I click away at my computer screen and take surreptitious glances at Jasmine while doing it.
“So what’s up? Broadening our literary horizons?” The two books she’s asked after aren’t her usual brooding reads. She gives me a shrug and evasive look.
“Jasmine, everything okay?” It is my experience that teens rarely spill the first, or third, time asked, so I persist. I’m being cool, though, acting casual, looking up a book that I already know is on the shelf.
“Um, I mean, yeah, I guess.”
“Uh huh...” I wait for more.
“It’s just, there’s this guy in my third period,” Ah, I should’ve known. There’s almost always a guy involved when a girl looks the way Jasmine did coming in here. “It’s stupid, I know, I mean, I shouldn’t care what some guy thinks…right? So lame.”
The thing is, I can so clearly remember being sixteen, the painful bliss of it all, and being hung up on ‘some guy’ is par for the course. And based on the book titles she’s searching for, her crush is into the whole fantasy/sci-fi thing.
“Jasmine, it’s not stupid and you’re not lame,” I work to reassure her. “Also, you’re allowed to read whatever the heck you want, regardless of what influences you to do so. If these books peak your interest, then go with that. Just don’t change you.”
Her whole posture softens and I watch a smile of a girl with a crush cross her face.
“Follow me while I get the book and you can tell me about this guy.”
I spend the next twenty minutes hearing about how “totally cute” and “so smart” Keagan from third period Physics class is. Apparently, he’s tall and wears a lot of punny t-shirts and has these “adorable” glasses that are always sliding down his nose, and it quickly becomes apparent that Jasmine is indeed crushing hard.
“Bring him with you to the next book club so I can get a look at him,” I tell her on her way out and her only response is a wide-eyed blush.
When I get back to the check-out counter (a full circle, waist high, beige laminate counter that is at the center of the library-from here, I can see all the nooks and crannies), someone is waiting for me.
“Hi, can I help you?” I greet her. She’s older, maybe a student’s mother.
“Hi, are you Holly?” She asks and her smile is friendly.
“Uh, Miss O’Brian, yes,” I respond, my senses tingly.
“I’m Lola Slade,” she says, and when I don’t catch on, she adds, “Dean’s mom,” and her smile grows bigger. And I can’t even fake a smile back at her because oh.my.lanta. I dig into my pockets for a ginger candy, then remember, darnit!, it’d been seventeen days and I’d finally stopped carrying those nausea-busters.
“Hi,” I eek out, then, like a dork, go ahead and repeat myself. “Hi.”
“You’re just beautiful,” she barrels on through my mind explosion.
“Okay.”
“I mean, your hair…” She begins to reach out, then sighs and clasps her hands down in front of her.
“I have hair.”
Lord have mercy, if I could just form one complete sentence right now, I’d be so darn grateful!
“I can see why Dean likes you,” she tells me with a twinkle in her eye.
And that’s when I die a little, right there. And all I can do is open my mouth and squeak, which she must think is adorable or charming or something because of how she just laughs lightly in response.
“I know this is awfully invasive of me, coming here, but I couldn’t help myself. Dean called us last night and told us the happy news and I tried to control myself, I really did, but when Grace told us who you were and where you worked, my feet just somehow brought me here all on their own.”
“Uh huh.”
“I also wanted to invite you over Sunday to our house, we barbecue every Sunday and Grace and her family will be there and, oh, probably most the neighborhood, too. The weather’s supposed to be fantastic and it’ll be nice to sit out back and visit.”
“Oh my gosh,” I breathe, not meaning to say the words aloud.
My baby daddy’s mom is standing in front of me talking about the “happy news” and inviting me over for barbecue and my loner’s heart just does not know how to deal with this. I feel like I’m about to keel right over, or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
Right before this happens, though, a small study group from Mrs. Hightower’s sophomore Literature class comes in noisy and excited and I’M SAVED!
“Um, if you’ll just excuse me, I have to help these guys with their research,” I tell her, already starting to back away.
“Oh, of course!” She says, waving away any concern. “Here’s our address, we hope to see you Sunday.”
She hands me a slip of paper with, yup, an address on it, as well as a phone number, and with a smile and a forearm pat, she’s on her way.
I can’t even…what the…
“Miss O’Brian?”
“Yes?” I’m so grateful for Donovan Wright’s voice snapping me out of my brain fog that I’m probably a bit more enthusiastic than he was expecting.
“Could you help us a minute?”
“Of course, yes, be right there!” I give myself one more minute to push Mrs. Slade’s visit from my mind and then head over to do my job.
I know I shouldn’t be disappointed that Dean hasn’t contacted me, we’ve already gone over this: he’s in a part of the world that makes contact challenging-even though he did manage to contact his family, but that was special circumstances; he had pertinent information he needed to share and I understand that, and besides, we’re not in a relationship. I’m fine with all of that. Really.
So when Grace shows up on my doorstep on another Saturday with an envelope full of cash that she says is from Dean, I at least wait until she leaves (envelope still in hand) to lose my cool.
Seriously?!
Did I not make it clear enough that I did not want his stupid money? And then he sends his sister with an envelope full of cash like I’m some woman of questionable character to be paid off?
Poor Mr. Bubberchop does not know what to do with his pacing, fuming human, so he takes his little stuffed mouse and high tails it down the hall to my bedroom. I don’t even know what to do with myself! I am not someone who loses her temper frequently, no matter what they say about redheads, but what I am is a hormonal pregnant woman who may not be thinking rationally at the moment. So in that vein of irrational thinking, I hunt down the notepad with Dean’s military email address that Grace left and sit down at my laptop and proceed to compose an email worthy of his actions.
What I do not do is go to his family’s Sunday barbecue. I hadn’t really planned on going, but after that visit, which, I admit, Grace did look mortified to be making, I want to do my best to steer clear of Dean Slade and everything that has anything to do with him. Instead, I grab a book, some snacks, a big blanket, an even bigger hat, and I drive an hour down the coast to the place where I grew up, where the memories weren’t the best, but the beaches are. We fair-skinned, freckle-faced ladies liked to enjoy the sun, too. We just have to take extra precautions, is all, hence the big hat.
I spend the afternoon on my blanket in the sand, dropping myself into someone else’s world via paperback, and forget all about Dean Slade and his stupid handsome face and his stupid wad of cash and his stupid sexy body. Ugh! I should not have picked a romance novel for today’s mind wanderings.
I throw my water bottle and book back into my beach bag, gather up my blanket and head back to where I’d parked my car on the side of the road. I’d spent my formative years, zero through thirteen, in this area. And when I said the memories weren’t great, I may have been a bit hasty, but the bad memories do have a way of overshadowing the good. I have lots of good memories, too, days with both of my parents, The Sober Years. I shouldn’t hold the bad times against the place where they happened; the little coastal town is lovely, known in these parts for its chowder bread bowls, which is where I’m headed now. Comfort a
nd Clams, that’s what the little wood-shingled restaurant is called, and I order my bowl then go out to the deck to sit and wait.
October in Southern California is one of the warmest times of year, so even though the evening breeze has picked up, it’s still beautiful out. I tuck my feet under me in my chair at my table for one and steer my eyes out to the sea. The waves crash lightly up against the rock at the edge of the deck and I can see the long pier from here with the bodies of tourists dotted all along the way out. When the server brings my bowl of soup, I take my book back out of my bag, not quite ready to give up on the seemingly hopeless couple yet. And this time, I don’t think of Dean Slade.
Chapter 4
Dean
Pregnant.
Fucking pregnant.
This is what my brain has been beating me with, over and over again, for the last two and a half weeks. I’ve nearly worked myself into a cardiac arrest ten times over just from thinking about how I’d fucked things up good this time. I mean, plenty of guys had ladies back home and plenty more had kids, but that was never going to be me; I had no interest raising a kid and having a relationship through a screen.
I’ll admit, though, seeing Holly O’Brian’s face on that screen…yeah, I liked it. She looked so good, even with her hair all tied up and tucked away. I mean, I preferred her the way she was the night I met her, hair down and wild, but seeing her with that one curly piece hanging out doing its own thing was like a seeing a secret, a tiny clue to the wild thing that lay beneath.
But Holly O’Brian was supposed to be a memory, one that I could think about when I was bored as shit out here in the fucking desert. Time here has been dragging more than ever lately and, where typically, it’d be months before I checked in with my family, all the sitting around we’ve been doing and actually having access to a computer had me checking in more frequently.
And then that call.
A baby.
I couldn’t sit around here for the next two months and think about a baby, I’d go crazy. Crazier. Shit, I’d be the craziest and that’s saying something with these guys. I’d already spent far too many moments thinking about that particular redhead and all her freckles.
“What the hell are you doing, man, writing a fucking love letter?” Bennett, resident funny guy, brings me out of my head.
“Yeah, what’s your Mom’s email address again?” I ask, looking his way.
“Aw, man, come on, I told you, don’t bring my Mama into this.”
Such a Mama’s boy.
I open up my email account and, what do we have here, there’s an email from the redhead herself. I’m hesitant to open it, but curiosity wins me over.
Dean,
I apologize for not making it clear the last time we spoke, so allow me to try again. I do not now, nor at any point in the future, want your money. In fact, I do not need anything from you at this point. Your implication, delivered to me via an envelope of cash, was vile and offensive. Being pregnant with your baby is not something I endeavored to be, and though I will never regret this child, I do feel remorse that he or she was conceived in such a way that would cause you to believe I am the sort of woman you can throw money at. I do not feel at this point there is any need or reason for us to communicate further. If you have any questions or would like to know what is happening in your child’s development, you now have my email address; the baby is due in March and since you are scheduled to be home before then, we will discuss any further details at that time, if you wish to do so.
Sincerely and Fuck You,
Holly O’Brian
Well the ‘Fuck You’ was a nice touch.
And what the hell does it say about me that this is the hottest damn thing any woman has ever sent me? Forget naked pics and give me a pissed off Holly O’Brian email.
Chapter 5
Holly
There is just something about being a single woman sitting in an OB/GYN waiting room. It’s not even that I was the only woman visiting the doctor alone, plenty of ladies come by themselves, but for whatever reason, it hits me harder here that I am doing this alone. But then, when my doctor pulls me into her office and puts the little microphone-wand thingy on my tummy and we hear the womp-womp of my baby’s heart, I cry, because I’m not alone after all.
There has continued to be no response from Dean in the near month since I’d sent that email, and when I went back and reread what I’d written, I felt proud of myself, one, for speaking my mind and sticking up for myself, and, two, only using one curse word. So, I was forging onward, twenty weeks and counting! Grace stopped by my house a few weeks ago, just to check in and see how I was doing, she said, also to apologize profusely for our last encounter (the money hand-off gone oh-so-wrong). Her mother called, also, but I was horrible and didn’t answer. I just didn’t know how to do this awkward baby daddy family thing so I opted to avoid it as best I could.
I am also having my first ultrasound today and if the baby cooperates, I might get to find out if I’m having a little miss or a little mister. This probably would have been a good thing to share with either Dean (if we were doing the whole sharing thing) or his family and now I’m feeling kind of guilty about not at least letting them know this is happening; they were so nice and kept asking me if I need anything and I just pushed them away. I’d call them after. I mean, there’s a chance the baby wouldn’t flash us, anyway.
My OB/GYN’s name is Dr. Grasyn and she’s great; I like her so much I want to take her for coffee, but that would be weird, so instead, I’m just going to be the best patient ever: pay my co-pay on time, keep my appointments (and be punctual), follow her directions, and try not to ask stupid questions.
“Alright, Holly, you ready to have a peek at your baby?” She asks, rolling on her little doctor stool to my side. I am lying down, belly exposed and gooped up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
“I’m ready,” I tell her, belying just how excited I am to see the little banana (the internet said that’s the fruit that most closely resembles my baby’s size at this point-next week, he or she will be a carrot!).
Then with just a few clicks and a rub on my tummy, my little fuzzy, gray banana appears on the screen at the side of my head and, dangit, I’m crying again. Because I’ve never seen a better looking fuzzy, gray banana. My baby is the most beautiful fuzzy, gray banana that ever existed and my heart cannot possibly contain all this feeling, that’s why some of it is leaking out my eyes.
“Perfect little baby, except he or she is just not showing us the part I’m wanting to see,” Dr. Grasyn says, squinting at the screen and moving the tummy rover around trying to get a different view but my little banana is modest and I can’t find it in me to care. Dr. Grasyn said he/she is perfect and that’s good enough for me.
“How about we try again in about eight weeks or so? It should be easier then.” She goes on, giving me further information about what’s coming up, what to expect, all while clicking at the screen and then wiping my tummy. As I sit up and cover up, she hands me a little printout and there’s my fuzzy little fruit.
Ten minutes later, I’m sitting in my car debating whether or not to call Grace or Lola Slade and tell them I have a picture of their nephew and grandchild. What’s worse is how much I want to show someone this beautiful blur of a picture, I want someone else to share this with, so I quickly run through a list in my head: Maya, but I don’t want to bother her at home while she’s with her family, plus I can just show her tomorrow at work…and then the Slade’s. Darn.
Before thinking too hard about it, I send a text to Grace asking her if she’s busy. She replies that she’s at the store (her Uncle Red’s surf shop where she is now basically the boss of everything) and that I’m welcome to come by. Oh, boy. If I do this, I’m really putting my foot into the puddle of Dean’s family life, but for my little banana, I’m willing to do it. Because I don’t want her to grow up alone, she or he is going to need a family, more than I alone can give her and if the Slade crew is willing to give
that to this little fruit, I should accept it.
And that is how I find myself bombarded by a large red-haired, bearded man with no shirt.
“Well, god damn, I’ve been waiting to meet you, little lady!” He shouts at me from where he stands at the railing of his shop’s deck. It’s the perfect beach town surf shop with a wooden deck and mismatched Adirondack chairs out front, its view on the waves laid out before it. I’d never actually been in the store, but I’d certainly been past it enough.
“Hello there,” I say to him, second-guessing my decision hard. “Is, um, is Grace here?”
“Gracie? Sure, she’s inside. But why don’t you come on over here, have a seat, put your feet up, take a load off. That’s what pregnant ladies are supposed to do, right? Rest and shit?”
He’s sliding a little wooden stool over with his foot so that it’s placed in front of a blue chair and gesturing for me to have a seat.
“Um…” I put one foot on the small set of stairs and hesitate.
“Red, I think you’re scaring the poor girl.” A woman appears from around the side of the building, she looks about Red’s age, with long hair the color that makes it hard to tell how much of it is light brown and how much of it is gray.
“I’m not scaring her, Babe, jeez.”
I watch him visibly soften in her presence, from the way he’s standing to the expression on his face. She pats his cheek and meets me halfway down the stairs.
“I’m Diane, come on up, honey,” she assuages me, reaching out a hand. I take it and she pulls me gently towards the chair. “I’ll tell Grace you’re here.”
I sit down on the edge of the chair and check out the view.
“I’m Red.” Even his voice is less abrupt now.
“I’m Holly,” I respond without looking.
“Yeah, I know, you’re Dean’s girl.”
“No,” I reply without thinking, regretting the quick retort instantly. “I mean…”
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