Knocked-Up Cinderella

by Julie Hammerle

  Our car pulled up to the curb, and Ian held the door open for me. “See? That’s what I’m talking about.”

  …

  Ian

  “Dessert for the lovely couple.” The waiter set a piping hot vessel of brioche bread pudding in the center of our table. “On the house.”

  “Oh, we’re not—” I started to say.

  Erin waved me off. “Hush, Ian. If it gets us free dessert, we can pretend we’ve been married for twenty-five years.”

  “You’re saying we got married at fifteen?” I grinned, and she tucked right into the steamy pudding, licking whipped cream and caramel from her spoon.

  “You want some?” she asked.

  I shook my head, sipping my espresso. Despite the jolt of caffeine, a calm washed over me. “This was fun,” I said. “Really fun.”

  She set her spoon down and smiled at me. “It was.”

  I raised my arms in victory. “We can totally eat dinner together and have it not be weird!” “Not weird” was an understatement. This meal had lasted three hours, but had flown by in a blur of steak and potatoes and chats about movies and TV and Glenfield Academy. Erin and I had everything to talk about. I couldn’t imagine ever getting sick of being around her, which was great because, for the next eighteen years, we’d be co-parenting. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but hanging out with you reminds me of hanging out with my best friends, Scott and Tommy.”

  Erin raised an eyebrow. “Thanks?” She picked up her spoon again and lifted a scoop of ice cream to her lips, which she licked.

  My body temperature rose, a vastly different response than the one I’d have around Scott or Tommy. She caught me staring at her, so I shook my head and averted my eyes. “I just mean because I feel so comfortable around you.” I set my cup down and leaned across the table. “But you look better in a dress.” I winked.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said. “But I’d be up for doing this again, you know, if you want to.”

  “I do want to,” I answered automatically.

  Erin and I said goodbye on the curb of Steak 48. She ordered a Lyft up to Ravenswood, and I grabbed one to my condo on Lake Shore Drive. When her car pulled up, the two of us stared at each other. We hadn’t touched all day, except for when she grabbed my hand in the ultrasound room and when I kneaded her shoulders right before she told me we weren’t going to have sex again. Right now, saying goodbye, would be a perfectly reasonable time to hug, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t cross even that small line. I’d had a lovely night with Erin in the friend zone. For the good of our child and our relationship, we had to keep it there. I held up my hand and she slapped it. I still got a charge from that brief moment of contact.

  Erin was hot. She was smart and funny and cool, and keeping her in my life was of paramount importance. Physical distance was the key to us making this work.

  She seemed to agree.

  When I got home that night, a wave of empty sadness swept over me, though I normally loved being alone in my condo. I turned on all the lights and asked Alexa to play some Pearl Jam. I changed the screen on my projection window from “the woods” to clear glass. I gazed down at the lake and Lake Shore. Cars below me zoomed up and down the drive, headed to meet people and do things while I sat alone in my condo. I pulled out my phone and sent Scott a text. “What are you up to?”

  In a matter of seconds, my phone rang.

  “Hey,” I said. “You’re calling me.” He never called me.

  “I am. I have a favor to ask.”

  My ribs squeezed my chest as my schedule and to-do list popped into my head. I was already dry-drowning under the weight of my obligations—and here was Scott to give me another one.

  “I hate, hate, hate to do this to you.”

  I mentally prepared for whatever this was. I’d been bemoaning my loneliness only a second ago. Maybe another commitment would remedy that. “Dude,” I said. “I’m here for you, whatever you need.”

  “You know I appreciate it. I wouldn’t ask unless it was an absolute emergency.”

  “Stop stalling, Scott.” I’d already mentally started filling in my calendar.

  “Before all this stuff with Mom, I agreed to chair the finance committee for this year’s Glenfield Gala.”

  I groaned. The Glenfield Gala. Scott was about to rope me into a school fund-raiser, notoriously run inefficiently by people who had no idea what they were doing. Yippee. Good times.

  “After Jennifer’s whole”—Scott made a sniff-sniff sound over the phone—“getting arrested thing, I figured they’d canceled the event or whatever, but the new chair called me tonight. They want to set up meetings, and I just…can’t. I cannot deal with sitting in a room with disorganized people right now.”

  Join the club, bud. I’d been pulling double duty on the Tokyo deal for months, all while keeping tabs on every other business in my portfolio. Plus, I was the only one in our office traveling anywhere right now. If we needed a presence in Paris or Pittsburgh or Prague, I was the one who had to hop on a plane. And, of course, there was Erin and the baby, and my dad, and my own health and well-being, which had really taken a backseat lately…

  “What about Tommy?” I said. “Isn’t this more his thing?”

  “He promised Susie no non-work-related extracurricular activities. She has him on lockdown.”

  I needed someone to put me on lockdown.

  “If this had come up any other week, I probably would’ve said yes. But Mom’s been having a terrible time with the treatment, and I can’t leave her alone. She has no one else.” He paused, and a small sob escaped. “I have no one else.”

  “Scott, dude, you have me.” I said it without hesitation, without concern for my own life and schedule, without thinking about Erin or the baby. My issues were inconsequential now. Scott needed me, and so did his mom. I couldn’t even tell him about the baby right now either. What a fucking sob story that would be—“Boo-hoo, Scott. I’m so distracted by the happy news that I’m going to be a father.” Sick mom trumped fetus every single time.

  The one positive about chairing the Gala: I’d get to see Erin once in a while, which both elated and relieved me. Seeing her made me happy, and it also felt like I’d be checking off two boxes with every meeting. Work on the fund-raiser? Check. Visit Erin? Check.

  Man, I was such a prince.

  “I really appreciate this,” Scott said.

  “Heck, anything for Glenfield Academy, right?”

  “‘Hail to alma mater,’” Scott sang into the phone.

  “By the way.” I flipped my picture window back to the video screen, this time projecting a secluded Caribbean beach into my condo. “Who took over for Jennifer?”

  “Oh, that,” Scott said. “Well, um…remember you already said yes. No backsies.”

  My head throbbed. I should’ve gotten this info upfront. Paul Pfister had been angling for Jennifer’s position for years. I would not survive being bossed around by his pretentious ass for the next several months. “Just spit it out, Scott.”

  “The new head of the fund-raising committee is Maria Minnesota.” Game-show host voice. “Yay!”

  Super. My ex-fling, current baby mama, and I would all be working together on this fund-raiser. It sounded like the start of a really bad joke.

  Chapter Nine

  Erin

  From Ian: So, you’re going to work, and I’m just getting home from work.

  From Erin: Isn’t it like 9:30 p.m. in Tokyo right now?

  From Ian: Exactly. [Exhausted emoji]

  From Erin: But you like what you do, right?

  From Ian: I love what I do. I just spent the entire day in a room full of suits talking marketing strategy for Asia and Eastern Europe.

  From Ian: You still there?

  From Erin: I was just waiting for the “j/k” or the sarcastic face.

  From Ian: Nothing sarcastic about it. Investing in a new company is invigorating. It’s like…what’s the best part of you
r job?

  From Erin: Well, yesterday a girl named Caeli gave me a rose she made out of tissue paper.

  From Ian: Discussing business strategy is like my tissue-paper flower from a girl named Caeli.

  Natalie knocked on my office door at work. “My classroom. Five minutes.”

  I glanced up from my computer, where I’d been sifting through a crammed in-box. Parents wanted to meet, the head of the school board had found yet another new initiative based on something he’d read about in the Tribune five minutes ago, the boys’ bathroom on the second floor might have asbestos tiles… I’d entered my zone—putting out fires, being a boss. “I’m a little busy,” I said. “What’s this about?”

  “A surprise,” she said. “Katie’s coming, too.” Nat waggled her eyebrows at me before running off.

  I stood and stretched. Immediately the spot between my groin and my leg started to throb from the godforsaken varicose veins. I couldn’t stand for more than a few seconds without wanting to remove the lower half of my body. It wasn’t that my gut was so big yet, but damn it, the pain in my legs made me duckwalk. I waddled down the hall and pulled open the door to Nat’s nearly empty classroom.

  She stood at the front of the room, and Katie sat in one of the desks in the first row. I, knowing full well I wouldn’t fit into a first grader’s desk, folded my arms and stood off to the side, shifting my weight from left to right to ease pressure on my legs.

  “Ladies.” Nat held out her left hand, and both Katie and I leaned forward to see. The florescent lights above us glinted off the diamond slab parked on her ring finger. “I’m engaged!” she squealed.

  “You’re…” I couldn’t comprehend the words she was saying.

  “To Third-Base Chris?” Katie asked.

  “Of course to Chris!” Natalie chuckled like we were silly for asking. Though he and Natalie had been seeing each other fairly regularly since Halloween, Katie and I had never actually met the guy. “He proposed.”

  My chin had locked in its down position.

  Good thing Katie was there to pick up the slack. “I’m sure you know how fast this is,” she said, “so I’m not even going to mention it.”

  “It’s not fast, not for us. We’re not getting any younger.” Natalie’s eyes twinkled. She looked happier than I’d seen her in forever. “We saw a movie together on Saturday night, and he told me he couldn’t live without me. He buried a ring box at the bottom of my popcorn. It was so sweet!”

  Tears streamed down my face, and I barely realized the eye faucets had started. This was a daily occurrence. Everything made me cry. Commercials for reverse mortgages. Dead flowers. Not having enough rice in the pantry.

  The emotions involved were usually pretty pedestrian—“We’re all getting old,” “Life is impermanent,” “Damn it I just wanted some rice to go with this sweet and sour chicken”—but I couldn’t quite identify why I was crying over Nat’s engagement. She seemed happy. Though I agreed with Katie that the engagement had happened fast, Nat was an adult woman making an adult decision.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Katie spun around in her seat to look at me.

  I waved them off and folded my arms again, blinking back more tears. “Pregnancy hormones.”

  “That’s it?” Katie narrowed her eyes.

  “What else would it be? And I’m happy for Nat!” I added quickly. My eyes scanned the colorful alphabet above the white board at the front of the room, as I searched for a distraction. The tears weren’t just about joy for my pal. Underneath the happiness lurked jealousy. And guilt because of the jealousy. And sadness and regret and fear and resentment and maybe a modicum of anger, I think.

  Plus my stomach had turned on me because it was lunchtime and my belly craved food.

  I waddled over to my friend and hugged her. “I seriously am happy for you,” I said. “Let’s get dinner this week to celebrate. I have to meet Chris!”

  She squeezed me back.

  “But for now I have to deal with this asbestos thing in the boys’ bathroom.” I rolled my eyes and left the room. They couldn’t argue with asbestos. It was the perfect out.

  But Katie caught up to me on my way back to the office. Damn it she was fast now with all the working out. My mallard-like body was no match for her. “You sure you’re okay?”

  I nodded. I couldn’t talk. I’d start crying again.

  She fell into step with me. “I’m happy for Nat, too, but I’m a little jealous.”

  I nodded. But being jealous was silly. I didn’t want to be engaged. I’d never been more content on my own, living life on my own terms. No strings, no stress.

  “And I don’t even have anyone on the horizon,” Katie said. “You have Ian.”

  I stopped walking. “I don’t have Ian.” I chuckled at the thought. “I have a friend, Ian, and we’re on the exact same page about our friendship.”

  “Right.” Concern clouded Katie’s face. Concern for her pathetic, knocked-up sister.

  “I’m exactly where I want to be right now.” The tears stung my eyes again, and I wiped them away in anger. “Ian and I are exactly where we want to be. We’re great. We text and talk on the phone and he’s one of the funniest, smartest people I’ve ever met. We are great friends, and that’s how we’ll stay.”

  “I know you two have been talking a lot.” Of course she did. Katie lived with me. For the past month or so, she’d seen me sneaking peeks at my phone during breakfast and dinner. She knew Ian texted me—whether he was in town or Tokyo or wherever—during the evening while we were watching TV. But there was nothing untoward happening between Ian and me. We were buds. Chatting with my pal and the father of my future child amounted to totally aboveboard behavior. “I’m only wondering if you might want more,” she asked.

  I shook my head. “No.” More was exactly what I didn’t want. More would be me falling back into old habits, falling for yet another emotionally unavailable man. What Ian and I had was healthy and honest. We both understood we’d fail at more than friendship, so we vowed to keep things at that level. No matter how much fun we had together, no matter how much I dwelled on the sensation of his hands on me sometimes, no matter how much I pictured the two of us living together happily, it wouldn’t last, and therefore it couldn’t happen.

  “If you’re only keeping your distance from Ian because you don’t want to buy Nat a SMARTboard…”

  “Katie, that is so not it.” The SMARTboard was secondary. I had committed to singledom for my own good. I pointed down the hall, back toward Nat’s room. “What she and this Chris guy are doing? It’s a bit silly. You know this, and I know this. I hope it all works out for her, but past history says it goes down in flames. Ian and I are trying to avoid that.”

  “If you say so,” Katie said.

  “I do say so.” I booked it down the hall as fast as my fat little duck legs could carry me. “Asbestos!” I shouted, shaking my head.

  …

  Ian

  From Ian: I’m telling my dad tonight.

  From Ian: I know I should’ve told him ages ago, but now I’m like, it’s really, really real. He’s going to be a grandpa, and I have to tell him.

  From Ian: What did your parents say when you told them?

  From Erin: We first told them that Katie had been secretly divorced for six months, so they were cool with their forty-year-old daughter being knocked up.

  From Ian: Damn it I wish I had a sibling.

  On Wednesday, after I flew in from a business trip in D.C., I hopped right into my car and drove up to Winnetka to visit my dad. He still lived in the house he and my mom bought when they were first married. He was a retired painter and spent most of his time golfing or bowling with his friends. I found him out in the garage, cleaning up and taking inventory for spring. My dad took great pride in his yard. We…didn’t have much in common.

  “Hey, Dad.” I picked up a rogue hammer on the ground and set it on the work bench.

  “Ian, what are you d
oing here?” His whole face lit up, and a pang of guilt hit me. I didn’t get up here enough.

  “Just came to visit.” I grabbed a broom from the corner and started sweeping. I’d start coming here more frequently. I’d bring the baby here all the time after he was born. Heck, maybe I’d move out to the suburbs like Tommy.

  I touched my forehead. Nope. No fever.

  “I’m getting as much done here as I can now.” My dad had made piles of everything—hoses, bags of mulch, algae killer for the pond. “Your Aunt Pat invited me up to Lake Geneva next weekend.” Aunt Pat was my dad’s sister. She lived in Barrington but owned a summer house in Wisconsin.

  “That’ll be fun, Dad.” I kept sweeping, growing the pile of dirt higher and higher. I was stalling. I’d come out here for one reason, and I was avoiding the issue. Time to rip off the bandage. I set down the broom. “So, I have some news.”

  My dad stopped in his tracks. He’d wrapped a green hose around his arm, and he held it there like a security blanket. His face had gone stark and white, because I hadn’t specified whether the news I had was good or bad. He was right to be a little concerned.

  I immediately regretted not inviting him to sit down for a pop or some coffee or whatever. It was a testament to how inexperienced I was at delivering important, life-changing news that I’d chosen to up and blurt it out in a cold, cluttered garage in the middle of April. “I’m…going to be a dad,” I said. “You’re going to be a grandpa.”

  “Wow!” He smiled for a split second and stifled it. My dad was no fool. Though he and I had never spoken outright about my plan to stay single, I was sure he figured that was the case. I’d never brought home a woman for him to meet. Not once. “That’s fantastic, right?” He furrowed his brow.

  “It is.” I beamed big, illustrating to him how fantastic. “I’m happy. It’s…it’s a boy.”

  “Wow!” he repeated. Subtext littered that “wow.” My dad and I talked golf, food, and real estate. That was it. This personal stuff went way beyond our comfort zone, and I’m sure he had no idea what to ask, how he was supposed to feel about this.