by C. C. Piper
Taking the lead on this might be the first in a series of steps to make that a reality. I had to do it.
So I would.
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket, and I glanced at the time. Eleven o’clock at night. It was late to be at the office, even for me. But over the past week, I’d worked fourteen-hour days to prepare for the upcoming merger. It would take place right after the new year, and I didn’t want to fail. Couldn’t afford to.
So here I was in the office with my best friend’s number lighting up my screen. I considered not taking it. What kind of friend makes a social call at this hour? But then, I realized in his time zone, it was only ten. Late enough to be home without being in bed. So, rather than decline the call, I hit “accept.”
“Hey, Jax.”
“What’s the good word, Trevor?” my best friend asked into the phone, sounding cheerful.
It was still a bit odd to hear him sound so upbeat, for four years he’d sounded clinically depressed every time I spoke to him. But that was all over now.
Instead of answering his question, I hit him with one of my own. “How’s married life treating you?”
“It’s awesome. And Alec is starting to pull up on furniture now. I think he’ll be walking pretty soon.”
Alec, Jax’s son, had been born nine months prior. My best friend had been thrilled to be present at the birth. Their first baby, a daughter named Callie, had been born unbeknownst to him, so holding his wife Roxy’s hand while encouraging her to push had been tremendously significant to him. I still remember showing up with blue balloons to the hospital, only to step inside the room and see him gazing at his son in awe, tears running down his cheeks.
In years past, I would’ve raked him over the coals for such a thing. But that time, after having seen what he and his wife had been through, I didn’t have the heart to yank his chain. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t give him shit for other stuff, though.
“You two still fucking on the couch at every available opportunity?” I had a huge smile on my face as I said this. I’d stopped over to bring something by once, and they’d forgotten I was coming. So instead, I got to see them come. Both of them, right before my eyes.
“Man, uncool. I really wish you’d let that go. And don’t you dare mention it in front of Roxy when you get here. She still hides her face every time you mention it.”
I knew that. I enjoyed that. Yet, his mention of my upcoming visit reminded me of what I hadn’t gotten around to telling him.
“Hey, look, Jax. I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m not going to make it for Christmas this year after all.”
“What?” he sounded indignant. “But we’ve been planning on you being here. Callie and Alec are growing like weeds, and you’re missing it.”
I knew that. I was missing a lot of things. But staying here couldn’t be helped. Although part of me felt disappointed, another part—a part I actively hid from Jax and Roxy both—felt relieved that I wouldn’t now have to be around all that blissed-out lovey dovey stuff for forty-eight hours straight.
“I know, and I’m sorry. But this opportunity came up at work, and it’s a big deal, you know? I need to do it. I’m still a junior executive and need to prove myself however I can.”
There was a lengthy pause. “I get it,” he told me, but truthfully, I didn’t think he did. “Just get back here when you can, okay? New York might as well be as far away as London at this point.”
Fuck. Guilt trip, much? He probably didn’t mean it that way, but comparing his old situation—which hadn’t been his choice—to mine as if they were the same, sucked balls. I wasn’t going to call him on it, though. Not when I was already letting him down.
“Listen, man, I gotta go.”
“Yeah, okay. Take care of yourself, Trev. And happy holidays.”
“You, too,” I said, then disconnected.
Today, I’d come into the office at six in the morning, and it was now after eleven. A seventeen-hour day was a new record for me, but I doubted it would be the last. Planting the heels of my hands over my eye sockets, I rested them until my vision went cool and black, then wiped away the grit.
I stood, realized I was too fucking tired to drive, and clicked on my Uber app. It was time to head home.
I’d been too out of it to stand in the shower, so I’d brushed my teeth, dropped trou’, and fell listlessly into my bed.
Then, I was galloping like a horse around the pristine tile and stainless steel of my kitchen. Like, actually pretending to ride a horse with the reins and everything. A child was holding onto my head, its legs on either side of my neck, whooping and hollering out, “Giddyap! Giddyap!”
I saw our reflection in the reflective surface of my backsplash and recognized the child. It was Callie, Jax’s daughter. “Faster,” she yelled then, squealing when dream me picked up the pace. “Faster, Daddy.”
Daddy?
And then I realized, here in this dream, fantasy, alternate reality, or whatever it was, I had somehow filled Jax’s shoes. A woman laughed, and I turned, thinking I’d see Roxy behind me, but it wasn’t my best friend’s wife at all. It was Jessie Souza.
Jessica.
She approached me with a wide smile and so much love in those jade eyes of hers that I nearly burst. Her skin, a few shades darker than mine, made a breathtaking contrast against my hand as she reached out to me, lacing our fingers together. She was beautiful, and Callie was beautiful, and even I was beautiful as we all stood there contentedly next to my colossal fridge.
The next thing I knew, my alarm clock was blaring at me. I slapped at it, nearly flinging it across my bedroom. Discombobulated, I sat there on my mattress, scowling hard enough that the skin of my face felt twisted too tight. As I slowly absorbed that my idyllic little scene had no basis whatsoever in reality, I felt myself come fully awake.
More alert now and twice as grumpy, I thrust out from beneath my bed linens. My windows—expensive floor-to-ceiling numbers—remained dark, which meant dawn had not yet broken. I was able to see the famous Manhattan skyline, though, with the Chrysler building, Empire State, and the Freedom Tower gleaming in the background.
That’s why I’d agreed to rent this apartment. While it was no penthouse, it did overlook Central Park and was high enough to garner some fantastic views.
It cost a pretty penny, but I enjoyed the prestige of it being mine. Living here helped me to feel like Jax wasn’t outdoing me. Here, I could feel like his equal. Like I was just as capable as he was of having a successful life.
And maybe, just maybe, when the requirements of my job settled into something easier to handle, I could quit trying to prove myself. I could stop relying on the Wish Maker to provide me with dates. Instead, I could focus on discovering a woman who would see all that I had to offer and decide that despite my quirks and sexual depravity, I was worth being with.
That I was worthy of their love.
7
Jessie
JANUARY
At eight that night, I had to drag myself up the three flights of stairs to our apartment through sheer force of will. I was just so goddamn exhausted all the time. Between student teaching five days a week, my Zumba class, and taking on a handful of personal training clients, I was dead beat at the end of each day.
My hands shaking, I unlocked the door and pushed myself to our loveseat. Ashley appeared from inside our kitchen.
“Hello, sunshine,” she called out, but then getting a good look at me, hurried over. She laid her palm on my forehead as if checking for a temperature. “You’re all clammy, and you’ve got dark circles under your eyes. Are you sick?”
For the past week, our school and work schedules had overlapped, so we’d only caught glimpses of one another on our way in or out.
“Nuh-uh,” I said, shaking my head. “Just wiped.”
While the money from my Wish Maker date had helped a great deal, I’d decided doing it more than once was out of the question. I’d done it because I’d had to, and
I’d experienced lots of nights that were worse. But right now, I could tell myself it’d been a fluke. A one-time aberration. If I did it again, I’d have to call having sex for money what it was, and I didn’t ever want to do that.
Ashley dumped some Ragu into a bowl and put it in the microwave as she boiled some spaghetti noodles on one of the two burners on our stovetop. Within moments, the smell of tomato sauce filled the room, and I groaned with longing.
“Hungry?” my BFF asked me.
I grunted at her and she snickered, a pasta spoon in her hand.
“You remind me of my aunt when she was pregnant with Carson.” Carson was Ashley’s baby cousin. Her aunt had been going through menopause and had thought her lack of menstruation meant she was no longer fertile. Turned out, she still was. “You do, though. I hear you getting up all hours of the night, and then you’re sluggish during the day. You’re hungry, grouchy, and not yourself.”
Fatigued as I was, my bladder chose that instant to not just become full, but to do so urgently. “Shit,” I mumbled, as I stumbled into the bathroom.
“That’s another thing,” my friend shouted through the door, which was completely unnecessary. The door was paper thin. “You’re going pee more, too.”
“Maybe it’s an infection,” I said without raising my voice. I wondered how bad it would be if I fell asleep on the pot.
“Then maybe you should go to the doctor.”
“I hate doctors.” I did, too. Well, hate is a strong word. But after the worst night of my life, which had subsequently led to me drifting around like a vagabond, I had to go to a free clinic. One of the doctors there apparently resented having to give away his time without getting paid, because he treated me with about as much warmth as a bedpan that had been stuck in the freezer.
“I’m serious, sweetie.”
I came back out. “Yeah, me, too.”
“Here,” she said, sprinkling Dollar Tree parmesan, that wasn’t really parmesan, on the top of our full plates. “Maybe this’ll make you feel better.”
I ate, took a very short shower, then slept. And then, as per usual lately, I turned over in my twin bed and couldn’t fall back asleep. It had been like this for a while, and I didn’t know why. I’d been a bit stressed out, but I’d never suffered insomnia this severe before. Needing to go to the bathroom again, I headed in there and took a gander at my cotton panties.
It occurred to me that I didn’t remember the last time I had a period. But irregular periods were normal for me. I’d have one two weeks apart, then skip for months at a time. The longest spread had lasted for four months. This time, I hadn’t had one in three. Oh, well.
I laid flat on my back and peered up at our rather dingy ceiling. That dinginess was our fault. Ashley and I both loved to burn candles, and the smoke made the ceiling and walls all sooty.
Still, I didn’t want to give up the practice. I loved the smell of them too much.
I focused on a spot that looked darker than the rest, my mind rewinding to the conversation I’d had with Ashley. She’d been so silly, comparing me to her aunt. It almost sounded like she thought I might be knocked up or something. I wasn’t. What a crazy idea. I’d only had sex once in the past year, and that’d been a desperate one-off to help pay for college and rent.
Granted, it’d been a very good one-off. Fabulous, even.
My body had buzzed for days after that. In the best possible way.
But we’d used protection. Well, I assumed we did. I hadn’t been able to visually verify anything since I’d been blindfolded at the time. All four of those times.
Surely, Trevor had been responsible, though. Right?
I bolted up into a seated position, suddenly feeling a little too awake. Throwing on some clothes and slip-on shoes, I tossed my wallet and keys into my pocket and skittered down the block to the twenty-four-hour pharmacy. It was just after three in the morning, but I needed to confirm that I wasn’t …
No. I couldn’t even allow myself to think it.
I bought a couple of stick tests and raced back home, holing up in the bathroom. For a long minute, I held the bright pink box in my hands, feeling afraid. But I hadn’t come this far to back down now. It was time to woman up, put my big girl panties on, and discover the truth.
Whatever that was.
Following the directions to the letter, I took the first one. Then I took the other right afterwards. It felt like if I just did this quickly, everything would be all right. Both came back with the same result. After that, I sort of slid off the closed toilet to crumple like a twisted pretzel onto the floor by the pedestal sink. I couldn’t accept what I’d seen, even though I was still staring at it this very minute.
I squinted down at the two unmistakable pink lines and had to put my head between my knees.
The sound of rushing water filled my ears, and I had no idea if the noise was real or coming from inside my own head. My body felt hot, then cold, then hot again, before every one of my limbs seemed to go totally numb except for my fingers, which were tingling.
I closed my eyes and pressed my temple against the porcelain of the sink. I needed to ground myself somehow because it felt as if I’d been jettisoned out an airlock and into outer space.
I lived in a postage stamp-sized apartment and paid less rent than my roommate, which I could still barely afford. I was single and so close to obtaining my bachelor’s degree that I could taste it. I was living with my best friend, dependent on my part-time jobs, and often had to scrimp and save just to help Ashley make our ends meet.
And despite the fact that I felt like my life was hanging by the thinnest of threads, my two over-the-counter tests had both come back positive.
I was pregnant.
8
Trevor
I greeted the end of another long day with my feet up in my recliner, a craft beer, and a football game on my big screen. It’d been one of those days where everything had been like pulling teeth. I kept playing phone tag with not one but three of my clients. Lars was on vacation which meant I had to cover both his workload and my own. And on top of everything else, both the Dow Jones and NASDAQ index had tanked across the board.
Not Great Depression or 2008 recession tanked, but it’d gone down steeply. My clients had lost money and so had I. Not that I was all that worried over the long term. To be a good investor, you had to see these sorts of dips in the market as a matter of doing business, and I did. Yet it still sucked because getting screamed at or consoling clients for hours and hours straight did not a fun day make.
But hey, it was a living.
I did my best to lose myself in the game on the screen. My Saints were playing the 49ers, and I always rooted for my home team. I had since I was a toddler. Some of my happier memories involved sitting with my dad and watching those gold helmets with our beloved fleur-de-lis throw that pigskin across the field.
It also helped me to feel a little less homesick.
The Saints had just taken the lead when a knock issued from my door. I contemplated ignoring that knock. Although I’d had a busy social life back in New Orleans, here I’d made no real friends. I didn’t go out to bars with my coworkers, so I hadn’t really bonded with any of them. Lars had invited me to go out once or twice, but since I’d felt the need to stay in the office working later than him, I’d always begged off.
So, since I had no social life and hadn’t asked for any food to be delivered on this particular night, I had no idea who might be on the other side of my door.
The knock came again, louder and more urgent this time, so with a groan of reluctance, I hauled my ass out of my extremely comfy seat to go answer it. I peered through the peephole, but all I could see was a shapely-looking shadow, as if a woman was standing off to the side. Bemused, I eased open my door to find a surprise.
Jessie Souza. Although I continued to think of her as Jessica. I called her by that name repeatedly during the night we’d spent together.
And she’d liked it. If h
er screams of rapturous delight were any indication, anyway.
I hadn’t seen her in months. At least three months, in fact. She was still astonishingly appealing to me. But then, it occurred to me that I hadn’t told her where I lived. How the hell had she found my private residence?
“I need to speak with you,” she said, barreling in past me.
“By all means, I guess,” I answered, struggling to bite back my sarcasm. I didn’t want to be rude to her, but she’d barged in on me uninvited without any warning at all. I started to close my door, but then merely pushed it to. She wouldn’t be staying. I’d make sure of it.
“Listen …” she began, but then paused, her mouth opening and shutting several times. For the first time I noticed that her mannerisms were off. She seemed jittery, as if she’d had way too much coffee. Yet her eyes had dark semi-circles underneath them as if she hadn’t slept.
While I couldn’t help being annoyed—I maintained a stringent rule to never ever re-establish contact with any of my former Wish Maker dates—her peculiar behavior did cause me to feel a flicker of concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m … pregnant.”
I blinked at her, stunned. “Congratulations?” I said cautiously, my words coming out as more of an inquiry than anything else. Why had she tracked me down to tell me this? There was no possibility that I had anything to do with her … condition. I went out of my way to avoid such eventualities.
“You’re the father.”
“I most certainly am not,” I spat out at her, irritated now. Not once had I had sex without a condom. Never, ever. I’d always been extremely disciplined in that regard. My bedroom habits might be kinky, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t careful. If anything, my preferences made me even more careful. “And I don’t appreciate you popping in here unannounced and casting such an accusation at me.”