by Claire Adams
Was it fair to compare the two? They worked in the same field and had had roughly the same number of years in the business so, in that way, it made perfect sense. I had worked for both, but I had also slept with both, so hell, if anyone could compare the two, I could. Jason would have had a fit if I had blown him off to spend Christmas with Damien. He would have gone on and on about how he was so young anyway; it wasn't like he'd ever remember his first Christmas. I sighed, remembering the arguments we had had. I was glad that those were just a memory I had to deal with now. He and his ego were firmly in the past and even more firmly in New York.
But then again, I thought, would he be that way if he knew that Damien was his son? I thought about it every day. He already kind of looked like him. The green-blue eyes he definitely hadn’t come from anyone on my side of the family, and his hair was blond too. It got to me and had been a lot more the closer we were getting to Christmas. If I hadn't had Damien, I knew that being alone wouldn't have bothered me as much. Christmas was for families, and if that was true, then Jason was part of mine.
I had played the scenario out in my head dozens of times. If I ever took the step to tell Jason that we had had a son then I would want him to react positively, but with Jason, who knew what would happen? He was unpredictable, and besides, how well could anyone take the news that they had a child that they knew nothing about? I knew how it sounded and a year ago, I would have judged the shit out of a person who willfully kept their baby a secret from the child's other parent. Being that person keeping the secret, it was more complicated than even I wanted to admit.
If Jason Bowman today was the same person who I had left in New York a year ago, then I didn't think I wanted him to be part of Damien's life. How could a man who was that narcissistic ever love anyone more than himself? I had tried to picture the two of us co-parenting; would he be as disagreeable in his personal life as he was in his work life? He hadn't been intending to get me pregnant that night, but it had happened. I had gotten pregnant despite having an IUD in place, which had been risky in and of itself.
He was here now, healthy despite the less than savory circumstances his parents were in. It just wasn't that simple. Nothing was black and white when you had a child. When I thought about how Jason would react if I ever told him, I knew that rejection could be a possibility. I wasn't going to force him to be a parent if he didn't want to be. I loved my son, and it was my job to protect him, even if that meant from Jason.
This wasn't the way I had thought my life would look after moving to L.A. Ready to start a new job and a new chapter of my life in a new city, the pregnancy had been a shock. I hadn't thought that I would ever be raising a baby alone. Maybe that had been too idealistic of me; I knew that many people did for many different reasons. I wouldn't give my baby up for anything, but there were things about my relationship with his father and the way that I had gotten to this point that I would change if I could have. If the past year had taught me anything, it was how to let go of what I wanted to do and come to terms with what I needed to do.
The broadcast was just about to start. I had time to think about my estranged baby's father later. I went back to my desk for my clipboard before making my way back to the studio. I caught Davis taking his seat at the news desk. He was made for this job, I thought, smiling. Truth be told, it was kind of sexy too. A lot had changed since last year, but honestly, I wouldn't go back.
Chapter Seven
Jason
Work at the station never stopped. Whether we were on the air or not, something was always happening. People were working on stories, or audio, or graphics, something was happening with the weather: there was always something. I was just about to go on for the evening broadcast. I had gotten into work a few hours ago and was in makeup. I was thumbing through my script last minute. I had just come out of a meeting with Clark, and he had just talked my ear off for twenty minutes about nothing in particular.
It was good that he took his job seriously, but I had never met anyone as nerdy and socially awkward in my life. Interacting with him hurt. He had to be on the spectrum or something; nothing wrong with that, but I couldn't imagine how he had gotten this far in his life. He was boring as a bag of rocks. Did he have a girlfriend or any kind of friend for that matter? Talking to him was like talking to a cat or something. I knew he could hear me when I talked to him, and he responded when I did, but I couldn't really be sure of what was going on upstairs, if anything.
After working with Shelby for a year, who at least had a fucking personality, I didn't know what to make of the guy. Saying he bored me to death was kind. It had been about a year with him too; he had officially unseated Shelby as my longest running writer. As far as work went, he could hold his own, but I wasn't sure half the time whether I was talking to a man or a robot.
Shelby. It had been harder lately not to think about her. It had been around this time last year that everything with her had blown up. I hadn't forgotten. I hadn't forgiven her either. Clark worked, I couldn't complain about him or what he brought to the table, but if she had never left, then nothing would have had to change.
"You guys still keep in touch?"
"Here and there. It can get hard with the time difference."
"Yeah, I can imagine." Rachael, she reported the news, had walked up with another woman, Trisha, who worked behind the scenes. Rachael sat in a chair close to me in front of a mirror and pulled something out of her purse and started touching up her makeup. Both politely acknowledged I was there before getting back into their conversation.
"There's that, but since the baby was born—"
"The what?" Rachael asked, turning to Trisha. Trisha looked up from the phone she was holding.
"You heard me," she said, smirking.
"Holy shit. Shelby had a baby? That's amazing; I didn't even know she was seeing anyone."
"Mm-hmm. It's a little boy, about fourteen weeks old, I think she said. She sent me pictures." Rachael gasped and asked Trisha to let her see. I listened to them gushing over how cute the baby was. I barely heard Lila when she said I was ready. I got up and slowly walked away, trying to hear as much of Trisha and Rachael's conversation as I could.
What a fucking time to hear that Shelby had apparently had a kid over in L.A. That was it, huh? She had really moved on, unless...
The last time we had seen each other had been a year ago. She hadn't been pregnant when we had hooked up. A year was long enough to get pregnant and have a young baby. She might have met someone in L.A., that was a possibility, but why would she have a baby with them so fast?
Then, of course, there was the night that we had been together. I hadn't used protection because she had said she was on birth control. My heart was pounding, trying to make sense of what I had just heard Trisha and Rachael talking about. They hadn't said that she was actually seeing anyone. Whether she was or wasn't, the kid would have had to have been conceived at least a year ago. How old had Trisha said the kid was? Fourteen weeks? That was about three months. Women stayed pregnant for nine months; that brought the grand total to a year—the amount of time since Shelby and I had hooked up.
"Bowman? You're up," I heard someone say. My fists were clenched, and my mind was racing. I cleared my throat and tried to compose myself before the broadcast. I had to calm down. The last time I had flubbed a line on air had been like six years ago. If my theory checked out, it meant that Shelby's baby was mine. When we had hooked up, I hadn't known whether she had been seeing anyone. Maybe she had been. She had been on birth control, but nothing was one hundred percent.
Fuck. I needed to talk to her. Trisha might have been able to tell me what she was up to since they still talked, but I needed it straight from her. If I had a kid out there, a little boy, then I needed to know. Before anything happened, I had to get through work. It felt like ages before I could finally leave the studio. I thought about her all day. Getting to her should have had a straightforward solution, but it didn't. It was clear that she didn't
want anything to do with me; reaching out to her directly probably wouldn't get me a reply. She could dodge me that way anyway and if there was something she wanted to hide, then contacting her directly was just the way to make sure I never found out.
Back at the penthouse, I sat down and did something I hadn't done in months. Shelby was a little younger than I was, just by a couple years, but her presence online was depressingly low, considering it was the only access I had to her. She didn't really use social media, just had a professional site and a LinkedIn page that didn't tell me anything about her that I was interested in knowing.
The story about her going to work at KJLA popped up, but it was a year old. I would never forget what it was like when she told me that that was what she was going to do. A couple pages into the search, I saw a result on what looked like one of the shadier gossip blogs. Her name was in the title, but so was another one: Davis Jacks. Newsman and Producer in Clandestine Romance, the title read suggestively. I clicked it, feeling my heart pound. There were some pictures of the two of them, one of them exiting their station's building together, one promo style picture of the two of them at work, and one where they were photographed on location somewhere. They didn't look any closer than any two people who worked together but usually, where there was smoke, there was fire. Rumors didn't just come out of nowhere.
I leaned back in my seat, trying to figure it out. I was still in my work clothes, sitting in my home office. I had a lamp on, but the rest of the house was still completely dark. I hadn't checked my email, my phone, anything since I'd walked in and right then, I didn't even care. I had just gotten a lot of information, and none of it had been good.
Last year a lot of us had no idea who Shelby Aster even was. For weeks now, the curvy brunette has been linked with heartthrob anchor Davis Jacks. The two started working together in January, and allegedly, the sparks started flying as soon as she moved into her new desk, the article read. The twenty-eight-year-old is a writer and producer whose job means she gets to work very closely with Davis. Who hasn't made friends with a coworker, right? Only these two reportedly are much more than just friends. Friends don't take each other on dates to expensive Hollywood restaurants, do they?
There was more, but I stopped reading and closed the browser.
Davis motherfucking Jacks. Was she serious? Was she that desperate? That had to be it. How the fuck did she go for him after we had been together? Jacks was an okay guy if what you wanted was second best. That milquetoast, straight-laced mama's boy? It had only been a year. Clearly shit had to be going south for Shelby in L.A. if she was hooking up with Jacks.
And then all that stuff Trisha had said about the baby... could it be Davis'? If that shady article was telling the truth, then the two of them were involved. Davis didn't seem like the kind to keep his girlfriend or child secret. No. If he and Shelby were parents, the baby would be in those pictures with them. That was his whole thing: the good guy who you could bring home to meet your dad. Apparently, Shelby's type. It made me sick thinking about the two of them together. All that baby stuff too made it worse. I had to figure this out. I needed the truth, and I wasn't going to get it from sketchy gossip sites.
I had to go to L.A. and make her tell me to my face. Everything, including whatever her deal was with Davis. I finally looked up from my computer. It had been a year, and Shelby had always been on my mind in one way or another. I had wondered why I hadn't thought about looking her up before, and this was why. I felt like I was going to explode. As long as I had been able to think about her the way I remembered her, then I didn't have to deal with what could have been really happening, like her moving on with Davis Jacks or having a fucking baby. That way I could have tried to forget her. Now I wasn't going to be able to.
Chapter Eight
Shelby
"What is it, baby?" I asked, unbuttoning Damien's onesie. He hadn't stopped crying all morning. I took it off of him halfway so I could get the thermometer in his armpit. He cried, flailing his arms and legs, making what should have been an easy task, a lot more difficult. "Please, Damien, work with me," I said desperately. Ninety-seven-point-eight. Normal. He wasn't feverish, so I could cross that off the list. Was he sick? Was he colicky? I had no idea and even less time to try figure out. I got him back into his clothes and lifted him into my arms, trying to shush him. It had started a few hours after I had put him down the night before. He had woken up at ten, and it hadn't been till three when I could get him down again. That had lasted exactly two hours because at five, he had started up again.
I bounced him up and down gently, trying to calm him as I stuffed my purse with one hand. He hadn't had a good night's rest so that would be making him upset, but besides that, I was out of ideas. He had been doing so well with his sleep in the past few weeks, only needing to wake up for feeding once or twice. He didn't seem unwell, so what was it? I walked into the kitchen, searching the drawers for his binky. I hated using it, but sometimes, it was the only thing that did the trick. We needed to leave, and I couldn't cuddle him while I drove. I checked the time. Work was only about fifteen minutes away, but I still didn't want to be late. I finally found it, running it under warm water in the sink before putting it in Damien's mouth.
He quieted down for the first time that whole morning. I sighed, relieved, hurrying back into the living room. I grabbed my purse and haphazardly checked whether I had everything. I hadn't put any makeup on, and my hair had gotten wet in the shower. I hadn't had time to blow-dry or straighten it, but we'd just have to make the rat's nest look work today. I hurried the two of us out the door, down to the car. I strapped Damien into his seat in record time, and we were on our way.
We hadn't had a morning this stressful since I had brought him home. As a new mom, I had no real-life reference for anything that I was going through. The internet was full of mommy forums and blogs and my own mother always picked the phone up when I called her, but there were times I felt like I was fucking up. His crying was one of the only ways he could communicate with me. I felt like a failure when he cried and I couldn't soothe him. I made the trip to the office as fast as I could while still being safe. In my hurry to get Damien out of his car seat, he lost his binky and started crying again.
There was nothing more humbling than being a new parent. I shushed him gently, picking him up and sticking his binky back in his mouth. Pretty sure, I'd start sobbing too, I thought. I rushed into the building and found myself apologizing to Karla as I handed him off to her. She just smiled sympathetically and took him, saying she'd let me know if he needed me throughout the day. My baby was my world. I loved him deeper and stronger than I had ever loved anything or anyone. I felt guilty at the slight relief I felt that Karla was going to watch him for a while. I felt guilty that I ever felt overwhelmed with him at all. It just got hard sometimes.
My mom had been a huge help when Damien had been born. She and my stepdad had come down from Napa where they lived, so I didn't have to go through the birth alone. Frank, my stepdad, only stayed a couple days because he had to go back to work, but my mother had stayed almost two weeks, helping me with Damien. She had given birth to and raised two kids so I had spent the time that she had been with me doing my best to learn everything I could while healing from the birth.
After that, I had been on my own. I could count the number of times that I had called Paula, my babysitter, to watch Damien on one hand. It wasn't about me anymore; it was about my baby who needed my attention and care. My mother told me whenever we talked these days that I had to remember to take time for myself, that sacrificing things for Damien didn't mean killing myself in the process. I still wasn't sure that I knew what she meant when she would say that to me.
The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. A few people got off and on, normal for any morning that I came to work but a pain in the ass because I was late. I crossed my arms, waiting for it to fill impatiently.
"Shelby, hey," I heard someone say. Matt was an audio engineer; we we
re both heading to the newsroom floor.
"Hey," I said, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.
"How's your little boy doing?" he asked.
"Fine," I replied shortly.
"How old is he now?" he asked. The door opened just in time. I mumbled the answer as I walked out ahead of him. It wasn't his fault; he had just caught me on a bad morning. I didn't really feel up to making small talk. I had been up most of the night with a cranky infant, and I hadn't had any coffee yet. I had barely gotten a good look in the mirror before I had gotten here but I knew I looked as bad as I felt.
I trudged silently to my desk and flopped into my seat. I ran my hands over my face. Twenty minutes: I would have given anything for just a twenty-minute nap before I had to start working. My job and my baby didn't care how much sleep I had had the night before. I booted up my work computer, running mentally through the morning's to do list. Emails sounded like the least daunting thing to start with in the state that I was in, after I got some coffee into my system.
Back at my desk with a steaming cup of coffee, I went methodically through my inbox. The coffee eventually undid what three hours of sleep the last night had done to my mood and focus. I got through my emails and opened another tab on my computer's browser.
"Jason Bowman," I said quietly as I typed his name into the search bar. He came up in conversation every other day. WRTC was our competition; we had to watch their broadcasts. Picture and story results popped up, a lot of the links already purple. There hadn't really been anything new about him in the last few days, just some of his broadcasts posted to his station’s YouTube channel. I had professional interest in Jason, but it ran a little deeper than that. We had a baby together. I had decided that Jason wasn't a person I wanted Damien to be exposed to, but I second guessed that decision every day. People could change, and I wanted to say that Jason could too. If he ever did, then maybe I'd change my mind.