by Aiden Bates
I gaped a little at Marcos without saying anything.
“Yep.” Marcos started nodding. “I mean… It’s not bad or anything. It’s good. It’s really good. We were talking about having a little brother or sister for Juan soon, anyway. One little brother or sister. It’s not…according to plan, but…”
“Both of them are…” I asked stupidly, trying to make sure I understood everything Marcos was saying.
“Yep,” Marcos repeated. “Both of them. Both of them are pregnant…” He rambled on quietly almost like he was trying to make it clear to himself as much as he was trying to make it clear to me. “Two… Two pregnant omegas. Don’t know what that’ll be like. Before, with Mitch, Oliver and I could tag team, but now there’s nobody that’s not pregnant. Just me.”
Marcos brought his eyes up to look at me and I decided to cut off that idea at the knees.
“I mean, I’ll help dude. Definitely. But I’m not… I’m not moving back in or anything. I’ll come over, but you know… I signed the lease with Ch—”
Charlie. Charlie in the apartment. Charlie in the apartment in heat. Charlie in the apartment in heat on the suppressors. Charlie in the apartment in heat on the suppressors that were on the news.
“Holy shit, why are you so pale?” Marcos asked, interrupting the realization I was coming to.
“They were on the pills, the bad pills? The suppressors that didn’t work? That’s why they got pregnant?” I asked urgently.
Marcos frowned like he couldn’t believe I was asking such an obvious question.
“I mean if the suppressant part isn’t working, then the birth control part probably doesn’t work either? That’s what we figured,” Marcos said, sounding very confused as to why I was taking his omegas’ pregnancies so seriously all of a sudden.
“Okay!” I said, trying to sound like nothing was wrong. Failing. “Bueno! Well. I have PT soon, so I gotta…” I pointed at Cireno’s door, my throat going too dry to say much.
“Really? You’re not even done with your—”
“No. It’s…earlier today. The appointment is. Time got away from me. I’ll walk. I’m good. Bye, Marcos. I’ll come by and see the husbands and the kid. Kids. Bye.”
I stuck him with the check, got up and left. I felt like I was staggering out of Cireno’s, only barely aware of pulling out my phone and calling the VA.
“Yeah, I gotta… I have to reschedule,” I said, searching around for my bearings on the street. I found the direction of the closest drug store and headed that way as fast and as hard as I could while I moved the appointment.
“Yeah, there’s just been an emergency,” I said, as I pounded pavement.
“A family emergency.”
15
Charlie
I wasn’t usually one for the news, but in the past few weeks all anyone was talking about was the “Paxium Scandal” as they’d started calling it. They were running the latest story in rerun on the twenty-four hour news. I’d seen it before, but it still startled me to see Joshua King’s face come up in my living room.
His story had dropped last week.
“There are multiple omegas I’ve spoken to since Paxium hit the market who are now pregnant, many of them with multiples after taking the medication.”
The news anchor reported with that same, glued on blank expression all of them did, about what their own reporting had discovered—very shockingly, precisely the same thing that Joshua King had already said—before cutting to various omegas across the south talking about their experiences, and medical providers to fill in the gaps.
I’d watched it three times now as I sprawled out on the couch and munched on potato chips, and every time I hardly heard a word after Joshua King spoke. Things with Pedro had been fantastic in the last few weeks. Once we’d both gotten over the fact that what had happened had, in fact happened, it started, well, happening all the time, everywhere. One heated look was enough to send one of us crawling over the other on the couch or in the shower or once, really memorably, against the refrigerator, which now refused to dispense ice cubes.
I lifted up my sweatshirt and looked down at my stomach. I didn’t have any sort of morning sickness or anything, but I knew it was way too early for that just yet. Still, my heat had been incredibly short. Thinking back, by the time Pedro had come home after I’d gone to the pharmacy, it no longer felt like I was in heat. I’d chalked it up to the second pill I’d taken, but what if that wasn’t it. When we’d had sex it didn’t have that same urgency it had that morning. I’d still wanted Pedro, but I hadn’t felt like my insides were going to gnaw themselves through if I didn’t have him. But that wasn’t crazy or anything, right? My heat had never been too long. It was usually two or three days at the most.
I took a deep breath. There was no reason to panic. There was no reason to panic. There was absolutely no need to panic. At all.
I heard a key scrape in the door. Okay, so there was one reason to panic.
I scrambled up from the couch and reached for the remote to turn the TV to anything other than the news and the constant pregnancy coverage.
“Hey! Don’t you have PT about now?” I asked. Usually, I wouldn’t see Pedro for at least another hour or two. Typically, he’d come home from physio sweaty and tired, and it would only take a few minutes before I couldn’t take it any longer, and it would turn out Pedro wasn’t tired after all. Well, not too tired to have me over the nearest flat surface, anyway.
Today, though, it didn’t look like that was in the cards. Pedro was white as a sheet, his eyes round in what looked a whole lot like panic. He didn’t say anything, just looked at me for a moment like he was trying to process what it was I had said to him.
So much for my delayed panic plan.
“What’s that?” I asked, gesturing down to the plastic bag in his hand.
That seemed to startle him out of whatever shock he was in. He rushed over to the counter as I followed, and dumped the contents of the whole bag over it.
And then, Pedro started to talk.
“I wasn’t sure which one would be the best,” he said quickly as he organized the little boxes in a neat row.
I had no idea what he was talking about until I looked down and saw pink box after pink box all of which were plastered with smiling babies.
“I mean it’s not like I’ve ever been in this situation before, and I asked the lady at the counter and she wasn’t r-re-really much help. Honestly, I think she thought I was crazy, but I wanted to make sure it was okay. I mean, I really wanted to make sure I got the right one, so I just thought fuck it. I’d just buy them all and let you pick. Do you need to pee?”
Pedro paused in his rambling long enough to take a breath, and that was my chance. I put my hands on both of his shoulders.
“Pedro, take a breath. Can you catch me up? Please, tell me what—”
“I had lunch with Marcos today,” he blurted.
“Okay…”
“They’re pregnant,” Pedro said.
“Ugh.” I pulled a face. “I hate when folks refer to the alpha as part of the pregnancy. It’s so—”
“No, bobo, they are pregnant. As in Mitch and Oliver. They were both on the same pill you were, and Marcos just found out.”
Suddenly, things didn’t seem so terrible. At least, at the end of the day, there was only one of me.
“Oh, no. Oh, that’s… Poor Marcos.”
“Yeah, and now it’s all over the news that tons of the omegas who were on that pill are pregnant.” It was, in retrospect, a dumb thing to try and keep from Pedro.
“Yeah, I saw. Sorry I didn’t say anything. I just didn’t want to worry you about something I wasn’t sure about. It didn’t seem fair.”
Pedro nodded. “I just wanted you to know that whatever happens, whatever the case is, I’m one-hundred percent on board, okay?” His voice was entirely serious as he reached up to take one of my hands in his.
It was stupid to get so emotional over something lik
e this. We still didn’t know whether or not I even was, but to see Pedro here with stacks of boxes just because he wanted to make sure I had what I needed was touching.
“I mean, I’m not going to lie, I’m still nervous as hell,” Pedro added. We both smiled.
“Yeah, me too. It’s a lot.”
“You’re damn right it’s a fucking lot. Marcos was nervous as shit about Juanito. He told me about how often he used to come to the hospital when I was still asleep and just talk about how worried he was about everything. But, that’s okay. It’s totally natural to be nervous, right?”
“Well, easy there. We still don’t know whether or not that’s even a thing. Speaking of… Why did you buy so many tests?”
“Like I said, I didn’t know which one you preferred,” Pedro said.
I rolled my eyes. “Pedro, I don’t have a preferred brand of pregnancy test,” I said.
“You don’t?” he asked helplessly.
I tsked. “I’ve never had to take a pregnancy test, Pedro. Of course I don’t have a preferred brand. What do you think omegas do? ‘Hey, let’s do brunch and take some pregnancy tests!’ Like, that’s not a recreational thing, sweetheart.”
“But at least this way you can have your pick,” Pedro said, looking down at me expectantly.
“Right,” I said.
Pedro then gestured toward the counter. “Well, then.”
“Umm, well what?”
“Pick one!” Pedro urged.
Good lord. The state of sex education for alphas in this country.
I shook my head. “Pedro, no. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Look at all the tests!” I shouted, showing him test after test as I talked. “They’re all rated for four to six weeks since heat. Well, except this weird off-brand one, which is apparently only good after nine weeks. It’s only been two weeks, Pedro. We can’t know yet.”
“Okay, so we wait two weeks,” Pedro said, like he was receiving orders. In that moment, I could see the soldier Pedro was. “What do we do until then?”
It was a reasonable question, and one I hadn’t put a lot of thought into until this point. I’d been so focused on the idea that maybe I was pregnant to really think of anything beyond that.
“Um, I guess, you know, if I am pregnant, then maybe we should talk about what that means for each of us.”
“I mean it, Charlie. No way in hell I’d walk out on you. If you’re pregnant with my baby, I’ll be here. I swear,” Pedro said.
I smiled. The reassurance was comforting. “No, I know that. But I mean, what does this mean for us? As in us.” I felt my face heat.
Pedro’s expression changed to one of understanding. “Oh. Well… I guess we already live together, but if we’re going to be having a baby—”
“Umm…”
“Okay, okay, easy there. If you’re going to have our baby. There is that better?”
“Yes, much,” I said, smirking.
“If you’re going to have our baby, then we need to see if it can work. If we can work.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
Pedro shook his head. “Me? Right now? I’m not sure of anything. Who could say they were sure of anything? But if I said I was sorry? That wouldn’t be true. I like you, Charlie. We get along. How about you let me take you out on a date and we see how it goes, okay?” Pedro shot me his most charming smile, and there was more than a little bit of me that went sort of…melty at seeing it.
I grinned. “I would like that.”
Pedro kissed me, and for a while the tests and pills and pregnancy were forgotten.
16
Pedro
Who knew buttoning a shirt could be so hard. After straining my neck looking down in an attempt to fasten the second from the top button, I then used my reflection in the mirror to guide my fingers. But no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t force my fingers to actually put the tiny button in the tiny hole.
The other buttons had been difficult enough, and I’d internally cursed myself for not doing the fine motor skill exercises Camden had given me as homework. But as I got closer to the top of my shirt—which meant I was closer to being ready to go out—I was having a harder time keeping my hands still enough to try.
Fuck it. I dropped my hands in disgust. I could leave it open. It wasn’t that bad. I looked fine. Well, I figured I did.
A date with Charlie. That’s why my fingers were trembling so badly, why I couldn’t do up my buttons.
When I’d asked him it seemed to make him happy. Hell, it made me happy. But… A date with Charlie
“You ready?” Charlie called through my door, gently rapping it with his knuckles.
Ni modo, as Marcos would say. No way around it but through it, in other words. It was time to take what felt like a plunge.
I opened the door, buzzing with nervous excitement while also suffering a darkening dread that something was going to go really, really wrong. Charlie, on the other hand, seemed completely mellow.
“Do you need more time?” Charlie asked, looking up at me with a sweet smile. “Comb your hair again? Change outfits? Change outfits again? You know, it’s normally us that get stereotyped as taking a long time to get ready, but I’ve been hearing your closet door open and close for the past hour or so,” he said teasingly as he leaned up against the doorway.
“Sh-Sh-Sh-shut up,” I said as I brushed past him.
I grumbled under my breath all the way to the car while Charlie giggled, a sound that kind of eased my nervousness about doing this. I still felt like I was making a bad decision in having this date with Charlie, but I could no more stop myself than I could when he was in heat.
Charlie drove us to the Five Star Grill, which, I’ll admit, was a little unconventional in my point of view.
“What are you still grumbling about?” Charlie asked.
I muttered something under my breath in a kind of explanation.
“What?” Charlie repeated. “What was that?”
“I don’t know. It’s old-fashioned, I guess. But my mami would whoop me if she could see this.”
We stopped at a red light, and Charlie looked at me with his head tilted to the side in confusion. Eventually, though, I watched him catch on.
“Oh, are you supposed to drive? Is that how it goes? Well, that’s archaic, and anyway you’re not supposed to be driving yet and Marcos would ‘whoop’ you if he found out you were trying to, so you’re just going to have to pick which one you’d rather, I guess.”
“Mami,” I said, decisively, which only made him giggle more.
When we got to the Grill we were quickly seated and given menus.
“What are you thinking of getting?” Charlie asked, going over the menu.
“I don’t know. The ribs sound good,” I said, trying to feel as casual as Charlie was making this date. “You?”
“Fajitas,” he said. “The fajitas with the chili-lime rice and the corn salsa.”
I didn’t say anything. I stared at him in appalled silence. Charlie didn’t notice, continuing to read the menu while I sat there, open mouthed.
“Maybe I’ll ask them if they can put the salsa on the side. Or substitute it with the tortilla soup.”
No. No, no, no. Not happening. All at once my nerves evaporated, and I leaned across the table.
“Fajitas, dude? Fajitas?” I asked him very seriously. “With chili-lime rice? Tortilla soup? You’re really going to order that fake shit after you’ve had Mami’s cooking? Like, real Mexican cooking? You’re dishonoring my people and…you know…if you are…” I let the implication hang, but then decided I needed to say it out loud. “If you are pregnant, you can’t be getting him used to that kind of nonsense. Nope.”
Charlie regarded me as seriously as I regarded him. But then the corner of his mouth ticked up in a little smile, and I knew he was thinking of the potential of him carrying my baby. My heart thudded a little harder at that, but I sat back, satisfied I’d got my point acr
oss. Until Charlie pursed his lips a little in a way that reminded me of Mami.
“Someone wants to go back to sleep for another few years, I see,” Charlie said softly as he looked back down at the menu.
“Dark,” I muttered.
But I laughed. And that made Charlie laugh. And from then on it was just like two friends having dinner. A nice dinner, on a date, granted, but still. It no longer felt like it was something I was definitely going to screw up.
“Mm… You look better,” Charlie said after we were done with dinner and while he considered dessert.
“And you look like you’ve decided to eat for two just in case.” It was just the latest in a series of friendly jabs we’d been trading over dinner. “Alright, alright. Don’t trip. I’ll get dessert, too.”
The waitress came by long enough for Charlie to order the turtle brownie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and to suggest that maybe I wanted to think about getting the caramel-apple cider cheesecake. If he was purposefully trying to remind me of how he smelled, he was doing a great job of it.
“What do you mean I look better?” I asked.
“You seemed nervous when we left the house. Tense.” Charlie shrugged as if he was just making a small observation, but I knew he was actually asking me why.
“I mean…yeah, I was. I guess I should say I am. I mean, I’m having a good time. It’s just…”
Charlie must have had conversations like this one before. Maybe not exactly like this, maybe not in this context, but something must have rang familiar to him. Something about the way I was suddenly tiptoeing around him when we’d mutually agreed we’d be honest with each other.
“It’s Jason, isn’t it?”
I didn’t want to admit it, but it would be silly not to, especially as it was pretty obvious what was wrong. “Yeah.”
Charlie licked his lips, looking like he was considering what he was going to say. Just then the waitress popped back up with dessert and it gave him a few extra minutes to respond to my confession.
“I know it just happened for you, and I can’t imagine what it was like to wake up and find out what had happened to all the guys who were with you when the IED exploded. To find out Jason hadn’t made it back. But you’ve got to remember it was over four years ago for me.”