by Ted Evans
“So when are you leaving?” she asked.
I hummed and looked around. We had an old clock on the wall, and it took me a few seconds to figure out the time.
“I want to head out soon before it’s lunch. But I will be back before tonight. I left some more milk for Danny just in case.”
Storing breast milk was a little awkward for me, mostly because of the process. I wasn’t interested in using a pump, so I had to do it by hand, and I used a tutorial I’d learned online. At least it worked. I’d been advised by my doctor that it was best to keep Danny breastfed, so I wouldn’t be trying formula on him for a while. Besides, it felt uncomfortable sometimes how massive my chest was when I didn’t feed Danny, and I’d had to run out on Joshua more than a few times because I was leaking.
It was just one of the things about motherhood you didn’t hear about until it was happening to you. Mom gave me tips on how to deal with it, but that just made things more awkward for me.
“Be sure to bring that young man over for dinner sometime,” Mom said, as she took Danny from me. “After you finally tell him everything.”
She had an eyebrow arched like she was asking a question, and I felt my face warm up.
Crap. She knew I was meeting Joshua.
“I’ll think about it, Mom. Promise.”
She smiled. “Good. Now, go ahead and don’t be late.”
“I’ll be leaving now. Bye Mom, bye baby.”
I pecked a kiss on both their cheeks, then got up to find a jacket and my shoes.
Joshua and I hadn't decided on any meeting today, so there was nothing to be late to, but I was thinking of asking him out to lunch. It was a weekday, which meant he was at the office, and we usually met after work hours for him during the weekdays. But I had nothing to do, and Mom was more than happy to spend time with her grandson.
He had no idea I was going to meet him, either. I planned to go to his office to surprise him.
I could pick the restaurant we go to, I thought to myself. And I could explain everything over lunch.
I had to walk for a bit before I managed to hail a taxi. I was feeling nervous about this. I had always intended to let him know, I just couldn’t come up with the when and the how, but that was procrastinating. There would never be a good time to come out with this sort of news.
More than anything, even my fears, he deserved to know, and I wanted him to know.
Hopefully, he wouldn’t be so mad at me that he stopped speaking to me.
The entire ride to his office, I kept my eyes on my fidgeting hands in my lap. I kept wording and rewording how I would say it in my mind. Like, ‘hey, guess what, I have a baby, and you’re a dad,’ or, ‘remember that time when we were teenagers, and we thought about what our family would be like, well surprise, we’re parents.’ Not to mention plenty of other stupid variations.
Maybe it would be best to deliver it in stages. Start with; he made a mistake assuming I was a nanny and it was wrong of me to lie. Then go from there.
“Ma’am? We’re here.”
I looked up and realized the taxi had stopped.
“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t realize.”
I went through my purse and got out the cash for the ride that I handed over to the driver. Then, I stepped out of the car and stopped in front of Joshua’ office building. It was the first time I’d stopped by alone, and I’d only come by one other time with Joshua when he forgot something at the office. I felt intimidated for several different reasons; the building was significant, Joshua would be somewhere close to the top, and there seemed to be a lot of people. We had been by in the evening before, but it was the middle of the day, and people were busy at work.
No one looked at me as I walked inside. Luckily, the lady at the reception desk remembered me from before and allowed me to go up without alerting Joshua.
I remembered the way. I just had to hit the third highest button on the elevator, and the whole of it was his floor. I’d asked before what was in the higher levels, and he’d just told me it was company secrets. I didn’t pry after that.
The elevator ride seemed to take no time at all. I took a deep breath as the car came to a stop, and the door opened. I went to step outside, only to look up, and freeze.
“Oh, Alessandra! I didn’t expect to see you here!”
Joshua smiled at me, looking surprised but pleased. I would have answered his smile, if not for the woman standing beside him. She was beautiful, with blonde hair tied in an elegant bun, deep blue eyes and a sophisticated skirt suit, in heels that put her an inch shorter than Joshua, she looked just perfect standing beside him.
Rachel.
“I…wanted to surprise you,” I admitted after a second, faking a smile. “I wanted to stop by and see you for something speedy, but I didn’t expect you to be with Rachel.”
Rachel smiled at me and wrapped her hands around Joshua’ arm. “Alessandra, how nice to see you again,” she said pleasantly. “Joshua told me the two of you were seeing each other again. I’m glad the two of you seemed to have mended your differences.”
Her voice might have been polite on the surface, but I didn’t miss the tightness around her eyes. To Joshua, it was a beautiful smile, but to me, I saw it as a challenge.
“Oh,” I murmured, my voice so low it was practically a whisper. “We’re not really…”
I couldn’t finish the sentence, and there was an awkward silence between us for a moment.
“Hey,” Joshua said, grinning. “We were actually about to head out for lunch. Since you’re here, why don’t you join us? The two of you used to get along, right?”
I just barely held back from sending Joshua a strange look, because that was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. I was the one he’d been dating, but Rachel was the woman his mother wanted him to marry. She never came on strong, but it had been so easy for her to move in between us when we were both living separate lives. We only met a few times, and I knew she carried the same disdain his mom did for me because I came from a simple family with a simple background.
Since when did we ever get along? We were rivals before we even met with each other.
“Joshua,” Rachel cut in before I could think of something to say. “Alessandra looks busy, and I think I might have left something in your office. I don’t have my purse on me, do you mind if we go back for it?”
He frowned at her. “Why did you leave it behind in the first place? Don’t you have somewhere to go afterward?”
Rachel chuckled. “Yes, you’re right. It was just careless of me.”
Careless my ass.
Joshua looked away from her, and she sent me a disgruntled look. I knew then that it had been deliberate, and I had ruined her plan. She would have used the excuse to have Joshua bring her back to his office after their little date so that she could spend more time with him.
Rachel, after all, was the kind of woman that wore expensive designer brands all over, and what kind of woman would be so careless with such prized possessions?
“Alessandra…”
Joshua looked at me; his expression was hesitant. I realized the smile on my face had dropped, and immediately replaced it.
“It’s fine; she’s not wrong. I took a break from work because I had something I wanted to tell you, but it’s not important.”
“Oh,” he frowned. “Well, I’ll call you later, and you can tell me about it, whether or not it’s important. I’ll see you later, okay?”
I nodded.
He stepped back from the elevator, and I was a little surprised when the doors automatically started to close. I didn’t think much of it, though, as I watched the two of them walk away, Rachel still holding onto Joshua’ arm, and he didn’t seem to mind. The doors closed, and I sunk into a crouch, feeling my stomach drop. It could have just been the elevator going back down, but that would just be lying to myself.
“Fuck,” I muttered to myself, burying my face in my hands as I felt tears trickle down my cheeks.
The whole exchange couldn’t have taken a minute; I had barely talked to her, barely looked at her. But I felt so damn inadequate, and I wondered what I was doing, what I had even been thinking trying to tell Joshua the truth when it would only cause problems.
Why does Rachel always make me feel this way when she barely does anything?
When the elevator stopped back at the first floor, surprisingly with no one staying it any other level, I had somewhat composed myself, but I kept my head down.
I rushed quickly out of the building, rethinking my decisions of the last little over a month.
Chapter Eleven
Joshua
I was in my office, working when my phone rang. Absently, I reached my hand to pick up the call. I was looking at some documents, but I rarely got calls to my private line, so it was ingrained in me to pick up my phone whenever it rang.
“Joshua.”
Immediately, I looked away from my documents.
“Wendy?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
Her voice sounded too serious, urgent even, and I wondered what had gone wrong. Wendy wasn’t one to panic unnecessarily, and it immediately put me on edge.
Did something happen with Danny?
I might have never thought much about children before, besides some off-handed comments, then learning I was a father already with the woman I loved, but I had enjoyed my little cousin from day one. Not only because Wendy loved him to bits, but because I was there for his birth and had been one of the few people to see him come into the world. He was so small and fragile I couldn’t help feeling protective over him.
Besides, he was family.
If something ever happened to him, his parents wouldn’t be the only ones devastated.
“Joshua,” Wendy said. Her voice was calm, but it sounded forced like she was hiding something else underneath. “I need you to come over to my house immediately. If you have something important, leave it to someone else just this once okay? Please.”
The please really got to me, because it was another thing that was uncharacteristic of my cousin. She never pled for jobs, she asked, or she demanded.
Fearing the worst, I put everything aside. I wasn’t working on anything crucial. It was a project that wouldn’t go into the planning phase for another month. I was looking over the information gathered on it, so while necessary, it wasn’t something I needed to finish right then.
I didn’t bother leaving the work to anyone else, logging out then shutting down my computer. I locked my office as I went, and told my secretary to reschedule anything else I had for the rest of the day. I made it out of the building and to my car and drove impatiently over to my cousin’s house.
The gates opened automatically for me, and I sped up the driveway. I practically shut down the car and jumped out in the same breath, then I ran up to the door and started pounding on the door.
“Wendy! It’s me, Joshua, open up!”
There was no immediate response, and I pressed down on the bell a couple of times before I went back to pounding on it. When I tried the handle, it was locked.
“Dammit!” I cursed under my breath.
I’d just taken a couple of steps back and started pacing a tight circle in front of the door when it opened, and the last person I expected to see stood there.
“Alessandra?”
She looked as surprised as I did, not to mention a little confused.
“Joshua? What are you doing here, knocking so wildly like that? Did something happen?”
I gaped for a minute, then shook my head. “Wendy called me and asked to come. Is she here?”
“Um, she left a while ago. I don’t think there was anything wrong before she left. She called me to look after Danny because she had something important to do today.”
It took a second, but I figured out what was going on.
Fuck.
This had to be a set-up.
What are you thinking, Wendy?
“Would you like to come in?” Alessandra offered hesitantly as if she wasn’t sure she should be inviting me in.
I hesitated myself. I wasn’t sure if I should go inside. I did like seeing Alessandra again. There had been silence between us ever since she showed up at my office over a week ago, but if it was a plan Wendy was setting up, I wondered if I wanted to be a part of it.
Not even giving me the time to make a decision, I heard the gates opening up and whirled around to see Wendy’s car coming up the drive. I scowled at her, up until she got to her car, smiling at the both of us, and came to join us at the door.
“What are you two doing at the doorway? Go in already.”
She showed us both inside. I frowned at her but went inside as well.
My little cousin was in the living room, in a comfy looking high chair, beside the couch. Alessandra went to sit back next to him and picked up the bottle on the coffee table.
“I was just feeding him when Joshua came in,” she explained.
Wendy chirped. “Oh, that’s just great, then! My chest was feeling a little heavy, so you can take that back to the fridge so I can use it later.”
Alessandra still had a confused expression as she watched Wendy walk forward to pick up her son, but she complied, getting up and heading for the kitchen. When she disappeared around the wall, I turned to my cousin.
“What are you planning?” I demanded in a low voice. “The way you called me here, I was anxious, so why isn’t there a fire burning or something?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I don’t know what happened between you two, but you and Alessandra better make up, quickly.”
I frowned. “How do you…”
“I don’t need either of you to tell me, all I had to do was mention your name and watch her face. I suggest, dear cousin, if you don’t want to lose the love of your life a second time, you better come out and do something about it. I’m giving you a chance here, so you better be grateful.”
I wanted to argue, but I could only bite my tongue. It was true that something had come between us in the past week. Before that, we were messaging regularly and meeting three or more times a week. So, of course, I noticed that Alessandra was acting a bit withdrawn, but when I messaged her, she still replied, she was just busy. It was hard to tell whether she was actually working or just trying to avoid me.
Alessandra took so long to come back; I wondered what was going on. So I was shocked when she walked back into the room carrying another baby, rolling a baby walker behind her.
“Why was Trent in the kitchen?” Wendy asked, head tilted. “You might as well keep them together so they can get to know each other.”
Alessandra looked up quickly, and I didn’t miss how her eyes jumped to me before she looked away quickly. She fidgeted, looking a little guilty.
She’s still not good at keeping what she’s thinking or feeling from her face, I noted. Or rather, she wasn’t even trying. I wondered what she and Wendy talked about.
“I didn’t have them in different rooms, he was curious about the house and rolled into the kitchen while I was busy. Don’t worry; he didn’t touch anything.”
Wendy just laughed. “I wouldn’t mind if anything got dirty, as long as he wasn’t hurt, so don’t worry about it.”
My eyes dropped to Danny in her arms. He had his face laying on her shoulder so that I couldn’t see all of him. He was about the same size as my little cousin and had almost the same shade light blonde hair. I was willing to bet he had matching blue eyes, though I could also imagine him with eyes like Alessandra’s.
Wendy hummed. “I just bought the perfect thing, and I was so excited over it, I had to come back early. I have a spare baby car seat, and I found a double stroller and bought it. It’s waiting for me in the car. Why don’t I take the babies out for a walk? I always wanted to try a double stroller. Everyone will think I have twins or something.”
She grinned to herself, looking genuinely excited at the prospect. I already knew about her fascination with twins, so it like
ly wasn’t a lie.
“Come on, Alessandra,” she said with a wave. “I’ll get the other seat, let’s get both of them in the car.”
The said baby seat was in a different corner of the living room, and Wendy went to pick it up. Alessandra followed, and I brought up the rear as we went to the car.
Wendy threw me a look, and I went forward without her saying a thing. I helped set up the second chair, and she set Danny inside. Then she went back to Alessandra and held her hands out for Trent.
My whole body froze. I wanted to stop her, because how dare she gets to hold my son before even I did? But I didn’t want to give myself away. Alessandra was also hesitant, her eyes moving to me before they met Wendy’s gaze.
“You don’t have to,” she said. “I don’t want to bother you, or anything…”
Wendy waved a dismissive hand. “Nonsense, how is it bothering me? I won't be going anywhere dangerous; I’ll be at the park. And if you’re so worried, you don’t have to be. My husband will be meeting me there so that the children will be more than safe. It’ll only be an hour, and you can watch the house for me at that time, right?”
Alessandra bit her lip in indecision.
I was still frowning at Wendy, wondering what she thought this would accomplish. I knew Alessandra, and I needed to have a real talk. I had known it from the moment I found out she gave birth to my son. I didn’t have any hard proof of it, but I felt it. But doing it this way was endangering everything.
Already, I could tell Alessandra looked cornered. She didn’t seem uncomfortable with the thought of being left alone with me. Wendy involving herself might make Alessandra less inclined to trust her later, so she was risking their friendship as well.
Then, Alessandra’s expression grew firm.
“I’m going, too,” she declared.
I narrowed my eyes. Wendy threw me a look, but I didn’t see it because my eyes were on Alessandra. I could feel her gaze practically boring into me, though.
“You’re not going anywhere, Alessandra.”
Her expression went tense. My fingers clenched into fists in my pockets. I might not be so sure of Wendy’s method, but I had a feeling, if I walked away now, it would be even harder for me to talk to her. She wasn’t making it very obvious, but with the way she was holding Danny ever since we were inside, it was as if she was trying to keep me from seeing the child correctly.