His Surprise Baby

by Valentine, Layla

  “Even if those legs are attached to a perfect ass?”

  “Even then, I’m afraid.”

  They grumbled, and booed him, but without any real antipathy. They were too swept up in the excitement to actually give a fuck about whether or not he came to the party. He held up both hands in the universal sign of mea culpa.

  “Sorry, folks. Gonna be a quiet night in for me. Some of us,” he said jokingly, “played pretty hard today.”

  “Oh ease up on him, ya’ll,” someone cried from down the locker room. “The man lined us all up for some sweet rings today.”

  “You tell ‘em,” Bradley called back to whichever teammate had spoken. With that, he rolled off his leggings and undershirt, and headed to the showers.

  Once he’d cleaned up and gotten his stuff in order, he was shepherded out of the stadium by an actual flock of security guards to a waiting blacked-out SUV. Bradley settled in, glad for the tinted windows. The camera flashes had gone on all day, and he needed to rest his eyes from the brightness.

  The driver got him home with little fanfare, save for the moment when he opened the door to escort Bradley out, and said, “You fucking killed it today, Mr. Fox. The way you played… Man, that’s how football oughta be played.”

  “Thanks,” Bradley replied sincerely.

  I won the Super Bowl, he realized again, this time with more wonderment. Shit. Can’t believe I did that.

  With a wave to the driver, Bradley walked up his curving driveway, and into the house. He at last had enough quiet to call his mom, which is what he’d really wanted to do for the past few hours.

  She alternately screamed and sobbed into the phone, saying how proud she was of her boy. He’d offered, several times, to fly her out for the game, but she’d declined, on the grounds that she’d be so nervous, it’d make him nervous. Didn’t wanna mess up the big game by giving a set of the jitters to the QB. He had been disappointed, even though he’d known she was right.

  It was still good to hear her voice, as she recounted how the entire town had crowded into Garrity’s, the local bar, to watch him play. She said that when the buzzer sounded, they’d flooded into the streets, dancing with joy. Bradley wished he could’ve seen that. Maybe some of their joy would’ve rubbed off on him.

  His mother said goodbye after only a few minutes—the whole day had been so thrilling, she was exhausted. In that familiar, parental tone, she told him to get to bed, and said once more how proud she was before hanging up the phone.

  Bradley was sitting on his enormous white couch, in his enormous living room, in his enormous house, and he was very much alone. There was no more football to think about; the season was over. The flood of sponsorship offers would hit tomorrow, and then there’d be those to sort through, but right now…nothing. Just quiet. He turned on his TV. A sports channel came on, and his own face dominated the picture.

  “Fox, damn, this must be the best day of that young man’s life,” one guy in a well-tailored suit said.

  “Can you imagine how good it feels to win the Super Bowl? Cause I can’t,” replied the co-host.

  Bradley clicked off the TV. He didn’t need any more reminders about how awesome he should be feeling right now.

  With no other bright shiny things to dangle in front of his mind’s eye, his thoughts slipped to Heidi.

  Don’t say her name, he scolded himself instinctually, and then relented. He was too tired to fight the battle with her lingering ghost tonight, and she took over his brain.

  His thoughts raked over every inch of her body, which seemed to suck him in like a whirlpool. Those voluminous auburn curls. The aquamarine eyes, which always had a secret smile just for him. Then, his thoughts turned to her soft breasts, the dimples above her perky ass…

  Stop, he chastised himself.

  He’d already spent enough nights by himself, thinking of the way her body flowed smoothly from one portion to another. It was the only time he’d permitted her image to enter his brain.

  Now, though, the floodgates had been opened, and he was forced to reflect on how their relationship—or whatever it was—had ended. For the first time, he was able to face the truth: he’d done wrong by this woman. It was a shitty thought.

  “You fucked her over,” he said to himself angrily. “You liked her, and then you put an end to any future you might’ve had together. Nice job.”

  He saw, with clarity, how he always shut himself off from a stable relationship, how all of his one-night stands were just exercises in avoidance. If people got too close, he pulled away. The realization was even more painful because he had no idea how or why he’d become this isolated.

  Bradley understood that it wasn’t actually all his fault, this time around. Heidi had done some, well, shady shit. Like, for instance, not telling him she’d parted ways with Image-ine. What was he supposed to make of that?

  For what it was worth, he might’ve worked with her in spite of the fact that she was a freelancer. But the fact was that she’d hidden it, and after all their time together…that stung. The lack of transparency was what upset him, really. He’d been honest with her in ways that he’d never been with anyone else, yet she’d concealed a huge thing about herself.

  It had made him feel vulnerable.

  Could she have done what Todd and the lawyers accused her of? Could she have set up this whole scheme to profit twice, once from doing his media work, and then again from selling her stories to the gossip rags? He’d ruminated over this for weeks, and it was usually at this point in his train of thought that he’d decide to hit the gym again to distract himself.

  Because, when he really thought about it, he knew she couldn’t have done it. That just wasn’t the kind of person he’d fallen for.

  And if he’d had the chance to speak with her, if the legal team hadn’t passed down such firm no-contact instructions…what then? What might he have learned?

  He could’ve—at the very least—given her the opportunity to defend herself. After all they’d shared, he owed her that much. He’d tarnished all their perfect memories together by refusing her the basic right of telling her side of the story.

  Todd had assured him that Heidi would get the chance in court, but Bradley was skeptical. He’d hired, at Todd’s insistence, the best lawyers that money could buy. They’d paint her as such a villain that, by the time she got to speak her piece, the jury would already have turned against her.

  He didn’t try to kid himself that maybe she would’ve hired a good defense; he was pretty confident she was low on funds since he and his people had effectively ended her career.

  Neither of them had gotten closure, and he could feel it in his heart, like a hole had been torn open and healed poorly, without the aid of emotional stitches.

  Bradley couldn’t think about it anymore. His mind was careening into depression, and on the so-called Best Day of His Life, it was too much.

  Without anything else to do, he wandered to his bed, stripped down to his briefs, and sat on the edge of the mattress. He took a sip of water, and then queued up a podcast on his phone. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep without the sound of something to drown out his thoughts.

  Bradley listened to the entire podcast, which was on the way Genghis Khan had shaped history, and what lessons could be learned from his conquests. Ordinarily, he would have been asleep a quarter of the way in, but this time, he made it all the way through the hour. His phone went silent, having been set to stop playing podcasts after the current episode was over. He reached for it and reset the app so that it would play background noise throughout the entire night, non-stop.

  By the following morning, he’d listened to every podcast he had downloaded on his phone. The sleep had fallen somewhere between restless and non-existent.

  Wearily, he sat up in bed, confronted with a rather painful realization: he needed to get in touch with Heidi.

  It would be awkward. No, not just awkward—awfully, gut-wrenchingly miserable. It gave him stomach cramps
just to think of potentially talking with her again. But it was the right thing to do.

  He knew that some part of him had to have answers, and she deserved closure as much as he did. For the first time in months, he felt like he was embarking on the right path. He felt like he was doing the emotionally responsible thing, which would make his mom just as proud as him winning the Super Bowl. Because it was what a true man would do—address issues, talk frankly, and be open to truth.

  Bradley grabbed his laptop. No time like the present to start a hero’s journey. He assumed that she’d blocked his number, so he began to look for her social media accounts. Every last one had been deleted. What the fuck?

  This would be a bad sign from anyone, but was even more alarming given that Heidi’s very livelihood revolved (at least in part) around being on social media. What did it mean, that her web presence had apparently vanished? He shook his head, discouraged and worried.

  He had saved her number in his phone, and decided that he had to give it a shot. Head spinning, he found her contact, and pressed ‘call.’ His heart was firmly in his throat, beating a mile a minute. Only seconds later, though, he heard a robotic voice say that the number he was trying to reach was no longer in service.

  Oh, God. Had she left the country? No, no couldn’t be that, you can’t leave the States when you have a pending court case. Maybe this was just a kind message from the phone company, which actually meant you’d been blocked by the person, but they wanted to let you down easy? A cursory web search on some chat boards told him this was not the case. Had she been harassed by his fans? Did they give her so much grief that she had to disconnect form the entire world, for her own safety and mental health?

  Growing increasingly concerned, Bradley made a last-ditch effort. He found the number of her apartment management company, and gave them a ring. A woman answered in a snarky voice and asked what he wanted.

  “Do you have any contact information for Heidi Morris?”

  “No,” she replied caustically.

  “She’s the woman that lives in apartment 2083?”

  There was a sigh on the end, and the sound of fingernails tapping on a keyboard.

  “No,” the receptionist said. “The tenant in 2083 is a Hernandez. No Morris.”

  “When did they move in?”

  “Few months ago,” she said lazily, clearly annoyed at the question blitz.

  He hung up without bothering to thank her, which wasn’t like him. He was swamped with fear for Heidi. She wouldn’t have moved out of her sweet digs unless shit had absolutely hit the fan.

  He reddened. Of course shit had hit the fan. He was a football star, the shining hope of American sports. He got out of media jams with relative ease; even when the going had gotten tough with Coach Simon a while back, he had been confident he’d come out okay. After all, people don’t care so much about your private morality when you’re winning them trophies.

  Heidi, on the other hand, was a “civilian,” so to speak. She didn’t have the insulation of a specific and wildly acclaimed skill set, or the backing of an enormous league with serious financial sway. Heidi was one woman, alone against a wall of hatred directed at her by everyone who thought they knew the full story.

  And he was the one who had abandoned her there.

  Chapter 18

  Heidi

  “Okay, honey, need anything else?”

  Heidi turned to her father, smiled, and shook her head.

  “I’m good, Dad. You can stop worrying now.”

  “A father never stops worrying. It’s our full-time job.”

  He went to pull her into a hug, then awkwardly stopped, trying to maneuver his way around Heidi’s growing belly.

  “You can hug me, you know; I’m not gonna explode,” she said with a laugh.

  Gingerly, he reached back in, and this time, wrapped her in a full bear-hug. She nestled her head in the crook of his shoulder, using his shirt fabric to dry the tears that, unbeknownst to him, were welling in her eyes.

  Heidi had moved back in with her parents a few weeks back. To their enormous credit, when she’d called and told them the story—that she was flat broke, and the baby daddy was effectively MIA—they’d immediately started prepping her childhood room for her return.

  At first, she’d said that wouldn’t be necessary; maybe they could just give her a short-term loan? It was painful, being an adult and begging her parents for money. But no, they’d insisted she move home so that they could care for her. She reflected, for possibly the hundredth time, how damn lucky she was to have them as parents.

  Moving down to Miami hadn’t been hard; after all, there was nothing left for her in Orlando. Heidi had packed up her things, shoved them all into her car, and made the drive downstate only a day after speaking with her parents.

  Her previous apartment—the “nice” one, as she now thought of it—had come pre-furnished, so when she’d had to leave because money got tight, she’d had next to nothing to take with her. She’d moved into an unfurnished studio apartment in a less “nice” area, and had been scrambling, day and night, to find a job, but hadn’t had the time to acquire any furniture besides a mattress. It hadn’t been a good way to live, especially not with a baby on the way.

  So, yeah. She’d moved back to Miami. What else could she do? It was the healthiest choice for her unborn child.

  That was another thing she hadn’t expected: the responsibility of parenthood. Suddenly, the baby motivated each and every decision she made, from where to live all the way down to how much salt to put on her food. The immense change had happened overnight—no, in a second. The second she’d seen the positive sign on the stick, she’d known everything would be different.

  It had been strange moving back in with her parents. They still lived in her childhood home, which was absolutely gorgeous. The house was situated at the end of a cul-de-sac, the façade draped with enormous palm fronds. It was in a neoclassical Spanish style, with red brick and twisting iron-working. Her parents had decorated with taste, and she had been proud, as a kid, to show her friends just how nice her home was.

  Her bedroom was the best part, in her humble opinion. It had a deck, which was covered by a trellis holding up strings of climbing ivy, where she used to read by candlelight in the summertime. The bed was swathed in white chiffon, forming a canopy that blew in the slightest breeze. A row of dolls from around the world—she’d collected them on her travels—was perched atop the book shelf, which itself was a marvel, and packed to the gills.

  Thus, moving back in had been bittersweet. She loved her parents, and her home, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of isolation. How was it possible to live with the two people who loved you the most in the world, and still feel absolutely alone?

  Today, her dad had insisted on driving her to the clinic for her mid-pregnancy scan. She’d shaken her head, telling him he really didn’t have to, but Tom wasn’t hearing any argument. There was no point fighting her dad when he set his mind to something; he may have looked a little older and frailer now, but he still had the heart of a lion.

  They’d been in the beige waiting room for almost thirty minutes, and she was beginning to grow listless. Picking up yet another teen magazine, she thumbed through its pages, and stopped suddenly. In the centerfold was Bradley, taking up two whole pages with his wide shoulders and smirking grin.

  Heidi felt sick.

  “Hey, Dad,” she said shakily, “I’m gonna go to the bathroom.”

  He looked at her with worried eyes. “You look a little ill, kid, what happened?”

  “I think maybe just some morning sickness,” she lied.

  “Do you want me to help you there?”

  “Help me to the bathroom? Nah, I can still open doors by myself,” she said with a laugh, and kissed him on the forehead.

  Heidi crossed the waiting area, took the bathroom key off the wall, and went down the hall to the women’s restroom. Safely inside, she locked herself in a stall and began to shake,
rocking back and forth, arms wrapped around herself for comfort.

  She had tried so hard not to think of Bradley today, and there he was, staring out of a glossy page, deep into her eyes. It wasn’t fair.

  Because, ultimately, he should be there. He should be holding her hand when she found out the gender of their baby, should brush her hair back with an affectionate look, overcome with love for the mother of his child. She scaled back her expectations to something reasonable: he should at least know that the baby existed.

  She’d tried to get in contact with him several times. Yeah, she knew she wasn’t supposed to do it, and that it put her court case in serious jeopardy, but whatever. He deserved to know. She also hadn’t told the lawyers her parents had hired when she’d at last told them the situation.

  They’d gleaned some of it from the press, she thought, and she’d divulged bits and pieces, but they hadn’t really put it together. When it all at last lined up—that his management had screwed up her career, that Bradley was the father—they’d refused to sit idly by.

  “We’re gonna fight this,” her mom had insisted. As a real estate lawyer, she had connections all over town, and most all of them owed her a favor.

  Dina Morris had assembled her daughter’s legal team in the span of only two days. Heidi had stopped trying to dissuade her parents from helping her. As a soon-to-be parent herself, she understood that she would take similarly drastic measures to keep her baby out of harm’s way.

  Running a hand over the back of her hair to smooth out the tangles, Heidi gathered her energy. She needed to be strong today—and every day for the rest of her life.

  Still emotionally wobbly, she unlocked the stall, and walked back to the waiting room. She found her father chatting amicably with another pregnant woman.

  “So, when are you due?” Tom asked.

  “Any day now,” the woman replied, smiling with a mixture of nerves and excitement.