“You bet,” Oscar says. “Take your time. She’s not going anywhere.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
OSCAR LETS ME IN THE FRONT DOOR. He’s got two mugs of coffee and hands me one.
“Figure you could use some,” he says. I thank him and take it.
Hale emerges from the hall, wearing a robe and carrying her own cup. I kind of brace for her to rush at me and claw my eyes out for letting Sher leave in the rain, but when she stops in front of me, her grin is sympathetic and kind.
“How are you doing?” she asks. I’m not sure if Sher or Oscar have told her about my balls, or if she means in general. I shrug.
“I’m alright,” I tell her. “Where’s Sher?”
Hale waves her mug toward the stairs. “Still in our bed upstairs. She passed out about two hours ago.”
I nod, but Hale puts a hand on my arm before I can move toward the steps.
“It’s not her fault, Landon,” she says. “I mean, it is, but it isn’t…you know what I mean? She can’t even stand Trent, really. All she’s got is me, and she thought she’d be the third wheel now that I’m married, and she felt lost. What she did wasn’t meant to hurt you. She did it because she was hurting.”
“She sure spread that around,” I say. I can still feel the phantom kick in the nuts she gave me last night.
“Landon,” Hale calls after me, but when I turn to listen, Oscar drapes his arm around his wife’s shoulders and murmurs something in her ear that stops her from saying anything else. It doesn’t stop her from looking sad, but Hale lets him lead her away as I turn back to the stairs.
***
It’s hard to believe that Sher didn’t somehow plan to stay on the second floor. The spiral of stairs has never taken so long to climb and getting up them is almost as much punishment as the initial kick in the cowbells. But I make it.
I know the Maree mansion like the back of my hand, since I spent so much time hanging out here. I know which room is Oscar and Hale’s, but when I tap on the door, there is no response.
I open the door and walk across the room to the mammoth four poster bed. Sher is just a tiny shrimp curl in the middle of it. I set down my coffee on O.C.’s bedside table and take a stiff seat on the edge of the bed.
Her hair, darker in the curtained room, hangs limp off the edge of her pillow. She’s twisted in the sheets, her breathing deep. One foot peeks from beneath the bottom, her toenails painted green. I reach out and touch her smooth heel. She stirs, pulling her foot back.
Her eyes closed, my mind still goes blank. I have no idea what I’m going to say to her. I don’t even know what I’m doing here, or what I’m really trying to accomplish. She’s been lying to me and her lie has made her a stranger to me again. A stranger that might be having a stranger’s baby. Or my baby. I can’t even predict the luck of the draw.
But there’s a warmth in my chest when I look at her, sleeping like this. I kind of hate it. This girl has lied to me, she’s inflicted me with bodily harm, and I can’t tell what she’s going to do next. She’s the wild card and how she plays her hand will still determine my entire life, whether I like it or not. I should hate her, but instead, I’ve tracked her down and now I just want to sit here, pretending none of it happened, and watch her sleep.
So, I do what I want. I study the colors in her hair, the shape of her ears, the way her eyelashes lay like angel wings against her skin. I match my breathing to hers for a while.
And the idea comes to me.
I pull my phone from my pocket and Google until I find the number I want. I put the call through, standing up and taking my coffee again. I pace as it rings on the other end.
“Dr. Henderson’s office,” the receptionist answers.
“Yes, I wanted to make an appointment,” I say. I sip my coffee as the receptionist tells me how to handle Sher’s lack of insurance. I wait patiently as she checks for an available appointment.
“Oh yes…there was a cancellation for the one o’clock appointment today, if you’d like,” she says.
“We’ll take it.”
“Fine. We can talk about the different options for determining paternity when you come in.”
“Alright. Thanks for fitting us in.”
“No problem. We’ll see you at one,” the receptionist says before she hangs up. I slide my phone back into my pocket and go back to the bed. I sit down and see Sher’s eyes, squinting at me. I take a drink of my coffee and put it down on the bedside table again.
“Landon? What are you doing? Are you taking me to the clinic?” She sits up, rubbing her eyes, disoriented.
“Not the one you’re thinking of,” I tell her. “We’re going to a regular doctor, and we’re going to find out if this is my baby or not.”
“Oh brother,” she snaps, turning away. I grab her arm and drag her back to look at me.
“If this is my baby, then I want to know. So we’re both clear about what’s going on here.”
She yanks her arm away. “Then let’s just say it’s not, how’s that? Let’s just say right now that it’s not, and you can get out of my hair.”
I just stare at her. I don’t know what’s true and what’s not, if there’s more that she knows and still isn’t saying, or if she really wants me out of her hair, but I’m not going to let her kick me when I’m down. I take a deep breath and shake my head as I pick up my coffee cup.
“There are ground rules now, Sher,” I tell her with a light growl. “First of all, you don’t ever kick me in the balls, ever, ever again.”
“Then don’t call me a whore,” she says. I tip my head, raise my hand and lower it, regaining my patience.
“Deal,” I say. “Second, just try to be nice.”
“You be nice.”
“Good, then we agree. The only way we can make this work is to be nice to each other.”
“There’s nothing to make work,” she says, fighting her way out of the tangled sheets. She walks on her knees to the opposite edge of the bed, swinging one long leg off the side. She’s wearing a pink camisole and tiny pink panties. The ensemble might be on loan from Hale, but they are made for Sher. My nuts zang as my rod hardens against my zipper.
Sher stalks across the room and grabs what has to be Oscar’s robe from the adjoining bathroom’s door hook. She douses my hard-on by throwing on some nubby terry cloth.
“I’m not asking for the moon and stars here, Sher. I’m just asking you to be nice,” I tell her. I’m not going to let her chase me away and then go off and do whatever comes to her mind first. But I have to admit, it’s easier to be nice, knowing she’s wearing those two pink pieces under the robe. “Your appointment is at four. Do you want to go back home or hang around here and make Oscar and Hale even more miserable?”
“Talk about nice,” she snorts. “I think I’ll stick around and be their dark cloud, since I don’t have a home.”
I ignore her claws and finish the last of my coffee.
“We could go for breakfast,” I say. “There’s a pancake…”
“Stop, okay? Just stop.” Her voice splits. One hand is on her forehead, the other on her waist.
“What? Too sick?”
“Why do you keep trying so hard, Landon. Stop being nice to me, okay? It’ll just make everything worse.”
That makes more sense to me than anything else she’s said in the last two days. It’ll just make everything worse. If it’s not mine, she’s going to be disappointed too.
“Oh,” I say. “Okay, I’ll work on being a dick.”
“Good,” she says and she holds back the tears with a sad grin.
That’s the exact moment that I believe her. This really might not be my baby. And I’m annoyed at the jolt of anxiety that follows right on the heels of that thought.
***
Sher gets into clothes and we eat bowls of cereal with Oscar and Hale. We all make annoying small talk about cars and clothes and lawn cutting, everything besides anything important, until it’s time to go.
I load Sher’s bag into my trunk and Hale hugs and kisses Sher, wishing her good luck. Sher looks like she’s going to spew all over the Maree’s front steps. Oscar kisses Sher’s cheek and slaps me on the back. Three of us will remain friends, no matter what.
Hale, on tiptoe, whispers in my ear, “Be good to her, Landon, she’s really scared.”
She’s not the only one, but I know that’s not for me to say. I don’t have a baby cooking in my belly. I don’t have to decide whether or not to do the nine month sentence. All I did was come, but I still feel the weighty decisions of two whole lives on my shoulders. My lack of control scares the hell out of me.
I am grateful when we’re finally on the road.
“If they say it’s not yours, can you still give me a ride someplace?” Sher asks. The expectation, that it’s not mine and that whatever is between us is already over, hangs in the air.
“Of course,” I say. My throat closes up on the words, but I still push them out. “Wherever you want to go, I’ll take you.”
The end of my sentence reaches for her and her silence seems to reach back. But what else can I say? I can’t take over somebody else’s kid, if that’s the case. I tell myself that the sinking sensation in my gut is because I don’t know if the baby is mine or not. I tell myself it will go away when I know on way or another. I tell myself that the dark, hollow feeling I get when I think of dropping Sher off someplace, other than my apartment, is just because I had revved myself up to be a dad. I assure myself, over and over again, that if I’m not the dad, I won’t feel this hollow forever.
Sher fidgets with her hair. She twirls it down her index finger and pulls it tight.
“Are you alright?” I ask her.
“Yeah, great.” She flashes a fake smile. I don’t ask what she will do if it belongs to Trent. It’s not my business. This ache will eventually go away. It has to.
We go along in silence and with each mile, Sher melts even more against the seat.
“Can you turn on the air?” she asks. I flip it on. Dodging a glance at her, she suddenly looks like a sweating puddle of a girl. Her eyes are clamped shut.
“What’s the matter?”
“Noth-,” she gags, but she doesn’t get the word all the way out before her hand is on the button for the window. It slides down and she wedges her head sideways out of the opening, barfing down the side of the car before the window’s even open all the way. Her ribs flex as she retches out the rest of her Unlucky Charms.
I pull into the clinic’s parking lot.
“Just in time,” I say with a tolerant grin. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She’s surprisingly clean, unlike the side of my car.
“We’re going to need a car wash when we leave,” she says. We.
We walk in and Sher freezes, just inside the door. It stinks like somebody slopped antiseptic from the floor to the ceiling. She presses her back against the window facing outside and stares up at the ceiling.
“Come on,” I say, taking her hand. “Just cover your nose. It’s the second office down her on the right.”
I hold the door for her and I check us in at the desk. The smell dissipates inside the waiting room, but Sher looks absolutely pale. There’s no other men in the waiting room, but every pregnant girl that catches my gaze gives me a smile. I assume they believe the very thing that we don’t know—that this baby is mine. Sher and I don’t talk, but when they call Sher’s name, we both stand.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she says.
“In. With you.”
She giggles. “Uh, no. This is party of one. You sit.”
“Uh, no,” I tell her. “My baby, my party.”
She can’t really argue in the middle of the waiting room, surrounded by a bunch of pregnant chicks that are giving up the moon eyes, over what a prince I am. And I know she doesn’t want to announce, in the center of my pregnant fan club, that she doesn’t know who the father is. Sher knows she’s beat and scowls at me, but she lets me follow her into the exam room.
The nurse is chipper. Sher is in hell. She is weighed in front of me and given a cup to pee in, which she has to carry back, filled, into the exam room where I’m waiting. She’s so humiliated, she’s nearly purple. The nurse doesn’t even seem to notice. She chatters as she checks Sher’s blood pressure and temperature. She goes a little pink when the nurse asks for the date of Sher’s last period. When the nurse is finished, she tells Sher to strip and hands her a paper robe. Sher’s pale face goes dismally white.
“For the pelvic exam with Dr. Singh. He’ll be right in,” the nurse chirps and she goes out. The door wafts closed and Sher jumps right off the crinkly-papered exam table. I stand up to block the door.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving,” she snaps. “This is nuts. I’ll just go to the clinic and get it over with.”
“No, you’re not. You agreed we’d find out.”
She wrings her hands as her eyes well up. “It’s probably not even yours, Landon!”
“We don’t know that,” I say. She spins back toward the table, and then toward the door I’m blocking, her breathing high in her chest. I grab her arm. “What are you so freaked out about?”
“I don’t want to do this,” she whimpers.
“Because I’m here?”
“Because everyone is here! This doctor…he’s a he!” She starts to cry. It takes me a minute to puzzle it out. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure this is about modesty, so I go with it.
“I’ve already seen your body, Sher,” I tell her. “And this doctor’s seen so many women, I’m positive he couldn’t care less.”
She shakes her head, sniffling. I think she’s going to puke again. “I don’t want everyone seeing me naked.”
I step closer to her and smooth my hand up her arm. She’s busted out in so many goose bumps that she’s a long sheet of sandpaper.
“I’ll help you. This is nothing,” I tell her. I run my hands over her shoulders and down her waist. I take the edge of her shirt and ease it up, over her head. Her eyes are wide, frightened, and never leave my face. I wrap my arms around her, unclasping her bra. “There’s absolutely nothing to it…” I pick up the paper robe and slip her into it, before unfastening her pants and easing them off. I talk to her the whole time, soothing her as if she’s a frightened baby, which is what she looks like to me. The doctor knocks as soon as Sher’s on the exam table and her clothes are folded beneath my chair. I feel like I’m handing off the relay baton as he walks in.
Dr. Singh is old, cleft-lipped, and all business. He’s got brown spots in the whites of his eyes and skin tags on his face, but he zips through the exam, he and his nurse talking to Sher the whole time. She’s frozen on the table, and he seems used to it, moving her like a stiffly-jointed doll. He sticks her feet in the stirrups. I stare at the ceiling wondering why the hell the chair is at this end of the exam table.
When he’s done, he pulls her up to a sitting position, telling her that her thickened uterus means that she’s definitely pregnant. He pulls a deeper blush from her when he asks about her last period, when she thinks she got pregnant, but she only says it happened at either the beginning or the end of the same month, she doesn’t know. I was the beginning and Trent was the end. She’s paralyzed after that, and when Dr. Singh can’t weasel any more useful information out of her, he finally gives up and talks to me. I ask him about paternity testing.
“There are a few options,” he says, resting his ha
nds on his thighs. “There is amniocentesis…”
But that test sounds like a horror movie. When he talks about the procedure—inserting a needle through Sher’s stomach—she finally shows signs of life. She gasps and goes gray.
“I don’t think that test will work for us,” I say.
“There is also CVS, Chorionic Villus Sampling,” he says. Another horror show. That one involves a needle to the vagina. Sher goes ghost-white and the doctor has her lay down on the exam table while the nurse gets Sher a carton of orange juice.
“I don’t think that’s an option either,” I say, while Sher sucks the juice through a plastic straw. “What else do you have?”
“The last option I have for prenatal paternity determination is SNP Microarray. It’s a blood test. We draw blood from the father and mother. It offers a 99% accuracy rate.”
“Just a blood test? I can do that.” I brighten, but Sher frowns around her straw. “You can handle a blood test,” I tell her. I can’t believe the good doctor didn’t bring it up first.
“The test costs approximately two thousand dollars,” Dr. Singh finishes and the bastard doesn’t even blink. Two thousand. I’d like to say that money isn’t an object, but it’s not like I can afford to pitch it at whoever walks by either. If it’s my kid, that two thousand would be better put toward the ridiculous pile of pregnancy-related bills that are already threatening to bury me. If it’s not my kid…the stomach cramp returns, gripping me in its fist.
“It’s just a blood test though?” I ask and the doctor nods. “Alright, I’ll do it.”
“I don’t know if I want to do it,” Sher says. “It’s two grand. I have to pay at least half and I don’t have that kind of money.”
“I can pay…”
“No.” She shakes her head.
“If you’d like, we can draw your blood today,” the doctor tells me. “Once I have that information, we can draw your blood for the test on another day, Miss Traifere, whenever finances permit.”
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