by Jamie Knight
Pumpkin starts scratching and yowling to be let in the bathroom door. I shush her a bit, hoping she will shut up and not make my grandmother aware that I have been in the bathroom longer than normal, but Pumpkin doesn’t listen. She keeps scratching and meowing at the top of her lungs. I reach over, turn the handle, and try to get the cat to come inside quickly. She doesn’t. Always annoyed with closed doors, Pumpkin rubs her orange fur along the door jam and purrs with satisfaction.
“Get your butt in here!” I hiss at her.
She looks up at me with lazy, golden eyes and purrs louder. After she is happy with her rubbing, she wanders in enough for me to close the door and lock it again. Clutching her soft body, I pull her into my lap and pet her gently. Pumpkin is a handful, but she can be comforting.
Not five seconds later, there is a knock at the door. “Mandy, are you feeling okay?”
Just as I open my mouth to answer, the timer on my phone beeps. I grab it as quickly as I can, throwing my cat onto the floor in an undignified way. The alarm keeps beeping as everything I try to turn it off suddenly doesn’t work. There is no way that Bubby cannot hear that. Exacerbated, I slip the phone between my breasts, it doesn’t quite silence the beep, but it mutes it, and that will have to do.
“I’m a bit under the weather,” I call out to my grandmother. “Can you make me some peppermint tea?”
“Sure, doll.”
I listen to her steps retreating towards the kitchen and try to slow my breathing. Strung out and practically hysterical, I try to keep the tears from coming to my eyes. I rub them harshly and curse myself for getting into this mess in the first place. I know men are no good. Christian doesn’t love me. I kind of doubt he even likes me. I should just let him expose everything and look for a different job. I’ll probably have to move out of Manhattan, but oh well. I’ve moved before, it wasn’t terrible. I’ll make new friends.
Worried, Pumpkin works herself around my legs, her furry body soft against my skin. Her purr is very loud like she is trying to get my attention. I reach down and run my hand over her back. “At least I’ll always have you, right?” I whisper, letting the tears fall freely now. My cheeks are coated quickly. A few drops hit the floor.
Buzz! Buzz!
“Holy shit!” I jump up, fighting with my cleavage and grabbing at the phone ringing in my bra. It’s gotten a little sweaty and insists on sticking to my skin. As it slides, it answers the call.
“Mandy?” Eileen’s voice is muffled and far away. “Mandy!” I can tell she is screaming into the phone. Shit. I’m probably scaring the hell out of my best friend.
A few more seconds of juggling, and I get my cell phone in my hands and up to my ear. Eileen is still screaming my name. “It’s okay!” I say back. “I’m okay.” She hushes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to dial you.”
“Butt dial?” she asks, clearly catching her breath.
“Cleavage actually.”
She laughs. “Good, I thought you were in a car accident or something. My imagination was going nuts. I was seeing you lying on the roof of your overturned car, glass covering you and totally passed out…”
Her words sink into the background. I’m not even paying attention. I didn’t mean to, but I saw it. The test. Two lines.
I’m pregnant.
Fuck.
“Mandy? Are you still there?” An edge of worry is lining Eileen’s voice again. She can tell something is up. I need to reassure her that everything is fine. I need to convince her that I am okay when I am very not okay. This needs to be a secret. I need to figure out what I am doing and do it, not cry on the phone to my best friend. Eileen wouldn’t understand. She doesn’t want kids.
I take a deep breath and plaster a smile on my face. I know she can’t see it, but they say that people can tell when you are smiling just by how your voice sounds. I want the words on my lips to be comforting, causal. I will lie to her.
“I’m pregnant.”
Okay. I guess I won’t.
There is silence over the line. “I’m sorry. Can you repeat that?”
“I’m pregnant.”
I sit back down on the toilet lid, reaching over to Pumpkin. My hand runs over her soft fur again. I can feel the vibrations in her chest. My situation doesn’t seem real. Someone is going to be my kid. That is if what happened before doesn’t happen again.
“Okay! Um…congrats!” Eileen still sounds worried. “How long have you known?”
“About two seconds,” I admit. “I was taking the test when I dialed you.” I know my voice sounds strained. I don’t know how to feel.
“I…Were you….” Eileen stammers and then goes silent for a second to collect her thoughts. “I don’t want this to sound judgmental, but are you seeing someone? Like do you have a boyfriend I didn’t know about? Because if this is just from a fling, then that’s okay too. No judgment.”
A choking laugh racks my body. “No boyfriend. It’s much more complicated than a fling.”
“It was…consensual?”
“Yeah. The father, he’s just not my boyfriend. He’s more like a playmate.”
She grunts slightly. “Okay. I can get that. Are you going to tell him?”
That really is the question, isn’t it? Am I going to tell Christian? I lean back on the toilet seat and let my head rest against the towel rack. My chest heaves with a hard sigh.
“I don’t know, Le Le.” Eileen grunts, still annoyed that I use her family nickname sometimes. “My knee-jerk reaction is to say, ‘hell no.’ But it’s too soon. I can’t believe it is even true. We just don’t have that kind of situation.”
Eileen grunts again. I can picture her nodding her head with understanding. Her relationship with her husband didn’t really start out as a normal romance. Plus, Ray owns and runs a sex club. They have seen all types of relationships there. Eileen would never judge me for my sex life.
“Okay,” she says boldly. “Here’s what we are going to do. Tomorrow we are going to the doctor’s office—” there is a noise behind her— “Hold on.” I can hear her cover the phone, but not enough to not overhear what she is saying to another person. “It’s Mandy. Code red.” The other person mumbles. “Yeah, you can come too.” I slap my hand into my forehead. So much for this not getting around. There are more shuffling noises, and then her voice rings out clearly, “Okay, Reese and I will take you to the doctor tomorrow. We will see if you are really pregnant and go from there. Don’t get too upset. You could have done the test wrong. Okay?”
Considering my nausea, I’m pretty sure the test is right. But I don’t want to argue. “Okay,” I whisper, whipping at my eyes again. Maybe it will be best if I let my two friends take care of me.
As if Eileen can sense my thoughts, she continues laying out a plan. “I will call Sloane and tell her we will both be out. I’ll give her a good excuse like we got food poisoning at the same restaurant. Then Reese and I will pick you up first thing in the morning. Ray has a doctor friend; I think I can get him to see us right away. Just try to relax.”
I pull one of the hand towels down and snuffle into it, rubbing the ugly pink fabric onto my cheeks. “Thanks, Le Le. You’re a good friend.”
“Get some rest,” she repeats and then hangs up.
I take a deep breath just in time for a knock at the door. “Mandy, I have your tea, doll. Do you need help getting off the toilet?”
For some reason, a smile reaches the corners of my mouth. I must be slightly hysterical. “No Bubby, I’ll be right out. Just set it on my bedside table and stay away. I don’t want you to catch this.”
Bubby makes a small snort, obviously not quite believing I’m sick. I give her a few minutes to leave and then open the door. Pacing down the hallway as quickly as I can, I get to the guestroom and pull Pumpkin inside the door before I lock it. I practically fall onto the bed.
The tea is sitting on my table, steaming and making the whole room smell minty. I find no need to touch it though, my stomach is too upset to eat or drink
anything. All I want is to close my eyes and fall asleep immediately. Maybe when I wake up this, all will be a dream, and I will never have to face Christian while carrying his child. I don’t know how I will keep this whole thing secret. But I have to, he can never know that this baby is his. I don’t think he would want that.
I think of his face as I close my eyes. I remember how his lips pulled in a sneer when he said that he just took from women and that feelings are a waste of time. I want to erase that look from my mind. I want that moment to have never happened, but I can’t get rid of it.
Soon his face, in my imagination, is replaced by another. Along with another moment, I am desperate to forget. Jered, his half-smirk smile fading, as I told him that I was pregnant with his child. There was no joy in his cold brown eyes. They were hard, hateful. “It’s not mine,” he had argued. “You slut, you opened your legs for someone else.”
I had promised him that he had been my only lover for years. It was his child. It had to be.
Jered didn’t take that well. His rage was like a storm destroying everything he could get his hands on in my apartment. My dishes hit the wall as he called me a slut over and over. Knickknacks hit the fireplace as he yelled that I was too poor to be his wife. He had never really wanted me. I was just a distraction until he found the real thing. He threw the remote through my TV as I stood frozen in shock. My joy turned into a nightmare. A hole through the wall was his last gift to me.
No words came after. Not even when we saw each other at work. I was too afraid to call or start up a conversation. And he didn’t say or ask anything. He didn’t ask if it was a boy or a girl. He didn’t ask how I was feeling when I started getting pale. He didn’t ask why I was in the hospital or out of work for weeks. He didn’t ask where the roundness of my belly went — all too soon.
He didn’t know or care that his baby was gone.
I turn over in bed so that I can sob into a pillow while Pumpkin purrs at my back. There is no way I’m going through that with another man. Christian will never know that I’m carrying his child. I can’t risk it.
Chapter Eighteen
Mandy
My mornings at work have drastically changed in the last two weeks, especially now that I know I really am pregnant. What used to be a leisurely start of my day — then some private sexy time — has turned into anxiety city. Every move I make all day is strategic to ensure that I do not run into Christian. Plus, every time Sloane or Kane or Ashton asks to see me, I start to hyperventilate fearing that this is the time that Christian is going to release the tape of me, or this is the day that I’m going to get fired. And now that I’m pregnant, I really don’t want to get fired.
One of the biggest changes to my life is that I stopped taking the elevator at work. There is too much risk. I could run into Christian and be stuck in there with him. That is something I just cannot handle. Part of me fears that he will somehow, mystically, know that I am carrying his child. I don’t know how. I’m not even showing, but I still worry about this constantly. So, to avoid him, I take the stairs. It hasn’t been the worst thing in the world. The stairwell is quiet, and I’m getting more exercise. It’s almost my new refuge. Almost.
Sipping my morning tea — peppermint to help with nausea — I take a break on the landing between the third and fourth floors. I often stop here to take a few deep breaths and prepare myself for walking into my office. Eileen and Reese have kept quiet about my condition and the circumstances that caused it, but still, I feel vulnerable every day. Here, in the quiet, annoyingly bland stairwell, I can feel protected — hidden even.
Above me, perhaps on the top floor, I hear a door open. Pretty much everyone takes the elevator, so it’s kind of weird. Trying to ignore the fear making my belly more queasy and the prickling of the hairs at the back of my neck, I take another sip of my tea, leaning my head against the hard concrete wall.
The person above me stomps down the stairs. They are obviously having a bad morning. I know that I should get myself moving and out of the way, but I want to savor my last moments of privacy.
“Hiding from me, pet?”
Looking up quickly, I see Christian staring down at me. He has a sneer on his face. His eyes are hot with anger.
“Don’t call me that,” I snap. “You don’t get to call me that anymore.”
I head towards the door to the fifth floor, but he is faster. He dashes down the stairs, getting in my face and slamming the door closed when I try to open it.
“Leave me alone, Christian.” Tears are already in my eyes. I don’t want to fight with him, but I don’t know how to make things better. And now that there is a baby involved, I can’t let things get worse.
His body is inches from mine. I can feel the heat. I can smell his cologne. I want, more than anything, for him to take me into his arms. I want him to kiss me. I want him to fuck me. I want things to go back to what they were before. Before I learned how he was with women, and I had to protect my heart.
Sky-blue eyes wide, he looks me up and down. “You look different.”
I start to shake. Please don’t let him guess. Please don’t let him guess. I want to cradle my middle. My hands ache to touch my stomach and protect his baby, but I can’t do that. A gesture like that would tell him everything.
Christian reaches out. He takes a strand of my hair and runs it through his fingers. I smack his hand away — harder than I intend to.
“Don’t touch me!” I shriek. “I’m not yours anymore.”
He frowns. His face turning cold. “And why is that? I don’t want to fight anymore, Mandy.”
There is hope in his words, but I can’t deal with it. There is too much fear in my heart for myself and my child. I don’t want to get rejected again.
“We can’t be together because we don’t trust each other!”
As my words echo in the stairwell, Christian leans back. His face is pale. His mouth is hanging open slightly. I expect him to yell at me. Part of me even wonders if he will grab me or hit me, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything or touch me again. He just drops his head, pushes around me and runs down the stairs as fast as he can.
I want him to come back. I want him to come back so badly that I have to catch myself from calling out for him. The tears I was holding back run down my cheeks. I can’t catch my breath as I sob.
My stomach drops, making my head spin. The stairwell starts to dim out some, so I sit down heavily on the steps. Everything goes dark.
****
“Mandy?!”
I don’t open my eyes at first. I can’t. The darkness is the only thing keeping my stomach calm. Plus, I don’t really want to deal with what happened because I’m not quite sure what did happen.
The floor is cold and hard beneath my cheek. I must be lying on cement, not the usual carpet. Hands grab my shoulders. Big hands. Warm hands. Their grip is tight on me, pulling me upright. One of them moves to my face, cupping my chin gently.
“Mandy? Are you okay?”
I want it to be Christian. I want him to be saving me, holding me, making my whole world make sense again. But this voice turns my stomach. I open my eyes and look into Jered’s face. His mouth is slightly open. His eyes search mine, then move up to my forehead as he gently pats my skull, looking for bumps or bruises.
A quick glance reveals that I am still in the stairwell at McKenzie Tech. After my fight with Christian, I must have fainted. This happened on occasion last time that I was pregnant, especially when I was under too much stress. Having Jered here with me is definitely not helping my stress level.
I want to yell at him to get his hands off of me, but I can’t. I’m still too out of it.
“You need to go to the hospital,” Jered tells me.
“No.” I shake my head. “I just haven’t eaten yet. I’m sure I’m fine.” Leaning forward, I place my head in one of my hands. This way, I’m able to shake off his grip.
Jered hisses as he sits back from me. “I’m just trying to help,
Mandy. Let me take you to the hospital. I can take care of you.”
Now that I’m sitting up, my stomach is doing loops again. My morning sickness is getting really bad, and having Jered in my face isn’t helping at all. My temper flares.
“You had your chance to take care of me, and you blew it!” I snap. “If you want to help me now, call up to Eileen in accounting then leave me alone.”
He grunts, obviously offended. But he doesn’t try to touch me again. Instead, he sits back on the stairs and pulls out his cellphone. I take deep breaths as he makes his call, not really listening, just hoping to calm my stomach down. To my great disappointment, he doesn’t leave after the call is finished. He sits with his back to the wall and stares at me.
“We could try again, you know?”
I snap my eyes open at his words — it makes the room spin — but it’s worth it to see him shift under my glare. My stare is telling him to die, to crawl off into some hole and never come around me again, but instead, he continues talking.
“I mean, the sex was great, right?”
I raise my eyebrows threateningly warning him to shut his mouth.
“And you’re already fucking one of the bosses. So, why not me too?”
As my stomach drops and rolls at the very idea of him ever fucking me again, Jered actually leans forward to try to touch me. He glides a finger up my bare leg.
“What exactly are you asking for, Jered?” I snap.
He grins his stupid, lopsided grin and runs his other hand through his hair. “I’m just saying that since you are already a slut at work…well…I mean, it was great right? You used to tell me how much you loved my dick. I could call you down to my office in HR, throw you over my desk and ride that ass until you beg me for more.” With each horrid phrase, he inches closer to me and rubs his hand up to my thigh.
“Mr. Coleman!”
We both look up. Sloane is standing on the landing above us. Her face is pale as a ghost’s. Her usually prim mouth is hanging open.