by Adair Rymer
The only thing I missed was Claire.
I finished my drink, setting it down on the table, then checked my watch. It was a few minutes to midnight, I wasn't staying much longer. If Ant didn't come back soon I'd have to go find him and let him know I was leaving. I was hoping that this party would take my mind off Claire, but it just made me think about her more. It was quickly becoming unbearable.
I reached for the remote and was about to turn the monitors off when my attention was pulled toward the rustling curtains. Good. Ant was back. I was eager to get out of here.
“'Allo?” An unfamiliar French accent asked from behind the curtain. “Monsieur Cooper?”
Two attractive women dressed as sexualized French maids sauntered into the room. Once they saw that I was who they were looking for their faces lit up. I knew right away that they were models. They were probably hired by the club to serve as private entertainment for the guests.
One of the women slipped behind the other and tugged at the back of her corset. The front woman feigned blushing as the garment fell away. She looked at me with pursed lips, while brushing the back of her hand down her exposed chest and stomach.
The other woman stripped in a similar way. They crawled up to me on either side of the couch, wearing only the maid hat, a pair of sheer black panties, garter straps and six-inch heels.
It was every man's dream come true.
“I'm flattered, ladies, truly,” I held a hand out to both of them, slowing their advance. “But I'm going to have to pass tonight.”
I wasn't that same man, not anymore. Claire had ruined me in a lot of ways.
They looked at me, confused, then giggled to each other and began in again. They didn't speak English. That wasn't a first for me. Seduction was a universal language and I was fluent in that.
Why was I going to pass on this, exactly? I suddenly became angry with myself.
Why couldn't I get over her?
I did everything right and Claire still dumped me! Afterward I still reached out to her. I tried to fix things and reach some sort of compromise with her, but she refused to get back to me. I hadn't heard anything from her in months.
She obviously didn't want to be with me anymore. I was punishing myself for someone else's decision. I did everything I could to make it work. What was I holding out for?
One of the girls loosened my tie while the other unclasped the button on my pants. I should fuck the shit out of both of these girls like I used to. I'm Maynard Cooper, billionaire, celebrity and sex god!
The girl that loosened my tie kissed up my neck and was about to place her mouth on mine when I pulled away. No kissing on the mouth. My three rules immediately snapped back into my head.
What about your rules? The memory of Claire's soft voice whispered into my soul.
I don't need them anymore.
“Fuck!” I cried out, frustrated. Even if she was really gone from my life this still felt too wrong.
I couldn't do this. Not yet.
The fake maids startled backward a bit, concern and fright was plastered across their faces. It was only then that I looked at them closely. They were both models but beyond that they shared a very similar look. I didn't realize that before. I thought about the two girls at the elevator entrance, they too had short blond hair, pale complexions and... green eyes.
My skin began to crawl. Did they all look like that?
I was here for Ant and hadn't been paying much attention to the women in the club. I checked the monitor again to see if my theory was right.
Ant was surrounded by women but he paid them no attention. He stood in the middle of the dance hall looking at his phone, then he looked right at the camera feed that fed into the monitors in the private alcoves and smiled.
How did he know I was watching?
Then it dawned on me.
I was such a fucking idiot!
I jumped to my feet and scanned the room until I found what I hoped wasn't there. To the side of the monitor was a small camera lens. It wasn't a coincidence that those girls just wandered in here. He sent them. Anthony had been recording me.
This had all been some sort of fucked up set up!
I glanced at the screen again but Anthony was gone. I fastened my pants clasp and quickly left the room. As much as I wanted to find that asshole and beat answers out of him, I knew I wasn't going to be able to, at least not tonight. This club was too big, I'd never find him.
I needed to get out of here before I fucked up my new reputation more than I already had. This was going to be all over the news. On my way out, with every woman I passed, I was assaulted by the obvious. A chilling rage radiated from me that kept everyone away.
I had been so wrong about Anthony's birthday theme, it wasn't Playboy or porn.
It was Claire themed.
Chapter 11
Claire
“Two lines?” Ohgodohgodohgodohgod. Deep breath!
These things weren't always a hundred percent accurate, right? That's why I bought two. I dropped the first home pregnancy stick in the trash and tore open a different brand's test. That was a false positive, I was sure of it.
What if it wasn't?
My brain immediately betrayed me. How could this have happened? I switched birth control pills while I was with Maynard because they were making me feel sick and generally uncomfortable. The new pills listed that menstrual irregularities were one of the side effects, so I didn't think much about missing my first two periods. But three?
Now I was getting worried.
A short time later I was able to try again with the second and five minutes after that I had my result.
“One line. Oh thank god...” I exhaled, sitting on the cold raised part of the shower that separated the bathing area from the rest of my bathroom. That first test must have been a fluke. I was sweating despite only being in underwear and a T-shirt.
I got up and washed my hands then splashed cold water on my face. Me? Pregnant? I laughed at how crazy that would've been. I had no doubt that the father would've been Maynard. We only ever had sex without a condom once. Talk about dodging a bullet.
I wasn't against the idea of having children but that was always a decision for future me, not the disheveled me of right now. Future Me would be finished with school and would have a good job. One night, after eating a full quart of ice cream and binge watching Game of Thrones on the couch with her husband, Future Me would have a long conversation with him about having a baby.
I couldn't do any of that right now, the timing was garbage. I had a few months left of school and I needed to focus. In that ideal scenario Maynard and I wouldn't be together. That made me extremely melancholy.
I thought about him more than was healthy.
I sighed again, scolding myself for being so stupid. There's no way a Billionaire waits around half a year for the girl who dumped him. I made my decision and now I had to live with it. Being an adult sucked so hard sometimes.
Well, at least I wasn't pregnant. I placed a hand over my heart. My breathing had finally steadied but my pulse was still playing drums on Rock Band's hardest difficulty setting.
“C'mon, Claire. Everything's going to be–” I started to reassure myself but something in the trash caught my eye. I turned my head to better read the back of the second test's box. It didn't make sense.
I fished both boxes and the sticks out of the trash and laid everything on the tile floor. I didn't care how gross it was, this was too important to not be absolutely sure. I reread everything but it still wasn't clicking.
One box said if one line shows then result is positive, and the other said if two lines... I laid the sticks above each box.
“Fuck!” They weren't conflicting tests; they were both positive!
Why would they do that! How is there not a committee that says one fucking line is one way and two is fucking another?! Then the hard truth of it all punched me in the chest.
“Holy shit. I'm pregnant.”
****<
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“Thank you so much for coming over, Jonas.” I pulled my security chair out of the way so she had enough room to walk in. I hated not feeling safe in my own apartment but I had no other options. “I hope I wasn't pulling you away from anything.”
I was pretty manic when I texted her earlier. I had taken five tests and they all said the same thing. I didn't know who to talk to and none of my friends back home had answered their phones. That left only my parents and that sounded about as fun as getting a Pap smear done.
“Not at all.” Jonas waved the notion away. “Saturday nights are always hit or miss at the bookstore for some reason. They canceled my shift so I was in for the night anyway.”
Jonas had short cropped dark brown hair and wore a thick wool sweater with gray corduroy pants. It was my first time seeing her not all bundled up in her winter clothes. She wasn't as stocky as I initially thought. She was older than me, but was pretty from taking good care of herself, so it was hard to peg her age.
“Did something happen with you and your boyfriend?” She asked, pulling a bottle of wine out of the messengers bag she always wore. “I find that wine always helps with heartache.”
“I'm pregnant,” I blurted the words out. I needed to say it out loud to another person or else it wouldn't feel real.
“I... chose poorly,” Jonas said, sliding the bottle of wine back into her bag. “Congratulations?”
“Dammit, that's right. I can't drink. Shit!” I walked over and sat on my bed, feeling like such an asshole. What if I had hurt the baby? I went over all the alcohol I consumed since the last time I had sex with Maynard. Fortunately it wasn't much; I had barely been able to afford food lately.
“Ok,” Jonas exhaled loudly, closing the door behind her. “I'll just close this.”
“I'm sorry. You barely know me. I don't mean to put this on you, I just—” A surge of powerlessness left me feeling overwhelmed and on the brink of crying again. “I needed to tell someone.”
“No, don't be sorry!” Jonas sat next to me on the bed. “You're just emotional right now. It's alright.” She paused, “I take it you haven't told the significant other.”
“Maynard? God, no. We're—” What the hell were we? Broken up, I guess. I never said I wanted things to end I just said I needed time. He never got back to me so I had no idea what he thought. “It's complicated.”
“Yeah, babies tend to do that. They can be inconsiderate dicks sometimes.” Jonas handed me a bottle of water from her bag. The pipes in our building had recently been turning the water rust-colored so I wasn't surprised that she had bought her own.
I took the bottle and choked out an exasperated giggle at her quip. That wave of panic finally started to recede. I was already glad I called her. I drained half the bottle in one go, I didn't realized I was that dehydrated. Did I really cry that much before she got here?
“Do you have any children?” I asked, suddenly feeling bad that I knew so little about the woman who came to my rescue.
“I have a little menace named Maximilian.” Jonas smiled, thinking about her son. “He's going to be twelve next month.”
“Twelve?” I wiped the last of the sorrow from my eyes. That was surprising. Jonas looked a little older than me, maybe in her mid-thirties. She didn't look old enough to have a near-teenager. “How old were you when you had him?”
“Thirty-one?” She asked herself, remembering then clarified. “I was thirty-two when I had Max.”
“Thirty two?” I was astonished, that would put her in her mid-forties. I saw the smile on her face shift into more of a knowing grin before I realized how insulting I was probably being. “You just look great for— I'm so sorry!”
Oh my god shut up, Claire! I winced, covering my face.
“Wheatgrass and red wine are concentrated magic,” Jonas laughed, diffusing the situation. If this bothered her she wasn't showing it. “Hold off on the wine till after the baby though. Are you going to keep it?”
“What?” It was a valid question, just not one I ever considered. All I could think about since my fifth home pregnancy test this morning was how I was going to raise the baby. Abortion hadn't even crossed my mind. “I mean, yes. I'm going to keep him—it—the baby! I'm going to keep my baby.”
God that was hard to get out. This sort of thing was so layered with new emotion.
“Then you should tell the father.”
“I know. I will. I just need a little time to figure out how to do that.” I buried my face in my hands. “We're just not talking to each other at the moment.”
How was I going to tell Maynard?
“How did you do it?” I looked up and asked Jonas. I didn't bother trying to hide my watery eyes from her. “Were you two still together when you found out you were pregnant?”
“Technically yes, but I had just asked for a divorce two weeks before I found out.” Jonas frowned in embarrassment. “Jeffrey, Max's father, was my best friend and high school sweetheart. We got married right away and spent years trying to have children.”
“Wow, what happened?” I quickly added, “If you don't mind me asking!”
“It took a long time, but my love for him sort of evolved in way that wasn't intimate anymore. I was hoping that a baby would bring us closer together. We tried one last time and then I realized that I was the problem, not him. Biologically speaking I was fine, I was just doing everything for the wrong reasons. Right after that I met Lucy at the bookstore and we've been together ever since.”
“Oh. That must have been super awkward.” I cringed.
“I had to tell my husband that I wanted a divorce, I was pregnant, and I was switching sides all in the span of three weeks.” Jonas laughed in an indomitable, but fully self-aware way. She recognized how crazy her situation was but she owned it. “Super, super, super awkward. I told you babies can be jerks. Or, rather, they can have terrible timing.”
“Yes, they can!” I exhaled, chuckling as tears streamed down my face. The way Jonas was able to laugh about something that painful-sounding gave me a little hope. Maybe everything wasn't as terrible and world ending as I thought. Maybe I could get through this. “How did you get through all of that?”
“It was hard, especially since I could no longer drink my liquid courage.” Jonas sloshed around the bottle of wine in her bag. “I don't know exactly, I just pushed through my fear and laid it all out on the table. Jeffrey was mad and hurt, but he knew I wasn't coming from a bad place, so we just talked it all out.”
I nodded. Maynard might not want anything to do with the baby, but I was confident that he would at least hear me out.
“Do you still see Max?”
“Every weekend like clockwork, and each summer. Jeffrey and his wife live in a better school district so I'm happy with the arrangement.” Jonas flashed me a warm smile. “Don't let this eat you up inside. Call Maynard and let him know.”
“You're right,” I pulled out my phone while I still had the strength. I squeezed Jonas' hand and looked at her. For the first time all day I knew what I had to do. “Thank you so much.”
“Don't mention it.” Jonas stood up and slung her bag over one shoulder. She didn't want to intrude on what was probably going to be a very emotionally-charged conversation. “I'll check in with you later. If you need anything please let me and Lucy know.”
“Are you going to give me rides to the doctor's on your bike?” I laughed, wiping my eyes again. Sometimes I felt like such a crybaby.
“As long as you don't mind sitting in my basket like produce.” Jonas gave me a friendly wink then let herself out.
“Oh hey, before I forget.” Jonas pulled a folded note out of her bag's side pocket and handed it to me. “This was sticking out of your mailbox this morning. I didn't want anyone else to snag it before you saw it.”
“Thanks,” I said absently, as Jonas left for real this time. Was this from Maynard? Was he finally writing back to me?
I peeled off the tape and unfolded the letter. It wasn't a
letter. It was two sentences that read: Maynard was at the Valley Chez last night. He's been a bad, bad boy.
The message had to be from Anthony. It terrified me that he knew where I lived but what could I do with him blackmailing me?
What did that asshole mean when he said that Maynard was a bad boy?
I cleared the call function on my phone and brought up the internet browser. My thumbs hovered over the keypad. With each character I typed the bar began auto-filling probable suggestions. I was slowly drowning in dread like it were quick sand.
“Billionaire celebrity Maynard Cooper caught with prostitutes at super elite club last night,” was the top result on Google. I skimmed the brief news article dismissively; things like this were always being written about Maynard and every other celebrity out there.
It was the pictures at the bottom that broke my heart in half then crushed it.
Chapter 12
Maynard
“You certainly have a knack for obscene headlines, haven't you?” Bianca declared just after opening the front door to my apartment.
It had only been a day so the media was still ripping into me ruthlessly. Typically I'd have worked through the weekend but I was taking it off. It wasn't worth it. The building was probably being swarmed with reporters and photographers.
“I like to think of it as a skill.” The negative press never bothered me before, I was used to it. I just had to lay low until the next scandal broke and sometimes that wasn't even a full day. “I keep forgetting you have a key.”
“You may have my company but I still own your hotel.” Bianca removed her white alpaca coat and reverently placed it on the coat rack.
“About that.” It was hard to believe that it had been months since we last talked. We bickered like there wasn't any time lost. “I want you to know that I had nothing to do with you getting kicked out.”
“Of course you didn't. You wouldn't have the slightest idea how to go about removing an existing CEO.”
“I do enjoy our little talks, Sis.” I smiled at her cutting, and unfortunately true, remarks. She was right. Even after spending the last month poring over corporate documents, I still barely knew a damn thing about circumventing company policies. “Drink? Flagon of virgin's blood?”