by Cherry Kay
“Kelsey woke me up, I just got off of the phone with her.” Adam looks guilty and he starts to apologize but I shake my head dismissively. “It’s fine, really. Kelsey isn’t one to get upset and hold a grudge. She understands and we’re good.” Adam nods and he sits up, folding his legs in and running a hand through his hair. I realize belatedly that he is shirtless…wearing only pajama bottoms.
“She was pissed with me when I called her. I’d be pissed with me too, I guess.” I force my eyes from his chest and stomach up to his intense gaze.
“She doesn’t hate you, it’s alright.” Adam licks his lips distractingly and his features fall into further upset.
“I bet your family does, though.” At the mention of them my jaw locks and I force myself not to get worked up.
“They want nothing to do with me, so be it. We don’t have to waste a thought and energy over their feelings.” I snap at him unintentionally and Adam purses his lips, but doesn’t continue with that subject.
“There is food downstairs, I made steak fajitas.” Adam gets up from the queen sized bed and pulls me up. I am really hungry, I didn’t eat much today.
Once in the kitchen Adam fixes me a couple of fajitas over a bed of salad. This looks like something I’d order out of a restaurant.
“You cook too?” I ask him, impressed.
He smiles cockily, flashing his teeth and winking at me. “I do it all, baby.” I giggle and take a bite of the fajita. It’s delicious.
“My goodness this tastes like…” I grasp for an appropriate synonym and the only word that pops into my head is ‘sex’.
“Oh don’t worry, I know, I know.” He says jokingly and winks. He watches me eat and I break the silence.
“Did you eat already?” I ask and he nods before resting against the island bar.
“I managed to get all your stuff moved in too, I hope you don’t mind, I had my cousin help me. He owns a moving company not too far from campus.” My eyebrows raise, I never thought to ask Adam about his family.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
Adam shakes his head. “No, I was raised by my mom and my aunt. My cousin and I grew up like brothers. They are my only family. I gotta tell you my mom will be thrilled she’s finally getting a grandbaby. There’s nothing worse than a Polish woman moaning about how she’ll die before she gets to see her grandchildren in real life.” I laugh, clearly envisioning a loving mother doting on her son to settle down and have a family.
“I’m sure she envisioned you to be married first, though…” I say and Adam’s expression sobers.
“No, she’ll pretty much be happy, either way. As long as the baby will have a loving mother and father she’ll be happy.” I hear the double meaning to his words loud and clear. He wants me to be happy with the fact that Little Bean will have Adam and I in his life, we don’t need my parents.
“So I was thinking that tomorrow we could go shopping for a Christmas tree after we get the rest of your stuff from Kelsey’s place.” Adam changes the subject and I’m glad for it.
“Yeah of course, I love Christmas time, putting up the tree especially.” Adam smiles, satisfied.
“Me too…my mother and aunt and cousin will be over for that tomorrow, so you’ll get to meet them.” Adam adds that as a casual aside and my eyes widen. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to make a good impression on someone’s parents. Now I’m meeting Adam’s entire family in one night?
“Um…okay.” I reply, at a loss, and Adam smiles at me apologetically.
“I know this is all fast, but you’ll like them, and they’ll love you, I promise.” I hope he’s right.
“But won’t it come as a shock to them…? That you got one of your students pregnant and she’s now living with you and everything?” I ask, my words nearly stumbling over each other.
“I told them already…” Adam informs me and I relax a little more.
“Well, okay then.” Wide eyed, I take another bite of fajita.
“So when do you start your internship?”
I tell Adam about the position as an Editor’s assistant and that I’d start the Monday after New Year’s Day. They’ll be paying me half of what a regular Editor’s assistant would be making, of course, since I’m an intern. But since I’m graduating soon, it can very easily turn into a full-blown position at the company. They're a smaller publishing house but growing, and it’s a great opportunity for the future. I’d be doing exactly what I’ve dreamed about doing for so long now.
After I finish eating, Adam shows me the eat-in kitchen area and I recognize my dining room set. The round glass table with wooden base and complementing dining chairs go surprisingly well with the space and color scheme of the kitchen. We move into the family room and I see my furniture doesn’t look half bad in the space, though its apartment sized so it's not half bad. Moving on upstairs into my room everything looks exactly as I had it set up in my apartment.
My chest tightens when I realize he must have remembered exactly how it was set up from when he spent the night at my place. I hug Adam tightly when I thank him and kiss him on the cheek goodnight before he walks down the hall to his room. I take a deep breath and release almost all of the stress that has been my companion for the last few weeks. If Adam was going to step up and be a father to Little Bean then we’d be okay.
Chapter Six
My mom walks into the house and kisses me on both cheeks before demanding to know where Ali is, in fluent Polish. My mother, Halina, is sixty-five, yet looks not a day over forty. How our family inherited such good genes, I will never know; usually we Polish age like cheese rather than wine. Following my mom in, is her sister, my aunt Ania. She kisses me on the cheek and hurries in from the cold. My cousin Gabriel is last through the door, he touches his knuckles to mine and I shut the door behind them.
“So where is she? We're all eager to meet her, Adi.” My mother asks me in English this time, using her nickname for me, I gesture for them to walk into the family room. My mother is at the head of the pack to go and meet Ali.
Ali is just stepping out of the kitchen with a bottle of water in hand and she sets it down when she sees us all enter the wide-open space. She smiles shyly, but genuinely and something shifts into place in my chest. I can’t explain it, but this feels right.
“Look at how beautiful my new daughter is!” My mother instantly falls in love with Ali, which is understandable, and pulls her into a warm hug. Mom holds Ali at arm’s length and aunt Ania studies Ali along with her sister and finally smiles warmly. Ania steals Ali from my mom and embraces her in a tight hug.
“Ali, this is my mother, mama Lina, and my aunt Ania. Oh and this is my cousin Gabriel.” I tack on and Ali laughs at the look on Gabriel’s face at my almost forgetting about him.
“Yeah I only grew up with the man and he forgets about me. Classic.” Gabriel says jokingly and surprises I think, everyone in the room, apart from Ali, by hugging her in greeting. Gabriel isn’t one for affection; he only ever hugs or kisses his mom and his wife, who had to work late tonight and couldn’t be here. So this is new, to say the least.
“It’s nice to meet you all, sorry if I’m a little shy.” Ali says, sweet as ever. I want to tuck her into my side to make her feel more comfortable. Mama Lina obviously has the same thought and takes Ali’s hand, attaching herself to Ali’s side.
“No need for this shyness Ali, you are family.” I’ve never been so grateful for my mom as I am now. I swear that woman is the best I know.
The night goes amazingly well. Ali really hits it off with my mom and aunt, subsequently gaining approval from Gabriel. To see Ali having such a good time decorating the tree and joking around with my family makes me unexplainably possessive. Ali’s place is here with me and I want her to feel the same way I do.
An idea forms in my head and takes root when my family gets ready to leave. Ali promises to stop by my mother and aunt’s house to learn how Christmas Eve Uszka is made. I want Ali to have al
l of her family around her, especially during holiday season. She has to be feeling lonely, not being able to talk to her own mom and carry on their Christmas traditions. When I used Ali’s phone to get Kelsey’s phone number earlier, I snagged her parents’ numbers too. It says a lot that Ali has them under their formal names and not ‘mom’ or ‘dad’.
“I really like your family. Your mom especially, she’s great.” Ali says after they’ve all left. She washes the last bit of dishes and starts to dry them.
“Yeah, I could tell they really love you, I told you they would.” I smile knowingly and Ali bumps me with her hip playfully, smiling to herself.
Her hair is pulled up into a ponytail and the usual curly culprits fall into her face. My fingers itch to brush them behind her ear, but I just don’t know how she’ll take that. Or if she even wants me to touch her intimately ever again.
I watch her move around the kitchen for a moment and decide that I’ll never know for sure if I don’t try. Stepping forward to intercept her on the way back to the dish drying rack, I go all in and cup her face in my hands to press a soft kiss to her lips. Ali gasps, shock stilling her completely.
My hands move from her face to pull her waist closer to mine. After a moment’s hesitation, she softens and melts into me willingly. Her plush lips move against mine in a heated kiss. My hands are just about to slide down to cup her round bottom when she breaks the kiss and pulls away.
“I didn’t…expect that.” She whispers almost hoarsely as she tries to calm her breathing. I see the heat in her eyes before she can control it.
“Didn’t expect that I’d still want you like this?” I ask, trying to get into her head.
Her eyes are unsure and I watch for any other emotion to cross her features “No…yes…I didn’t expect you to kiss me. This would make things complicated, we’re supposed to be more like roommates, remember?”
I shake my head and decide to be straight up with her. “Ali I let you think that so you’d feel comfortable moving in with me…I want you, I still want you. That hasn’t changed even though I tried to force it to, it hasn’t changed.”
Ali stares at me wide eyed and I watch as a question takes form in her mind. “You want me…but you still don’t know why you do, correct?”
I take a deep breath and then sigh as I exhale. “You’re special…I don’t know why yet, you’re right about that, but you’re special to me and I won’t deny it anymore.”
Ali’s eyes scan my face and she bites that delicious lip, her expression still unsure. “I don’t know how I feel about this yet Adam, everything is just happening so fast, can you just let me catch up a bit?”
I nod. If she needs time I can give it. As long as she comes here every day and calls my house home, I can give her time. After all, she is pregnant with my baby.
“That’s perfectly fine. As long as you know where I stand.” Ali nods and she silently continues on with the dishes.
I decide to leave her to her thoughts, hoping they are about how much I just turned her on. I head out back to make a couple of phone calls. The only way I’ll prove to Ali that I’m not just messing around and I really want something with her, is if I fix her relationship with her parents. I’ll do just that. After pulling on my coat and grabbing my gloves, I walk into the softly falling snow. Nothing is sticking to the ground yet, but give it a couple of days and that will definitely change.
I pull out my phone and dial ‘Shatrice King (Ali’s mom).’ She answers on the third ring.
“Hello, how can I help you?” She has the efficient tone of someone who maybe works in a hospital setting, getting right down to business with no time to waste. I can hear an echo of Ali’s voice in her mother’s.
“Hi this is Adam-Adam Gwozdek. We’ve never had the chance to formally meet or anything, but I’m…” I pause, unsure of how to continue that sentence, what was I to Ali? Her teacher? The man that got her pregnant? Her baby daddy?
“You’re the man who got my daughter pregnant and ruined her life.” Mrs. King finishes for me crisply and I press my lips together. This is going to be harder than I thought. I figured Ali’s mother would be easier to appeal to.
“I got her pregnant, yes, but I did not ruin her life. You did that—excuse me you and your husband did that by cutting her off and practically throwing her out on the street to fend for herself.” I close my eyes in horror at what I just said and how sharply I said it. This isn’t going to go well.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand right now, Adam, but the moment your child makes a stupid mistake that will color the rest of her life for the worst, you can get back to me. How could you expect us to possibly support Alicia and an illegitimate child?
God forbid, she feels she could take advantage of us and get pregnant again after the kid is born! She would only be on a downhill spiral and we simply cut her off so she won’t do any damage to my husband and I and the rest of our family.” Disgusted, I begin to see why Ali won’t even talk about them.
“Do you have any idea of how shallow you sound? You make it as if Ali is sixteen and a teen mom. She’ll be graduating from college by the time the baby is born and is already starting her career. How you could abandon your own child in such a time of need is despicable.” I’m beyond livid and I don’t care for choosing my words carefully anymore.
“Ha! A career is not in reading books. We thought we could eventually sway her to a better path there, but it became too much when she got pregnant, that we can’t change.” The woman’s tone is so final it sounds as if Ali is dead to her. “I thought I raised Ali right, not to be the kind of girl that gets pregnant out of wedlock.
It’s the worse disappointment to realize that I failed as a parent.” Shatrice says this as if it were a thought running through her mind. “I’m sorry, Adam but there is nothing you can say or do. We want nothing to do with Alicia.” With that, the line goes dead.
Frustrated beyond belief, I chuck my phone into the woods behind the house and groan in angered exasperation. After several deep breaths I go find my phone and slip it into my pants pocket before heading back into the house. Ali is curled up on the couch watching TV and sipping a cup of tea.
“What were you doing out there? It’s too cold to be outside.”
I hang up my coat and slide the glass door closed before stepping fully into the family room.
“I had to take a phone call. What are you watching?” I sit on the couch next to Ali and drape an arm around her shoulders, stealing some of her warmth. She stiffens for a fraction of a second before relaxing against me.
“The Polar Express. It’s one of my favorite Christmas movies.” I smile, Ali will make a good mom. I think the only mom who would actually enjoy sitting through cartoons and kid movies with Little Bean.
“Do you know all the words to this one too?” I tease and she smiles at me slyly before proceeding to recite every line in tandem with the characters. I can’t help but laugh and she giggles. The sound does more to warm me than the crackling fire across from us. This would never get old, that’s for sure.
Ali falls asleep against my chest while watching the other Christmas specials. She feels so good against me that I don’t dare wake her or take her upstairs to her room. Instead, I stretch out along the couch and fall asleep beside her.
In the morning, my phone vibrating in my pants pocket wakes us both. Ali stirs and I fish the phone out of my pocket awkwardly while holding her against me securely. It’s just my fucking luck that the phone falls face up onto the floor and the name Shawn King is displayed bright and bold for Ali’s waking eyes to see.
“What…why is my dad calling you?” She sits up and grabs my phone from the floor. I’m at a loss for words as she looks at me for an explanation, one I haven’t quite formulated yet. She hands the phone to me and crosses her arms over her chest. “Well, answer it,” she says angrily and I send her a pleading glance before answering the phone.
“Hello?” Ali watches me closely and my heart
hammers in my chest. This is so not the time to screw up with her.
“Adam Gwozdek, correct?” The man’s deep, authoritative voice sounds across the line and I give him the confirmation. “I decided to give you a call before you tried my cell. I understand you think you mean well in this mess, but do not call my wife again. You have no right to harass us over a decision we made concerning our daughter.” My jaw clenches in anger at the brisk tone of his voice.
“Fine, I understand, sir,” I say with reluctance.
There’s no arguing with him in front of Ali. Without a reply, he hangs up the phone. Ali gives me a look; she doesn’t even have to explain why it’s a bad idea to reach out to her parents. I know now. She simply stands and walks upstairs, shaking her head.
Chapter 7
She’s pissed at me. It’s obvious, as she hasn’t said a word in my direction all morning, not even when I left and came back from shoveling snow at Lucy’s. Just when I might have been making a little headway, I have to go and screw this up. Frustrated with myself, I pace around my bedroom trying to come up with my next move.
I know Ali has two older brothers…I wonder what her relationships with them is like. I could give one of them a call and try and get some help to make Ali’s parents see reason. But then, that would require me to steal Ali’s phone again for their numbers and I’m pretty sure she’ll move out at that point. Exasperated with myself, I sigh and flop down on the bed.
My phone rings and I see it’s Ali’s friend Kelsey calling me. Why would Kelsey be calling me? I stand up and walk over to my window, glancing out at the driveway, I see Ali’s car is still parked there.
I answer the phone, not knowing what to expect. “Hey, uh…Adam?” Kelsey greets me, unsure of whether I’m Adam or Dr. G. I stifle my sigh.
“Hi Kelsey, is everything alright?” I ask, more than curious as to what this call will be about.
“Yeah everything is fine, how are you doing?” I pause, at a loss. Why is she making small talk?