by S. C. Adams
“Uh huh.”
“Okay, then,” he says, giving up. “I’m heading out now.”
“Okay,” I say, smiling and hoping he will keep on walking.
“I’ll be around this weekend,” he lets me know. “If you need anything, text or call. I will be there for you, I promise.”
I nod stiffly and stay right where I am without saying another word. He doesn’t fight or try to stand his ground. He walks out my door just as quickly and easily as he entered it. As I hear his car engine rev and then disappear into the sea of cars on the road, I feel that emptiness again more than ever before.
I want desperately to fill the void, and with exceptional timing, Emma helps me to do exactly that. She’s gotten home from Vegas, tan and content after a very successful shoot. I’m ready for her to dish on Vegas, give me some juicy details and stories, and generally keep my mind off of Mason.
First, in order to clear my mind of Mason, I have to talk about him nonstop until I feel totally drained. I’ve been vague with Emma while texting about the developments over the past couple of days, so she has a lot to hear.
Emma comes over to my apartment after she drops her bags off at her place. Once she makes it over to me, I’m ready to burst from all the things I want to delve into—all involving Mason, and all revolving around words spoken and unspoken between us.
Once I reach the point where I feel drained, I tell her about what is freshest on my mind: Mason’s phone conversation, what he said, what we think Luke might’ve been saying, what it all means, and why he might not have told people important to him about the pregnancy.
“It’s probably just his game, anyway,” I speculate. “Meet them, fuck them, and go looking for the next one. I ruined that by getting pregnant.”
“It takes two to get pregnant, darling,” says Emma. “And I don’t think you are just some piece of ass or whatever to him.”
“Right,” I say facetiously. “So, explain the way he was talking earlier.”
“That’s how guys talk, hun,” she says. “They don’t talk about babies or get too emotionally invested in something other than video games or sports. Men are definitely out there, but I think they’re simple compared to us women.”
“That’s just it,” I say. “I want more emotional investment. I know guys don’t get deep or discuss how they’re feeling as much as you and I do. But I figured something about the pregnancy would’ve come up during Mason’s conversation with Luke.”
“Maybe they’ve talked about it to death,” she ponders. “I know if I’ve talked about something too much, I eventually don’t want to talk about that thing ever again.”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I know he didn’t tell him. I know it.”
“Okay, well let’s assume Mason didn’t tell Luke what is going on,” says Emma. “So what? Maybe he wants to keep it private. What’s the big deal?”
“The deal is that nothing is ever going to happen between him and me, baby or not,” I say tearfully. “I knew all of this was too good to be true. I feel so silly for living in such a fantasy the last few days. I’m worse than a teenager.”
“Nothing is worse than a teenager,” says Emma.
“I went from feeling amazing and on top of the world to losing my faith and being treated like a notch on the bedpost,” I rant. “I didn’t expect him to call me his girlfriend but saying I’m only a friend like that hurts. He probably wants distance.”
“Have you stopped to consider that maybe you’re overreacting a little bit and perhaps are feeling a little bit hormonal?”
“Even if I am being hormonal, so what?” I ask pouting. “I’m pregnant. If anyone gets to be hormonal, it’s me. I was wrong before. Now, I see it more clearly. Mason is just a typical man after all. I made him go because I refuse to let him do what a lot of guys do: leave. I did this on my terms, so now I can’t get hurt.”
“I think there are better ways you could’ve done it.”
“Maybe, but it’s done,” I say, throwing my hands in the air. “I think what bothers me the most is the ‘friend’ label, and not the bragging or the way he so easily opened up about our sex, minutes after it happened. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Well, so much for ‘not talking about Mason,’ huh?” Emma chuckles.
“You’re right,” I say, putting on the brakes. “I need to stop talking about him right now. I’ve talked about him longer than I wanted. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Jillian,” she reassures. “We can talk about anything you want.”
“Then, let’s talk about your shoot in Vegas,” I say trying to get excited for her. “Help me forget Mason even exists.”
She is unable to eradicate Mason entirely from my train of thought, but she does a fine job of distracting me nonetheless. She recalls tales of Vegas and what it’s like to shoot at the Vegas Strip. She also recalls adventures she and the other models shared involving heavy drinking, gambling, and waking up in places they didn’t recognize.
During Emma’s stories, I receive a text from Mason. I don’t shine a spotlight on it or even mention it to Emma, but I reread it repeatedly:
“Did I do something to upset you? What was up right before I left?”
After I can’t think of a clever retort or reply, I reply with just one word: “Nothing.”
“It doesn’t seem like nothing,” he texts. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”
I don’t reply for a while, and so he sends another: “If I hurt you in any way, I swear that wasn’t my intention.”
The reason that I don’t reply back is because everything I want to say doesn’t come across right through text. I try, “It had to end sometime. We can’t just live in a fantasy world,” but choose to delete it. I try, “If you have to ask, there’s no point in explaining it,” but that seems like something my parents might say. I nearly settle on “We don’t belong together,” but I can’t send it. Even though I feel, at the time, that the sentiment is true, I can’t bear to put it in writing. It doesn’t feel right to send.
I fear that Emma’s theory regarding my hormones might have some weight. Before she has even finished telling me about her Vegas adventures, I wish that Mason was back under my roof so that I can have my way with him. Even though I am hurt and confused, it doesn’t stop me from being irresistibly attracted to him.
34
Mason
True to my word, I am staying in L.A. for a few days in case Jillian wants or needs help. What I need is a healthy distraction—a way to put the pregnancy and everything else providing stress on the backburner and just enjoy being alive. Anytime I initiate a “party dialogue” with Luke, he becomes incredibly enthusiastic and starts naming off places we can go, and what the ladies are like at each of his favorite spots.
Luke and I do what we often did years before. We dress up nice, squirt a spray of cologne on our necks, get our routine down if and when we met girls, and we head out into the havoc and congestion of the city to face our fate on that Saturday night.
Of course, once we step out of Luke’s Lamborghini and start hopping from bar to bar and club to club, I rapidly begin to lose all interest in everything that is going on around me.
It isn’t Luke’s fault, by any means. My haze is caused by Jillian, and I only want answers. While Luke is working like a lunatic to get the girls’ attention, and all while random girls approach me and throw themselves at me without hesitation, I am sitting around like a log. I am contributing nothing to our night out other than bad vibes and aggravation. For a while, Luke doesn’t respond to me. I suspect he is too horny and focused to notice me at first. But once he really sees how disinterested I am, he has to put his fun on hold.
“What’s going on with you?” he asks me. “I want to know. You have been riding on autopilot whenever we go out these days.”
“That’s not true.”
“You must be so reliant on autopilot that you’ve forgotten that’s what you’re doing,” says Luke. “Yo
u’ve had so many hot chicks come up to you tonight. Why aren’t you trying to score? And please—”
“We both know what’s going on with me,” I interrupt. “Be a bro, would you? Are you really going to make me say it?”
“Say what?” he asks with concern. “I am going to say, ‘Please don’t tell me you’re abstaining from sex just because you like a chick.’”
“I’m definitely not abstaining from sex,” I assure him. “Didn’t you hear what I was saying the other day? I’ve been having the best sex of my life lately.”
“I’m sure some girl in this place will be able to top her,” Luke says. “If not, we’ll walk around downtown until we find the first chick that looks like Jillian.”
“Why would I settle for someone that looks like Jillian when I can have the real woman?” I ask. “I don’t think I could have her right now. She’s acting mad at me, and I don’t know why.”
“This girl is really embedding herself in your head.”
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” I admit. “It’s gone way past her just being on my mind most of the time.”
“Dude, really?” He laughs. “What’s going on? All jokes aside, let’s be serious for a moment. I want to know what’s going on with you.”
“I think it’s just a perfect storm,” I throw out there. “I have this girl that I like. We have a strong physical attraction to each other that defies modern logic, and I’m caught up. It’s like a heightened crush—it’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” disagrees Luke. “Don’t brush this off, dude.”
“I’m not brushing anything off,” I say defensively. “I haven’t been this happy in my sex life in a long time. I’m simply trying to enjoy myself the way that feels right.”
“Nah,” Luke says, disbelieving, shaking his head, and rolling his eyes. “I’ve seen you when you find a girl you really like. This isn’t just a girl that you like to fuck.”
I choose not to dignify his assessment with a response.
“So, that’s what you were up to the other day,” says Luke. “You weren’t here only to bang Jillian. You came back all this way because you’re falling in wuv.”
“Don’t be disgusting,” I chide. “Yeah, I’m here for more reasons than just getting my dick wet. It’s true. I won’t deny that.”
“Then, tell me what’s got your dick in a knot, bro!”
And so, through the loud music and the never-ending surge of loud dancers, rapscallions, and attractive women, I tell Luke about my last encounter with Jillian. I bring up how she made a complete turnaround from seemingly out of nowhere and how she freaked out right around the time when he and I were talking on the phone.
After I finish telling Luke much of my history with Jillian, conveniently still leaving out the pregnancy bombshell, he ponders on everything for a short while.
“With women, it isn’t just what you say, man,” Luke reminds. “It’s how you say it. Maybe you should have chosen your words a bit more carefully.”
“What’s wrong with what I said?” I ask. “She was going wild for everything that came out of my mouth from the time we met up until the other day, and I don’t get it.”
“You aren’t sure if she overheard you and I talking the other day,” says Luke. “So, who’s to say she didn’t hear how you were blabbing about your sex life to me?”
“I thought about that, but do you really think that would be enough to make her want to get the hell away from me?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know, man. She’s your girl.”
“She’s not my girl,” I protest, blushing. “It doesn’t make sense to me. I purposefully try not to say much around her because I don’t want to upset her.”
“Is this girl that temperamental that you have to walk on eggshells around her?” Luke asks. “What do you mean you’re afraid to upset her?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” I say. “I like being sensitive to her feelings.”
I’m not sure what led Luke to his astute epiphany, but I am grateful that he had it. He generally has good insight whenever he is able to put his energy and attention on someone other than himself.
“When you first picked up that morning I called you,” Luke begins. “You were cryptic about what you were doing, remember? You wouldn’t tell me who you were with at first, so you said—”
“I am with a friend,” I finish. “Right.”
“Is it possible that she heard you when you kept saying you were just hanging out with a ‘friend’?”
“I was in bed when I said all that,” I recall. “She was in the bathroom, though. You and I talked for like thirty seconds!”
“So, there’s no chance that she could’ve overheard you from the bathroom?” he asks. “You’re sure?”
“Well, no, I’m not sure.”
Luke shakes his head, patting me empathetically on the shoulder.
“Mason, Mason,” he says with an occasional tsk. “You never should have referred to Jillian as a ‘friend.’ Then you went outside and talked about what it was like to fuck her. It sounded like she was just a hook-up to you!”
“She’s absolutely more than just a damn hook-up!” I say, flustered. “She knows that! There’s no way she could be thinking that.”
Luke keeps shaking his head, smirking wide and pleased with himself for apparently figuring out the source of my woes.
“After everything she and I have been through already and everything we’ve sais, that can’t be it. I refuse to believe it.”
“Is it that unbelievable, really?” he asks.
When I think back on the past month and everything that was happening to me, I realize that nothing should be unbelievable to me anymore. I slump my head in defeat, feeling dumber than I’ve felt in a long time.
“I’m stupid, and girls are fucking crazy,” I say.
“Man, that’s just the way it is,” he agrees. “You never know with women. They’re like great works of art: beautiful, respectable, but very fragile.”
I’m not sure if it is the drinks talking for me, or if I feel randomly inspired to do so, but I decide to not hold back any longer.
“Jillian’s pregnant.”
He is puzzled, not piecing it together right away. “Come again?”
“The girl I took home from the bar is pregnant,” I stress. “And it’s mine.”
Luke looks at me wryly before asking, “Are you sure it’s yours?”
“Yes.”
“She showed you some kind of proof of that?”
“She was having morning sickness while we were together, I’m sure,” I say. “She says she didn’t sleep with anyone else after me, and I believe her.”
“She could’ve gotten pregnant right before she met you, and she’s using you as her replacement daddy.”
I never seriously doubted what Jillian told me. She always comes off honest and sincere. She has mentioned hiding the pregnancy for a while. Then, I begin to wonder if she could potentially be hiding another man’s child and hoping to pass it off as mine. It would make sense if she slept with someone that wasn’t going to help or be there to try and move in with someone that could take care of her.
“Did that never cross your mind?” Luke asks.
“I think the baby’s mine,” I say.
“You never know,” he says. “But I will say this: pregnant chicks are super hormonal. My guess is that’s why she freaked out over you calling her a friend.”
“You’re talking as if you know for an absolute fact that’s what it is.”
“Let’s say I’m right until proven otherwise.” He winks.
The idea of Jillian’s behavior being caused by hormones did cross my mind. The only thing on my mind now is the seed of doubt that Luke has sowed into it. I am troubled, and he can see it.
“What are you going to do, dude?” he asks.
“I want to be there for her and for this baby,” I reply.
“Okay then,” he says. “You need to talk to her right
away and clear things up. You guys can’t act like this when that kid is born, especially if you were interested in dating this girl.”
We both sit there, contemplative and pondering on my predicament. He’s having an epiphany on his own, and I want to know what it is.
“What should I do, man?” I ask.
“Do what you think is right, man,” he answers. “And you know what? I believe her, too, when she says it’s your kid. She’s probably telling the truth. Call her up and don’t keep things uncomfortable.”
“What made you leap from A to B like that?”
“What?” he asks like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “Maybe she’s telling the truth. I don’t know.”
“Give me your logic if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Okay. In all fairness, and with respect to us opening up and being honest, I may have seen her best friend Emma recently. She said a few weird things that didn’t make sense to me at the time: ‘Can you believe what our friends are going through?’, ‘How is Mason doing with everything lately?’ Stuff like that. When I didn’t know what she was talking about, she sort of got weird and quiet; stopped bringing you two up. I wonder if maybe she was talking about the pregnancy.”
“What were you doing with Emma?”
Luke raises his eyebrows, takes a sip of his drink, and puts his arms behind his head.
“You’re such a fucking dweeb.” I laugh. “So, tell me the story.”
“We called each other one night, horny and bored,” he says. “We didn’t have anything else better to do, so we met up and fucked.”
“Really,” I say. “How about that?”
“We called each other one other time after that,” he confesses. “We’re bored and horny a lot, it seems. We might do it again.”
I know that I shouldn’t care that Luke is still getting sex from Emma, but I can’t keep my composure and have a calm reaction.
“You shouldn’t keep fucking her like that if she actually likes you,” I say. “You don’t want to, like, use her like that, you know? I’m not trying to tell you who you should talk to, but she’s probably a good, honest girl, too.”