Baby, Come Back: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance

by M. O'Keefe

  At the bottom of the bag, beneath the sparkly gold dress, something rustled. I pulled out the sweaty and terrible wrinkled work dress and the shoes and there at the bottom of my bag were stacks of papers.

  “What in the world?”

  Flipping through them, I realized they were all the restaurant spaces for lease or sale in the Bay area.

  He’d printed them off for me at some point while I was sleeping. And then put them in the bottom of the bag so I wouldn’t see them until I got home.

  Tears burned behind my eyes.

  And despite all my brave words, I fell down to my knees at the foot of my bed and sobbed.

  Chapter Eleven

  ABBY

  BEFORE

  I went back to work two days later. Sun, Maria, and I were selling tequila at a fancy Mexican restaurant. We wore black dresses and bright red lipstick and the money was good.

  “Hey,” Sun said one night after work. “Want to go out tonight?”

  “It’s midnight, Sun,” I said, through a yawn.

  “Night’s just getting started. There’s a band playing down at the HiLo.”

  I shook my head, exhausted. Exhausted by work. Exhausted by pretending to be okay. Exhausted by trying not to think of Jack and then failing. And failing. And failing.

  The failure not to think about Jack was killing me.

  He was killing me.

  The memory of his hands. Of his smile. The tilt of his chin in the tub as he drank. The rumble of his chest under my ear as he laughed, telling me dirty economic jokes. These things snuck up on me like ghosts in the night, waking me up from disturbing dreams of endless staircases heading up to walls of black windows.

  “I’m just going to crash at my sister’s,” I said.

  “Do you want to come over tomorrow?” Maria asked me. “Julio is gone and it’s just me and Valentina.”

  Tears bit at the back of my eyes and I looked into the wind so I wouldn’t cry.

  “Thanks guys, but I’m fine.”

  But I wasn’t and everyone knew it.

  Though there were moments I was successful. But mostly there were hours of missing him, of touching my lips and holding back tears or screams.

  A rage so sharp it turned to grief.

  A grief so big it turned to rage.

  I slept most nights at Charlotte’s house, and she didn’t ask too many questions. At least not with her mouth. Her eyes all but screamed her concern.

  I stepped out of the BART station closest to her house (because damn Jack and his argument about debt), the wind picking up my hair and pushing it across my face, and I smacked it back, wrenching it all into a tight ponytail that made my eyes water. In my back pocket my phone vibrated, and I couldn’t stop the leap of my heart when I pulled it out.

  Please, I thought. Please be him.

  But it was Charlotte.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to sound cheerful as I answered.

  “Hey, you on your way?” she asked.

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Can you stop at the corner store and grab some tampons?” she asked.

  I stopped in my tracks. Tampons. My period.

  Shit.

  “Abby?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll grab some. See you soon.”

  It’s nothing, I thought as I walked up the hill toward Charlotte’s condo and the corner store at the end of her block. It’s stress. I mean… things have been so stressful. It only makes sense that my period would be a day… no, two days… late.

  “What’s wrong with you?” my sister asked two days later as I was flopped across her purple loveseat, staring at the ceiling, trying to make my stomach cramp and my breasts sore. Trying to will my period into coming.

  “Do you feel all right?” she asked.

  Four days late.

  Four. Days.

  The pill pretty much made me regular like a clock. Four days late never happened.

  And the morning after pill wasn’t always effective.

  And I almost told her. But again, I didn’t want to be this person again. I didn’t want to be the one always coming to her for help. Always needing her.

  I was tired of being me.

  And if I said it out loud, it was real. Like really real.

  “Fine,” I said. “Just tired. I think I’m going to go home tonight.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Is that okay?” I was snapping at her and I didn’t want to. I didn’t mean to. But I was out of control of myself.

  “Totally fine,” she said with all the patience my sister always used with me.

  I left her house and took the train back to my neighborhood and immediately walked to the Safeway, where I bought a pregnancy test.

  It sat on my counter for two days.

  I lay in my bed, remembering the feel of Jack inside of me that night. The incendiary heat. The terrible beauty of being skin to skin with him. Had I done this on purpose in some way, I wondered, curled under my covers with my blankets over my head.

  Knowing he was going to kick me out of his life, had I planned this in some passive-aggressive way?

  I sobbed once, hard into my hands. The tears like bricks inside my head, refusing to come out.

  No, I thought. Don’t be like this.

  You didn’t trick him. You didn’t try and get pregnant. You just got caught up in that moment.

  Both of us did.

  I pushed off the blanket, got up, and took the damn pregnancy test.

  When the blue cross appeared, I wasn’t even surprised. I couldn’t even muster up the fear I’d been living with for four days. It was like the blue cross just obliterated that cloud of fear.

  This was real.

  It was happening.

  I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t.

  Three weeks after that weekend with Jack—I was pregnant with his baby.

  Chapter Twelve

  ABBY

  BEFORE

  In the days after that test, the pregnancy was a secret I clutched to my chest. Like some kind of light I had to protect. I knew what my sister would say.

  Oh, Abby…

  And she would say it in that tone. Slightly disapproving. Slightly disappointed. But loving all the same, like she had—in some way—expected something like this from me.

  And maybe, just maybe she was surprised that it hadn’t happened earlier.

  But it couldn’t have happened earlier. Because no man ever got to me like Jack had. No one would have made me forget to use a condom. No one would have turned me so inside out with desire and grief and the ghostly start of love, that I would forget to protect myself.

  I cried the next few days. In my apartment. On the BART. In storage closets in the bar where Maria, Sun, and I were working.

  I cried because I was so fucking scared.

  And so fucking sad.

  And… so fucking happy.

  Seriously. Happy. Having this baby could not be bigger problem in my life. A bigger mistake. I had no clue what to do.

  But this light I clutched to my chest in the darkness of all that—it was a happy light.

  It was an excited light. More than I could have anticipated. More than I could have imagined.

  I was going to have a baby.

  There wasn’t a place I could make for Jack in this situation, not with the secrets and lies. But at the same time this light… this light was so fucking beautiful. And I was alone and I was scared and I wanted to share this. And I wanted to share it with Jack. The joy and the fear.

  That was normal, right?

  So, in bed, propped up on my pillows, a month pregnant, I took a deep breath and did as he asked that morning in his kitchen. I texted Jack:

  We need to talk. It’s important.

  And the second I sent the text I felt better. I felt less alone, like the burden and the guilt and the fear were not solely on my shoulders. And I fell asleep for the first time in a month feeling like things were going to be all right.

  Th
e next morning at eight a.m. I leapt from my bed to find nothing from him on my phone. No text. No voice mail. Nothing. I collapsed backward onto my couch, surprised at how upset I was. How betrayed. He’d kicked me out of his house, what did I actually think he was going to do? Rush to my aid, hold my hand?

  Yes. A little.

  Dumb Abby.

  I’d spent the last few weeks believing he, like me, was lying in bed staring at his phone, my number on the screen and his thumb just barely lifted off the side, paused there, stuck in indecision. In that gray place between hope and fear.

  I imagined him in that gray space with me.

  And this—this crisis—would bring us both out of that gray space. It would bring us back to each other.

  But by Friday afternoon, I realized that was just a dream. A fantasy that wasn’t going to happen. The truth was, he kicked me out of his house and he didn’t look back, and now I was pregnant.

  And I was going to figure this out on my own.

  I didn’t even bother to text him again. I put him out of my head with more success than I’d ever had. I closed off all roads back to him. I put a tourniquet around the bleeding.

  And in the quiet and the hush of my apartment in the middle of the night, I put my hands over my stomach.

  “All right,” I whispered. “What are we going to do?”

  It wasn’t going to be easy. My job didn’t have insurance and Charlotte made me sign up for the ACA, but that didn’t cover everything.

  The money I had put aside would keep me going for a few months if the whole birth went okay. If not, I’d be burning through my money in no time.

  And after that, it wasn’t like I could keep working in bars. The hours were ridiculous.

  Tomorrow I would go talk to Vanessa in the offices of Elegance Hospitality, and I’d talk to her about that office job she kept trying to give me.

  And my sister… I would tell my sister and I wouldn’t be alone. And I’d just… fucking do this.

  I smiled up at my ceiling. Sure of nothing except for the fact that this was right. This was the thing I was supposed to do.

  I rolled over to my side and the tears trickling from my eyes rolled over my lips and they tasted bittersweet.

  I woke up late Saturday morning, near noon. The sun slicing across my room, over my bed. I tested myself, pressed on all my fears and all my plans and everything held. Nothing crumbled. My eyes didn’t burn. My heart didn’t hurt.

  Jack was out of my life.

  And I was keeping the baby.

  I ached, with a kind of distant grief, but it was tempered with hope. A kind of excitement that felt like the sunshine through my window, warming me up in pieces.

  In the kitchen I grabbed my phone to call my sister but I had a voice mail message from an unknown number.

  Delivered at 4:30 a.m.

  Everything about it felt strange. And dread crept up along the edges of my newfound hope.

  I pressed play and bit back a sob when Jack’s voice came whispering through my phone.

  “Abby,” he said, his voice cracked and worn. Tired. “I got your message and I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m sorry…” There was a muffled shout on his end of the phone. “I’m sorry for a lot of things, but I’m not sorry for that weekend with you. I’m not sorry for touching you and for holding you. I’m not sorry for dreaming just for a few days that I had a future with a woman like you. I love you, Abby. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s the realest thing in my life. I love you. And something… something is going down tonight, and if it ends the way I think it’s going to, Patty at the club has a package for you. Be safe, Abby. Be happy.”

  The message ended and my heart in my throat, I stared at my phone like it could tell me more. I listened again, trying to get some kind of proof that disproved this feeling in my gut. That would alleviate this fear rising in my throat.

  Jack left a message because he thought he was going to die.

  That was obvious, right? Clear to everyone?

  He was saying goodbye.

  I listened to the message again, and again, trying to convince myself to not be so dramatic, but the feeling only got worse.

  Wherever he was at four a.m. Whatever he’d been doing, he believed he only had a few minutes to live. And in those minutes he called me.

  To tell me he loved me.

  Jesus, I thought. For the first time in years, I fumbled in my bedside table for my inhaler. I took puffs until I could breathe again. Oh my God.

  I called the number back but it was dead. An electronic buzzing scraped at my ears.

  What was I supposed to do? Who did I call? The cops?

  Quickly I turned on the TV, looking for news. I scrolled through Twitter, looking for any mention of murder on the streets of San Francisco.

  There was nothing.

  Was he still alive?

  The image of him dying somewhere, lying on his back, bleeding into asphalt. Hurt. Scared. Crying. Thinking of me.

  I sobbed, dropping the phone.

  My knees buckled and I fell down on my kitchen floor.

  Okay. Okay. Okay. Think. Think.

  I reached for my phone, dropping it once with shaking fingers. I scrolled through my texts and found one from Patty. I called her.

  “Hello?” Patty answered on the second ring.

  “Patty?”

  “Who is this?” she asked, immediately panicked because my voice was so fucking freaked out and wild. I was sobbing and couldn’t breathe and I tried to calm myself down.

  “It’s Abby. From Elegance.”

  “Yeah, honey, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m looking for Jack.”

  “I haven’t seen him for two days. I haven’t seen any of them for two days. Bates and Jack and Sammy, even Lazarus and every other asshole in a suit in this place took off Thursday afternoon, and I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Jack said he left something for me behind the bar.”

  “Well, I’m heading there now. I’ll call you when I get there.”

  “Okay, thank you.”

  I hung up and stood in my kitchen, wondering how long it would take her to get back to me because every second was century.

  My phone buzzed in my hand and I stopped breathing with the hope that it was a text from Jack. It was just an email, some spam from a dress store I loved, something I should have known by the tone of the beep. But I stared down at my texts and saw the one from Bates.

  The one offering me a job.

  The one I didn’t respond to but I didn’t delete either.

  Bates.

  Bates would know where Jack was. Bates was with Jack.

  Texting him had the flavor of a mistake, but the weight of not knowing was too much. And frankly, if something happened, something serious, I had to doubt he’d answer.

  But I couldn’t stop myself from trying.

  I texted:

  This is Abby. I’m looking for Jack. I just want to know he’s okay.

  Immediately the bouncing dots indicating a return text showed up and my brain buzzed with sudden hope. With a wild relief and panic. Within seconds the balloon of his returning text appeared.

  Meet me at the club in a half hour.

  Is Jack okay? I texted.

  There was no response.

  I gaped at my phone and then sobbed hard. Once.

  I didn’t think twice. I called an Uber (sorry Jack), put my shoes on, and headed out to the club. It was Saturday, just after noon, and I was in a pair of baggy yoga pants, a tank top and a cream sweater pulled over it. My hair was pulled back into two braids, coming undone in a halo around my face.

  There was no plan in my head, no conversation I could map out. I had my purse, my keys, and my inhaler, and all I needed was to see Jack.

  Because he loved me.

  I’m not sorry for dreaming just for a few days that I had a future with a woman like you. I love you, Abby. It doesn’t make sense but it’s the realest thing in my life. I love you.
>
  I mean, I’m not so stupid that I didn’t realize he said those things because he’d been scared. Probably thought he was dying.

  But the words swung inside me, gaining momentum. Like a kid on a swing set thinking if they pumped hard enough they’d get the swing to go all the way around the posts.

  He was scared, sure. Yes. But the feeling was real. I knew that because the feeling was real in me too.

  The ride to the Moonlight took roughly seven thousand years. I sat in the back of some stranger’s Honda Civic praying, actually praying between puffs from my inhaler. Tasting blood because I was biting my lips.

  Just let him be alive. Just let him be alive. Just let him be alive.

  There was nothing to wish for after that. No room for any other thought. If he was alive, the rest would take care of itself.

  The driver dropped me in front of the club, which in the daylight looked like any other night club during the day.

  A little seedy.

  A little forgotten.

  The front door was locked. So was the side door, so I ran around back to the alley. It had rained at some point while my world was ending, and my feet splashed through puddles. The spray splattering my legs.

  The back door was open, and it felt like seven hundred years ago that I’d watched Jack kick out the guy with the horrible shirt. It felt like something that had happened to a different person.

  I pulled hard on the heavy door before stepping into the dark back hallway. I ran past the bathroom where I’d caught Jack praying and cleaning off the blood of the man he’d put in the hospital. I ran past the dressing room mirrors where Sun, Maria, and I had argued about how the men running this place were or were not gangsters, where we’d checked our makeup and done our hair before everything fell to shit.

  I felt like I ran past every version of the person I’d been. Shedding all of that like a skin.

  It was like what Jack had said about himself three years ago, that version of him was a story he’d heard about another person.

  Panting, I pulled open the door that read Private across the glass and burst into the wide open club.

  “Hello!” I cried, my voice echoing through the empty space.