by Liz Durano
“You should get the results in three to five days,” the woman says before opening the door and telling us we’re pretty much done.
As we make our way out of the office and down the hallway toward the elevator, I hear someone calling Jordan’s name. I turn to look behind me and see a blonde woman still in her lab coat walking toward us. Beside me, Jordan curses under his breath.
“Jory?” She looks at him in disbelief. “Oh, my god! What a small world! It is you! I could have sworn it was you leaving the clinic but I wasn’t sure.”
Jordan stares at her. “I thought you worked for Dr. Mack, the dermatologist.”
“I changed jobs seven months ago. They pay better and it’s in the city.” She turns to face me. “I’m Rachel Calloway, by the way. You are…?”
“I’m Addison. Nice to meet you,” I reply, shaking her hand. Her grip is loose, just a mere touch and she thrusts her hands into her coat pockets before turning to Jordan again. She’s blonde, her hair styled in fashionable layers around her face, with blue eyes and perfectly lined pink lips. Her name tag says R. Calloway, Medical Records.
“So what are you guys doing here?” She asks Jordan who doesn’t look too happy to see her.
“None of your business, Rachel,” he mutters, his jaw clenching. “You shouldn’t be out here.”
“Not if I’m on my break. I have every right to be out here,” she says, annoyed. “What’s the big deal?”
The big deal is called HIPAA, I almost say out loud. I should stay out of it, but with her calling him Jory, curiosity gets the best of me. “So how do you two know each other?”
“Our fathers work together and our families are close. Very close,” she replies. “Jory and I also used to date.”
“Oh,” is all I get to say. Great. In a city of eight million people, I had to pick the one office where Jordan’s ex-girlfriend works.
“We dated for five years, didn’t we, Jordan?” she continues.
Even worse. A long-time girlfriend.
“When did you get back?” she asks when Jordan and I don’t say anything. “I was just with your parents last week and they never mentioned you were back.”
“I just got in,” he says as Rachel turns her attention to Piper.
“And who is this little lady?” She pulls back the canopy to get a look at Piper but Jordan positions it back in place.
“This is my daughter, Piper,” I reply as Rachel stares at me and then at Jordan before her gaze lands on Piper again. As the elevator doors slide open, it’s as if realization hits her and her eyes widen, her mouth dropping open.
“Seriously? She’s yours, Jory? What the fuck!” she blurts out angrily, her voice echoing in the hallway as she straightens, her hands on her hips. I don’t stay to answer or wait for Jordan to say anything. I push the stroller inside the elevator, not even bothering saying goodbye.
“It’s not what you think, Rachel,” Jordan says as he holds the door open and follows after me.
Rachel steps aside to let other people enter the elevator. “What do you mean, it’s not what you think. It’s exactly what I think it is, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not,” Jordan says as the doors slide shut.
As the elevator makes it way down, I can see that Jordan has turned pale and he’s clenching his jaw. “I wish I knew she worked there or I’d have picked another clinic,” I mutter, hoping the other occupants in the elevator don’t hear me but their attention is on their phones, earbuds stuck in their ears.
“It’s not your fault,” Jordan says. As the elevator reaches the ground floor and the doors slide open, we step out.
“When did you guys split up?” I ask. “From her reaction, she seemed to imply that you and her were still together when we met.”
“We’d already split up when I met you if that’s what you’re implying,” he says. “But I wouldn’t worry about her.”
“Who said I was?” I snap as I push the stroller outside, and not waiting for him to catch up, I hurry home. I don’t care if I have to walk all the way. As far as I’m concerned, Jordan’s time is up for the day I just want to be alone. I also hate surprises, like one-night stand fathers who show up a year too late and ex-girlfriends, who show up at all.
I want my life back the way it was yesterday when I’d finish nursing Piper during my lunch break and return to work not because I needed to but because I wanted to. Like most days, I would have come home to Marcia telling me how Piper's afternoon went before she'd leave and then having the rest of the evening to Piper and myself. On days I didn't have to go to work, it was just her and me, and I was happy with that.
Instead, it's not just Jordan's life that changed yesterday afternoon. In a way, mine has, too. I'd written Jordan off in my mind when he didn't answer my text message last year, mentally prepared to raise Piper alone even though I knew it would be a struggle to juggle everything. But all that has come crashing down the moment Jordan showed up. His presence has turned me into someone I don't recognize, a woman who's feeling emotions she never expected to feel, like jealousy, anger, and most of all, fear.
If this is just the first 24 hours and I'm already feeling this way, what about tomorrow... and the day after that?
I'm glad he doesn't do any small talk on the way home. Instead, he's suddenly fielding calls, his phone beeping as soon as he tells them he'll call them back. When his phone beeps for the fifth time, he switches his phone to silent and slips it into his jeans pocket.
“You're quite popular,” I say. The walk has calmed me down, my panic almost gone although it hasn’t done much to ease Jordan’s mood. His brow is furrowed now.
“It’s nothing,” he mutters as I take the baby carrier and he collapses the stroller so he can carry it down the stairs to the subway station. In the subway, we don’t talk, our attention on everyone around us as Piper starts to fuss, the sounds on the platform too much for her newborn ears. I’ve never taken her on the subway before today, and I don’t plan on taking her again.
By the time we get off my stop, Piper is cranky. I’ve had to hold her to calm her down. Jordan walks me all the way to my building but doesn’t ask to come up. I also don’t invite him in.
“I was thinking that maybe it would be a good idea if we’d wait until after the test results are in before we make any arrangements as far as visitation and all that,” I say.
He nods, his brow still furrowed as if he’s distracted. “I agree. I'm glad that we did the test today. Thanks for setting it up.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I apologize about Rachel,” he says. “We dated for five years and three months before I met you, we ended it. I haven’t seen her since we broke up and I had no idea she’d be working there.”
“It’s not your fault, Jordan. You’re right. There was no way you or I could have known. Let’s just forget about her, okay?”
As Piper starts to fuss again, Jordan touches my arm, sending tingles running up and down my spine. “Thanks, Addy, but I won't keep you and Piper. I'll talk to you later.” Then with one more tug of Piper’s dangling toy, he bids us goodbye and walks away.
Chapter Four
I don’t go straight home. I can’t. I switch off my phone and take a walk, still in disbelief. Out of all the people I didn’t want to see so soon after coming back, why did it have to be Rachel Calloway? And of course, she had to work at the one doctor’s office Addison picked out for our DNA test, which means she has access to all the information Addison and I filled out.
Isn’t that why my phone hasn’t stopped buzzing since we left the doctor’s office?
My mother: Jory, what is this about you and some girl?
My dad: What is this about a baby?
My sister, Caitlin, all the way from California: What’s going on?
Rachel must have called Mom first, knowing that’s all it would take. Mom then called Dad, probably insisting that he take her call even if he’s in the middle of a job. Then she probably called Caitlin
in California, too, wanting to see if my sister knows something they don’t. I’m sure somewhere along that whole chain of people, someone called my best friend, too.
I spot the High Line two blocks away and make my way toward it. It’s an elevated freight line that runs from Gansevoort Street through Chelsea all the way to Javits Convention Center. Now it’s an urban park and along with the Whitney Museum of Art and the Standard Hotel, has caused real estate values to go sky-high.
I find an empty bench and sit down, resting my forearms on my thighs as I stare at my phone. How on earth can I go about telling them about Addison and Piper the way I’d wanted to—with a proper introduction over lunch or dinner—when the cat’s already out of the bag?
But right now, even as the text messages continue, I know I don’t have to tell them a thing. Not yet. They don’t have to know how Addison and I met. Hell, even Addison hadn’t wanted to talk about that at all when we met, and definitely not when we were getting busy at my apartment.
Addison had wanted to blow off steam the night we met; it was evident in the way she was determined to get herself drunk, starting with one Long Island iced tea followed by another although this one she didn’t finish because we ended up talking… and then singing. I’ve never even sang karaoke in my life before and there I was, singing Sonny and Cher’s I Got You, Babe all because I didn’t want her to leave yet. When we finished, we laughed so hard at how off-key we were (mostly me) until we had tears stinging our eyes. Then, like Cinderella at the ball suddenly realizing it was midnight, she announced that she had to go. She had a hospital rotation in the morning.
As I walked her outside, a light rain had started to fall and I offered to hail her a cab. Instead, she grabbed my hand and started walking toward the direction of Queens Boulevard.
“I don’t mind the rain. Do you?”
“No,” I said, following behind her. I loved the way she laughed and her nervous habit of tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Do you live around here?” she asked. “You seem to know everyone at that bar.”
“Only because I live close by,” I replied. “Come on, let’s get you a cab.”
We got as far as the awning of my building three blocks away before the clouds opened up. As we waited for the rain to ease up, Addison looked up at me. “You know, I’ve never done that before.”
“Done what?”
“Go into a bar by myself, order a drink and sing in public.”
I chuckled. “There’s a first time for everything, Addison.”
“You can call me Addy,” she says. “You know what else I haven’t done?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“I’v never picked up a guy before,” she whispered, standing on her tiptoes, her lips brushing against my jaw.
“Is that what you did in there?”
She nodded. “I think so, although right now, I’m losing my nerve. I don’t think I can go through with it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you must might say no,” she replies, looking away. “Never mind. Forget I said that.” It was as if she caught herself doing something she didn’t expect to do and I tilted her chin upward with my finger.
“Are you drunk, Addy?” I asked, studying her hazel eyes. She’d only finished that one drink and barely touched the second. Still, she could be a lightweight.
“Tipsy good, but not drunk,” she replied, frowning. “Why?”
“Because I want to kiss you and I want to do it with you sober.”
She smiled. “Well, that’s interesting.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to kiss you, too. I want to do many things with you. But only for tonight.”
“Really?” I asked. “And why’s that?”
“Because good girls like me don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what, exactly?”
“This,” she whispered, kissing me then and that was all I needed. I felt her arms go around my neck, her fingers playing with my hair. She tasted of honey, her soft lips parting as my tongue slipped between her teeth. She felt so small in my arms and yet so perfect. I really should have called her a cab and sent her straight home, just as she could have done the same, too.
But we didn’t.
Instead, we ended up in my tenth-floor co-op and went at it like bunnies. She wanted to explore and play. She wanted to try things she’d never tried before. She wanted to know how it felt to be bad.
“Just one night, show me,” she whispered. “And then we go our separate ways.”
With me living overseas for a year, her proposition seemed fair. She was a doctor, she told me, a nephrologist. Not a urologist like some people confused her to be, she stressed. She’d worked hard to get where she was now but she wasn’t ready to settle down. She was afraid of settling for the wrong man.
“So you’re with someone then?” I asked and Addison shook her head.
“Not anymore. Are you?”
“Not right now,” I replied and that had been the truth. Rachel and I had already broken up then, a decision that led me to join ReBuild to Heal for a year, a nonprofit organization that helped set up schools in remote villages in Southeast Asia. If, on the other side of the world, I’d still think about Rachel and feel I couldn’t be without her, then I figured we were meant to be together and I’d ask her to marry me when I got back. At least, that was the plan.
Only it wasn’t Rachel I couldn’t stop thinking about the moment I got to Manila. It wasn’t Rachel I saw when I’d go to a bar with the group and see the locals belt out their favorite tunes, or when we’d go on a day trip to some exotic hidden paradise and women would find a way to get close to me.
It was Addison.
My phone vibrates in my hand, notifying me of another new message but I ignore it. I tap on the browser and search the Internet about the efficacy of condoms. It’s not like I haven’t already done a similar search the day Addison told me I was Piper’s father, but it makes me feel like I’m doing something instead of staring out into space. I don’t have to glance at the search results to know what I’d find, that condoms were 86 percent effective in preventing pregnancy. That makes Piper fall in the 14-percentile statistic representing the condom’s failure of preventing it.
A text notification slides down my screen before I can switch the phone off. This one I don’t mind taking.
- You still in the city?
It’s my best friend, Campbell Murphy. He works in the Financial District and he’s one of the few reasons I come into the city to hang out. His family lived in the house next door to ours and we’ve done most everything together. But unlike everyone else we knew-and myself, included-who chose to live in Queens, Campbell moved to Manhattan the first chance he got. He's a financial analyst for a small investment firm and lives in an apartment in Midtown that he shares with a guy who works for Madison Square Garden. It's got a nice view of the Empire State Building.
Jordan: Yup
Campbell: Let's meet for lunch. We have to talk.
I meet him in a bustling restaurant close to his office. It's filled with men and women in suits discussing the stock market and portfolios. I know I look out of place in my t-shirt and jeans but that's the Financial District for you; I'm just another blue-collar jock in a sea of moneymen, probably in the area for a home improvement job.
Growing up, Campbell was known as the nerd on our street, complete with a mop of thick dark hair, braces, and thick glasses that have since been replaced by contact lenses and lately, repaired via laser surgery. People assumed that just because he was a whiz with numbers, he had to be one. But he was actually just shy and probably carrying a few hidden scars from childhood, some of them not so hidden. He'd been born with a cleft palate and although it had been repaired when he was a baby and the scar above his lips nothing but a faint line, the ribbing from grade school classmates who thought he talked funny pretty much sealed the deal for him. Campbell retreated indoors with his video games and TV shows. Bu
t that didn't last too long.
Soon we were tossing baseballs in the backyard and riding our bikes to the park and back. Though he professed to dislike group sports, I invited him to join me and the rest of the boys anyway in touch football and baseball while he introduced me to the role-playing computer games he often lost himself in for hours. Soon everyone forgot about the faint lisp in his speech and he became just one of the guys. He's still shy, especially around women but it hasn't stopped him from being seen around town with some gorgeous blonde hanging off his arm.
He looks every inch like any financial adviser in the city with his tailored suit and clean-shaven face. When he notices my gaze, he snorts. “I’ve got clients to meet, man. At least, you just got back from a year-long vacation. Lucky dog.”
“You know very well it was no vacation,” I say, taking a swig of cold beer. “But it was fun just the same. I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world.”
Campbell chuckles. “Your idea of fun is picking up a hammer and nailing things. My idea is hanging out on some beach and doing nothing–”
“We did that, too.”
“–and getting laid,” Campbell adds although I don’t say anything. “So what brings you to the city, man? Shouldn’t you be sleeping off your jet lag?”
“I wish,” I mutter. “But it’s getting better.”
“So what’s this thing you never bothered to tell anyone? Not even me?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, wondering if the news got to Campbell, too. “What thing?”
Our food arrives then and we wait until the server leaves before we dig into the gourmet burger and fries. I can't believe this thing costs over thirty bucks but I'm too hungry to care. I’m also still in Philippine peso mode.
“I got a call from Rachel,” Campbell replies. “If she could have texted pictures, she would have.”