by Ford, Mia
Tense, stressful, awkward? I don’t know what word she means but they all fit in perfectly. It will be all of those things, but it may well also be exactly what we need. If this girl does belong to me, then I have already missed out on so much, but I can’t be blamed for that because I didn’t know. Now, I do, and I want to make up for it. I don’t know what I’ll do, for someone with so many children in the family, I don’t know much about them, but I will learn. I will work. I will prove to Zoe that I am worthwhile. I have to.
Even if she is in New York and I’m here. Other people make it work, and I will too.
“Yes, sounds good,” I reply a little too formally. “I will make a reservation for us and message you the details.”
As I say this, I feels like a date, but of course that isn’t what it is. There won’t be any kissing or funny business and she will have to be back at a reasonable time for the babysitter. It’s something totally different. New for the pair of us. A territory that we’re going to have to get used to, to make this work.
“Great okay. Well, I have to get back to Maddie because I’m pushing her on the swing at the park, but I will see you later on. Thank you for calling me, Wesley. This means a lot. I guess I will see you tonight.”
Maddie. That’s her name. The name of the girl who could be mine. That’s tangible, something to have for now, to get me through the rest of the day until we share dinner tonight and we sort things out. At least, I hope we will. Now that I am over my little temper tantrum, I know that I will give it all I have to make it right.
“Thank you for reaching out to me, Zoe. I know that must have taken a lot. Please know I appreciate it.”
As we say our goodbyes with promises to meet up later on, I feel more vulnerable and raw than ever before. Like I’m cut in half and anything could happen to me. I’m handing myself over to Zoe with no knowledge of what she’s going to do… but as scary as it is, I know that it’s right, and that will keep me going.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Zoe
I tap my foot anxiously on the floor, my fingers trembling and shaking as I keep darting my eyes towards the door. It isn’t even time for Wesley to turn up yet, but I’m desperate for him to just arrive already. I’m an absolute mess and we haven’t even laid eyes on one another yet. I just don’t know how this is going to go and that is so hard for me to deal with. Even if he sounded reasonable enough on the phone, that doesn’t mean it will go that way now. He could have spent the last few hours deciding exactly how he is going to take me down.
“Come on,” I mutter nervously to myself. “Come on, will you? Come on already?”
But of course, there isn’t anything that I can do to speed him up, to make him arrive just because I need him to. Like he said when he was yelling at me, I was the one who walked away, so the ball is in his court now. I will just have to be patient and wait until he is ready to come to me. Even if it kills me.
I check my cell phone for what feels like the hundredth time. One to see if there is any message from the babysitter, letting me know if there is any drama with Maddie, and also to see if Wesley has been in touch. I keep expecting him to call the whole thing off and say that he doesn’t want to speak to me ever again.
He will come, I try my hardest to convince myself. He will come because of Maddie. He isn’t a bad person.
I don’t know who was the bad person back then really, I think that we both might have been at fault. Of course he shouldn’t have believed Hannah over me, but I don’t think that I fought enough either. If I had just tried, then perhaps we wouldn’t be in this whole mess now. Maybe we could have sorted it out.
Oh, who the hell knows. The past can’t be changed. All we can do is work towards the future.
The door swings open and I practically leap out of my seat, but yet again it’s someone else. I can’t stand this, the anticipation is too much, it’s too intense, I need a moment to myself. So, I head straight for the bathroom to try and calm myself down. Straight in to the much too bright lights which only serve to make me look even more wild eyed and crazy. Even in my most sensible looking trousers and flowy top, I look crazed. If I were Wesley, and I walked in to see me, then I would quickly spin around and turn back again.
I try and smooth down my hair, which has managed to look curlier than before, and to clean up my make up, but I can’t seem to do anything to make myself look like a normal, capable human being.
“You are just going to have to go out there and face him,” I tell myself seriously. “There is no other option.”
“You go get him!” an older lady comes flying out of one of the cubicles which is very embarrassing. I thought that I was alone here. A heat immediately creeps up through my cheeks. “Or break up with him. Whatever is going on here. You are a kick ass woman who can do whatever it is that you want to do.”
“Er, it isn’t exactly like that,” I tell her honestly. “It’s a bit more complicated.”
“Oh, honey. The best love stories in the world are the most complicated ones.”
I can’t help but laugh at her remarks, even though I’m not sure that’s what she’d be saying if she knew about my story. I’m pretty sure she would be telling Wesley to head for the hills. Still, it feels much better to laugh at the situation rather than to sit there getting all kinds of worked up. I would much rather be smiling.
“There, now you look like you can handle whatever is going on.” She grins at me.
“Thank you. I will… go and sort out my complicated situation.”
A surge of confidence rushes through me as I head towards the bathroom exit, but it ebbs away immediately once more as soon as I lay my eyes on him. Wesley Smith, standing in the door way of the restaurant with one of his trade mark suits on, making my heart flutter and race like crazy. I can’t help but admire how good he looks now. He is absolutely heart stoppingly beautiful. It’s hard for me to keep my head on straight around him.
But I’m not here to lose my head around damn Wesley Smith. I’m here for Maddie’s sake.
When he spots me, Wesley gives me a relaxed smile and a wave. On the one hand, that’s good because he doesn’t look like someone who has come here to yell at me. But on the other, I can’t understand why all of this isn’t freaking him out too. He’s the one who has much more to process than me.
I feel like I’m floating on air as I walk back to the table, like my feet aren’t touching the ground, but not in a good way. More like I’m in the middle of a nightmare and I can’t claw my way out of it. If my heart keeps thundering in my throat like this, then I’m not going to be able to speak on my daughter’s behalf.
“Hey.” He holds out his hand to me in a strangely formal way. I take it and shake it, but I can’t quite reply in the way that I would like to. A strangled sound comes out instead of words. “Good to see you.”
We both sit and I find myself nodding like I have lost all control of my head. Maybe I have. I need to say something, anything, so I don’t freak him out because we’re supposed to be acting like adults.
“So, how er… how has work been?” A bit bland, not the ideal question, but it will do.
“Work is work.” He shrugs. “Andy is still the same, unable to really control anyone. So, I have to do most of that now. Not that I mind. It means that I can mostly keep the staff working as I want them too.”
“Hannah and Court too?” I ask without thinking. “Are they still there? I mean, did you ever manage to…”
“I would love to get rid of them, but it isn’t quite as simple as that unfortunately.”
I nod as if I understand, but I don’t really. If it was up to me and I had taken the job, then I would have found a way. But I didn’t, and Wesley clearly has a different way of doing things to me.
“Well, I’m glad that it all seems to be going well for you. That’s good news.”
“And how have things been in New York? Have you enjoyed living there?”
“It’s been good for me,” I reply hones
tly. “When Grandma died, and with everything that happened here, I needed a change of scenery. My best friend is there. She moved right after high school, which is why I went there to see her. She’s always going on about how it transformed her, and I needed some of that for myself.”
“And did it?” He gives me a strange look. “Do you think that it has changed you?”
“Well, not like Jessica. It’s really changed her.” I giggle. “She hangs out with celebrities now. That’s how much her life has transformed. So, it definitely didn’t do that for me. But… I do feel stronger.”
“You look it,” he confirms, surprising me. “I can tell that it’s made you stronger. You look it. More confident. Although I suppose that could be being a mother as much as it is the city.”
And here we are. The topic that we have come for. To be honest, I thought that we would have a bit more small talk to ease us in first, so this has hit me hard. It’s a bit overwhelming. But I need to do it, despite the fact that any speech I had planned has gone flying out the window… but just as I suck in a deep breath and I prepare myself to talk, the waiter comes over to take our order. A blessing and a curse all at once.
I order food that I know I probably won’t eat, since all of this has made me lose my appetite, and I watch Wesley do the same thing. It’s strange to think that this is the closest we have ever had to a real date. When we were together, it was never like this. We never really had a dating phase, we more slipped in to the comfortable couple phase. I don’t know if that just proves we were never meant to be, or the complete opposite.
Once the waiter goes, Wesley says nothing. He is still waiting for me to speak. So, I start with the biggest bomb shell. “I am sure you have already worked this out, but just for clarification, Maddie is yours.”
“She is?” He clutches his chest. Even if he has worked this out, it’s still shocked him. “Oh my God.”
“I’m sorry. I know that I should have told you this earlier, but I was so hurt. The fact that you would believe I’d make up a pregnancy was too much for me. Just for a promotion as well. It showed me that you didn’t know me at all and made me feel like I didn’t know you either. And… well, since we always seemed to hate one another before we started fooling around, I just took the view that there was nothing we could do. I walked away.”
“You did.” He nods slowly. “You did walk away, and you broke my heart when you did.”
“I’m sorry.” Fuck, I didn’t know that I was going to feel this bad. “But my heart was broken too.”
“Because of me,” he accepts. “Because I listened to Hannah and Court. I listened to them and fell in to their little trap. Their games. They were playing us off against one another, and I was dumb enough to believe it.”
“That’s what I still don’t get… what was their angle? Like, who did they want to be manager?”
“Who the fuck knows?” he laughs. “I don’t think they even knew. I don’t really think that it was about me and you. They just like to create drama in the office. They still do it now.”
It’s a real shame to think that our lives were torn apart by people who didn’t even give a shit about us. But we can’t put all the blame on them, however much we want to, we played our part as well.
“So, where do we go from here?” I ask Wesley. “I know that this is a lot to put on you, but we came back because Maddie wants to meet you. She wants to know who her father is and where she came from. I didn’t come to put the pressure on because I know that you might not want to, but…”
“I do,” he reassures me sharply. “Oh, I do. I feel like I have already missed out on so much and this is my chance to make up for that lost time. If you and Maddie are willing to let me…then I would love to…”
Wow. Now that isn’t what I was expecting him to say, but this is a good sign. It’s all going smoothly; I just hope that it continues to go this smoothly and we can all come to some sort of happy ending. One that suits us all… whatever that may be.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Wesley
The four walls surrounding me are familiar, I know them well. I have spent the last few years knowing them well. But somehow as I look at them now, they look different. More colorful, brighter, more exciting. Tonight, has absolutely transformed my whole life in a way that I didn’t even know I needed.
“Maddie.” I love the way that my daughter’s name sounds. “Maddie.”
It might not have been the name that I would have gone for, but I don’t know what I would’ve picked. I haven’t seen enough of her to know if it suits her or not, but from the way that Zoe has talked about her tonight, I would assume so. My beautiful sweet four year old girl who likes coloring in, unicorns, and football. I still hate what I have missed. It was hard to hear Zoe talk about her. It was nice that she wanted to catch me up on her life, but it made me yearn for all that I’d missed. But I can make a difference now. Me and Zoe can start with a clean slate, forget all the shit that happened before and just carry on moving in the right direction.
I like the idea of a fresh slate. I like the idea of starting again, it feels nice. We need that more than anyone else in the world, and we have a reason for that now. We won’t be co-workers fighting for the same job, competing just to be noticed by Andy. We won’t be pawns in Hannah and Court’s stupid games. We won’t be lovers either, because it gets too complicated too quickly and we have another person to think of now. I guess we will just be friends. Since that isn’t something that we have ever tried before, I’m quite excited to see how it goes.
I grab my cell phone and glance at the picture of Maddie that Zoe sent to me, just so I can get to see her a little bit. It might be a flat 2D image that doesn’t give me any detail and doesn’t allow me enough insight in to her life, but I will take it. Right now, I will take anything that I can get. Especially if it involves her sweet smile.
A small part of me wants to send this image to Brad, to show him that I actually do have more going on in my life than he could possibly know about. But I don’t. I think that it’s best for me to figure things out for myself first. I need to work out how me and Maddie are going to have a relationship, what bond me and Zoe will have these days, how the distance will work… then I will tell everyone what’s going on.
“They are going to lose their mind!” I chuckle to myself. “It will be insane!”
I was angry, when I first saw Zoe with Maddie, when I knew that I had been duped, but now I’m not. That anger isn’t healthy, it won’t lead anywhere. Life is too short to be mad. My parents might have passed away when I was only small, younger than Maddie is now, but I have always carried that around with me. Perhaps it’s because I always knew that they were gone, or maybe that’s something that Brad drilled in to us as we were growing up, but it’s a lesson that has always been there. Shame I didn’t take it on board five years ago…
“No wonder Zoe had to protect Maddie.” I shake my head sadly. “No wonder she left.”
I probably would have done the same thing if the does was on the other foot. If I was being accused of lying all the time, of making up heinous things. I still acutely remember some of the horrible things that I said, and it makes me cringe. To know that those words could even come out of my mouth: “Do you always do the fake fiancé bit? The fake relationship to distract a guy so you can trample all over him and steal his dreams? Or is it just the fake pregnancy? And before you even try to deny it, don’t forget that Hannah has already told me that you have pretended to be pregnant before.” Five years and those words have stuck with me, reminding me that I have the capability to be a terrible person. At least I can be sure that I will never do that again.
I let my male pride get in the way, that was a big part of it. I was upset that Andy chose Zoe over me which made me more susceptible to whatever Court was telling me, and I hate myself for that.
I flop on my couch and allow my eyes to close, letting the dream of me and Zoe flood me. The dream of us making a go of it way bac
k when. I think of being there when she gave birth, getting to hold Maddie when she was only moments old, being there together as she grew up, loving Zoe through all the sleepless nights, all the teething, all the hard times, falling harder for her every single day. I know that I’m not really supposed to be thinking about the feelings that we shared, but I can’t help myself from falling back in to that place. Because it wasn’t a lie, was it? There was no reason for me to back away from her. We could have just been together.
It makes me ache all over to consider that we could have had it all. That love my brothers have… that could have been mine too. I could be living a similar life to all of them. I might have mocked it in the past, but now it could be awesome. Even the rock star of the family, Alex, managed to find someone to settle down and have a family with, and he was the wildest one of us all for a very long time. I might have turned my nose away from love and a happy ever after, but really, it’s all that I ever wanted.
Oh well, I might not be able to have that beautiful love story, I think that the ship might have sailed on that one, but I can have Maddie. I can make our day together good. Thankfully, Zoe hasn’t hung around to make this a more nerve wracking deal than it already is. She said that we can hang out tomorrow at the park so I can spend some time with my daughter. But I need to do something big for her. I need to make up for the shitty impression that I have already made. Maddie wasn’t really looking at me as I fell out with Zoe outside of the office, and I wasn’t particularly looking at her either, but it still happened, and she probably heard. She heard too much of me being a douche bag, so I need to turn things around and actually be a nice guy.
“Gifts,” I mutter to myself. “Gifts always make things better, don’t they?”
Unfortunately, I don’t know enough to be sure of what to get for Maddie and I don’t want to ask anyone for help. If I ask any of my brothers, they are going to come at me with a million questions, and if I ask Zoe then she will know what’s coming. I don’t want her to be aware because it will spoil the surprise and also, she will tell me not to get anything. I don’t think Zoe will want it to be too much of a fuss, but it feels right to me.