Good On Paper

by Jennifer Millikin

  Unwilling to risk a second awkward run-in with Grady, I take a circuitous route home.

  When I get home, I find Savannah sitting on the couch thumbing through a magazine. “How’d it go?” she asks, tossing the magazine down beside her. Her eyes, which at first were hopeful, absorb my expression. Their glimmer dulls as she waits for my response.

  Holding up a hand, I begin to tick off Grady’s attributes that are immediately recognizable. “He’s nice. Charming. Sweet. Funny.” I groan. “And a doctor. A freaking doctor, Savannah.”

  “But?”

  I plop down on the couch beside Savannah and pick up her copy of Us Weekly. “He’s not Aidan.”

  24

  Aidan

  I’ve taken the afternoon off to go with Allison to the big appointment. The gender appointment. She asked me if we should wait to learn, telling me about something she heard of where the doctor’s office tells a bakery the gender, and they bake a cake with either blue or pink dye. The expectant parents cut into the cake and that's how they learn what they’re having. I'm sure for some people that sounds like a great idea, but it doesn't work for me. When I told her I'd rather just find out the old-fashioned way, she agreed, even though I could see her disappointment.

  To make up for my lack of enthusiasm about revealing the gender, I left work early and am going to swing by her apartment and take her to the appointment. Our plan had been to meet there, but this way I can give her some sort of surprise, even if it doesn't have to do with our baby’s gender.

  I walk up to her building and catch the door just as somebody is walking out. Mumbling my thanks, I hurry inside out of the cold.

  I take the elevator to the fourth floor and step off. As soon as I step foot in the hallway, I hear them: angry voices floating down from somewhere. As I get closer, I see Allison’s front door is cracked open. Voices float through the small fissure. A man's, followed by a woman’s.

  Stepping closer, I push an ear up to the space. My breath quiets as I listen.

  “Don't lie to me. I saw the picture on your fridge.” I can hear the stress in the man's voice.

  “I’m not lying, Jared. It’s not yours,” Allison insists in a high-pitched voice.

  My hand is poised to push open the door, but Jared’s next words stop me. “The timing fits, Allison.”

  What. The. Fuck.

  “It's not yours," Allison insists. The pitch in her voice is higher now, desperation leaking through.

  “I don't know who you think that baby belongs to, but whoever he is didn't spend a weekend fucking you. And I don't think you need to be reminded that we ran out of condoms halfway through.”

  “Shut up,” Allison screeches. “Just shut up.”

  “I’m giving you twenty-four hours to tell whoever he is the truth. If you don't, I'll find him myself and tell him.”

  Footsteps come closer. I step away and hurry down the hall, turning my back toward Allison's place and pretend to be waiting in front of someone else's door. Behind me, I hear Allison’s door close and those same footsteps stomp down the hallway to the elevator. A moment later the elevator announces its arrival with a ding. I wait a few more seconds, then turn around. Jared is gone.

  Slowly I walk to Allison's door and knock.

  She answers with her face already arranged in an expression of anger. The anger vanishes, and shock takes its place.

  “Aidan? What are you doing here?”

  “Is that really the question you want to ask, Allison? Don't you mean to ask me if I heard you and Jared?”

  She takes a step back, her hand coming up to cover her open mouth. “Aidan, I…” She shakes her head. “I…”

  “Why, Allison? Why?”

  Tears pour down her face. "I'm sorry. So sorry. Jared… he's my ex. He's not very nice, Aidan. I don't know if he's the father, or you are. I swear on everything, that's the truth. But I do know who I'd rather it be.” She looks at me so pitifully, so sorrowfully, but it doesn’t displace any of my outrage.

  “So you were just going to let me believe I was the father when you didn't know for certain?" Un-fucking-believable. I’m such an idiot. I should’ve pushed for a paternity test the second the words left her lips that day in the cafe.

  She nods, shame coloring her cheeks. “I know how awful that sounds, but I just wanted to pretend that the father wasn't somebody like Jared. If he is…” A shudder moves her shoulders. “I don't know if I can handle it. Haven't you ever wished something weren't true?”

  “Of course I have. But that doesn't give you the right to mislead me. Not only that but, Natalie. Natalie.” I rub my face with my hands. It's hard to say at what point I realize I'm standing in the wrong place. I know I shouldn’t be here anymore, and it's like bricks raining down upon me.

  “How soon can you get a test?” I ask, my voice intense.

  “I’ll ask the doctor today,” she says tearfully. “It’s just a simple blood test and—”

  “That’s enough,” I tell her, backing out of her apartment.

  She follows, her arm outstretched. “Aidan, I—”

  “Bye, Allison.”

  I hurry to the elevator. As I wait for it, I look back. Allison stands in her doorway, one hand on her stomach and her eyes squeezed shut.

  The doors open and I step on, willing the damn thing to go faster. Glancing at my watch, I see it's only mid-afternoon. That means Natalie is still at work. I have an idea, and I hope to hell she comes straight home after work today. But if she doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. I'll wait all night for her.

  I've done it. I've been uptown, downtown, and everywhere in between. My arms are loaded with Natalie's favorite flower, ice cream, dinner, drink, salsa, and perfume. My final stop is at a store that sells random junk. I came in here once to buy a bottle of water and noticed a basket of heart shaped rocks on the check-out counter.

  I push aside the rocks until I find the best one.

  “I'll take it," I say, handing it to the lady behind the counter.

  She tells me it's one dollar, and I laugh. Such an inexpensive symbol for something so priceless.

  I pay her and slip it into one of my bags. I have fifteen minutes until Natalie gets home.

  Natalie's building is four blocks away, and I jog the entire distance. Two old women watch in amazement as I go by, but for the most part, nobody notices me. Such is life in a bustling city.

  When I get to Natalie's door, I set everything up. Then I sit down, lean my head against the wall and wait. One minute passes, then two, and then after a while, it's twenty. I grab my phone to look at the time, ignoring the urge to text Natalie. My plan is to surprise her, and my text message might tip her off.

  Fifteen more minutes go by, and although I've been waiting for it, the ding of the elevator startles me.

  Please be Natalie.

  It's not. A man in scrubs steps off. He's talking to somebody else, but I can't see who because of the way his body is angled. I hear the response, and I would know that voice anywhere.

  I get to my feet just as Natalie's eyes meet mine. She walks toward me, confusion in her eyes.

  “Aidan?”

  The man in scrubs is still walking beside her, so I stay quiet and wait for him to break off and go into his own apartment. Natalie reaches me, and the guy in scrubs stops alongside her. Instead of looking at me, he's looking at the array of items at our feet.

  What the hell is going on?

  I point to the guy and look at Natalie, the question plain on my face.

  “Aidan, this is Grady. He's the doctor who stitched me up.”

  Natalie told me about her trip to urgent care, but she didn't tell me she and the doctor had…. had… I can't even finish the sentence. The thought makes me ill.

  “What's all this?” she asks, looking down at the ground.

  “Just some stuff,” I mumble, feeling like an idiot.

  Her expression softens. She knows that it’s not just stuff.

  “Natalie, I'm going to ta
ke off,” Grady says, turning to look at Natalie.

  “But what about—”

  “Don't worry about it. I’ll call Brad."

  Grady doesn't touch her. He doesn't run a hand along her arm, hug her goodbye, and thank fuck he doesn't kiss her in front of me. He retreats to the elevator and steps on when it arrives.

  “He’s locked out of his apartment,” Natalie explains, her face guilty. “He needed a place to hang out while he waited for the building manager to let him in.”

  I nod and stick my hands in my pocket. Now that I’m here, my tongue feels twisted up.

  Natalie glances at the ground. “Why are my favorite things on the ground outside my apartment?"

  “Because I didn't know what else to do. I wanted to do something grand and amazing for you, but I don't know what that looks like. I'm not good at this, Natalie.”

  She watches me. I’ve memorized her face, and now I'm watching her absorb my words, trying to make sense of what is happening.

  “Come inside,” she tells me, pulling her keys from her purse and opening the door.

  I pick everything up and put it back in the bags, except for the heart-shaped rock, which I stow in my pocket. I walk in behind Natalie and set the bag down on the table beside her purse. She hangs her coat on the rack and kicks off her shoes.

  Sighing deeply, she turns to where I stand just a few feet inside the door. It's almost the exact spot I stood in when I told her Allison was expecting.

  “Okay. Please explain to me what is going on. I'm so confused.”

  For the past hour, I’ve had time to plan what to say, but right now in this moment all I manage to do is blurt out, “The baby might not be mine.”

  Natalie gasps. Her fingers sail up to touch her parted lips. “Might not?”

  I shake my head. “We're getting a blood test to confirm.”

  “I…I thought it wasn't even a question.”

  “Me neither,” I tell her. The amount of relief I feel overwhelms me, and on my face, I feel a grin that stretches from ear to ear. “We were supposed to find out the baby's gender today, so I went to her apartment to take her to the appointment. She didn't know I was coming, and I overheard her talking with her ex. I'm almost positive he's the father, Natalie. I would bet my life on it.”

  “But you're not definite?” Hope dances in her eyes, but I can see her trying to quell it.

  Every time we’ve gone to the movies in the past month, I sat beside her while I was dying to reach over and touch her. Now we are having this conversation, separated by a few feet, and I'm done with it.

  Striding forward, I make it so we are separated by mere inches. Gripping her shoulders, I look into the eyes of the girl who stole my heart back when I didn’t know I had one. “It’s true that I don’t know what exactly is going to happen. But I do know that no matter what that test says, you’re my forever. You think you’re doing what’s best for me by backing out, but you’re not. I've learned that the hard way.”

  “What if you are the father?"

  “Then we'll deal with it. Together. Our situation might not look pretty from the outside, but it will be ours. I don't want to be without you, Natalie.” Reaching into my pocket, I pull out the rock and hold it up between us. “You stole my heart when we were seventeen, but I never acted on it. Then that night when you were in the bathtub, you asked me that question. We had so many rules surrounding our friendship, but you broke one that night. And then I realized we were only as strong as the breaking of one rule. Not because we were weak, Natalie, but because we’d been denying ourselves for so long.”

  I continue. “I'm not perfect, you know that. My parents are unconventional, to say the least. I share an apartment with two guys, and I'm not a doctor.”

  “I don't need you to be a doctor,” Natalie says tearfully. “I love your parents the way they are, and as much as I like Rob and Jasper, I hope that one day soon you won't live with them.” She takes the rock from my hand. “I don't need pretty, or perfect. I just need you.”

  My body crashes against hers, my lips consume her. I touch her, I taste her. She is sunlight in the morning, a drop of dew sliding down a flower petal, a swath of moonlight late at night.

  She is everything.

  I’ve brought Natalie to my parents Pound Ridge house for the weekend. We needed a place to escape to, a place where we can be alone, and just be us. No roommates interrupting us. No barking dogs, honking cabs, or previously made plans to get in our way.

  We’ve been here less than seven hours and we’ve already made good use of the kitchen counter, the laundry room, and the big, fancy dining room table.

  “Let’s never leave here,” Natalie murmurs, her face snuggled into my chest. We’re lying on the couch, watching the snow fall outside. Three more inches is expected by the end of the weekend. I’m hoping the forecaster is wrong and we’ll get ten more. Snowed in with Natalie sounds like exactly where I want to be.

  “Sounds good to me.” I place a kiss on the top of her hair. She lifts her head so she can see me.

  “I love you, Aidan.”

  “I love you too, Nat.”

  She wiggles against me, then glances down and laughs at the reaction she has gotten from me.

  “Let me get a drink first. I swear you’re working me overtime.” She climbs off me and stretches. Reaching down, she snatches the blanket off me and wraps it around herself.

  “Hey,” I complain. She laughs and walks from the room. While she’s gone, I get up and grab a blanket from the woven basket in the corner of the room. I sit back down and wait for Natalie to come back.

  A few minutes later she returns, but her demeanor has changed.

  “What?” I ask. Whatever it is, we’ll tackle it together.

  She holds out my phone. “I was getting a drink and heard your phone. Allison sent you a message.”

  Suddenly time suspends. The snow falls slower so that I can see the individual snowflakes tumbling to the ground. My heartbeats feel more spaced out. I haven’t heard from Allison since the day we went for the blood draw. Jared was late, which was fine by me. I gave my blood and got the hell out of there.

  “What does it say?” I choke out.

  Tears tumble from Natalie’s eyes.

  I should get up, take the phone from her, read the results for myself, but I can’t bring myself to.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I take a deep breath and count to ten. Each second passes, more excruciating than the next. My eyes open.

  Natalie comes closer, blanket rustling, and holds out the phone until it’s under my nose.

  I read the results and find I’m not the only one crying.

  Epilogue

  “I’m just not sure who's going to eat these cupcakes.” I sigh theatrically, dipping a finger into the chocolate frosting of one cupcake and bringing it to my mouth.

  “Me! I will eat them all!” Brayden screeches, his little voice bouncing off the walls of our kitchen.

  "Not all of them," I tell him, wiping my finger on a dishtowel and lightly poking the tip of his nose. “Your mother wouldn’t appreciate that.”

  Allison will be here in half an hour to pick up Brayden. That's just enough time for me to fill the three-year-old with lots of sugar and then hand him off to his mother.

  “Did you have fun with us today?" I ask Brayden as I place a cupcake onto a plate and slide it across the counter to where he sits.

  He nods and peels off the wrapper. Chocolate crumbs fall down his front when he takes a bite.

  Aidan walks in from the living room, his expression hopeful. “Please tell me they're cool enough to eat now.”

  “Yes, yes,” I say, meeting him just as he rounds the kitchen island. “I'll take her.” I reach for the tiny wrapped bundle sleeping in his arms. Juliana is only four weeks old. I'm exhausted, but I've never been happier. She and Aidan fill me with joy on a daily basis.

  Aidan grabs a cupcake from the cooling rack and sits down beside Brayden. I stand on the opposi
te side of the island, watching them. They look so much alike, a stranger would never know they aren’t related.

  We’d called Allison that day after she sent the test results. Joy was my first reaction, but I couldn’t truly feel it when Allison was so devastated.

  Two months later Aidan told me he felt bad about her situation and wondered how she was handling everything. I encouraged him to reach out, and he did. We learned that Jared, despite his insistence that day in Allison’s apartment, was not actually interested in being a father. He signed away his legal rights to Brayden, and Allison became a single mother.

  Unbelievably, Allison and I became friends. Not the ride-or-die kind, but the kind that can have a conversation and walk away feeling better about life. And then later on, when I became pregnant with Juliana, Allison became the person I went to with questions about my changing, aching body. Her son, Brayden, visits us a couple times a month so that Allison can get a break. Today, that break included a second date with Grady.

  I ran into him when I was eight months pregnant and waddling down Fifth Avenue. I’ve never thought of myself as a matchmaker, but when I saw him, I immediately thought of her.

  For a person who had been so anti-love, Aidan is awfully good at it. He’s tender, caring, and knows exactly how to make me laugh. Diana and Diego have taken to the role of grandparents, and Shawn has too. Their love is still a secret, but I don’t know for how much longer. Diana says the older she gets, the less she cares about keeping it. As for my book, it was published a year after I first met with the editor. It wasn’t a chart-topper, but it sold well. I received an advance for my sophomore effort, and it went to my editor just a few days before Juliana’s arrival.

  The knock on the door signals Allison’s arrival. Brayden squeals and hops off his seat.

  “Mommy!” he yells when Aidan opens the door.

  Allison walks in and gathers the small, dark-haired human bowling ball into her arms. “Hey, buddy.” She glances over at me. “Let’s be quiet. Juliana is sleeping.”