She shook her head, looking down at the keys in her lap. "Honestly, I probably wouldn't have told you. It's not exactly something that I feel proud about sharing."
"So you don't hate me for never asking before, until a couple months ago?"
She smiled as she reached across the center console to awkwardly hug me. "I'm just glad that I can tell you now."
A couple hours, however, Ellen had changed her tone. "Starting to not be so glad that you're my friend," she griped as she stood on the ladder, a spray bottle in one hand and a dirty rag in the other.
"Oh, stop complaining," I called up to her from the bottom of the ladder. "I can't go up there – I'm pregnant! And this sign needs to get cleaned. It's the first thing that prospective customers see when they come into the café."
"That excuse is starting to wear thin," Ellen muttered, but she kept on scrubbing away at the years of accumulated dirt and bird poop that coated the front awning and window of the River's Edge Café.
"Well, once this is done, I need to build up the courage to face your mom," I sighed. "The next few changes are going to focus on the interior – and the menu."
"Oh, that's not going to go over well. She's had full control of that menu for years."
"But it needs to be changed!" At one point, the River's Edge Café might have had a clean and well-designed menu, but it had swollen over the years, and now included far too many dishes. I'd sat in the café and watched first-hand as customers, overwhelmed by the level of choices, decided not to order anything. Cutting out some of the items that no one ever ordered would make things easier for Vicky, and would save the café money because they wouldn't need as much inventory.
That was the gist of my argument – and surprisingly, even though Vicky put on a ferocious scowl, she finally acquiesced to my suggestions.
"But these changes of yours better work," she griped as I drew red lines through some of the dishes that even she had to admit she couldn't remember anyone ordering in the last six months. "I don't like you making all these changes, like you're the boss."
"I'm not the boss," I assured her. "But I want to help, that's all."
She just sighed and puffed out her cheeks, watching as her menu shrank.
I did have faith in my decisions. I knew that, if River's Edge wanted to succeed, it needed to make two big changes – it needed to cut costs, and it needed to increase the number of customers, happy customers, coming in through the doors. I'd managed to accomplish the cost cutting, but I still had to tackle getting new customers in the door – and making sure they came back.
I had a few ideas for pulling this off, and, although I felt a bit nervous, I also found myself occasionally filled with strange excitement, wondering whether my strategies would work. I'd covered topics like this in business school, back before I dropped out, but I'd never gotten the opportunity to test any of them in real life.
Maybe, I considered to myself that evening, having this baby didn't spell the end of my life, like I'd feared. I'd had to go through an adjustment period, changing my focus from parties to helping out Ellen and her mother with their little café, wearing baggy outfits that made me feel frumpy instead of sexy, but I could handle this change, at least so far.
Still, I knew that this new equilibrium wouldn't last forever. At some point, this baby would arrive, and then I'd have to add the additional challenges of motherhood to everything else I did.
I lay back in the darkness, looking up at the fuzzy, indistinct ceiling above my bed. Acute longing suddenly cut through me – longing for Seb, wherever he might be. He'd been staying out longer and longer as of late. I didn't think that he'd found another woman – he'd tell me if he did, I hoped – but I suddenly wished that he was there, beside me.
I put that desire out of my head. Just another craving, like the sudden tears or the hunger for pickles in my ice cream. I'd get past it.
Things were turning around for me. Tori Lilly was adjusting to her new life.
Chapter Sixteen
SEBASTIAN
*
I'm pretty sure that there's a God up above the clouds, and he's rigged things so that his metaphysical toilet constantly floats directly above me.
It's been... what, five months, now, since Tori called me up and told me that she was pregnant with my kid? Feels more like five years. I think that I'm aging prematurely. All those years of avoiding stress? Yeah, they're all wasted, now, because I'm getting it all thrown at me and then some extra.
Every day, I wake up with my back aching from this stupid guest bed. Didn't I pay for a really nice one to be put in here? Maybe I ought to send this one back as defective, try and order another. But I'm fairly certain that the reason it hurts my back is because of the stress and tossing and turning at night, not from the mattress.
This house is big, sure, but it still feels stifling. Even when I don't see her, I know that Tori's in it, somewhere, with my kid growing inside of her. It's like the Grim Reaper of responsibility is here, just waiting for me to trip up so that he can swing that scythe and claim me forever.
How the hell did I ever convince myself that I was ready to handle this? To be a dad, to give a screaming baby a bottle, drive a kid to preschool, watch as he ran around and ate shit while playing Little League? Whenever I close my eyes, that whole future plays out in front of me, and it's terrifying.
I keep trying to find something, anything, to distract me. When I'm at the house, whenever I bump into Tori, I just think about that whole future stretching out in front of me. I'm not scared of it – at least, that's what I try and tell myself. But I don't want to face her, don't want to feel that weird, confusing rush of emotions.
When I bump into her, my eyes always land on her face first. They always see her smiling at me, or sometimes frowning in concentration as she looks over a pad of paper with notes on it – what she's taking notes on, I have no idea. But when I see her face, for a second, I feel a little better.
It's familiarity, that's what it is. Oh, it's Tori, the girl that I've known for years, the one that hangs out at the parties with me, dangles off my arm like a supermodel, always knows the right thing to say to break the tension in a meeting between me and someone I've slighted. When I see her face, I want to go over, slip my arm around her shoulders and lean in to murmur something sweet in her ear – or maybe give it a sexy little nibble.
But then, my eyes move downwards, and those nice feelings fade away. My eyes land next on her chest, and for an instant, I notice that her tits are getting bigger. Why is that – right, the pregnancy. The pregnancy which is made even more apparent by the bulging belly, just beneath those tits. And if that's not a confusing sight, I don't know what is. The girl that I've slept with dozens of times, but with bigger tits and my kid growing inside of her.
It feels like the punchline to some sick joke. "Your number one girl goes up a cup size – but she's also got your baby growing inside of her, and you'll have to care for her and the kid for the rest of your life! Do you hit it or quit it?"
Worst of all? If someone asked me that stupid joke, I don't know what my response would be. Even with a baby in her, all the horror that this entails for the future of any sex with her, I still feel a disturbing stiffness in my southern regions when I look at her. My brain's screaming no, but my dick still wants to get all up in that.
Some days, I'm tempted to just take an axe to myself, get rid of that corrupting organ before it keeps on driving me crazy. She even creeps into my damn fantasies! I'll be in my room, trying to get some private time, my hand down my pants just to relieve the pressure building up in my balls from not getting a satisfactory release in months – and Tori will creep into my fantasies!
Seriously, you don't know how awful it is. I'll have my eyes closed, playing back my mental recording of when I took those two red-haired buxom beauties out on a yacht in the Mediterranean. In my head, I'm laying back on the bow of the boat as it bobs gently in the crystal blue waves, one of the redheads peeling off
the skimpy little top she insisted on wearing before we left the harbor. I'll close my eyes in my fantasy, just for a second-
-and then, when I re-open them, it's Tori on top of me. Tori, blonde and busty and sun-kissed and pregnant, her belly pushing down against my abs as she slides down on top of me, gasping as I plunge inside of her.
And in my head, sometimes, I go with it. I reach up to feel those big, stretched and swollen tits, arching my hips forward so that she can still ride me even with the bulge of the baby. I listen to her breath coming heavy, slip one hand down between her thighs to play with her clit the way that I know she loves, and I feel her breath come faster as she gets ready to lose control and come.
And a couple times, to my utter shame, that fantasy's been enough to make me blow my damn load, right there in the guest bed.
What the fuck has happened to me? I've gone from being the perfect example of a billionaire playboy who hits every party and always gets laid, to jerking myself off in a house in suburbia to the thought of a pregnant chick! I'm falling apart!
It's because I've been cooped up in this damn house too long, I tell myself. I just need to get out of here. I've started hopping into my car and driving, without the slightest idea of where I'm going. I'll drive until I see someplace that looks like it might be able to distract me for a few hours and then pull over, wander inside. I'm lost, out of control.
The other day, I even wandered into a strip club! Not that I've never been to one, of course. I've seen plenty of strip club interiors. But I've never wandered into one before noon, never been to one named "Bob's Discount Stripper Shack."
It pretty much lived up to the name, if you're curious. Half a dozen girls who look like they've already gone through Life's wringer a few times, moving aimlessly back and forth on the dirty stages as a few sleazy looking businessmen watch them. I don't know what was worse – the desperation in the strippers' eyes, or the hunger in the eyes of their gross, fat, balding audience.
I hightailed it out of there, but the experience did get me thinking. Maybe, I considered, I need to just get a real change of scenery, go on a real adventure to put thoughts of Tori out of my mind.
It started off just as a vague thought, but it didn't seem to want to go away. Or, more accurately, it kept returning to me. Maybe I really did need to get away, for more than just half a day. Maybe I needed a longer trip.
I kept on thinking it over, turning the idea around in my head. Finally, after a few days, I decided to ring it up to Tori.
"I was thinking," I said hesitantly as I helped myself to some of the pasta salad that she'd prepared for dinner. Quite a lot of pasta salad, weirdly enough.
"Oh? About what?" Tori blinked, smiling across the kitchen counter from me. She seemed more relaxed, strangely, as if I'd somehow soaked up all her nervousness. Now that I thought about it, she'd been calmer for the last few weeks.
If she had drugs, she should have shared them with me. I could use some calm right now, even if it came from a chemical source.
I took a deep breath – but a chunk of tomato from the pasta salad shot backwards in my throat, and my words dissolved in a coughing fit. Looking concerned, Tori stepped over to pat me on the back.
"Is it too spicy?" she asked, sounding slightly concerned. "If so, let me know. I'm trying it out for River's Edge – it would make a great side dish for a lot of their sandwiches, and it can be prepped in advance."
The words didn't mean anything to me. River's Edge, the restaurant place nearby where she'd been spending all her time as of late? Why was Tori cooking for them? "Nah, it's fine. Just went down the wrong way."
"Okay then." She ate a bite, smiled at me. God, she still looked so much like the carefree party girl I remembered, even with the swollen breasts, the belly poking out despite the flowing, gauzy blouse she wore. She really looked great – had she gotten new clothes? How did she manage to dress so amazingly well, even with her growing belly? "What's up?"
"I was..." No bite of food this time. Keep the airway open. "I was thinking of taking a trip for a few days, try and clear my head."
A little part of me somehow expected her to know about my shameful visit to the strip club, as if she could read my mind. But of course she didn't. She probably just thought that I meant that I needed a change of scenery.
She paused, tilting her fork slightly towards me. I noticed the cherry tomato on its end slipping slightly, about to go tumbling off. "A trip," she said, tapping the handle of the fork against her chin lightly. "You know, that might be good for you."
"What?" Definitely not what I'd expected.
She nodded. "Look, I know that this has been hard on you," she said, as if she could see inside my head. "But you're going to adjust at some point, and it will all just click. It's happening for me now, I think. I don't feel as scary about everything that's happening; I know that it's all going to turn out okay."
"And you think that will happen for me?"
"I know that it will." She stood up, popping the last few bites of pasta salad from her plate into her mouth. She dropped the plate and utensil into the sink, then paused beside me before leaving the kitchen. She draped her arms around me, leaned in to plant a soft kiss against my cheek. "Any thought to where you're going to go?"
I shrugged, but I suspected that she could guess exactly where I had in mind. A single glance at her face confirmed it. "You and Vegas," she sighed, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. "Well, get it all out of your system."
"I..." I tried to get my scattered thoughts together. "I'm not sure how long I'll be gone."
"Just let me know." One more kiss on my cheek. She smelled faintly of basil, parsley, other fresh herbs that must have gone into the pasta salad. I hadn't really tasted it even as I put it into my mouth, feeling so concerned with how she'd respond to my news. Now, it seemed like I shouldn't have bothered to even feel concerned.
"I will," I said, a beat too late. She'd turned, and I watched her leave from the kitchen. We had a deal, after all; she cooked, and I cleaned up afterwards.
I watched her go, hating that conflicting swell of emotions that rose in my chest. If this was five years later, if I was ready for all this shit to be happening in my life, everything would be perfect. Previously, I'd never consider Tori as a potential mother, but I now saw that she'd make a good one. The same fiercely burning inner fire that drove her to dance wildly out in the middle of the dance floor also pushed her to adjust to her still-unborn child, prepare for its arrival. I could see her, slightly older but still just as beautiful and alive, bouncing a baby in her arms or leading a toddler on its first steps.
It was a beautiful sight, imagined inside of my head. But I didn't fit in with it. It was a great future for her, but I couldn't see it for me. Not yet.
I wasn't ready.
Maybe, hopefully, this trip would fix whatever I still needed to experience, would let me get it out of my system. I needed to just get away, long enough to really think, for my thoughts to finally make sense without the influence of this stifling house, all the baby pictures staring at me from the covers of the baby books, Tori.
That was all I needed. I got up, turned my attention to the sink full of dishes – but my thoughts were already hundreds of miles away.
Chapter Seventeen
SEBASTIAN
*
I leaned in towards one of my buddies, seeing my own reflection in his mirrored pink sunglasses that he insisted on wearing all the time, even indoors. One girl once told me that he even wore them during sex, as if she wasn't permitted to look directly into his pupils.
"This is great!" I shouted, holding up my bottle of champagne to toast him.
He grinned happily back at me, lifting his own bottle to clink against mine. "Fucking A, man!" he replied, spreading his legs a little wider to accommodate the bare hips of the girl grinding down against his crotch. "You might have been gone a while, but you certainly didn't forget how to throw a party!"
He had a point, I
thought as I looked around the club. My brain fizzed pleasantly with the half a bottle of champagne already bubbling away inside my stomach, lighting me up with the bubbles and making me feel carbonated and tingly. This might be my last real party, I'd figured, so why not go all out and invite everyone?
I'd run through my entire phone directory, calling everyone in my contacts them. I advertised this as "Sebastian Stone's Final Bash," although I didn't share any specifics of Tori and her swelling stomach back home. Why rain on a party parade?
Speaking of which... I hadn't quite managed to arrange to have a parade thrown in my honor, but I came close. Vegas gave me her best, and well she should, considering the money that I lavished on her! Sure, I sometimes made it all back when I hit a hot streak at her high-stakes tables, but she still ought to spoil me, her favorite son.
I stood up, looking around the inside of the club. I'd booked out the entire ten thousand square feet of Hyde, the club on top of the Bellagio, offering both indoor and outdoor spectacular views of the fountains. Throw in a bottomless bar with practically everything on tap, a solid hundred strippers, and we had the makings of a good party.
But I'd done this before, and I knew that a great party, a truly great one, didn't come just from hot women and fast flowing liquor. A truly great party needed interesting people, the kind of guys that made even celebrities sit up and turn their heads.
Fortunately, those were the kind of people who populated my speed dial.
Just about everyone showed up, I noted as I looked around. Over in the corner, half a dozen New York Yankees were tossing back shots in unison. One of the hottest rap stars in the world reclined lazily on a couch nearby, each arm wrapped around a beaming, completely nude woman as they ran their arms over his exposed chest. "Easy on the chains, baby," I heard him murmur to one.
"Damn, Sebastian!" I turned at the shout, grinned back at the flashy media mogul who strolled over with his arms spread wide. "When you say that you're throwing the party of the century, you certainly don't disappoint!"
For Love of Freedom (Stone Brothers Book 3) Page 11