by London Casey
“Maya, fuck,” Cole growled. “Look at me.”
I looked at him. “What?”
“What are you doing right now?”
“I have no idea, Cole. I didn’t plan on this. I don’t know what’s next.”
“I’m telling you what’s next,” he said. “You need to see a doctor. Get everything checked out. Make sure everything is okay.”
“You mean make sure I’m actually pregnant, right?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Here’s your proof, Cole.” I leaned forward. “Bev and I are synched up. She’s had two periods to my zero. I get sick every single morning at the same time. And then the second I’m done puking, I’m hungry. I can feel my body changing. Like… from the inside. Oh, and this one you’ll like. My boobs? They are so tender and feel so different. It’s not the same kind of tenderness I get when my period is coming. Oh, no. This is totally different.” I snapped my fingers. “Oh yeah, I almost forget. How about the positive pregnancy tests?”
“Okay, Maya, I get it. I just-”
I turned my head and saw the young man looking at me again.
I stood up out of the booth. “You heard that part too? Want to come over here and feel my boobs? There might be milk, I’m not sure.”
“Holy shit,” Cole said. He jumped up and blocked me again. “You need to go outside and get some air. I’ll be there in a second. Let me pay the bill.”
“Yeah, you do that,” I said. I reached back for the table and grabbed another slice of pizza. “I’m taking this with me.”
I walked to the door and went outside.
I stood alone with a neon red sign buzzing with the word pizza flashing.
I looked at the slice of pizza.
And I started to cry.
“Fuck, Maya, what’s…”
I looked at Cole. He knew better than to finish that question.
What’s wrong? What the fuck do you think is wrong?
“You know you need to go to the doctor no matter what, right?” Cole asked. “You don’t want to be one of those women that refuses to say they’re pregnant and then ends up having a baby in some bathroom in a restaurant, right?”
“I’m not an idiot,” I said. “I would never do that. I can go to the doctor on my own. Make my own appointments.”
“But I’m going to do that for you,” he said. “I can’t feel what you’re feeling. I don’t know what you’re thinking. So let me do this for you.”
“You just want to sneak me around.”
“Can you just be real for a second, Maya?” Cole asked. “Think about the position I’m in right now.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “How dare I think about myself? I’m just the one with a living human inside me.”
“Maya…”
“No, go ahead. I can’t wait to hear this.”
“Do you want me to be honest with you or just bullshit you into feeling good?” Cole asked. “That’s the choice you have to make right now, Maya. I’m letting you in. I’m bringing you in. I trust you more than I trust anyone else in my life right now.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“That means…” Cole swallowed hard. “I need to do this with you. I need to make a secret appointment and get you seen. I need to know for sure you’re pregnant. Not that I don’t believe you. I just need to see. I want to make sure you and the… the baby… are okay. That everything is, you know, on time…”
I laughed. “You son of a bitch. You want the doctor to tell you the exact date it happened. You think there’s a chance this baby isn’t yours.”
“Is that wrong?” Cole asked.
I had two choices.
My left hand balled up into a fist to punch him.
My right hand had the slice of pizza.
There were a lot of women like me in the world who would love to punch their asshole boss right in the nose.
But I figured there were even more that would enjoy slamming a slice of pizza against their asshole boss’s face.
Cole stepped back and the pizza slice was perfectly stuck to his face.
From his forehead, covering his left eye, his nose, and a part of his mouth.
His right eye looked at me as I stepped back and waited to see what he was going to do next.
Slowly, Cole reached up and peeled the pizza off his face and threw it to the ground.
He had globs of sauce on his face as it glistened from the grease.
“Oops,” I said.
Cole turned and charged back into the pizza place.
I hurried to get my phone and get a ride back home.
I was done with Cole. I was done with the night.
I was done with a lot of things.
But I couldn’t be done with everything.
I had to come up with a plan for myself and my life.
I was pregnant.
I was going to have a baby.
I was going to be a mother.
Cole came back out of the pizza place, his face clean once again.
“You know what, Maya? I have the right to ask anything I want. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. I’m a good-looking guy with money. You’re my secretary, struggling to get by.”
“Fuck you,” I yelled.
“Fuck me?” Cole asked. “All I’m trying to do is be honest with you.”
My phone buzzed with a notification my car would arrive in less than a minute.
That was one good thing about the city. A ride was always just a minute away.
A black car pulled up and I waved to Cole.
“See you at work tomorrow,” I said. “Any other conversations we can have through text, email, or maybe lawyers.”
I walked to the car and Cole ran after me.
As I opened the back, driver’s side door, he slammed it shut.
“Give me your phone,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“You didn’t even check to see if this is your driver. Do you always just get into cars like this?”
“No.”
Cole grabbed my phone and verified who the driver was.
He handed me my phone back and opened the door for me.
I slid into the car and was desperate for one more line to throw at him.
To hurt him. To piss him off.
But I had nothing.
Cole, however, had one more move to make.
He got into the car with me.
“I’m not doing this with a person in the driver’s seat,” I whispered to him.
“I tried to talk to you back there,” he whispered back. “You’re the one who wants to keep fighting with me. I’m just trying to get answers.”
“Answers?” I whispered-growled. “You don’t trust me! After you just got done saying you do trust me.”
Cole showed his teeth. “I do trust you, Maya. And right now, this deal with Mr. Pickle is the only thing keeping everything around us going. Okay? If this deal falls through, we all might be in trouble. I’ve worked on this company for years. I finally have it in a position to be sold. This is it. This is the next move. Nothing can fuck that up, okay? I’m not saying that you being pregnant is a fuck up. Do not take my words out of context. The reason why Mr. Pickle is ready to do this deal is because of me. I’m the selling point. I’m the guy that has no commitments. I can do whatever I want, when I want. He relates to me. And this…”
“Me being pregnant takes that away,” I said.
“Exactly,” Cole said. “So, yes, I want to go to a secret doctor appointment. Oh fucking well. Do you want a parade? Balloons? You need to get checked out no matter what. And, yes, I would like to see how far along you are. Just to… I don’t know…”
“And you don’t know how hurtful that is to me,” I said. “I’m just some dumb secretary who wants to be a writer and my grand scheme was to lure you into inviting me to that cabin for one night. And then I purposely allowed Mr. Pickle to attack me and make me feel worthless just so you would get drunk and s
tick up for me. So then I could chase you down into the cold, knowing my nipples would get hard… because we all know when a woman’s nipples are hard men forget everything they know. Their brains turn to mush and their dicks get hard. Right?”
“Maya, stop,” Cole said.
“No. I get it. You figured me out. So after the whole hard nipples ploy, I coaxed you into the living room, in front of the fireplace, and with my slut mind games, I made you lick between my legs until I came…”
I caught the driver looking at me in the reflection of the rearview mirror.
“Hear something you like?” I asked.
The driver looked forward again.
“Maya… just stop talking.”
“Why? Are you getting embarrassed? Ashamed? Huh? What are you going to do about it?”
I had Cole where I wanted him, but I didn’t anticipate his next move.
Before I could take another breath, his mouth was against mine.
His left hand touching my right hand.
I reached up and ripped his hand off my face.
But I didn’t stop kissing him.
Fuck me.
It felt good to kiss him.
It was comfort. I didn’t feel so alone.
And it was a good way to get me to shut up.
We kissed until the car came to a stop outside my apartment building.
Cole told the driver to wait for him and he rushed out of the car after me.
I put my hand out. “Do not try to kiss me again, Cole.”
“I won’t,” he said. “I just want you to know-”
“It’s yours,” I said. “There is no way it’s not. You are the only person I’ve had sex with in the last… long time. Okay? I did not set this up on purpose, Cole. I want nothing to do with you or your money. That’s not who I am. We were in that cabin together and things just… we both wanted that to happen.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll go to the doctor with you, okay? I understand what the deal means to you. I’m not out to ruin anything or anyone. Okay?”
Cole nodded. “Okay. I’m not going to abandon you, Maya. Believe me when I say that. Just let me figure this all out.”
“Goodnight, Cole,” I said.
“Goodnight,” he said.
I walked to the door and paused.
I told myself when I looked back and he was still there, I was going to run after him and jump into his arms.
Why?
I had no clue.
It was just…
I looked back and Cole was already gone.
The car was already driving away.
I walked to the apartment and when I opened the door, Bev was waiting for me.
With a shirt in her hands, she smiled ear to ear.
“Look what I made you!”
I looked at the shirt.
My boss’s baby!
With an arrow pointing down.
“Isn’t it great?” Bev asked.
“Yeah, Bev, it’s the best.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cole
“What do you have for someone who can’t have caffeine?” I asked. “And something to settle a stomach?”
“You mean someone who is sick?”
“No. Not sick. Just… morning sickness…”
“Oh,” the woman with blue eyes said from behind the counter. “First time dad?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“I’ve never seen you in here before,” she said. “But I’ve seen you walking around.”
“I’m a busy man.”
“Well, I can see that. Tell you what, you wait down at the counter and I’ll take care of you.”
I paid for the coffee and tea then waited.
I looked at my phone, waiting for an email to come through.
Mr. Pickle had some questions and was sending them my way. And they were going to the lawyers too. Now came the nitty-gritty bullshit. Where every dollar and dime had to be counted and valued. It was never just a simple process. But that’s why Mr. Pickle was worth billions.
My eyes kept looking to the date on my phone too.
There were three dates that clung in my mind.
The date Maya got pregnant. The due date for the baby. And the current date.
Because each day was another day closer to that date.
“Here you go,” the blue-eyed woman said with a big smile.
“Do I need to know what’s in it?” I asked.
“Nope. See how it makes her feel. If that’s the one, then just ask for me.”
“You work here every day?” I asked.
“I own the place,” she said with a wink.
“Ah, right. Thanks again.”
I grabbed the coffee and tea and walked across the lobby of the building to the back set of elevators.
Yeah, I was that guy.
The asshole who worked in the building for how many years and I just realized who owned the little cafe in the lobby. I had never gotten myself coffee or food once. Ever.
And now…
I chased the thoughts away and took the elevator up to the office.
Anyone who saw me carrying my own coffee, plus a tea, gave me a strange look.
So far, everything was quiet. And I needed it to stay that way.
Of course, I was up against the clock.
I needed the deal with Mr. Pickle to finish for good so I could focus on how to have a baby with Maya. How to navigate those tricky waters. Truthfully, once the deal went through and all that money came my way, it wouldn’t matter at all.
I walked into Maya’s office and found her drinking coffee.
She looked at me and raised her eyebrow.
“Got you something,” I said. “Some kind of special tea for your stomach.”
“You got me something?” Maya asked. “And you got yourself coffee?”
“Yeah.”
“Cole, I just put coffee on your desk.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, there’s never too much coffee, right?”
“Sure,” Maya said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just thought… I mean, you texted me this morning that you were sick again…”
“I text you that every morning,” Maya said. “That’s our thing, right?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“That’s part of this deal.”
I kept nodding. “I know. The lady downstairs said that-”
“Amy.”
“What?”
“Amy owns the cafe,” Maya said. “The lady. Amy.”
“Amy. Yeah.”
“You didn’t know that,” Maya said. She took the lid off the cup and when she smelled it, she pulled away. “Oh, wow. That smells… rough.”
“She asked if it was for someone pregnant,” I said.
“Great,” Maya said. “So the woman who owns the cafe downstairs knows you got someone pregnant.”
“No. I didn’t say that. I just played along. Or something. I don’t know.”
Fuck.
“Well, thank you, Cole,” Maya said. “While you’re here, I have this information…”
Maya stood up and reached for a folder.
My eyes looked down at her stomach and I felt my knees buckle.
I couldn’t point it out because Maya would probably stab me with a letter opener.
But Maya’s belly was starting to pop out.
I opened the top drawer of my desk and took out the envelope.
I dumped the ultrasound pictures to the desk and studied them.
It had been a few weeks since we went to see the doctor.
Dr. Haime was good at his job and good at keeping his mouth shut. He didn’t ask questions, other than about the health of Maya and the baby.
She was definitely pregnant. The baby was definitely mine.
Unless Maya had sex with someone else that week which she swore on her life she didn’t.
Dr. Haime gave Maya a list of things to do and not to do. When he started talking a
bout vitamins and all that, I told him to get her exactly what she needed and to just bill me. I also had it so all of Maya’s appointments would be with him and it would all be private, in secret, and she was to have twenty-four-seven access to him.
Everything was in place.
But it still didn’t feel…
I wasn’t sure.
The ultrasound picture wasn’t much to see.
The black and white picture with the small, white, peanut shaped figure.
And that was it.
That was a baby.
A baby that Maya and I made during one wild night of drunk sex.
It was the forever kind of moment that just happened without reason.
My desk phone rang.
I hurried to sweep up the ultrasound pictures and put them back into the envelope and into my desk.
“Maya,” I said as I took the call.
“Your brother is on the line.”
“Okay.”
I sighed and waited to hear Cody’s voice.
“What did you think?” Cody asked.
“Of what?”
“My name.”
“Your name?”
“Didn’t she tell you my name?”
“No.”
“What the hell?” Cody asked. “It was a good one.”
“What was it, Cody?”
“Dr. Stuckafingerinmyass,” Cody said with a laugh.
I smiled. “Nice one.”
“Whoa. You sound extra tight today, brother. You okay?”
“I’m busy right now.”
“Still need me to lay low?”
“Are you still messing around with pills?”
“Nah. No more pills. I ditched them. Too expensive.”
I shut my eyes. “Cody, are you getting that messed up again? Let me help you.”
“Help me? Oh, don’t do that, Cole. Don’t send the pity patrol my way. Just because you got the good dreams and I got left behind.”
“Cody, come on,” I said. “We were both hurt as kids. You know I’ll always have your back. I was there too.”
“Oh, wow. So now you want to talk about the past? You never want to talk about the past.”
“I just want you to be okay.”
“You’re so sweet,” Cody said. “Where was this version of my brother years ago? Wait a second… you’re being nice to me. Did you just get laid? No. Wait. You’re in a relationship. Shit. No. That’s not it either. Oh, fuck, Cole…”