by Aria Ford
“Right,” my father said. “I think dessert is coming shortly, so while we’ve got the champagne to hand, I want to make a final toast. To us. The future. Our strong ties strengthening.”
“To the future!” Mr. Jones was enthusiastic. As we all murmured, “the future,” and clinked glasses politely, I found myself wishing I could get up and walk away. I also found my mind straying, as it had been all that day, to the woman I had shared a bed with months ago.
I wonder what Jackie would think of all this? I tried to imagine where she was right now, what she might be doing. It was around nine in the evening, on a Saturday. What did she do on Saturday evenings? What had she cooked for supper? Or had she gone out for a meal, maybe with a new guy, someone who would make her smile the way she had that night beside me?
I didn’t want to imagine her out with another guy, so I abruptly cut off those thoughts, surprising myself. I had slept with her once. It shouldn’t matter to me if she had fifty guys between me and now. I didn’t even know how long it had been since I saw her, though I guessed I could have counted it up.
“Scott?”
“Yes?” I looked up into the brown eyes of Alexa, thick lashes fringing them beautifully. She was lovely, I had to admit. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t simulate some kind of feeling for her. I just couldn’t.
“I wanted to ask you about your travels,” she said. “My father mentioned you were in Singapore last year?”
“I was,” I nodded. “It’s a great place.” I had found it inspiring: clean, technological, organized.
“I don’t know how you do all this traveling,” she said and her lip wrinkled in distaste. “Foreign countries are so…foreign.” she sounded scandalized. I laughed.
“I guess they are. But our way isn’t the only way, right?”
She frowned, as if I’d suddenly spoken Martian. I saw my father make a face across the table, as if to tell me to change topic. I did so.
“What’s your favorite holiday destination?” I asked.
“Oh! The Hamptons…”
As she told me about her most recent vacation, I found my thoughts drifting again to Jackie. I wondered what she would like to talk about. I had a feeling that engines would be part of it. I found myself wishing she was here.
This is stupid. I told myself the same thing stubbornly again. You spent a night with her. You can’t go comparing every girl you meet to her.
But I couldn’t help it.
The supper wore on. After a while, my plate was cleared away and I found myself presented with a trio of amazing desserts in delicate glassware. I sampled them—each was perhaps the size of an egg cup, but intensely flavorful—and watched Alexa tasting hers.
Under any other circumstances, the combination of a pretty girl in a red dress and sweet dessert would have got me going. But something was different today. I was almost impatient with myself. It felt as if my spark plugs needed replacing.
The thought made me grin. I imagined myself in the car, turning the key and turning it and the engine coughing and rattling and dying again. That was how I felt. No matter how much I tried to make myself ignite interest in this girl, nothing happened.
I guess the pressure from Dad would kill just about anything stone dead. I felt his eyes on me as I ate, almost as if he was willing me to do something, say something. I breathed in the scent of rich, exquisite coffee—the coffee had come around with the dessert—and ignored him.
Dinner ended at around ten that evening. I was tired and I followed Dad down to the car, Alexa on my arm. She was walking close, but not too close, keeping a polite distance between her knee and my leg. Her hand was linked to my elbow, her red-painted nails dark against the black of my blazer. I felt sorry for her and I felt sorry for me. We were both trapped.
“Goodnight, Scott,” she said softly. She looked up into my eyes. This close I could smell the sweet floral of her perfume and I could see the moist red lips up close. I bent down and pressed my cheek to hers, first one side, then the other, politely.
“Goodnight, Alexa.”
She looked up into my eyes and I looked down into hers. Our fathers were somewhere else—I could just make out their voices, the soft burr of them as they talked together about something or other. I knew I should kiss her.
I bent down and pressed my lips to hers, a brief contact.
Then she was waving at me and going to join her dad, who had just stepped away from mine and came crunching over the gravel to find her.
When they had gone, roaring off in their car together, I was left facing my dad.
“A successful evening,” he said. He looked up into my eyes. He was tired. I could see that. His face was lined and weary and he looked badly in need of sleep.
“It was,” I said softly.
“Son, you really must do me proud,” he said. “I need that guy to like us…so badly.”
I sighed. I nodded. “I know, dad.”
He sighed too. “You could at least kiss her next time.”
“What?” I felt a stab of surprise, of betrayal, in my heart. Had he really watched me? Rated my kissing? What was wrong with this guy? I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what to say and besides, he was walking back across the drive towards the waiting car. It was too late.
I stood where I was, breathing the cool, fragrant evening air and sighed.
I was stuck. I had lost my chance to make a good impression on the one girl who insisted on haunting me. And now I was failing to make a good impression on the one my father chose for me. The one, I thought, with a sinking feeling, he wanted for my wife.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jackie
The local Aldi brought me joy when it first opened—close, well-stocked and convenient, it made grocery shopping so much easier. And there couldn’t have been a time at which I appreciated it more. If I had to drive across town for groceries, I don’t know what I’d do. Getting stuck in traffic with a baby would be unpleasant, to say the least. And more so for them than for me, I reckoned, which wouldn’t be fair.
I looked down into the stroller as I pushed it around the corner into the baking aisle. The little face that lay there, asleep and peaceful against the child-size pillow, took my breath away.
My daughter.
Even though she had been born just over a month ago, I still couldn’t believe it. She had come into my life in early Autumn, a reminder of that late winter night all those months before. But the way I felt wasn’t about that. I adored her for who she was. My daughter.
She already had a personality of her own, I thought as I turned down the end of the aisle and looked for the baby food. She was quiet and tranquil most of the time, waking me only when she needed something or when she just wanted cuddles. She was very cuddly, my daughter.
Stella. My star. I smiled down at her as she opened her eyes and looked up at me. She often did that, as if she wanted to make sure I was still there. I said her name.
“Hello, Stella. I’m still here.”
The words reassured her, I thought. She closed her sleepy eyes again and settled down. Her eyes were gray—an uncertain gray that could go brown, or blue, or green. Or stay as it was. My eyes were green too, after all.
I studied her face as I stood in the queue. I looked for the similarities to Scott. There were some—the high, squarish forehead, the jawbone, the little nose. Her eyes seemed to be mine—larger and wide—though I couldn’t be sure yet, of course. I wondered if they would be blue, like his.
Come on, Jackie, I told myself firmly. You should forget him. He wasn’t interested in us.
I pushed the stroller out of the grocery store and onto the sidewalk. The rear wheel didn’t stick like it usually did, which was a good thing. My groceries in two large bags slung over my shoulder, I walked on out to the car. I parked the stroller carefully by the side of the car, opened the trunk and hauled the groceries round with a grunt, packing them into the trunk of the car.
As I usually did, I made m
yself angry to get some strength. I grunted with effort as I swung the bags of groceries about, thinking of how angry some of the myopic teachers at the school made me, how impatient I felt with the funding restrictions, how much I wanted to slap Scott. How could he do this to me? Just walk out without caring? Leave us like this?
Stella must have heard me groaning as my back bent, because she made a little fretful noise. I sighed.
“It’s okay, honey. Lullaby bay-by…” I sang in a wavering monotone. I have never been a good singer. Luckily, my own toneless attempts seemed to soothe my baby rather more than anything else did. She was just over a month old now, and slept less than I ever thought a human being could do.
“Thank Heaven for maternity leave.”
I sighed and, feeling weary and exhausted, slammed the trunk and went over to lift Stella out of the stroller and into the carry cot. At that moment, just as I bent over the stroller, the car went past.
A BMW i8.
A white one.
I wouldn’t normally notice cars at a time like this, except for the fact that you don’t see BMW i8’s often. Not in my neighborhood, especially. And this one was white, and sleek, and going past just fast enough for me to think it was driven by someone who really liked the acceleration that it offered.
I stared after it, leaning on the handle of the stroller in shock. It couldn’t possibly be.
I hadn’t thought I was capable of feeling shock. After the birth I had been too half-asleep for any strong emotions, pretty much, except the slow fire of anger I stoked inside myself to keep myself going sometimes. And the intense, heart-twisting love I felt for Stella.
But I was shocked.
After the initial surprise, my first reaction was anger. The cheek! How dare he come here? How dare he just drive past, so uncaring? It’s like what he did—just drove his way into my life, used me and drove out again. User!
I was stoking the anger, using it to force aside all other feelings. The wonder and hopefulness. The sorrow and the overwhelming fact that I missed him. That I wished I could hear from him. See him. Know we meant something to him and share my joy and Stella with him.
“Damn Scott.”
I spat it angrily and reached for the stroller. I had lifted Stella out and laid her down in the cot. Now all I had to do was fold up the damn stroller and pack it into the back of the car. As second-hand strollers will do, the thing had a mind of its own and it inevitably refused to budge when I needed it to fold up quickly.
I was on my knees, fiddling with the pin that held the legs of the thing and swearing under my breath when I heard the car door slam. Someone had parked on the sidewalk just beyond the parking bays. I looked across, about to shout an angry retort at the person for parking in a non-parking zone. I looked up.
Tall and dark haired, wearing an impeccable suit of a navy so dark it was almost black, with his blue eyes alight with emotion, chiseled face firm, was the man I thought I’d never see again.
My throat felt as if someone had poured cement into it. It was blocked so much I could barely draw breath, barely swallow; barely make words.
“Scott.”
“Jackie?” He was smiling so incredulously at me that I would have laughed except for how touched I felt.
“Yes,” I said through my poor, bruised throat. “It’s me.”
My heart was thumping in my chest as if I was about to collapse, my breath was shaky and my hands trembled. I looked into his eyes, and he looked into mine, their blue depths alive and warm and shining with emotion.
Then, almost as soon as I saw the feelings flower in his face, it changed. A shutter came down. He went stiff.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have…um…just appeared like this.”
“Scott?” I frowned. What had made him change so suddenly? What was his problem? Had I done something? Offended him? I sighed.
I pulled the pin out that held the legs of the stroller together, folded it flat and packed it into the back of the car. He was still standing behind me. I didn’t hear him move.
When he still hadn’t moved and the stroller was all packed, I smoothed my hands down my skirts and turned to face him.
“Scott,” I said.
He looked at me with those blue eyes all frosted and if I hadn’t known better—if I hadn’t known that he was a cold-hearted player with no real emotions—I could have sworn there were tears there.
“Jackie,” he said in a strained voice. Then he looked at his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said, coughing abruptly. “I shouldn’t have come. I see that now. I was just…never mind. Forget I came here.”
That was too much. I felt nine months of rage and pain and sadness well up and crash through all the barriers I had built against them.
“Scott,” I said under my breath, quietly and vehemently. “You bastard.”
CHAPTER NINE
Scott
I felt as if I had just been slapped. I had been, more or less. I stared at Jackie, not quite sure I’d heard right. Then I sighed, realizing I couldn’t really expect anything else.
It serves me right. I was a bastard. I behaved like a pig. Now she’s married and she has a baby and I’m too late even to say sorry.
“I am a bastard,” I said softly. “I know that. But all the same, I hope you’ll be very happy.”
I turned away, but couldn’t resist the temptation to glance back at her. I had forgotten how she affected me: the soft curve of her cheek, the fluffed smoothness of her hair. The angelic gray eyes. I wanted to kiss her.
She was looking back at me with the oddest expression. It was part outrage, part total confusion. I would have laughed except that it was so desperately serious.
“That’s a fine thing to say!” she shouted after me. “Is that all you can say? That you wish I’ll be happy?”
Her voice broke. I couldn’t keep walking away, knowing she cried. I turned around.
“Jackie,” I said softly. “I mean it. I know…what I did was unforgivable. So I don’t ask for forgiveness. All I can say is, I’m glad you found someone who can make you happy. Someone you deserve. Better than me.” I closed my eyes a moment, my throat tight, swallowing my hurt.
When I opened my eyes, she hadn’t moved. She was looking at me. Her eyes widened and now the expression was entirely surprise, the anger disappeared in a quiet incredulity.
“Scott,” she said. “What the hell are you talking about, someone else? Don’t you know? Don’t you…Stella is yours. Your child.”
I stared. I felt as if someone had poured treacle down lungs: I couldn’t breathe. Did what she just said make sense? Could it be? I struggled for a gasp, then another, as my brain tried to understand this.
“Your daughter,” I said slowly, my brain rising up through a fog of wonder and amazement. “Your daughter is my daughter? We had a baby?”
“Yes!” She was smiling, then. Smiling and crying. I went to her and threw my arms around her. This was the most remarkable moment ever. I was a father! I had a daughter. Jackie and I had a baby.
I still couldn’t really make sense of it all. I held her close, breathing in the warm musk scent of her I missed so much in the last months. It had been months. Exactly enough months, if I thought about it, for a baby to be born. This was all true. This was my daughter.
“I…Jackie!” I was laughing, and crying and I held her against my chest, disbelieving and awed at the same time. “How is this possible? What? When? You’ve made me so happy. So, so happy.”
She sobbed. “Scott. I’m so glad you think that. So glad you’re here. I…oh!”
I held her while she cried on my chest. My hands stroked her back and I whispered words into her hair, saying her name, how much I’d missed her, how she meant the world to me. I don’t know if she could hear me but she eventually stopped crying. Looked up at me.
“Meet your daughter,” she said gently. She moved out of my arms and reached into the car. Lifted a small blanket-wrapped bundle out of a cot on the r
ear seat. Passed her up to me.
I couldn’t quite believe it. I was looking down into a tiny, scrunched face. It had perfect, tiny eyelids, a nose like a little pixie. High cheekbones and a knob of chin. Under the cap I could see soft blond hair. This was my daughter. Stella?
“You named her Stella?” I asked. My voice was hoarse. I could barely talk. I looked down at the little face, sleeping so blissfully, and felt my heart ache with love.
“Yes. Stella Mae. After my mom.”
“Oh.” I swallowed hard. I watched the little face wake and look up at me. Her eyes were uncertain gray—they looked like Jackie’s eyes. She regarded me with a level stare. I wanted to cover her in kisses and keep her safe forever. I swallowed hard and handed her to Jackie, who lowered her into the carry cot, making little crooning noises to her.
I shook my head. None of this made sense. The only part I could focus on right then—besides the growing fireworks of sheer celebration that were going on in my chest—was the thought of what she had been through. How had she faced all nine months of that, and the birth, and the illness and worries and pain and Heaven alone knew what else, alone?
She had my daughter without telling me. I felt so sad that I couldn’t have shared in that.
“Jackie,” I said quietly.
“Yes?”
“You didn’t tell me. You never said. Not a word.”
“Why would I have?” she said defiantly. “Not much point, right? You walked out. Didn’t stay to say anything. Didn’t say goodbye, even.”
She was crying now, hot tears that ran down her cheeks. I held her and she sobbed against my chest, real sobs that shook her shoulders and sluiced my shirt and made a wailing noise. I shivered.
“Jackie,” I whispered into her hair. “Jackie. Forgive me? I am so sorry. I know it’s unforgivable. I am so, so sorry.”
She sobbed some more, shoulders heaving. Then she looked up at me.
“I wanted to share it,” she said. “But I was so, so mad at you. I’m sorry I shut you out.”
I looked into her eyes, disbelief warring with joy in my heart. “Jackie!” I laughed aloud. “That’s nothing. How can you ask me for forgiveness? I’d ask you, except I know I don’t deserve it. I was such an ass.”