“Bye, Ava,” I said and hung up.
Before I could turn to my brother, he got a ding on his phone and pulled it out of his pocket. He was reading something as I approached him.
“Mason, do you hate chicken scallopini?” I asked him.
“Apparently,” he said.
“Apparently?”
“I mean, yes. I do. I hate the stuff,” he said.
I nodded. Something was going on, but hell if I knew what it was. If Ava was running some kind of idea by me and needed to be this secretive about it, it had to be a huge one. Probably involving a bigger investment.
“Well, I’m off to meet Ava for dinner. Come join us when you’re done, I guess,” I said.
“Sure,” he said, sounding ironically unsure.
* * *
When I arrived, I was surprised to see Ava sitting outside the restaurant. She seemed pensive, and a million thoughts ran through my mind about what I could be in store for. Whatever it turned out to be, the effort seemed silly. At this point of my investment I was in for a penny, in for a pound. Might as well go full hog if she really believed in something. Though, admittedly, I was curious as to what it was.
I got inside, and she gave me a quick hug before telling me to follow her. We walked directly past the hostess stand and into the restaurant. I looked back at the hostess, who seemed just as confused as I was. I was beginning to wonder what the heck was going on and was about to ask her if she was leading me to a dark room to murder me when the words got caught in my throat.
We had arrived at a table and sitting at it already was Amanda.
“Amanda,” I said, suddenly not able to breathe all that well. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ll just let you guys talk for a few minutes, but I will be right over there,” she said, pointing to the other end of the bar. She was also not facing me when she said that. The conspiracy to get me there was hatched between the two of them, and Ava was on her side.
“Why don’t you sit down, Tom,” Amanda asked. I thought of protesting, of refusing to do anything until I knew what was going on, but my body followed the instruction without any input from my indignation. Curiosity and the desire to be close to her overrode everything else at the moment.
“Okay,” I said, settling into place and clearing my throat. I tried to relax my body language so I couldn’t be threatening at all. It was something I had learned from Ava, actually, that I had a tendency to approach serious conversations combatively. When she and Mason were breaking the news of their relationship to me, there was a lot of tension simply because my body language gave off the impression I was totally against it. It couldn’t have been further from the truth then, and I didn’t want to give Amanda that impression now. I folded my hands over each other on the table, my arms stretched out so I wasn’t hunched. “What’s this all about?”
“I have some news, and I thought you should know first,” she said, and I held up my hand. I knew where this was going. She thought I hadn’t gotten my email yet, which, to be fair, was a reasonable assumption. I hadn’t responded to it, and also was a man of my tendencies, and the one of not checking all my email was a well-known one between the two of us.
“I know,” I said.
“You do?” she asked, her face a mask of confusion. Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure it was about the email.
“I read your request,” I said. “You want to move departments.”
She sat there, stunned, her jaw moving up and down like she was trying to find the words, and I decided to cut in before she could say anything else. If there was a chance to keep her before she made the jump, this was the time.
“Look, I know things are difficult, and you aren’t comfortable working with me right this moment, and I get that. And I know I’m the one who encouraged you to fill out that application. It’s just that, well, I don’t want you to leave your position,” I said.
“I’m pregnant,” she blurted out.
I was halfway through another word when the interruption registered. There were at least a few seconds where I had my mouth open, the word still trying to come out, while my brain registered what the interruption actually was, and what that meant. My eyes instinctively floated to her stomach, then back up to her eyes.
“Pregnant?” I asked.
“I’m pregnant,” she repeated, this time not looking like the words got out without her meaning them to. She straightened up in the seat and looked calm and collected, but I could see her eyes measuring me. Trying to read my reaction.
“Are you sure?” I was able to mumble. It was the only thing I had at the ready. Every other thought and feeling and word was tied up with each other, all fighting their way to my throat.
“I am. Completely,” she said. There was a finality to that. No ambiguity.
“Oh,” I said, cursing my sudden inability to speak.
“So far, the only person that knows besides you and I is Ava,” she said. I turned to look at Ava at the bar, and she kind of half waved at me, then realized that meant she’d been watching us and I saw it and suddenly turned her back to me again.
“Ava,” I said, as if the name was foreign to me. I couldn’t think. I certainly couldn’t speak. Emotions and thoughts were coursing through me at lightning speed, and none of them slowed down long enough for me to concentrate on them. Instead I just looked back to Amanda, who looked like she was getting upset.
“Ava, yes. She is the only person I trusted. I talked to her about it, and she told me about how she hid her pregnancy and how I needed to tell you as soon as possible,” she said. I nodded and stared at the table. A glass was in front of Amanda, and it just registered that it was filled with orange juice. I had never known her to drink orange juice except in the breakfasts that we had in the hotel room just upstairs.
The mornings after we made love.
Upstairs.
Where we made a baby.
“You told Ava,” I repeated, encouraged by the fact that I was able to repeat something rather than immediately begin blurting out the mathematics of how the baby had been conceived and where, like was on my mind. Images of Amanda’s naked, succulent body, wrapped in the bedsheets, and around my hips coursed through my memories. I tried to shake them off.
“Yes. Ava. She is the one who convinced me to come out here. She encouraged me to fly here today. She even arranged it and paid for it,” Amanda said. I noticed something in her voice. It had gotten cold.
“So, you flew back. To tell me you’re pregnant,” I said, my brain finally feeling like it was registering the situation, putting all the blocks into place and getting me back on track to being able to meaningfully contribute again.
Amanda sighed and threw her cloth napkin down on the table in front of her. She grabbed the orange juice and drank the remainder of it in one big gulp, then sat it down and stood up.
“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said. “This was a mistake.”
Before I could get words out of my mouth, she stomped away and was out the door before I could stand. I looked over to Ava, whose eyes were wide, and she took off after her while I stood there, dumbfounded and speechless.
34
Amanda
I didn’t have time before dinner to check in to the hotel, so I had just left my luggage at the front desk and gone straight to the restaurant. Fighting tears, I crossed the lobby back to the desk. I didn’t want to cry, but the tears were welling up, and I just couldn’t push them back any longer.
All I could hope was that I would manage to get up to my room before they came spilling out. I got up to the desk, and the clerk smiled at me.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I left my luggage here a little while ago, but now I’m ready to check-in.”
He looked at me strangely. “Check-in?”
“Yes,” I said. “I have a reservation for tonight. It’s under Amanda Myers.”
He continued to give me that confused look for a
few seconds, then turned to his computer. He clicked a few buttons, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, but there’s no reservation under that name.”
“What do you mean there’s no reservation?” I asked. “I made it this morning.”
He shook his head again. “I’m sorry, but the hotel is completely booked, and I don’t see a reservation under the name Amanda Myers.”
“If the hotel is booked and you don’t see my reservation, why did you keep my luggage at the desk?” I asked.
“Did the person who took it from you ask your room number? Or your reservation confirmation number?” he asked.
“No,” I said. This was going spectacularly. I let out a sigh. “Can you check one more time? Maybe it’s under a different variation of the name? A misspelling?”
“I’m happy to look again,” he said. “But the only reservation that was made within the last three days was made this evening just before a gentleman arrived. Everything else has been booked for quite some time.”
“Then what happened to my reservation?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m very sorry for the mix-up. Unfortunately, sometimes things like this happen. Can I help you find somewhere else?”
My jaw hurt from my teeth gritting so hard. It wasn’t this man’s fault, as much as I wanted to blame him for it. I just felt ridiculous standing there with my luggage at my feet and nowhere to go.
“Yes,” I said.
A couple of minutes of clicking buttons later, he gave me a smile.
“You’re in luck. It looks like there is a room available. It’s in the town of Astoria. If it’s alright with you, I will take the liberty of making a reservation for you,” he said.
“Go ahead,” I said.
He finished, printed out a confirmation, and handed it over to me. As soon as I looked down at the name of the hotel, I felt my heart sink. It was a motel. There really wasn’t any other option. I wasn’t going to be able to get a flight back to San Francisco until the next day.
I knew if I called Ava and asked if I could crash at her place for the night, she would let me. But I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Not only did I not want to talk about what happened yet, but I also didn’t want to be somewhere Tom could find me so easily. The look on his face when I told him was plenty. I didn’t want to deal with any more right now.
Just like he had been by showing back up at the office to talk through what happened before I left Astoria, I knew Tom was the kind of man who would want to talk about this. I had purposely not glanced back in the direction of the restaurant since getting to the desk and was hoping with every fiber of my being he wouldn’t approach me right now. But it wasn’t like he was just going to go about his life pretending the conversation in the restaurant never happened.
Eventually, he was going to want to talk to me about it again. I just needed time before that happened. I didn’t want to be at Ava’s house and have him show up for an awkward confrontation with his family right there to witness it all. I hadn’t wanted to be by myself when I headed to Ava’s earlier in the day, but now it was exactly what I needed.
I called for a cab to bring me to the motel and resigned myself to settling in for the night. The paper-thin walls gave me a front-row seat to the various activities and events going on in the rooms around me, and combined with the thoughts rushing through my head, I struggled to get to sleep. Finally, exhaustion got the most of me, and I nodded off.
It didn’t last long. Only a few hours after I fell asleep, I woke up. My body was still on my work schedule, but I managed to will myself back to sleep for a little bit longer. The next time I woke up, it was to the sound of my phone ringing. I had the sinking feeling it was Tom, and I definitely wasn’t in the headspace to start my morning with talking to him.
I took my phone out from under my pillow so I could silence it and caught the name on the screen. It was Ava.
“Hey,” I said, rubbing my eyes as I answered the phone.
“Were you still asleep?” she asked. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I said, pulling myself up to a sitting position and leaning back against the wall. “I actually woke up a while ago, but I made myself go back to sleep. It was really hard to fall asleep last night, and I’m really tired.”
“I’m sure you are,” she said. “I just wanted to call and check on you. How did last night go?”
“Well, I’m in a really crappy motel at the edge of town if that tells you anything,” I said.
“I thought you said you got a reservation at the hotel,” Ava said.
“I thought I did,” I said. “But to add to the fun that was my evening, the hotel lost my reservation. So, I ended up here. Alone.”
“You should have just come to my house,” she said. “We could have had a slumber party.”
“I’m sure Mason would have loved that,” I said.
“I would have just kicked him out,” she said matter-of-factly.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I guess it’s safe to assume Tom didn’t take the news well?” she asked.
“That’s one way to put it. We were sitting there at the table, and I told him. I just came right out and said it. I didn’t want to beat around the bush or make a big deal out of it,” I said.
“That was the right thing to do,” Ava said. “It’s better to just put it out there and be straightforward. That way there isn’t any ambiguity or confusion.”
“That’s what I thought. But apparently, Tom doesn’t need ambiguity in order to be confused. I told him straight out, and he gave me this look.”
“What kind of look?” she asked.
“No idea. That’s the thing. I’ve never seen this kind of look before. Especially not from him. It was this kind of disturbing blend of anger and shock and confusion. Just several decidedly negative things. There wasn’t any sort of positivity or even neutrality. It’s not like I expected him to jump up and declare to the restaurant that he was going to be a father and champagne all around or anything. But there could have at least been a hint in his eyes that he was willing to talk about it,” I said.
“What did you do?”
“I left,” I said. “Whatever that expression was, it didn’t seem like it was going to accompany a conversation I wanted to have with other people in the restaurant with us. I was totally overwhelmed. I didn’t know what was going to happen or how he was going to react, but I wasn’t ready for that.”
“Have you talked to him since?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “He didn’t come after me.”
“Has he called you?”
“Once, but I didn’t answer. I booked a flight home. It leaves later today,” I said.
“I think you should hold off on leaving,” Ava said.
“Why?” I asked.
“You said you didn’t know how he was going to react, and the truth is, you still don’t know. You didn’t even give him time to. He might have just been surprised. Wouldn’t you be?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I’m sure I would have been.”
“Then you need to hold on,” she said.
“I can’t, Ava,” I said. “I would have been surprised, but I would have at least said something. I can’t just stick around.”
“Look, just cancel your flight. Don’t give up. I’m going to come pick you up for lunch. You sound like you could use some girl time. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Good. I’ll see you in a bit.”
Taking a shower woke me up, and I spent the next couple of hours going through emails and doing a little bit of work. It definitely wasn’t the most productive morning I had ever had, but it kept me distracted and made me feel like I wasn’t completely going off the rails.
Early that afternoon, Ava called me from the parking lot to let me know she was there. I headed down and got in the car, happier than ever to have her as a friend. I glanced into the back seat, but there
was no car seat.
“Where’s Robert?” I asked.
“He’s having a day with his daddy,” she said. “When I said girl time, I meant it. I have a feeling you haven’t really talked about everything that’s going on with you right now, have you?”
“Not really,” I said. “I mean, Emily and I talked about it some, but I didn’t really go into details. I know she wouldn’t complain about it or anything, but it’s not like if I talked about everything she would know what I was going through. She’s never been pregnant, and we don’t have any friends with children.”
“Well, I have been pregnant. Twice. One might not have made it all the way here, but that was still my first pregnancy and I can remember what it was like. Consider me your sounding board,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said.
Ava ended up bringing me to a restaurant two towns over. She didn’t explain why. She only said it was a place she really enjoyed. I believed that part of it, but it also felt like she was giving me a little bit of space. Being out of Astoria helped me relax, and we settled into a conversation about everything I was going through at this stage of my pregnancy.
“I know it’s really early, but I already feel like I’m having symptoms. Morning sickness, obviously. That’s what clued me into it to begin with. But I’ve also been really tired. And I’m having a lot of breast pain. That one is unexpected. I’ve never really gone through that with my period, or anything. It’s definitely the tiredness that’s the most surprising, though,” I said.
“Why?” Ava asked. “You’re literally growing another human being in there. That takes energy.”
I laughed. “I guess you’re right. The baby is just so small right now, I didn’t think it would take that much energy, yet. But I guess it is still a major undertaking.”
“To say the least,” she said with a laugh. “If it makes you feel any better, all of that is totally normal.”
“That actually does make me feel better,” I said. “You know what’s also really interesting?”
Taboo Boss: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance Page 19