So I… well. I technically didn’t lie. I just didn’t correct her, either.
“You have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone,” I said, leaning in. Brooke stared at me and I leaned in a little more. “No one, okay? You have to keep this to yourself. I don’t want anybody knowing that I’m pregnant, it’s why I came up here. I’m going to have to tell my family, but they’re the only people I intend to have find out.”
Brooke looks disbelieving. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Definitely. Especially at the restaurant, okay? Nobody can know there.”
“I suppose…” Brooke sighs. “I don’t understand, Stevie, I really don’t, but it’s your choice. I’ll keep your secret.”
I nearly collapsed in relief, feeling like I’d finally gotten a cool breeze after a stifling hot day. “Thank you. I really, I don’t have words for how much I appreciate it.”
We moved onto other topics as we ordered and ate, and Brooke told me all about Theo’s television show. I hadn’t watched it because I’d known that it would just piss me off. Apparently, Brooke felt the same way.
“It was the biggest load of bullshit you’ve ever seen,” Brooke said, her voice getting heated in a way that I hadn’t heard from her in… well, not since three years ago when her mom had left her dad for Theo. “I couldn’t believe it. Like, okay, so Theo is obviously an asshole and my mom was awful for screwing over Dad and me like that but I didn’t expect them to be so pathetic? I guess. They were pathetic, really, like wow. I barely even recognized them. I was ashamed to know them.”
Brooke went on about it for a while, actually, all through dessert and paying the check. I wanted to ask about Michael. I’d forgotten when the show aired and I hadn’t been about to look it up and give it more views, but I’d worried about it. About him.
I expected Brooke to leave after lunch was finished, but she insisted on taking me shopping for some baby supplies. “I know that you’re on a budget. Let me help.”
Well, how could I say no when she was so earnest about it?
I agreed, and we got a crap ton of diapers - no pun intended - and a baby crib, and a sling, and baby bottles, and other things.
As we loaded it all into Brooke’s car and then took it to my apartment, Brooke told me more about the restaurant. “Things have been getting so much better there, Stevie, you wouldn’t believe it. People are coming back in, after that slump with the critic’s review it was just that, just a slump! I wish you could come back and see it.”
“Maybe when I have more time off,” I replied. I had no idea how to feel about this.
On one hand, I was glad to see that I had been right. My food was damn good, and the critic had just been some idiot with a stick up his ass. I had been right the whole time and now the restaurant was finally going to be the success that Michael deserved for it to be, even if I couldn’t be around to see it. That didn’t matter, I mean it did, but not as much as knowing that Michael would finally get the successful restaurant that he deserved.
On the other hand it made me weirdly glad that the critic had trashed the place. Because if it wasn’t for that… my disappearance, as far as everyone knew, was because I had quit the restaurant and wanted a change of pace. But if the restaurant had been doing well, then that would’ve led to confusion over my leaving. I never would’ve thought that I would be grateful for that shitty review and yet here I was, glad for it. It gave me the excuse I needed.
Brooke helped me with putting all the supplies away, figuring out where the crib should go, and all the other things that a wonderful best friend like Brooke would do. But the whole time, I had to work to hold in my sadness.
I didn’t want to be doing this with Brooke, no offense to her. I didn’t want to be doing this in my studio apartment, in a city that I didn’t care about, without any of my friends or family around me. I wanted to be doing this in a proper home, one that I shared with the father of my child - with Michael.
God, he would be so fucking good at this. I mean, I had proof. He had done an excellent job of raising Brooke. Brooke was a kind, thoughtful, considerate, and hardworking person. She was the kind of daughter that any person could be proud of raising. I knew that Michael would be an amazing dad to my child as well.
But as much as I wished things were different… there was nothing that I could do. Michael didn’t want another family. He had made it clear that he didn’t even want a relationship with me, I could only imagine how horrified he would be at the prospect of being a father once again, and so suddenly. Wishing didn’t make it so.
Not to mention that Michael had enough on his plate. I wanted to ask how he was feeling about Theo’s TV show, but I didn’t dare. That might lead to me betraying myself with my voice or a look. I couldn’t afford that. Aside from the TV show, he also had the restaurant to run, and his grown-up daughter, and his whole life to get back on track. A life that didn’t include me.
I had to just keep quiet and raise the baby on my own, best as I could. I had good parents who I liked to think did a good job of raising me. I could do a decent job, right?
That, and I had to do it without Brooke or Michael learning the truth.
I said goodbye to Brooke, hugged her, and then turned to stare around at my apartment, now filled with baby things.
It was going to be a long few months.
23
Michael
I couldn’t lie, I’d been moping around. Like a lovesick puppy or something. Honestly I was a bit ashamed of myself for being so down in the mouth. But I couldn’t help it. I missed Stevie, more than I had the words for. Every time I went into the restaurant and saw how well things were doing, I could only wish that she was there to see it. Or I’d think about how if things were running this well without her, how much better they’d run with her, how spectacular it would all be.
Yeah, I was in a funk, no doubt about it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been like this. Perhaps I had been like this when Virginia had betrayed me but that was more of an outrage and betrayal. This was just… moping, and being frustrated with myself. I couldn’t understand why Virginia had done that, how she could break my trust, but with Stevie, of course I understood.
I had told Stevie that I didn’t want a relationship, and I had told her that the restaurant was still failing and that I had let her change things too quickly, gone to an extreme that our guests weren’t ready to handle. If I were her, I would’ve quit too. I had no one to blame but myself for this.
If only I had realized just how much I cared for her. If only I hadn’t been so gun shy about the new menu.
Honestly, I blamed my own state of mind for why it took me so long to notice that Brooke was doing some moping of her own. She was unusually quiet, especially at the restaurant, and seemed to be just… down. There was a heaviness to her that I didn’t usually see, like someone had strapped weights to her shoulders.
I made sure to make her a delicious breakfast the next morning, and while she devoured her pancakes, I sat down with her and asked her what was up. “Is it a boy? Or a coworker?”
Brooke shook her head. “I just miss Stevie, that’s all. With her gone, I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this whole thing, with Mom and Theo and their dumb TV show.”
“You haven’t watched more of it, have you? It’ll just make you upset, don’t do that to yourself.”
“I know, I know, and I’m not—it’s just—” Brooke set down her fork. “Mom called me.”
My eyebrows shot up. Virginia rarely spoke to Brooke. At first she had total radio silence, then she had tried to reach out multiple times, practically harassing Brooke, until Brooke put her foot down in the one and only temper tantrum I had ever seen Brooke give.
After that, Virginia had stopped trying to talk to Brooke. I was glad for it. Not that I wanted Brooke and her mother to have a bad relationship, but Virginia needed to listen to Brooke and respect the boundaries that Brooke had set down.
“Why did she cal
l?” I wondered if it was something bad, if Virginia was trying to warn Brooke ahead of time of something so that Brooke wouldn’t have to find out the way she had about the cheating with Theo - when the whole storm exploded on her.
Brooke sighed, fiddling with her pancakes. “She asked if I wanted to come visit and tour the set. She even said that I could be in the show, if I wanted.”
Ah. “And how did you feel about that?”
Brooke shrugged, and I saw that her eyes were shining and wet. “Like she still doesn’t get it,” she whispered. “All I wanted, Dad, all I wanted was for her to apologize and say that she had handled it poorly. Like… you can’t control your emotions or how you feel about someone. I understand that. So if she fell out of love with you, that’s okay. If she fell in love with Theo, that’s okay too. Her feelings are valid.”
“Just because you’re angry doesn’t mean you can punch someone, though! Her actions weren’t okay. And at that point, it doesn’t really matter how she was feeling, was it? She could’ve asked you to go to marriage counseling with her, or asked for a separation, or even just a straight-up divorce. But she didn’t do any of that, did she? She wasn’t honest, she just took what she wanted without thinking about anyone else.
“And I could even maybe forgive that, if she actually showed that she was sorry and that she understood that she was wrong. But she doesn’t! She just talks about it like… about her feelings and how awful she felt and how trapped she was, and how unhappy, and just… yes, okay! I get it! But your feelings don’t excuse your behavior! It’s like… yeah that was a good reason to murder someone but it’s still a murder, you’re still going to prison!”
Brooke stopped talking, apparently realizing that she had her fork in a death grip and was panting hard. She took a few deep breaths. I pushed her water glass towards her and she sipped it carefully.
“So anyway,” she said quietly, “it didn’t go well. The phone call, I mean. I was angry that Mom still wasn’t… that she was acting like everything was fine. Just an I’m sorry, that was all I wanted from her, you know? But she wouldn’t even give me that. Or it was always followed by ‘but’ like, ‘oh I’m sorry but you have to understand…’ and that just cancels out the apology.”
“We had a fight, and at the end of it… Mom ended up breaking down. She was just sobbing uncontrollably, I’d never heard her like that. It was really startling. I didn’t know what to do, or say, and I thought at first—I thought that she was upset because we used to be so close and now we couldn’t even have a single phone call without fighting.” Brooke shrugged. “I guess it was stupid of me to think that it was actually about me and our relationship. But no. It was about Theo.”
Of course it was. Virginia had made her life all about him, and it saddened me. No person’s life should ever revolve around one other person, be that a spouse or a child or a friend, or anyone else. You had to have more than one person in your life.
“Mom said that the show hasn’t been going well, and that they even had to…” Brooke paused, her eyes going wide. “Oh! That was the other thing she let slip. Dad—the critic who trashed the restaurant? Theo paid the guy to do that. He heard the guy was moving to San Francisco and paid him to make his first review about our place, and to say it was shit. Mom told him about the menu change and everything and I guess Theo threw a huge fit. I don’t know if he was thinking about paying for a bad review of us before that but after that he definitely was.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “About the reviewer or that things aren’t going well.”
“He’s gotten really egotistical, I guess,” Brooke said, her voice soft. “Mom’s really unhappy.”
I nodded. “This is going to sound callous of me,” I admitted. “But I don’t care. I’m not sympathetic. I feel bad for the production crew who just are trying to do their jobs, the second assistant cameraman or whoever. But your mother? She made her bed and now she has to lie in it. This was her choice.”
Brooke nodded. “I agree.”
I stared at her. “You do?”
“Yes.” Brooke’s tone was firm. “The thing that really struck me… is that Mom and Theo had this whirlwind romance, right? But she just jumped right in with both feet. I bet you, that if she had actually done things the right way and taken her time, asked you for a divorce, then started dating him and all that… I bet she would’ve seen this side of him much sooner. She would’ve gotten the hell out of that relationship way sooner. But she didn’t do that, and now, she’s stuck. And it’s her own fault.”
“That makes sense. I agree.” In a perverse way, it reminded me of my own relationship with Stevie. We had jumped right in, caught in the blinding romance, and now we were both being forced to take a step back and evaluate.
And unlike Virginia with Theo, I was finding my conviction to be with Stevie only growing. She was the one that I wanted, hands down. Now that I’d been forced to take that step back, take stock, I was only feeling more strongly about Stevie, my feelings intensifying instead of fading.
It would’ve been a reason to celebrate, if I was able to do something about it like call her up.
“Why can’t you talk to Stevie about it?” I asked, before I could stop myself. “You saw her this weekend, didn’t you?”
“Two days ago, actually, on Tuesday.” Brooke shifted in her chair, and I could see that her eyes were bright again, like she was about to cry. She looked incredibly distressed. Was Stevie okay?
“What’s going on?”
Brooke bit her lip, then burst out, “Stevie’s pregnant!”
It felt like my fucking heart stopped.
“She’s what? When? How?” Did someone knock her up in Sacramento?
Brooke sighed, then leaned in. “Listen. Dad. I’m serious here. This is a secret. Stevie trusted me with this and she begged me not to tell anyone. She kept bringing it up all day—asking me not to say anything. So you can’t tell anyone that you know, all right?”
“Honey, do I honestly look like the kind of person who goes around gossiping?” My tone was thankfully even and calm, but my heart was pounding like a damn horse racing in the Kentucky Derby. I could barely focus. How? How had this happened? Had Stevie moved on from me that quickly? Here I was, missing her, and was she…was she just moving on, fine, but then…
“I know, but…” Brooke sighed. “Look, you can’t go and beat him up, okay?”
“Beat who up?” What the fuck was happening?
“Cameron. It’s Cameron’s baby.”
…what.
Brooke went on, but I could barely hear her. “Stevie said that they ended things before she found out that she was pregnant. That was the real reason why she left. She didn’t—doesn’t—want the father to know, she told me in those exact words. I think that she fears he won’t be a responsible father which, you know, it’s Cameron so I can’t blame her for thinking that. She also said that it was her body and her choice and I respect that but surely she could get him to help a bit financially? Even if he doesn’t want to raise the baby?”
How could that possibly be true, though?
Stevie and I had been together right up until she had left for Sacramento. Well, not together, together, but… was that it? Had she been with Cameron as well, because I had told her that I didn’t want a relationship?
There was a hot flare of jealousy in my chest, I couldn’t deny that. Cameron wasn’t good enough for Stevie. He was a flirt and focused more on charming guests than on actually being a good coworker and a member of a team at the restaurant. All he cared about was looking good and scoring the best tips. He was good with customers and some came in just to see him, so I couldn’t fire him, but his attitude and how much he would flirt with the women he worked with sure tempted me to.
The fact that she might have been with that tool instead of…
No, I told myself, shaking away those thoughts. What mattered was that Stevie was pregnant. Pregnant and alone and probably freaking out, as much as she w
ould try to soldier through it because she was a determined and stubborn woman.
Jesus. And she hadn’t told anyone? “Does her family know?”
Brooke shook her head. “Not yet. She knows that she has to tell them but… she doesn’t know how.”
“I can imagine.”
“You won’t tell anyone?”
I shook my head. “No, it’ll be our secret. You just keep an eye on her, okay? You need her and she really needs you now.”
Brooke nodded. “I just wish that she was here.”
I exhaled slowly. “Yeah, me too,” I said. If only Brooke knew how much.
At work that night, I could barely keep it together. My thoughts were swirling. I had to get out, take a walk. Everyone could see that I was distracted. I closed up and wandered, eventually finding myself at a local tavern that I used to frequent back in the day.
I nodded at the bartender as I walked in, picking a booth, and got a beer. I had to sort this all out in my head, somehow.
Ugh, the television above the bar—one of them, anyway—was playing another episode of Theo’s damn fucking show. It was just as bad as the first episode. Maybe even worse. He was just so full of himself, and everyone could tell. Talk about an ego trip. Theo was coming off looking like a total fool.
But then again, maybe that was what sold cookbooks? He kept promoting his new damn cookbook right and left, like this was just an hour long commercial for his book instead of an actual show where people were supposed to do things like actually learn more about food and cooking.
Shocking concept.
How should I know, though? I couldn’t even figure out how to take advantage of the perfect woman when she was put right in front of me like a fucking godsend. Stevie was everything that I could have dreamed of in a woman, and I hadn’t even had the guts to have a real relationship with her.
I had known from the first moment that I’d seen her that Stevie was special. I had been so into her in a way that I hadn’t been into any woman. It had been like a lightning strike. And I had spent all of my time fighting that attraction. Trying to keep it at bay, trying to keep her at arm’s length. I’d done it professionally too, I hadn’t listened to her when I should have, I hadn’t trusted her or her vision.
Best Friend's Daddy (Forever Daddies Book 3) Page 17