by Ford, Mia
Zoe
Oh my God. As Wesley looks at me and his eyes flash with recognition, I realize that my whole plan has fallen apart. I intended to let him know about Maddie gently. I was going to try and see him alone somehow and let him in before introducing him to his child. I didn’t want it to be a massive shock like this. I knew that coming anywhere near the old office was a bad idea, but I wanted to scope the place out. To see if there was anyone left who had been there before. Not that I left any friends behind, but I could see if Wesley was still around, maybe try and find out his situation. But now he is the one who has come out and found me. And he looks… confused.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself. “There is nothing I can do about this now. I just need to face it.”
“Mommy, what are you saying?” Maddie asks me. “You are gripping me too hard.”
“Oh, sorry.” I loosen my hand. “I just need to… to talk to someone, that’s all.”
Shit, I want to be all calm and collected. I would love to be able to hold my head high and handle this properly, even if it isn’t what I planned and I have no idea what I’m going to say to this man… but how can I hold myself high when my heart is pounding so loudly and I am falling apart? He must be able to see it, it’s obvious.
“Can we go, Mommy?” Maddie moans clearly not interested in what’s going on here. She obviously doesn’t know that this is her father which is for the best. I don’t want any pressure on her at all. Even if that is the reason we have come. “I’m bored. You said that we could go to the park soon.”
“Mhmm, and we will. We will,” I reassure her. “I just need to have a conversation first.”
The cogs are ticking in Wesley’s brain, I can practically see them spinning. He’s putting two and two together and coming up with a wild range of numbers. But four will settle in his brain eventually, he will figure it out. He will work out that I was carrying his child the entire time and he abandoned me. He didn’t reach out to me, and I suppose I didn’t him either, which has put us in this mess right now.
It really doesn’t help me that the last five years have been good to Wesley. Really good. In fact, he looks amazing. Somehow, he manages to be even better looking than before which isn’t fair. He must be about twenty five years old now and he’s already become a lot more distinguished. But I suppose that’s what happens when your body hasn’t been ravaged by pregnancy and child birth, plus the endless sleepless nights that followed. He has just been living his life, probably going far with his job, and becoming more handsome with it.
“What is going on?” Wesley suddenly demands as if he has just found his voice. “What is this?”
“I…” Oh God, he’s mad. Really mad and I don’t know what to say to him. The closer he gets to me as he struts across the road, the more I can see the intense rage in his eyes. He’s fuming at me. “I don’t…”
“Is everything that you said to me a lie?” Thankfully he seems to sense that yelling around Maddie isn’t the best idea. But I can hear the anger in his voice. He can’t disguise that from me. “Because my head is really spinning now. I don’t know what to think. One minute… well, you are telling me one thing. Then another. Then you just vanish, and now…” He can’t even look at Maddie, I can see the pain in his eyes. He doesn’t want to see her, to admit what he has missed out on because both of us put our petty argument first. “And now this?”
“Look, I didn’t mean for this to happen,” I try and tell him calmly. “I didn’t mean for any of this…”
“Oh, I see. You didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Well, that makes it okay then.”
“It doesn’t. I know that it doesn’t, but look…” Where are the right words to make all of this okay? They must be there somewhere. But I can’t find them. “Just talk to me. Properly. We need to talk about this…”
“We needed to talk about this before we left. Don’t you remember? I tried to get you to speak to me, but you refused. What you really should have done was just listened to me. Then everything could be different.”
He rakes his fingers through his hair, something that I know he only does when he’s stressed out, and he steps away from me. The anger burns off of him in waves. It rolls against me, crashing in to me, almost knocking me to the ground. It kind of hurts but I don’t want Maddie to see. She can’t know that I am in pain.
“I know. But I can’t change what happened. I can make it right now though and that’s why I’m here.”
“What if it’s too late to make things right?” He throws his hands in the air. “You said to me once that you won’t do things on my time line, but what if I don’t want to work on yours either? What if this is inconvenient for me? I might have other stuff going on my life that this doesn’t… gel with.”
“Gel?” I sneer. “Are you joking? I get that this is a shock, but that’s a di… bad thing to say.”
He cocks an eyebrow at me as I try to cover up the curse word. “Maybe so, but perhaps I am not in the mood to be dealing with this right now. Perhaps you going was the best thing to ever happen to me.”
Now it’s my turn to fall back away from him. He might be saying this to hurt me because I’ve hurt him, or he might really mean it. I don’t know but it feels killer all the same. The fact that he can even utter those words are too much. He might look like he has grown up in the last five years, but I guess he hasn’t.
Well, one of us needs to be the adult here, so I guess that’s going to be me. Stepping up. Again.
“Look, Wesley, I know that this is too much, but please think about talking to me. Not here, not now, but somewhere else. At another time. A calmer time. Just me and you. Please.”
“I don’t think I can.” He shakes his head at me. “I really don’t think that I can. I’m sorry, Zoe, I don’t know what to say to you, but this… this is all too heavy for me. I mean, I am at work, trying to manage those people…”
“So, you took the promotion then?” I jump in, needing to make my little dig. “You’re the manager?”
“So what if I am?” He holds his head high, but I can see the strain in his eyes. “I know that you had been offered the job first, but Andy is glad that I have it now. The numbers have been amazing.”
“You don’t need to prove yourself to me. I wanted you to have the promotion,” I remind him. “So, don’t act like I was the one who pushed you away from the job because I wanted it to be you the whole time.”
I still think about it. How different things would have been if only he had been given the job. Maybe then his male pride wouldn’t have gotten in the way and he would have ignored the rumors. Me and him wouldn’t have fallen out and we could have been the family that we always planned to be.
Of course, it might not have worked. We may have fallen apart anyway, but at least we would have been given a chance. If it hadn’t worked out, then it would have been because of us not someone else. That I could handle.
Anyway, I can’t get lost in that dream now because it never happened, and nothing will change that.
“I have the same number,” I tell him hurriedly. “I have always had the same number, so if you still have it then you can call me. Call me and we can set up a meeting and talk about this properly. Like I said way back when, I don’t expect anything from you, I just think that we should talk.”
“You kept the same number the entire time?” His face softens then hardens. “Me too.”
So, basically, we both could have contacted one another and we didn’t. We chose to ignore each other until this very moment. And now… well now, all we can do is try to put a band aid over that big crack we created.
“I have to go.” He shakes his head hard. “I have to get lunch and then go back to work. They need me there. I don’t have time for all of this. I don’t know… I don’t know if I will call you. I’m not too sure.”
He stalks off without looking behind him and leaves me and Maddie just standing on the side walk with nothing. No answers, no confirmation, nothing. I
automatically glance my eyes up towards the office building and I’m pretty sure I have the sense of eyes upon me. Me and Maddie. If that’s the case, then everyone will know that I am back with a small child and that I’ve been arguing with Wesley. The rumors will be crazy again.
I grab Maddie quickly and start walking away. I don’t care what any of those people say about me, not anymore. But I don’t want them to say a damn thing about Maddie. She is innocent. She doesn’t deserve anything.
“Where are we going, Mommy?” Maddie asks me as we walk rapidly. “Why are we running?”
“We’re going to the park. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Yes.” She’s quiet then, glad to be getting her own way, but only for a moment. “Who was that man?”
Oh God, how do I explain this to her? How do I tell her that he’s the elusive father that she has probably built up in her mind to be something amazing? She’s too young to understand that some people are just assholes. I can’t break her little spirit, not yet. I need to give him a try to come around. Not for his sake, but for hers. If he is going to actually try to get his head around this and he’s going to come back to me, then I need to let him. Because that is what we came here for and I need to give it a try. It was hard enough to make this trip. I don’t want to leave worried that I didn’t give it my best shot.
“That’s just someone that Mommy used to work with, sweetie.”
“Why was he all mad? I don’t like him at all.”
Those words crush me. I don’t know how to stomach them. She doesn’t like her own father. What a damn shame. Wesley shouldn’t want that, especially since he had to grow up without any parents, but it doesn’t seem to have changed him at all. Clearly, he hasn’t even thought of it like that.
“Well, not everyone is nice, baby,” I tell her, hating that this lesson is coming so soon, and from her own father, but it’s the best that I can do right now. “I’m sorry but that’s just the way it is.”
She says nothing. She doesn’t know what to say and nor do I. For now, silence will have to do.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Wesley
I pace up and down my office, occasionally pausing to put my hand on my sandwich as if I’m going to eat it. But I’m really not hungry. If anything, I actually feel sick. Today has just been… well, there aren’t any words for how overwhelming it has been. To see Zoe is one thing, five years after I last laid eyes on her, and to have all of those emotions stirring around inside of me. But for her to have a child with her too… and a child that I’m pretty sure is mine. It isn’t hard to read between the lines of our conversation and to come up with that conclusion.
Fuck. I have a child. A girl who is about four years old. That means that four years ago, a baby was born belonging to me. A little bundle of joy that I never got to lay my eyes on. Okay, so maybe at twenty years old, I wouldn’t have been mature enough to really handle it, however much I would like to assume I would have been… but I would have tried. I would have done whatever I could for my baby girl.
But I missed her birth. I didn’t even know that she was alive. I missed her first word, her first step, her first tooth… all of those things. Now, she is like a mini human, a mini version of her mom.
“Hey, I have something to ask you,” Court says as he leans against the door frame of my office. “If you have time? I know that you are a very busy man these days because you are the boss and all…”
Good, a work dilemma. That’s what I need. Something tangible that I know is real to focus on. I’m good at work, I find it easy because I can use my logic to make it work. It’s nothing like Zoe.
“Yes, sure.” I shake my head and get my brain back in the game. “What’s going on, Court?”
“Well, I was just wondering… we all were really, if that was Zoe who you were talking to outside?”
Urgh, well this is my fault for thinking that he’s mature enough to actually care about work. He hasn’t ever before, so why the hell would I believe that he has now? Not even for a second. Come on.
“Why are you asking me about that?” I reply wearily. “That isn’t exactly business related.”
“Because we all saw you out there talking to her and it looked like it was heated. I just wanted to check in to see if you were okay, because you guys had a thing way back when, didn’t you?”
His eyebrows wiggle as he pretends to be a kind and caring friend who actually gives a shit about me and isn’t just seeking out gossip. But I’m not about to be fooled by him. Not at all. He has absolutely nothing to offer me now. No friendship, no fun, no caring ear… this is all just bullshit.
“Court, I don’t want to talk about my private life out of work, thank you very much.”
“She had a kid with her, didn’t she?” he continues as if he hasn’t heard me. “A young child.”
“Court, I really have too much to do here, so can you get to the point please?”
I don’t want to get in to this with him, or anyone, but if he isn’t going to go then so be it. I will deal with him, shut him down, then work out what the fuck I am going to do about this. Because I can’t just do nothing. Burying my head in the sand and ignoring the problem for five years is how I managed to miss out on that girl’s life.
“Well, I’m just wondering if there is something sordid going on here? Does Zoe have a secret baby? Wasn’t she screwing around with Andy which was why she had to leave? He paid her to go so that his wife wouldn’t find out the truth? Not that it matters. I heard that she’s going to leave him anyway.”
“I think you hear too much, Court. And never anything from the horse’s mouth. Zoe wasn’t screwing around with Andy. That isn’t his child. This isn’t some sordid black mail thing.”
“Well, it has to be something, doesn’t it?” I can see the cogs ticking in his brain. He’s trying to fill in the gaps himself. It doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t get from me, because he will run back to Hannah with something. The truth doesn’t matter to them as long as they get through the work day having done as little work as possible. I really need to get the pair of them fired before I lose my damn mind.
“It isn’t anything. Zoe was just walking passed and I bumped in to her.”
“Ooh, does she want to come back here? Is life on the streets not treating her right?”
“I don’t think she was living on the streets. She just wasn’t living here, and no. She doesn’t want to come back here. She doesn’t want anything from anyone here. She was just walking by.”
“Shame.” Court shrugs. “The kid is cute and if her father does work here, then she deserves to know him.”
Shit, Court is right. I might not like him much, but that statement is the damn truth. That poor little girl doesn’t deserve me to be in a rage at her. She isn’t the one who lied to me. She didn’t aske to be dragged in to this damn mess. What I really need to do is call up Zoe and sort this out. I can as well, I have her number. I can make the first step to making this right if I really want to. And actually, I do want to. I need to.
“Can you go please?” I say to Court, just needing to be alone. “I have to make some calls.”
“Yeah, I bet you do.” He rolls his eyes. “Worst kept secret, honestly. But if you aren’t going to be honest then fine. I will just get out of here and leave you to whatever it is that you want to do.”
Urgh, I don’t care, let him do whatever. He can go out there and say whatever he wants to Hannah and the rest of them. I have some making up to do. I have something that is so much more important to deal with.
Once he’s gone, I close my office door and lock it behind me, before I pick up the phone. My heart pounds as I do, but this is something that I need to. This proves that I am grown up.
“Wesley?” Zoe sounds understandably shocked as she answers. “What’s going on?”
“Er… shit, I just want to say that I’m sorry for the way I acted then. I freaked out. You just showing up out of the blue like that… well, it�
�s a bit much. Because I have spent the last few years believing that things were different. I assumed that you walked out on me and the job because you were found out.”
“You still believe Court and Hannah that I played all of those games?”
The hurt in her voice brings out a deep pain within me. One that I didn’t even know I was clinging on to.
“Erm, well I guess that it was easier to believe that than to admit that I was a dick.”
She laughs a sweet musical sound which causes me to yearn for her in a way that I haven’t done in a very long time. I lean against the phone hand set and imagine the smile that must be playing on her lips right now.
“Well, you were… but I think that I was as well. It all just got very messy, didn’t it? And then when my grandma died, I just couldn’t be here. It was too much for me. Everything that was going on at work just added to it and I snapped. I freaked out and I left for New York because it seemed like the best thing to do.”
“New York, huh?” I don’t know if I can imagine her in the big apple. “Wow, that must have been something.”
“It was. And then once I was there it was easy to forget that life was even a thing here.”
I feel a bit chocked up as she says this. I have been here the whole time, living through this, and she just forgot about me. I suppose I can’t blame her because I would want to forget me too… but knowing that I can be pushed to one side without even a second thought is a bitter pill to swallow. But swallow it I must if I want to make this about that little girl and not about me and Zoe. We had our chance and blew it. This isn’t a second one.
“I want to take you up on your offer of meeting. To discuss things,” I say thickly. “I’m sure that we have a lot to get through and I think that a calm and neutral environment would be the best thing.”
“Right, you do.” She sounds shocked. “I think that’s good. Erm, what I will do is get a babysitter tonight and we can meet up then. Maybe have some dinner or something? Make it less…”