CHAPTER SIX

The cold January air felt amazing on my hot face as I left the coffee shop, already commanding my phone to call Jessica. I needed to vent. Why did guys always have to ruin a perfectly decent moment? Jonathon had handled my news pretty well, all things considered, though I didn’t appreciate his hinting it was my fault for not being on the pill. But then he had been thoughtful, comforting, and while he looked like he had a fish bone caught in his throat, he hadn’t hesitated to say he would be involved. That made me feel hugely relieved. I mean, either way, I was having a baby, and while it might be totally awkward at first to co-parent with a dude I barely knew, I still wanted my kid to have a father.

Then he had completely pissed me off by telling me he was dating someone and pointed out in that voice—the one you used when you thought someone was simple or slow—that he just wanted to be friends. So freaking insulting. Like, what, I’d gotten pregnant on purpose to snag my chem tutor? Yeah, because that was about the stupidest doomed-to-failure plan ever and pathetic to boot. I may have been a lot of things, but pathetic was not one of them.

“Hey, how did it go?” Jessica asked as a greeting.

“Remember when I said that I didn’t want to go see Jonathon again because I didn’t want to ruin the good memory by finding out he’s an asshat?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I found out he’s an asshat.”

“Oh, no. Did he freak out? Please don’t tell me he insisted it can’t be his. Because I will have to beat the shit out of him if he said that.”

Walking quickly down the street, the initial relief of the cold on my overheated skin gave way to shivers. “No, he didn’t say that.” Yeah, he had pointed to himself in question, but I thought that was more shock than anything else. Once I had told him it was his and I hadn’t been with anyone else, he hadn’t questioned that. He hadn’t insisted on a DNA test or anything like that. “He said he would be involved. That he would try his best.”

“So then why is he an asshat?”

“Because he told me he’s dating someone.”

“When you had sex with him? What a dick.”

“No. He started seeing her after.”

There was a pause. The longer it went on, the stupider I realized what I had just said sounded.

“I guess that’s a little awkward, but I’m not sure it makes him an asshat. I mean, he didn’t know you were pregnant. And you’re the one who didn’t want to see him again.”

Why did she have to make it sound like I was the unreasonable one? “You just had to be there. To hear his tone. It was . . . what’s the word when someone is talking down to you?”

“Patronizing?”

“Yes. Patronizing. That’s what he was being.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. Just give him some time to get over the shock before you judge him. And then if he proves he’s truly a Grade-A asshat, we’ll deal with it.”

That made me smile as I approached my apartment building. “Are you going to take a hit out on him?”

“No. I’ll just have Tyler and Riley work him over.”

“You can’t do that. It’s illegal. But thanks for offering.” I was not going to think too closely about why the idea of Tyler punching Jonathon in his very cute face made me super upset. His cute face that was going to merge with my genetics. “Hey, I just had a thought,” I told her.

“Should I be scared?”

I laughed. “Shut up! No, I just had a really good thought. My baby is going to be super cute. I mean, how can she not be cute with two cute parents?” Just seeing Jonathon again had reminded me of how nerdy adorable sexy he was.

I admit it, I had my shallow moments. Hey, honestly, we all do. But that wasn’t what I was saying, well, aside from no one wants to think they’ll produce a goblin child. The point was more that suddenly, it felt real, and I felt . . . okay. Even looking forward to meeting my baby, who would be cute simply because she was mine. I had a human being growing inside of me and suddenly that felt very awe-inspiring. Glass half full. That was me.

“I’m sure she will be adorbs. It’s genetically impossible for her not to be. And I will buy her many pretty dresses. Unless she is a he and then I probably shouldn’t buy him dresses.”

I was about to reply when I pulled open the exterior door and found myself face-to-face with Nathan. “Oh!” My heart started to race. “Shit. Jessica, let me call you back.”

“Are you okay?”

It depended on what Nathan wanted. “Yeah. Fine. I just don’t have enough hands right now. Give me twenty.”

We hung up and I stared at Nathan, chewing on my bottom lip. What the hell was he doing here? Had he heard I was pregnant? How did he even know where I lived? I definitely had not told him.

Unless it was just a coincidence. Maybe he knew someone else in the building.

“Hi,” he said, and gave me a nervous smile. “How are you?”

“Okay.” Pregnant. “How are you?” I had no idea why I asked that. I guess I was being polite.

“Not so great. Can I come upstairs? I really, really want to talk to you, Kylie. Please. Just let me apologize face-to-face once and then I’ll leave you alone forever.”

My heart twisted. Tears formed in my eyes, damn him. “So I need to do this to give you closure? To make you feel better?” Somehow, the pure selfishness of that made me profoundly sad, not angry. I had loved him with all my heart, but did I even really know him? Obviously not.

“No, no, of course not. I’m trying to say I’m sorry. Can we at least go inside and sit down on the steps? We’re blocking the door.”

There was no one around and it didn’t matter, but I was starting to feel light-headed. This whole creating-a-placenta thing was kicking my ass. I was exhausted all the time. Pushing around him, I unlocked the interior door to my building and sat down on the bottom step with a sigh. It suddenly felt like a long walk to the second floor.

Nathan sat down next to me, his hands on his knees, legs apart. I stared at him, at the familiar curve of his nose, his jaw, the mouth that had kissed me so many times with so much tenderness and I wondered what really was going on in his head. I wondered if I would ever know the truth and if I did, if I would even recognize it as honesty. He turned to speak and started a little when he realized I was watching him.

Then he surprised me by starting to cry. That was so not Nathan. He joked, he got angry, he grinned. He didn’t cry.

“I’m sorry,” he said, covering his eyes with his hand. “I’m so sorry, Kylie, baby, you have to believe me. I never meant to hurt you.”

It got to me. I didn’t want it to get to me, but it did. Throat tight, I tried to hold on to my anger. Tried to remember that moment when I had found the texts he had been sending to Robin. “If you had sex with Robin when you were both drunk and that was the end of it, I would believe you. But that wasn’t the end of it. You weren’t sorry at all. You’re just sorry you got caught.”

He wiped his eyes and sniffled. “I’m sorry I did it. I’m sorry I texted Robin. But I missed you, Ky, when you were back home, and this is going to sound stupid, but I missed you so much it scared me.”

This wasn’t helping. “That does sound stupid. The thing is, there is literally nothing you can say that will make it okay that you were texting my best friend telling her that her pussy tasted like chocolate.”

He winced.

Good. I wanted him to squirm. “Does that make you uncomfortable to hear that?”

“Yeah.” He shifted on the step.

“It was really uncomfortable to read it.”

For a second, he just stared at the floor then he looked at me, his nose twitching. “I deserve that.”

I sighed. “What do you want?”

“I just want you to know it was real, you and me. Everything I said, all those feelings. I loved you. I love you still.”

It shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have had any impact on me whatsoever.

But it did. It made me cry. I had devoted a whole year of my life to loving him. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair of him to cheat. It wasn’t fair of him to continue to try to cheat. It wasn’t fair of him not to just leave me the hell alone and let me heal.

“Baby, don’t cry. Why are you crying?”

He reached for me and I jumped up. “I can’t do this. Go home, Nathan. Leave me alone. Please.” I ran up the stairs, feeling flushed and nauseous.

There was nothing he could say that could undo any of his actions. What I didn’t understand was why he still cared, why he wanted to continue to insist that he loved me. Because in my world, you couldn’t love someone and do what he did. The two can’t coexist.

I was afraid he was going to follow me so I unlocked my door as fast as I could and closed it behind me, locking the dead bolt. I was leaning against it, breathing hard, when my phone buzzed in my hand.

It was him. Of course. Because apparently it wasn’t bad enough that he had to cheat on me and humiliate me. Now he was going to stalk me until I absolved him of his guilt. In a moment of weakness before Christmas I had taken the block off his number and now I was sorry I had.

Are you going to the going-away party?

He was talking about the party at Riley and Jessica’s house for Robin and Phoenix. She had transferred to Tulane and they were moving to New Orleans in just a couple of days. Because she got a complete fresh start. Clean slate. Happiness.

While I got Nathan lingering like a headache I couldn’t shake, and a growing uterus.

I was happy for her, I was. Despite everything, I loved Robin and she had shown me over and over how remorseful she was for what had happened. Unlike Nathan. But I wasn’t quite ready to wave a handkerchief in good luck at her bon voyage party. Especially because she had found what seemed like the perfect guy for her. Phoenix looked at Robin like he couldn’t breathe without her, and he’d tattooed her face on his rib cage. Who does that?

No.

We should go together. Show them they can’t break us.

Was he for real? He had lost his fucking mind.

You broke us. Not anyone else.

And suddenly I knew I was going to throw up. I dropped my phone and my bag on the floor and ran for the bathroom.

*   *   *

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mom.” After Kylie left the coffee shop I stared at the table for a while, thoughts racing around in my head in concentric circles, and I needed someone to talk to. Devon wasn’t going to be the best source for advice on this one given that he thought procreation was for suckers, so I figured my mother was a better bet.

Besides, I needed to get this conversation over with. If Kylie hadn’t ripped my balls off, it was possible my mother still might, and I couldn’t concentrate when I was dreading castration.

“How are you doing? What’s new, sweetie?”

More than there usually was. “Oh, you know, classes start in a few days. I, um, have a new student I’ve been tutoring.” And having sex with. God, this was really, really awkward. I wasn’t the kind of guy who shared details about his personal life with his mother. I hid my masturbation results in middle school like I was covering up state secrets or the evidence of the existence of aliens. When I had lost my virginity my senior year in high school I played it cool, as cool as you can when you’ve suddenly been given the key to nirvana. I didn’t even talk to my mother about girlfriends unless I was past the three-month dating mark with someone. So, yeah, this was fucking awkward.

“An undergraduate?”

“Yes.” I rubbed the patch of hair on my chin I never got around to shaving. “She’s really struggling with chemistry, and, um, she’s pregnant.”

“Oh, geez, that poor thing. It can’t be easy for her to be in school and to be pregnant. Trust me, I know.”

“I know. And you handled it amazingly well, Mom.” She had. My mother had raised me by herself with my father nowhere to be found. The only proof of his existence was the child support the government garnished from his wages every month. A freshman in college when she got pregnant, Mom had managed to graduate by the time I started kindergarten and find a job in marketing. It wasn’t until I was seventeen and won the physics competition that my father suddenly appeared to claim his part in producing me.

“Is the father around at least?” she asked.

Here it was. Moment of truth. Man up, Kadisch, I told myself. Get it out. “I’m going to try to be.”

Dead silence. She made a sound, like a gasp, and I winced, dropping my head into my hand. I was ashamed of myself, and selfish for wanting Kylie so much that night that I had been a total idiot. I’d taken advantage of her. It didn’t matter that she had wanted me, too. She had been hurting and instead of being a shoulder to cry on, I had gotten her pregnant. Winning.

“Jonathon . . . you got one of your tutoring students pregnant? Oh my God, how old is she?”

“She’s a junior,” I said, because I didn’t actually know how old she was. Further proof of my asshat-ness. “It was an accident, Mom.”

“I should hope so, for Chrissake.”

I didn’t know what else to say. Part of me felt like she couldn’t condemn me, given that she had personally made the same mistake and I was the result of that mistake. But at the same time, I knew she would feel that history was repeating itself, that I had taken advantage of Kylie the same way my father had taken advantage of her.

“She’s not crazy, is she? She’s not going to keep this baby from you, right? Because we’ll sue.”

Crazy? That’s where she went first? What, like a chick would have to be crazy to have sex with me? “No, she’s not crazy, and no, she’s being really reasonable.” My mom’s reaction surprised me. “I thought you’d be on the girl’s side in this one, considering what you went through, not jumping on her.”

“I’m on your side if she’s crazy or a bitch. You’re my son. But if she’s normal, then I’m on both your sides.”

That was some kind of complicated woman logic. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”

But she was already on to firing questions at me. “How far along is she? Do you know if it’s a girl or a boy? Where is her family, are they close by? Has she been to the doctor?”

None of which I knew the answer to, other than how far along she was.

“She’s six weeks.”

And then the worst one of all. “Are you in love with her?”

“No,” I said, because there was no point in letting her hope this was something different from what it really was. “I barely know her, Mom. I’m embarrassed to say that, but it’s true. I’m actually dating someone else now.” That might be a bit of a stretch to say Lydia and I were dating, but it seemed important to make sure my mother didn’t get the wrong idea about Kylie.

“What’s her name? Not the girl you’re seeing, but the mother of my grandchild.”

Did she have to say it like that? But it was true. And honestly, I had nothing bad to say about Kylie. “Kylie. She’s blond, pretty, and she’s very sweet.”

“That’s good. Are you sure you’re not in love with her? You sound like you like her.”

“Mom . . . don’t.” Of course I liked Kylie. But did I like her, like her? Who the hell knew? I didn’t really know her. Sure, I knew that I liked her smile, and her funny laugh, and the way her bottom lip tasted, and without a doubt I liked her naked body locked with mine, but beyond that I couldn’t say anything with any certainty.

Fortunately, she dropped it. Unfortunately, she brought up my dad.

“Does your father know?”

“No. I just found out an hour ago. And I don’t think I’ll tell him until the semester is over.” I wanted to add that I didn’t think he would be particularly interested, but that seemed a cruel truth my mother already had personal experience with. “Kylie is actually in his class. I don’t want to cause problems for her. And I graduate in May and I don’t feel like hearing his opinion on what’s next.” On how I was disappointing him by not going on to get my PhD, which was basically out of the question now. I had been debating whether I wanted to pursue it or not, but with needing to support a baby, I needed a job more than another degree.

Maybe that was revealing too much about my father to my mother, though. My relationships with them were separate entities.

It was amazing to me that suddenly, within the span of an hour, my whole future had changed. I picked at the congealed cheese on my sandwich and tried to stay rational, not succumb to emotion. I felt like I might actually have a heart attack. “Mom . . . do you think I can do this?”

I heard the doubt in my voice and she obviously did, too.

“Oh, Jonathon, of course you can, honey.”

“Dad couldn’t.”

“At the risk of bad-mouthing your father, sweetheart, you were more of a man at fourteen years old than he is at fifty. You can do this. I know you can.”

I took a deep breath, feeling more calm. “I don’t know anything about babies or pregnancy.”

“You’re a scientist. Do your research.”

She was right. So three hours and three cups of coffee later, I had made my way through a refresher course on conception, just out of curiosity, plus the first two trimesters of pregnancy, and the legal rights of non-custodial parents in the state of Ohio.

I had also spent a ridiculously large amount of time browsing through baby name sites. Never once in my entire life had I given a single thought to the name I would like to gift my future conceptualized infant, and it was a daunting task. I gave up by the time I got to C names. It was insanity. Just the As and Bs alone presented the basic options, the bewildering, the just plain bad, and the beautiful. I couldn’t deal. Besides, I wasn’t sure that I was actually entitled to an opinion. That may be something Kylie felt was well within her rights to decide solo.

Having kids was never something I’d given much thought to. It was a nebulous concept, something way off in the future in my mid-thirties or even later, after I had achieved certain career goals. After I had proved myself. I didn’t think I had ever even actually held a baby. My mother only had one sibling and Uncle Mike had kids who were in their late teens. My father had two sisters that I had never even met. I had grown up in an apartment with my mother and she hadn’t been particularly friendly with the neighbors, and basically there just hadn’t ever been an occasion to hang with a tiny human.

It was a damn good thing gestation was a lengthy process because I needed every second of that nearly eight months to figure out what the hell I was doing.

My phone dinged with an e-mail alert. It was Kylie, giving me her phone number. Plus it said, “If you could not tell your father just yet I would appreciate it. And thanks for not running screaming. ”

I tapped a message back to her, giving her my number as well. “I won’t tell my father. Trust me, I don’t want to. I did tell my mother, though. I hope that is okay. Don’t worry, my parents never talk to each other.”

Seeing that about my parents written in front of me on the screen just before I hit SEND, like it was a positive thing to tell her, hit me hard. I didn’t want that for myself. For her and I. Ever. I would do whatever it took to maintain a friendly and reasonable relationship with Kylie so that my child didn’t have to grow up the way I did, wondering where the hell my father was and why my mother was so angry.

History wasn’t going to repeat itself. Any more than it already had, that is.

So I sent a second e-mail. “Hey, Kylie, why was the mole of oxygen molecules excited when he walked out of the singles bar? Because he got Avogadro’s number.”