perfect lives and their pregnancy glow…

Poppy Adams doesn’t have a perfect life, and she wasn’t ready for the positive test. An unexpected baby—Poppy’s unexpected baby—won’t exactly have her family doing cartwheels. But she’s making the right choice.

Right?

Poppy’s totally got this. She just needs a little encouragement, and a knitting group is the perfect place to start. Baby blankets, booties, tiny little hats—small steps toward her new life. But she feels like she’s already dropped a stitch when she discovers the knitting group is led by the charismatic Rhiannon.

It’s not exactly a great time to meet the woman who might just be the love of her life. While the group easily shuffles around to make room for Poppy, it’s not so easy fitting her life and Rhiannon’s together. With the weeks counting down until her baby arrives, Poppy’s going to have to decide for herself what truly makes a family.


What people say?

With crafting references sprinkled throughout, this uneven but dynamic rom-com may hook romance-loving knitters.

What people say?

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Chapter One

If this were one of those mid-00s R-rated bro comedies, my story would begin two months ago, the night I got sloppy drunk and succumbed to a 2 am text from my ex. Our sex would be comical, full of the usual “realistic” comedy-sex pratfalls: bumping heads, limb-entangling clothes, and downright terrible dirty talk, but never crossing the realistic and/or comical line where I as the female party stop looking sexually appealing for even a second of screen time.

I’d also inexplicably have sex with my bra still on, and as soon as my schlubby not-nearly-hot-enough-for-me ex rolled off to instant sleep, I’d have my genitals—but never my shiny, shaved legs—covered by his artfully tousled sheet.

Like he’d ever have a flat sheet on his bed, but I digress.

Luckily for all of us but especially me, this isn’t a mid-00s R-rated bro comedy. It isn’t the story of a lovable loser manchild who, in spite of how bitchy and irrational his harpy nag of an ex is about everything, still manages to barely grow up and come into himself, just in time for said harpy to renounce her nagging ways and meekly accept all his faults, negating any need on his part for personal growth. It isn’t the story of a guy who not only gets the girl, but gets to keep his video game and pot habit, too. It isn’t the story of a guy at all.

It’s mine.

About—among other things—knitting, having sex without a bra on, and not only not having permanently shaved legs, but going several months without even touching a razor.

And it starts at a Planned Parenthood.

***

“You don’t have to talk to them,” the woman in the neon pink vest tells me and flashes an edgy smile. “You don’t have to listen to them. You don’t even have to look at them.”

“Okay.” I nod, already shell-shocked. We’re standing sheltered by the door of my cab, but it might as well be tissue paper for all it protects me from the sounds of shouting and singing.

There’s one particularly throaty woman who keeps reciting a version of Hail Mary that would be more at home in a horror flick than a church.

“I’m Rhiannon. I’m gonna be with you every step. If you want me to hold your hand, I can. If you want me to make small talk, I can. If you want me to recite Monty Python and the Holy Grail including the moose jokes from the opening credits, I can. I also have a very large umbrella.” She gestures to the four-foot-long neon pink staff she’s leaning on. “Sadly I’m not allowed to use it as a weapon.” This time her smile seems ever so slightly more natural, and I find myself smiling back.

“Okay,” I say again, a little more confidently.

“You ready?”

The question isn’t funny, not in the phrasing or the delivery, but it still makes me laugh. I am the absolute opposite of ready. Not ready to face the fire and brimstone waiting for me on the sidewalk (which I assume is what Rhiannon is asking about), not ready to commit to the irreversible decision I’m somehow supposed to make today, and sure as hell not ready to be a mother. I don’t even consider myself ready to be an adult, and yet here I am, twenty-two and on my own regardless.

Rhiannon opens her very large umbrella.

She may not be allowed to use it as a weapon, but she’s still damn good with it regardless. One minute she’s twisting it to hide my face from some asshole recording me with a handheld video camera. The next, she’s using the pink fabric of it to block my view of a particularly gory five-foot poster before my brain can register the image. She doesn’t recite Monty Python to me, but she does talk my ear off with her excitement for tea latte season.

“Tea latte season?” I ask. “You sure you don’t mean that lesser-known season… What do they call it? Oh yeah, ‘Fall’?”

“Nope. Tea latte season,” she repeats without hesitation.

“Not pumpkin spice season?” I continue, hoping that even though Rhiannon and I are strangers to one another, the in-joke will be one we can still share. Surrounded by hate and harassment on all sides, I’m desperate for kinder human connection, even if it means bonding with a clinic escort over stale memes.

“Oh God no. Not that I have anything against Basic girls—some of my best friends wear Uggs!—but little known fact, pumpkin spice syrup? Not the best choice for the lactose intolerant among us.”

It may be impossible for either of us to be loud enough to drown out the noise, but the light talk is still a welcome distraction.

Rhiannon even manages to get me to laugh—right as some geriatric asshole is calling me a whore, no less—by regaling me with the story of the day said lactose intolerance met a disbelieving barista and a latte that definitely wasn’t soy.

I’m so damn glad she’s here. I can’t imagine running this gauntlet with Jake, assuming he didn’t smoke up and flake like that time we were supposed to go to my grammie’s funeral. I certainly can’t imagine being here with my mother or sister, because that would mean admitting to either of them why I need to be here in the first place.

Yeah, no thanks.

Not that anyone in my family spends their weekends wailing and handing out pamphlets like this Costco-sized pack of nutbars, and I know if I called my mom she’d be here in a flash, even pay for the procedure if I needed her to, but none of that means she’d be over the

moon happy that her college-dropout youngest daughter got herself knocked up by her loser ex-boyfriend. And the thought of admitting my shame to my big sister, the 4.0 student and lawyer, isn’t much better.

The last thing I need in my life is to disappoint my family even more than I already have.

But unlike when I’d very conspicuously needed my mom to come and help pack up my dorm room two months before the end of semester, she doesn’t ever need to know about this. As long as I do what I’m supposed to do and get this abortion, she’ll never have to know. None of them will ever have to know.

“Remember,” Rhiannon says in parting as she drops me off safely at the door of the clinic, “Whatever choice you make, it’s always the right one.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but is it still true when your choice isn’t a choice at all?

Body Shaming/Fat-Phobia, Serious Illness/Hospital

Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl
Heidi Belleau


Warnings: Body Shaming/Fat-Phobia, Serious Illness/Hospital

Summary

Some people can’t wait to have babies. They’re ready for it—with their perfect lives and their pregnancy glow…

Poppy Adams doesn’t have a perfect life, and she wasn’t ready for the positive test. An unexpected baby—Poppy’s unexpected baby—won’t exactly have her family doing cartwheels. But she’s making the right choice.

Right?

Poppy’s totally got this. She just needs a little encouragement, and a knitting group is the perfect place to start. Baby blankets, booties, tiny little hats—small steps toward her new life. But she feels like she’s already dropped a stitch when she discovers the knitting group is led by the charismatic Rhiannon.

It’s not exactly a great time to meet the woman who might just be the love of her life. While the group easily shuffles around to make room for Poppy, it’s not so easy fitting her life and Rhiannon’s together. With the weeks counting down until her baby arrives, Poppy’s going to have to decide for herself what truly makes a family.


Preview

Chapter One

If this were one of those mid-00s R-rated bro comedies, my story would begin two months ago, the night I got sloppy drunk and succumbed to a 2 am text from my ex. Our sex would be comical, full of the usual “realistic” comedy-sex pratfalls: bumping heads, limb-entangling clothes, and downright terrible dirty talk, but never crossing the realistic and/or comical line where I as the female party stop looking sexually appealing for even a second of screen time.

I’d also inexplicably have sex with my bra still on, and as soon as my schlubby not-nearly-hot-enough-for-me ex rolled off to instant sleep, I’d have my genitals—but never my shiny, shaved legs—covered by his artfully tousled sheet.

Like he’d ever have a flat sheet on his bed, but I digress.

Luckily for all of us but especially me, this isn’t a mid-00s R-rated bro comedy. It isn’t the story of a lovable loser manchild who, in spite of how bitchy and irrational his harpy nag of an ex is about everything, still manages to barely grow up and come into himself, just in time for said harpy to renounce her nagging ways and meekly accept all his faults, negating any need on his part for personal growth. It isn’t the story of a guy who not only gets the girl, but gets to keep his video game and pot habit, too. It isn’t the story of a guy at all.

It’s mine.

About—among other things—knitting, having sex without a bra on, and not only not having permanently shaved legs, but going several months without even touching a razor.

And it starts at a Planned Parenthood.

***

“You don’t have to talk to them,” the woman in the neon pink vest tells me and flashes an edgy smile. “You don’t have to listen to them. You don’t even have to look at them.”

“Okay.” I nod, already shell-shocked. We’re standing sheltered by the door of my cab, but it might as well be tissue paper for all it protects me from the sounds of shouting and singing.

There’s one particularly throaty woman who keeps reciting a version of Hail Mary that would be more at home in a horror flick than a church.

“I’m Rhiannon. I’m gonna be with you every step. If you want me to hold your hand, I can. If you want me to make small talk, I can. If you want me to recite Monty Python and the Holy Grail including the moose jokes from the opening credits, I can. I also have a very large umbrella.” She gestures to the four-foot-long neon pink staff she’s leaning on. “Sadly I’m not allowed to use it as a weapon.” This time her smile seems ever so slightly more natural, and I find myself smiling back.

“Okay,” I say again, a little more confidently.

“You ready?”

The question isn’t funny, not in the phrasing or the delivery, but it still makes me laugh. I am the absolute opposite of ready. Not ready to face the fire and brimstone waiting for me on the sidewalk (which I assume is what Rhiannon is asking about), not ready to commit to the irreversible decision I’m somehow supposed to make today, and sure as hell not ready to be a mother. I don’t even consider myself ready to be an adult, and yet here I am, twenty-two and on my own regardless.

Rhiannon opens her very large umbrella.

She may not be allowed to use it as a weapon, but she’s still damn good with it regardless. One minute she’s twisting it to hide my face from some asshole recording me with a handheld video camera. The next, she’s using the pink fabric of it to block my view of a particularly gory five-foot poster before my brain can register the image. She doesn’t recite Monty Python to me, but she does talk my ear off with her excitement for tea latte season.

“Tea latte season?” I ask. “You sure you don’t mean that lesser-known season… What do they call it? Oh yeah, ‘Fall’?”

“Nope. Tea latte season,” she repeats without hesitation.

“Not pumpkin spice season?” I continue, hoping that even though Rhiannon and I are strangers to one another, the in-joke will be one we can still share. Surrounded by hate and harassment on all sides, I’m desperate for kinder human connection, even if it means bonding with a clinic escort over stale memes.

“Oh God no. Not that I have anything against Basic girls—some of my best friends wear Uggs!—but little known fact, pumpkin spice syrup? Not the best choice for the lactose intolerant among us.”

It may be impossible for either of us to be loud enough to drown out the noise, but the light talk is still a welcome distraction.

Rhiannon even manages to get me to laugh—right as some geriatric asshole is calling me a whore, no less—by regaling me with the story of the day said lactose intolerance met a disbelieving barista and a latte that definitely wasn’t soy.

I’m so damn glad she’s here. I can’t imagine running this gauntlet with Jake, assuming he didn’t smoke up and flake like that time we were supposed to go to my grammie’s funeral. I certainly can’t imagine being here with my mother or sister, because that would mean admitting to either of them why I need to be here in the first place.

Yeah, no thanks.

Not that anyone in my family spends their weekends wailing and handing out pamphlets like this Costco-sized pack of nutbars, and I know if I called my mom she’d be here in a flash, even pay for the procedure if I needed her to, but none of that means she’d be over the

moon happy that her college-dropout youngest daughter got herself knocked up by her loser ex-boyfriend. And the thought of admitting my shame to my big sister, the 4.0 student and lawyer, isn’t much better.

The last thing I need in my life is to disappoint my family even more than I already have.

But unlike when I’d very conspicuously needed my mom to come and help pack up my dorm room two months before the end of semester, she doesn’t ever need to know about this. As long as I do what I’m supposed to do and get this abortion, she’ll never have to know. None of them will ever have to know.

“Remember,” Rhiannon says in parting as she drops me off safely at the door of the clinic, “Whatever choice you make, it’s always the right one.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but is it still true when your choice isn’t a choice at all?


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