My Best Friend's Girl

by Dorothy Koomson

  Nate stared at me. His expression had frozen the second the words “you’re her father” had made sense in his head. His clear eyes burrowed into me as though waiting for me to recant it. No air came in or out of his mouth or nose, so I knew he wasn’t breathing. All of a sudden, his upper body lurched and he was taking big gulping breaths, the breaths of a man who’d been flung, fully clothed, into the big wide ocean of parenthood, and had only now broken the surface of the water.

  “Nate.” I reached out to touch him but he wrenched himself away.

  “What are you telling me?” he said. “What are you saying?”

  “Nate, it’s true. You’re her father.”

  He launched himself off the park bench, stood stock-still, jammed his hands into his hair, sat down again. His hands, the hands that had been erotically unbuttoning my coat minutes ago, went to his paled face. He rubbed his palms over his cheeks, then they went to his eyes.

  “No kids,” Nate said. “We always agreed, no kids. And now you’re telling me, what? I’ve got one?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re wrong. It has to be some kind of mistake.”

  I shook my head.

  “It has to be. I can’t be her father. It’s not possible.”

  “Did you use contraception when you slept with Adele?” I asked.

  Nate grimaced, closed his eyes, shook his head in shame.

  “Well, then it is possible,” I replied, my voice clipped and icy.

  “But she always said it was a married man she met through work. A one-night thing with a man who wasn’t capable of loving…” Nate’s voice trailed away as it dawned on him that what she’d said pretty much described him. Even the work thing because they had run into each other a few times at media parties before I met him.

  “It didn’t occur to you that she had a baby nine months after you slept with her?”

  “No. Why would it? She never let me know. Never gave me even the slightest hint…” He pushed his hands against his face again. “How long have you known?” he eventually asked from behind his fingers.

  I lowered my head, concentrated on my hands, which lay cold and motionless in my lap.

  “How long?” Nate repeated a little louder. I cowered a little more, waiting for his explosion.

  “That’s why you left,” he said. “I never understood why you wouldn’t talk to me, why you wouldn’t let me explain. You found out and you didn’t bloody tell me, you just…What the fuck!” He was off the seat again.

  “Adele didn’t want you to know,” I stated.

  He swung toward me. “Adele didn’t want me to know and you agreed with her?”

  “She’s Tegan’s mother. She didn’t want Tegan’s life disrupted. She said not to tell you.”

  “That’s all right, then,” he said. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” he shouted. “YOU WERE WITH ME, NOT HER, ME! YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME!”

  I was off the seat as well and marched up to him until our bodies were angrily butted together. “LIKE YOU TOLD ME YOU’D FUCKED MY BEST FRIEND, YOU MEAN?” I shouted back.

  He glared at me, then his top lip curled back in a sneer as he hissed, “Fuck off.” Then he stalked away, the dark night greedily gobbling him up as he went.

  My instinct was to leave him to it because he needed time to get used to things. And, well, no one talks to me like that. Not even him. Then sanity returned: I was alone, in a dark park, with trees and hedges, behind which could be lurking attackers, or even social workers who were gagging to take away my child. I propelled myself after my ex-fiancé.

  It didn’t take long to catch up with him. “Nate,” I called. “Please! Stop! Please!”

  Nate had changed in the years since we parted—he didn’t stop. Being a few years older than me, and of even temperament, he would always rather talk things out than storm off in a rage. He thought it added to our problems if we didn’t talk straightaway. Clearly, that had changed.

  “Nate,” I called again. Was it my imagination or was he…? Yes, yes he was—he was speeding up. “Nate! Just let—” I was cut short by my heel skidding on a patch of ice, taking my legs from under me and depositing me unceremoniously on the ground.

  I sat in a heap on the stony ground, the cold seeping in through my clothing. After a few seconds I shifted off my legs and pulled up my throbbing left ankle, cradling it in my hands. My right knee smarted enough to make my eyes water. The black nylon tights were in shreds, stained with blood from where the cold ground had split my skin. More tears sprang to my eyes as arrows of pain tore up my legs. I wasn’t a crier, normally, not even when I was in this amount of agony, but what was normal about my life now? What had been normal about my life in the past six months?

  This was the perfect ending to a traumatizing evening: I was stranded in a park with no way of getting home. The person who had been seeing me home hated me and had stormed off. And I was in an extraordinary amount of pain for such a small fall.

  I allowed the ridiculousness of my situation to sink in for a few more minutes, allowed myself a wallow in self-pity before I accepted I had to call Luke to come and collect me. I picked up my black leather bag, rooted through it until I found my mobile. As I pulled it out, a picture fluttered to the ground. Tegan had drawn it while she was waiting for me to take her to school last Tuesday morning. It was a picture of a house with a yellow sun in the sky and red flowers in the garden. In the bottom window, stick versions of me and her were waving out. I’d been impressed by it, she’d got my hairstyle—longer at the back, shorter at the front with a fringe that swept across my face—almost perfect. She’d drawn herself with yellow bunches and we were both wearing red dresses. Tegan had given it to me as we walked to school, saying, “You can put it in your work.” It was a way for her to connect herself to the life I had away from her. She was fascinated by this thing called “work.” She’d often ask if I’d had a good day at “your work” when I went to pick her up, questioned me on who I spoke to and what I did that day, how many calls I made and e-mails I sent.

  I shoved the picture back into my bag, went back to the mobile. Luke would come out, of course, but he’d have to wake up Tegan, put her in the car, drive—

  “Are you OK?” Nate asked, stopping in front of me.

  I lowered my head so he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes as I nodded at him. I didn’t want him to know that I was crying not only because I’d hurt myself but because he’d upset me. I put away my mobile as he helped me to my feet. Holding on to Nate, I limped over to a nearby bench which, like the ground, was slick with frost. We sat beside each other in silence for a while until he moved toward me. His fingers closed around my lower thighs and he gently lifted my legs up onto his lap. He rolled up my dress and stared down at my gashed knee and swelling ankle.

  “Look at you,” he said with a regretful sigh.

  “I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you.” I surreptitiously wiped at my eyes.

  From his pocket he pulled out a tissue. “Don’t worry, it’s clean,” he said as he wiped grit and blood from the wound.

  We sat in silence: me staring at the dark, rolling hills of the park and the spikes of the trees piercing the black sky; him tending to my knee.

  “She was my friend too,” he said quietly, his voice loaded with sadness. “She was one of my closest friends and she’s gone. And no one told me. I had to read about it in some trade magazine. She was such a big part of our lives, of my life, and then she died.” He stopped dabbing at my knee. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He stared at me until I looked up at him. “Do you hate me that much?”

  “I don’t hate you. Nate, I didn’t think. It was hard enough getting through every day after she died, and there were lots of things that didn’t occur to me. Telling you was one of them. It all happened so suddenly. I know she had a terminal illness, but I didn’t think she’d die. She told me she would but I didn’t quite believe it. Still don’t to some extent.”

  Nate nodded. “The las
t thing I ever said to her was that she’d ruined my life. And I’d hate her for it as long as she lived. How’s that for not thinking someone would die?” Nate closed his eyes. “After you’d gone, I rang her and asked why she’d told you. She said it was an accident but I didn’t listen. I shouted at her. Told her…Told her she was a jealous bitch; that I hated her. That she’d ruined everyone’s life.” He shook his head, his eyes still closed. “She’s the first person I’ve known who’s died. Even my grandparents are still alive. I…” His voice cracked with emotion. I took his hand. His fingers closed around mine and clung to me. “I want you to know it wasn’t planned.”

  I lifted my face to the night sky and the cold wind rushed over my features, the sharpness chilled my skin. “Nate, I don’t want to talk about it.” His fingers tightened around mine as I lowered my head to him. “I feel sick every time I think about it. When I first moved up here, I used to throw up every time I thought about you and Adele…I still do sometimes. Occasionally I look at Tegan and it’ll come to me who she really is, what her existence means, and I have to turn away because I’m so overwhelmed by how she came about. Not her—I love her—the circumstance. It hurts. I don’t mean it makes me cry. It doesn’t. It actually rips away at me inside…And I can’t talk about it. I thought I could, but I can’t. So, not now, OK?”

  “Why tell me about Tegan, then?”

  “Because you deserve to know.”

  “You could have told me on the phone.”

  “No, I couldn’t. And, there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “I…I need to ask you something. Adele wanted me to adopt Tegan. And I’m trying to. But if the adoptee has one living parent whose whereabouts you know, then the prospective adopter has to get permission. I need you to sign over all rights to being Tegan’s parent to me so I can adopt her.”

  Nate shook his head. “I only just found out that I’ve got a child and you’re asking me to give her up?”

  “You don’t want kids, you said it yourself not five minutes ago.”

  “Neither did you but you’re doing it.”

  “I had to. I was always the other person in Tegan’s life, you know that. But you don’t have to. You can just…”

  “No,” Nate cut in. “We can’t talk about this here. It’s cold and we’re tired. We need to discuss this properly. And you need to get your knee cleaned up and your ankle strapped up.”

  “Yeah, shall we see if we can hail a taxi out on the street?”

  Nate leaned forward, put his hand on my face and stared straight into my eyes. “Come home with me,” he said. “Please.”

  “Mummy Ryn,” Tegan’s voice insisted as she tugged at my arm.

  I wanted to cry even before I’d opened my eyes. I hadn’t slept in so long, and now I was being roused from the depths of a lovely sleep.

  “Mummy Ryn,” Tegan said again.

  “Yeah?” I mumbled.

  “Why have you got your clothes on? Did you sleep in them again?”

  I groaned. Had I fallen asleep during sex again? That’d be bloody stupid, especially when I hadn’t had sex with Nate in years. NATE! My eyes flew open and I found that I wasn’t looking at my bedroom window, I was looking at the television and the red beanbag because my body was hunched up on the sofa.

  Images of the night before flashed through my mind: Nate cleaning up my knee and tacking on a bandage; his strong fingers massaging my ankle; us drinking tea as we sat side by side, watching television but not talking; him calling me a taxi. I remember, too, he’d tried to get me to stay the night, saying he’d drive me home in the morning when he was less tired, but I’d insisted on going home. For both our sakes. After checking on Tegan when I’d come in, I’d stood in the corridor, unsure whether to climb into bed with Luke or not. It’d wake him up and we’d either talk or make love, neither of which was appealing. I’d ended up curling up on the sofa and falling asleep, using my coat as a blanket.

  Luke was at the stove, cooking—from the smell of it—bacon and eggs. There was toast on the go as well. From the way he stood, his tall body rigid, his back perfectly straight, he was avoiding looking at me.

  “See, you’ve got your clothes on,” Tegan confirmed.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said absently.

  “Leave Ryn alone,” Luke said to Tegan. “She must be knackered. Come sit down, eat your breakfast.”

  Tegan, who would fly to the moon if Luke asked her to, went skipping over to him and took the plate of food he’d prepared for her.

  “Why don’t you go to bed for a little while?” Luke said to me as he busied himself putting out eggs and bacon for himself. “I’ll bring you a cuppa and some breakfast in an hour.” He still wasn’t looking at me. I stood up, I had to make this right with him; he had to understand I hadn’t been unfaithful.

  “Your orangey dress is all creasy up,” Tegan commented.

  “Yeah, it is,” I said, glancing down at the red and orange silk present from Luke. “I’ll have to iron it.”

  “Yes, you will,” Tegan admonished.

  Luke’s eyes dared to stray to me, taking in my crumpled appearance, then flinched with pain when he spotted my tights shoved in my coat pocket. His eyes darted away as though scorched by the thought of why my tights would be in my coat pocket, what it inferred. “Go on, get to bed,” Luke ordered. “I’ll bring you a bacon sarnie, Tommie K on the bread, not the bacon.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. The moment to reassure him had passed. And I might not get another one, he might go on believing I had betrayed him.

  “The toast is a T!” Tegan squealed in delight when she saw her plate.

  “Yes, it’s T for Time to eat your breakfast.”

  “No!” Tegan giggled. “It’s T for Tegan!”

  “It might be,” Luke laughed back, “but I think it’s for Time to eat your breakfast.”

  He gets on better with her than I do sometimes, I thought as I slunk away to bed.

  I woke up again when I was being gently shaken. I opened my eyes and found Luke perched on the edge of the bed. On the bedside table was a mug of tea and a plate with a toasted bacon sandwich. Had I been asleep for only an hour? It felt like days.

  “Thought I’d better wake you up before I go,” Luke said, avoiding my eyes.

  “Go?” I said with a yawn, pushing myself upright.

  “Yeah, I’ve got stuff to do. T’s playing in her room, so she’s fine. But I thought I’d better tell you before I go because you know how much mischief she can get into.”

  “What stuff do you have to do?” I asked.

  “Just work, back at my flat. I’ll see you later.” Luke lifted himself off the bed but I reached out, grabbed his arm, held him back.

  “What’s going on?”

  He sat heavily on the bed, finally turned his gaze on me.

  “You tell me.”

  I said nothing, unsure what to say. How much would he want to know? Not all of it, that was for certain. And how would I explain it, anyway? He didn’t know the complexities of my relationship with Nate. That Mr. Turner wasn’t simply an ex or even The Ex, he was…Nate, as simple and complicated as that.

  “Look, Ryn,” he said after my long silence, “I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to handle this. I’ve never been in this situation before. You know how I feel about you and Tegan, the pair of you have become my life. But he’s her real father and there’s obviously something going on between the two of you.”

  “There isn’t!” I protested.

  “No? Then why won’t you make eye contact for more than two seconds? Why didn’t you come to bed last night? Why were you walking funny? I’m hoping you didn’t fuck him but I wouldn’t be surprised if you did because I know you still love him.”

  “I told you, I don’t anymore.”

  Luke plowed over my correction. “I can’t deal with this. It’s best I go and we talk about it when I’m less angry.” He stopped. “I don’t want to do this now. Not when Tegan’s aroun
d and not when I haven’t thought things through.”

  “OK,” I mumbled.

  Instead of leaving, he sat stock-still, stared at the door as he asked, “Did you?”

  “No,” I replied. “I didn’t even kiss him, Luke.”

  “Did you want to sleep with him?” he asked, then braced himself.

  Without hesitation, I replied, “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. I told him about Tegan and we had a row in the street, then I fell over, hurt my legs—that’s why I’m limping, not because of some sex marathon. I went back to his place to get cleaned up—that’s all, nothing happened. Then I got a taxi home. I didn’t come to bed because it was 4 a.m. when I got back and I didn’t want to disturb you. That’s it. That’s all that happened.”

  “Is he going to sign?”

  “I don’t know. He was so freaked out by what I told him, he couldn’t deal with anything else.”

  “And you seriously didn’t want to sleep with him?”

  “Seriously.”

  “OK. OK. Move over,” he said, and lay down beside me. I wrapped my arms around him, snuggled up against his solid body, resting my face against his back. I closed my eyes and let myself drift away into sleep.

  I’d been telling him the truth. I didn’t want to sleep with Nate. Not in the slightest. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to make love to him. And afterward, I wanted to go back to watching him as he floated in dreamland, but at no point did I actually want to sleep with him.