Because Of The Baby
“Mmm, sure.”
“You seem a little distracted.” Reaching back, she patted her hair and felt that it had gotten mussed. She released the tortoiseshell clasp and ran her fingers through the straight strands.
The movements weren’t intended to be seductive. They were seductive, though, and it didn’t help his distractedness.
I did that, he thought. I ran my fingers through that hair, felt its silken texture. I know it smells like gardenia.
He’d caught himself leaning too close to her recently, trying to get a whiff.
It made it worse, he thought, to know what she smelled like, felt like, tasted like. Now that he’d seen her naked body, caressed her curves, it had become almost torturous to be near her.
Especially to be near her and not be able to do it all again.
He swallowed. “Guess I’m a little preoccupied with the fall fund drive,” he said. A fib. He hated to lie to her and he didn’t have much practice. The need had never arisen in the past. But she wouldn’t want to hear about him lusting after her. “Sorry.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Nah. You’re already volunteering plenty.” Kyle finished off his beer, which was flat and warm. He decided he’d better attempt some kind of conversation. Assure them both everything was okay. “So…any luck finding a roommate this week?”
Anita had moved out of their little house around the corner on September 1st. More than a month had passed and somehow none of Melissa’s roommate applicants had worked out yet.
She shook her head. “Actually, I’ve been thinking of calling off the search. Living by myself for a while.”
He gave her a look. “Because you think she’ll come running back,” he said, and they both knew he meant Anita.
“Honestly? Yes.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“Then I’ll live alone.” She gave a half smile, just a slight quirk of the lips. “Maybe it’ll be good for me.”
“You know how I feel about that.” It would be great for her. He’d been telling her so for years. She needed to live for herself awhile, instead of for others.
“Then why are you eyeing me as if I’ve done something wrong?” she said.
Okay, they weren’t going to have a lighthearted conversation tonight. This would be one of their serious ones, instead. That was fine, he told himself. As long as it didn’t pertain to the two of them. “You’re not planning to live alone. You’re planning for your poor, weak, flighty sister to have a dramatic breakup with her boyfriend, just like she always does, and then come running back to you. You’re counting on it. She probably knows it.”
“Am I supposed to expect their relationship to last? Expect her and Ty—”
“Troy,” he corrected.
“Troy.” She paused. “I’m supposed to expect them to live happily ever after? That’s never happened before.”
“How many times has your sister moved in with a guy?” He knew the answer, but he wanted her to say it.
“Never. But she’s talked this way about plenty of guys. I can always recognize it. She gets the same tone in her voice, the same look in her eyes. You want to know what it says? ‘It’s real this time. He’s my knight in shining armor. He’s the one who’s going to sweep me off my feet and make everything all right.’ But it never lasts.”
“Maybe this time is different.”
“It’s not.” She spoke with absolute certainty.
Kyle considered her. “Okay. Say it isn’t. Say the relationship goes up in smoke. You really think it’s good for her to come running back to you?”
“Who else can she turn to?”
She didn’t say, Not my father. I’m the only strong one in the family. She didn’t have to. He’d heard her say it in so many ways a hundred times before.
“Mel, what about her standing on her own two feet? Not needing to depend on anyone?”
“You sound like such a guy, Kyle. All that independent, rugged-individualist stuff.” She stood up. Grabbed his beer bottle and her water glass and the gingersnaps. “In my family,” she said, “we support one another when times are tough.”
Melissa carried her load to the kitchen. She returned with a cloth and wiped up the three microscopic cookie crumbs she’d gotten on the coffee table. Her hair clasp, which she’d set on the arm of the couch, went neatly into her pocket.
He knew she didn’t realize how revealing her actions were. She’d spoken so calmly, but that obviously wasn’t how she felt.
She always cleaned things when she was agitated. Tidied a pile of papers. Dusted a picture frame. Suddenly remembered a load of laundry that needed to be folded.
She bunched up the cloth in her hand, spotted a coffee mug he’d left on the end table yesterday and walked over to get it. When she turned around, the most direct route to the kitchen was between the couch and the coffee table. She took a few steps forward.
He didn’t think. He just raised a leg, resting his foot on the side of the coffee table, barring her path.
“Kyle—”
She faced him. Their gazes locked. Something hot and electric and impossible passed between them.
“Kyle, move.” She didn’t step over his leg. His bent knee reached the level of her thighs; she would have had to straddle him. But she didn’t pivot and go the other way, either.
He ached to tumble her onto the couch, on top of him. To kiss her again. He ignored the urge. He looked up at her and said, “What about you, Melissa? Who do you lean on when times are tough?”
Her gaze wavered, sliding sideways. She towered over him, spine straight, the cloth in one hand and the mug in the other, and didn’t give him an answer.
“Come on, tell me. I want to know. Who takes care of you? Who do you turn to?”
She shook her head. “Stop it.”
He couldn’t. Suddenly he couldn’t stop himself. It had been building in him for two and a half months, he finally acknowledged. This restless, edgy energy. This urge to push against her emotionally, to shake things up and break things down, even though he knew he shouldn’t. Even though it could screw up their friendship.
“Or is that just for other people?” he demanded. “For the weak ones?”
“Don’t.”
“I need to know the answer.”
“You already know it.”
“I do? Because it doesn’t seem that way to me.”
“Damn it, Kyle.” She glared down at him.
He blinked. Hell, it looked as if she had tears in her eyes. Oh, God. He’d made her cry. He was being a jerk and he wasn’t even sure what he was saying.
Remorse and shame flooded through him. He dropped his foot to the floor. He raised his hands and pressed them to his forehead, a weary gesture.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be such an ass. I’m not myself right now.”
He heard Melissa sit down next to him and sensed the couch shifting beneath her weight.
For a moment she was silent. Then, “Me, neither.” The words came out as a whisper.
Kyle wanted to take her in his arms right then. He wanted to comfort her, even though he didn’t know all the reasons she might need comforting.
But he held himself back. She had her boundaries. He had to respect them. And she did accept his support in other ways. She did turn to him when times were tough.
He wasn’t prepared when she spoke again. He hadn’t expected anymore from her. But she gave it to him, and it was more than he’d ever imagined.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
CHAPTER TWO
MELISSA HAD NEVER felt an earthquake before. Now she knew what it would be like.
It would begin as a distant rumble; you couldn’t be sure it was real. Just a slight, subtle hum. But then you would start to feel the vibrations. You would realize the floor was shaking beneath your feet, the walls were shaking, the furniture was shaking.
And the noise—that unearthly rumble growing louder and louder, gaining textures, piling up on itself, creaking, shifting, shuddering and shattering. A cacophony of sound.
The books in the shelf near the TV, she thought, would tumble to the floor. The framed paintings on the walls would rattle and hang askew. Or slide down the wall, hit the floor with a bang. Plaster and paint would flake from the ceiling.
Then suddenly the earthquake would be over, gone more quickly than it had come. Leaving behind a deafening silence.
She looked at Kyle, sitting quietly beside her on the couch, his forehead buried in his hands. He hadn’t moved. An emotional earthquake had passed through his living room and he hadn’t moved.
He didn’t even glance up. Rubble lay all around them—the rubble of their lives as they’d known them, their lives before this moment.
Before they’d made love.
Before she’d told him the truth. Before he’d known they’d made a baby together.
Melissa set the mug and washcloth down on the coffee table. “Kyle, please. Say something.”
He dropped his hands from his forehead and looked over at her. For a long moment he didn’t speak. They just stared at each other, trying to read thoughts through eyes. To understand emotions without words.
“You’re pregnant,” he finally said.
“Yes.”
“From that night in July.”
He didn’t need her confirmation. Of course he knew it couldn’t be otherwise. She didn’t exactly have a highly active sex life. At thirty-one, she’d had fewer partners than most eighteen-year-olds.
Kyle massaged his temples. “I can’t believe this. We used protection. We were careful.”
“No, we weren’t,” she said.
If they’d been careful they never would have made love at all. She saw by his expression he knew what she meant.
But they hadn’t been their normal selves that night. They’d each been running from something, each seeking a way to forget. And their solution had worked—temporarily.
Now they had to face the consequences of their foolishness.
“Condoms aren’t one hundred percent effective,” she reminded him.
“I know. But I never thought—” He stopped, shaking his head. “How long have you known?”
This was the part she’d dreaded. She didn’t want to tell him. She couldn’t explain or justify her behavior. “About—about six weeks.”
“Jesus, Mel. That long?”
“I wanted to tell you sooner. I just—couldn’t.” She felt overwhelmed. Overstimulated. As if she were having one of her sister’s anxiety attacks. She took a deep, calming breath and forced tense muscles to release and relax. “I’m sorry.”
She stared straight ahead at the blank television. Kyle had a twenty-five-inch screen—almost double the size of hers—which was why they always watched The X-Files at his place.
“It was right after my birthday,” she said. “I’m not…very regular, so it took me a while to figure it out.”
“You haven’t been getting sick or anything. I would have noticed if you’d started throwing up every day.”
“Of course. But not all pregnant women experience morning sickness.”
“Oh.”
She could feel his gaze on her.
We’re going to have a baby.
It was a thought she’d had many times recently. She would look over at him as they were working, or driving somewhere, or sharing a meal, and she would know she had to tell him. But the words had always refused to come. Her tongue had felt heavy and thick and incapable of forming the right sounds. She’d let the moments pass.
Until tonight.
“I don’t understand this,” Kyle said. “I don’t understand how you could—” He waved a hand in the air, momentarily speechless. His gaze pinned hers. “How could you act so normal? All this time. Six weeks, for God’s sake, you’ve known you’re carrying our baby.”
Melissa abruptly grabbed the items she’d set on the coffee table. She stood and headed for the kitchen.
Kyle followed her.
She wiped down the counters, loaded a few more items into the dishwasher. A butter knife. The bowl and spoon Kyle had used for his cereal that morning.
He stood and watched her, leaning a hip against the edge of the counter, arms crossed. “You asked me to say something back there. Now it’s your turn. Talk to me, Mel.”
She stopped and closed her eyes, flattening both hands on the countertop. “I don’t know if I’m ready,” she admitted.
“It’s been six weeks since you found out. How much more time do you need?”
More than I’ve gotten. A lifetime, maybe. I’m simply not prepared for this.
“You weren’t even going to tell me tonight, were you?”
She shook her head. “It was just because you…said what you did,” she admitted.
She stared down at the backs of her hands. Doctor’s hands. Well trained, sensitive yet strong. A narrow scar ran from her left wrist toward her thumb, a memento from that day over twenty years ago. And she had other scars, too—the invisible kind. The kind that wrenched you from sleep in the middle of the night, soaked with the sweat from another bad dream.
“How long were you going to wait, then?” Kyle asked. “Until you started to show? Were you going to make me work it out on my own when I saw your belly get big?”
She turned toward him, chin raised. “Kyle, I can’t do this right now. I need some space.”
He ran a hand through his short, dark hair, tousling it.
The man was gorgeous, she thought—an irrelevant, inappropriate fact to focus on. But she didn’t stop herself. She let herself stare at the father of her baby.
The firm, lean muscles of his tall physique attested to the hours he spent on the basketball court at the park down the street; to the long runs and summer hikes and that intense kind of yoga he did.
He held himself and moved with graceful, careless elegance; easy charm. And unutterably sexy masculinity. Two and a half months ago Melissa had lost her ability to ignore it.
She remembered what it had been like to make love with him. He’d been very, very good in bed, drawing out her arousal until she’d lost control. Until she’d whimpered and moaned in a way that embarrassed and appalled her now.
She turned away so he wouldn’t see the flush spreading over her ears and face.
He sighed. “I’ll walk you home.”
“Thank you.”
He always walked her around the corner after dark. Their urban neighborhood wasn’t a bad one, but Kyle said he saw no point in taking chances. He liked to make sure she got home safely.
Kyle had an intensely protective side, and because she knew him, she didn’t think it was sexist. Just caring. In his own way—despite his fear of commitment, his inability to sustain a long-term romantic relationship—Kyle was very caring.
He did good work at the clinic, touching hundreds of lives.
He loved his mother and his younger brother and had looked after them when his father had decided to drop out of the family, leaving only a mildly apologetic note and a pile of overdue bills.
And he’d loved Felicity. The woman who, despite her name, had been hopelessly, hopelessly sad. Too sad to stay in the world, even with Kyle right beside her. Even when their wedding date had been only three weeks away.
In silence she and Kyle walked downstairs and left the apartment building. The night air had a hint of fall crispness and she was glad for the light sweater she wore. Beside her Kyle shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled along, looking almost like his usual, easygoing self.
How many people, she wondered, would guess what kind of conversation they’d just had? Who would think, seeing their composed expressions and unexceptional behavior, that they’d discussed, for the very first time, the new life they’d created together?
Briefly she stared upward at a dark, cloudless sky dotted with thousands of glittering pinpricks of light. So many, many stars. And they were so far away her mind couldn’t even begin to grasp the distance. She marveled at the vastness of the universe the way a child would.
In such a big space as the universe, she was small, and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but she existed.
I’m right here with Kyle. Kyle Davenport, my best friend.
And by midspring our baby will be with us, too.
Our baby. The phrase still had the power to shock her. Even after six weeks she couldn’t quite believe she was pregnant.
Barely aware of her actions, she cupped the faint curve of her abdomen.
“No one else knows?” Kyle asked as they turned the corner onto her street.
“No.”
“You could have told your sister.”
Melissa grasped his meaning. She could have told Anita and gotten her to move back in. It would have been the perfect way. Her sister would have come back to help her throughout the pregnancy. But then, Anita would have been the one taking care of her. And it was supposed to be the other way around, wasn’t it?
Maybe Kyle was right. Maybe that was why she hadn’t told her sister yet. She couldn’t stand to be the one in trouble, the one who might need support.
“There’s a lot we’ll have to discuss,” Kyle said.
“I know.”
“You should let me know when you’re ready to tell other people. I won’t do it until you’re ready, but we should both tell our families soon. You are going to keep the baby, I assume.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
They both understood she could never have an abortion, even though she believed in a woman’s right to choose.
“How much time do you think you’ll need?” he asked. “Before you’re ready to talk again.”
“I don’t know.” She fished her keys out of her handbag as they climbed her front steps. The two-bedroom bungalow, painted light blue, seemed lonely and dark.
“I need some kind of timeline, Melissa. Come on. This isn’t fair.”
She acknowledged that he was right. Opening the door, she reached inside to flip on the porch light. It bathed them in a pale-yellow glow. She turned around in the doorway to face him. “How about a week.”
“So we’ll talk next Wednesday?”
“Yes.”
“And this weekend? We’re still on for Sunday dinner with your dad and Anita? We’re still going to Whitney’s dance performance on Friday?”
The possibility of canceling their plans surprised her. She’d been behaving as if everything were perfectly ordinary for so long now. Going through the motions. She’d gotten used to it.
“You don’t want to?” she asked.
“It’ll be awkward, that’s all. Especially around your family.”
But we’re so good at pretending nothing’s wrong, she thought. We’ve had plenty of practice since July. How many times have we seen Dad and Anita and acted as though we were still the same platonic pair as always?
He shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll deal with it. We’ll touch base tomorrow night, okay?”
She nodded.
“Melissa?”
“Yes?”
He raised a hand to her hair. She tried to hide a shiver as he stroked his fingers through the strands, rustling them and making her scalp tingle.
Why are you touching me like this? It isn’t allowed. It’s against the rules. I can’t let you do this.
But it felt so good.
Kyle stopped and cupped the side of her face. “Don’t worry. We’ll work this out.”
He turned around and left.
CHAPTER THREE
ONLY MELISSA.
Only Melissa, Kyle thought, could have kept her pregnancy secret for so damn long. Only she could have maintained the fiction that nothing had changed, could have managed not to reveal anything through words or expressions or actions. It was simply a logical extension of her business-as-usual performance after they’d made love.
Oh, Mel.
The woman was purely herself. She didn’t try to act like anyone else.
He knew some people considered her inhuman, even cold. She wasn’t. She might be more subtle, less immediately accessible. But the depth and the feelings were there. Only people who had no patience for subtlety had a hard time with her. People who needed everything to be simple and easy and obvious.
Kyle changed into sweats and shoved on his court shoes. It was Thursday afternoon and he’d made plans to meet his friend Jerome down at the park for some hoops. He needed the physical activity and the diversion of athletic competition. Badly.
His keys sat on his dresser, next to a framed photo of Felicity and him. He grabbed the keys and stuffed them into the zippered pocket of his sweat-pants, then jogged down the stairs and left the building at an easy run, warming up his body slowly. The October air felt cool and refreshing against his skin. The change to standard time hadn’t occurred yet, so a few more hours of daylight remained this afternoon.
He tilted up his face to the sun, briefly closing his eyes as he ran along the sidewalk, and thought, How could this have happened? This impossible, incomprehensible situation. How can Melissa and I be having a baby together?
Neither of them had expected to have children—let alone with each other.
How strange and terrifying…
Not that either of them had something against kids. No, they both liked them. They’d enjoyed the times when Kyle’s brother and his wife—now his ex-wife—had come to visit, bringing little Danny and Mira. They often volunteered to baby-sit for friends.
But to take on parenthood themselves?
Kyle reached the park, saw Jerome and waved as he jogged toward him.
“Hey,” the other man said, clasping his hand in a quick man-to-man shake when he reached the court. “How’s it going, Kyle?”
He shrugged. “You know.”
I’m going to be a father.
The thought resounded in his head like the echoing announcements in a sports arena. He tried to ignore it and said, “Ready to be the old farts who kick some seventeen-year-old butts?”
Jerome laughed. “You bet, man.”
Within a couple minutes they’d found more players and started a game. Kyle worked up a sweat. As the only white guy this afternoon—and one who was only five-eleven at that—he had to work extra hard to prove himself. And then there was the age thing. He and Jerome were thirty-two and thirty-six respectively. The teenagers here really did see them as old farts.
I’m going to be a father.
He jumped up and aimed for the hoop. The ball made a satisfying whoosh as it slid cleanly through; unlike some public courts, this one had nets hanging.
Jerome tagged him on the arm as they moved back out. “Good shot, buddy.”
“Thanks.”
I’m going to be a father. They played another thirty minutes before taking a break. Kyle walked over to the water fountain, breathing hard. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his forearm.
A few yards away children laughed and shouted as they pumped back and forth on the swings and climbed all over the brightly painted jungle gym.
Hell.
I’m going to be a father.
Jerome caught up with him as he leaned down for a drink. “Hey, old man,” he teased. “Too much for you?”
Kyle swallowed a mouthful of water. “I’m not the one who was gasping and wheezing on the court back there,” he said, and took another long gulp.
His friend laughed.
Kyle felt dizzy and weak. And it wasn’t because of the basketball game.
ANITA LOPEZ did not look forward to seeing her sister. She loved Melissa and usually enjoyed spending time together—but sometimes the tensions in their relationship were more than she wanted to deal with.
And sometimes her perfect, overachieving sister could be a royal pain.
This Friday morning, Anita feared, was going to be one of those times. Especially after she told her the news. Without a doubt Melissa would flip.
Oh, she wouldn’t shout and wave her arms in the air, or swear, or do any of the things most people did when they flew off the handle. No, Melissa would stay completely calm. Her very noticeable lack of a strong response would signal her flipped-outedness.
Through the kitchen window of her ground-floor apartment Anita saw her sister’s white Honda pull up in the parking lot.
She’d been washing dishes from breakfast. She rinsed the last plate and wiped off her hands.
Melissa had almost reached the front stoop when Anita opened the door. They greeted each other with the genuine affection they shared—despite the issues between them—and Anita ushered her inside.