Jax
Three Months Later
I’m losing her already. We’ve only been married three months, and already she’s pulling away.
I sit here on the bottom step of our staircase and wait for my wife, like her dog. That’s what I’ve been as good as these past few days, trotting after her with my tongue hanging out, desperate for her to dole out an explanation, the reason why she won’t tell me where’s she’s been, what she’s been holding back from me.
Bella’s been denying everything. But not today. Today, she left the house again without explanation, still hasn’t replied to my texts, and I’m not going to take it anymore.
I sit here on my steps and stare at the door. If things are falling apart, I want to hear it from her own lips. The longer I sit here, however, the more restless I become. Bella left only twenty minutes ago, am I really about to sit here for another few hours if need be?
I glare at Muffin as she trots up and tilts her head at me, at the man who’s doing a better job at being a dog than she is.
I stand up. I know where to go.
My legs take me outside. I turn to give one last admiring look at our house. Our mansion, really. Its white walls are just as Bella requested, white with rosewood doors, all the arches rounded Italian-style. Just as Bella requested. Hell, our whole life is as Bella requested: she has her own motorcycle now, we go on trips around the world every weekend – how could she be unhappy?
The answer comes back as an insidious voice in my head: Because of what you said to her a few weeks ago.
I stride to my bike, get on, and start driving. As mansions and acres of lawn flash past, I shake my head, dismissing the thought. Just because I don’t want to have kids right away, doesn’t mean she’ll dump me on the spot.
If you’re so sure, the voice returns, then why are you heading where you’re heading?
Shut-up, I tell the voice, and it does. It burrows into a churning in my stomach that only worsens when I pull up to Valhalla, our old bar. I stop in front of it, a weird twist of nostalgia in my chest as I stare at it. Where I met her. Where it all began. Where I have to go to find out.
Bella wouldn’t have done… that, would she?
I stride in before the answer can come. The place is just as I remembered: black floor and walls, a strange Christmas-tree shaped light fixture on the wall, a handful of hip, chill-looking people. It’s fitting that it’s James behind the bar.
He smiles as I come up. “It’s been a while.”
I nod. “Has Bella been here lately?”
The easy smile on his face slides off. “You’re not still on about that one, man, right? I told you…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, just – has she?”
He won’t meet my gaze. “Yes.”
I collapse onto a bar stool. “When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Two Jack Daniel’s.”
“Ok.”
The first one is a gulp, the second merely an inhalation. “Another whiskey,” I tell him. When he slides the cup of brown deliverance over to me, I don’t take it. “Did she leave with anyone?”
James shakes his head and turns away. “I’m not doing this, man.”
I stand up. “Please, this is important.” I down the whiskey, but when I lower the glass, he’s over at the other end of the bar, talking to a big-bearded customer.
Already I’m feeling it, the effects of the whiskey. My gaze slides around this beloved, hated bar once more, stops on the blonde sitting on the stool beside me. She’s eyeing me like she’d like to help take my mind off my Bella problem.
I head to the other side of the bar, to James. “Another Jack Daniel’s.” When he returns, I grab his hand. “Please, man, it’s important.”
He rips his hand away, and before he turns away, says, “Yes. She left with a tall man.”
I slump back to my old seat, drinking most of my drink.
“Can I have a taste?” the blonde asks, now right beside me.
I shove out the glass. She puts in a straw and, eyes on me, sucks. When she’s sucked her fill, I drink the rest in one gulp. Everything’s a bit blurry, but the blonde’s still beautiful, putting her hand on my chest, whispering in my ear, “What’s your name?”
“Bella,” I say, pulling back and away. “Bella.”
The ride home is a mist of Bella leaving in the bar with a blur-faced man, and me, swerving and pressing into the gas and dodging cars and people and everything else at the last minute, almost hoping to hit them.
I shriek into the driveway just as she gets home too.
She’s happy, doesn’t expect it.
“Jax?” her lying whore smiles says.
I grab her. “Tell me. Tell me.”
She’s scared. Good. “You know?” her lying terrified lips ask.
“I went to the bar. I know.”
She’s scanning my face, her terror transforming into rage. “And… you’re actually upset?” She peers in closer. “You’ve been… drinking?”
“I talked to James, okay,” I snarl out. “I know.”
She’s shaking her head. “You’re not making any sense. James doesn’t know.”
I lean in close, getting right up in her face. “He saw you, Bella. He saw you leave with that guy.”
Now she’s smiling, and I want to smack it off of her. “Oh, my God, you mean the guy who put the letter on top of the bar for me because I wasn’t tall enough?”
I stare at her and don’t say anything.
“So clearly, you don’t know,” she says.
“You’re lying.”
She stares at me as if searching for a glint in my eye. Her mouth has the beginnings of a smirk, like she hopes I’m joking. Finally, she shakes her head. “Wow, you know what? I set this all up to make it a nice surprise. But now? I don’t think I’ll even tell you. Not today. You ruined it.”
The words burst out again – not really a belief as much as a fear: “You’re lying. You’re cheating on me.”
Bella stalks off toward the door and stops at the front mat. “No, even better, Jax. I’m pregnant with your child.”
The doors slams behind her. I gape at its wooden panes and bronze doorknob. Bella’s lying. She has to be, and yet… why would she lie about this?
I hurry in after her, but she’s already halfway up the stairs. “Bella?”
“Leave me alone, Jax. You’re drunk and you’re mean.”
“Bella, please. I’m sorry, I… you’ve just been so distant these past days. I didn’t know what to think.”
On the second floor now, she stands at the railing, looking down at me. “Fine, Jax, but… that? After all we’ve been through, you think that?”
I hang my head. My boots are filthy; I never noticed. “I just can’t bear the thought of losing you…” I murmur.
She pauses, and I rush up the stairs, taking her in my arms. “Were you telling the truth? Is that what this has all been about – all this secrecy?”
Her lower lip trembles. “Yes.”
I look at her, my wife and now, the mother of my child, I smile, then exhale. “Thank God.”
Drawing back, Bella says slowly, “You mean it?”
I nod. “When I told you I wasn’t ready, I was just afraid, Bella. I am afraid. That I won’t be a good father, that I’m not much of a role model. Not yet. May never be.” I sit down on the carpet and stare at the wall. “You forget what I was doing less than a year ago.”
Bella sits beside me and leans her head on my chest. “You forget what I was doing less than a year ago.”
I pat her head, shaking mine. “Going to the bar to hook up isn’t quite the same as running a sex trafficking business.”
Bella giggles and turns to face me with a grin. “You’re right. You’re an evil, evil man, Mr. Jax Forester. Not fit to father children.”
I pat her head again, smiling myself. “Glad you agree with me on this one.”
Next thing I know, I’m being whacked on the side of my head. “So you have a bad past, Jax. So what? Lots of people do. You can’t control what happened to you, what you did before. All you can do is try to be the best person you can now. And if you teach even that to our children, they will be the richer for it. You are a kind, brave, giving, compassionate, capable man, Jax, and any child of yours will be better off for having you as their father.”
She burrows her head deeper into my chest, and I lean my head onto her. The way she said it, I almost believe her.
I pat her again, and she kisses my cheek. “I was so afraid – that’s why I’ve kept it from you. And then when I brought up having kids, and you dismissed it, I got scared, wanted to wait until I knew more to tell you.”
“How long have you been keeping it from me?”
“I’m two and a half months pregnant. So far, the baby is healthy. Our little angel.”
“What?!” I ask, standing up.
Bella leaps up. “Were you just pretending to be supportive so you could tell me later to get rid of it?” she demands, eyes flashing.
“No, I just… you’ve been lying to me for two months?”
Bella takes a paper out of her jacket pocket, shaking her head. “I found out a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t want to tell you until I knew more. I’m sorry.”
She hands me a paper, and I find all my arguments dissolving in my mouth. It’s an ultrasound photo of the baby. Our baby. With a big alien head and little lump of body. Ours.
“Wow,” is all I can come up with to say.
Bella takes the photo back with shaking hands. “So… you’re okay with this?”
“Ok with this? Bella, I’m going to be a father! I’m going to have a little baby with you!”
I race all the way down the hallway and back.
“We’ll have to outfit one of the storage rooms into a nursery,” I say, then race back down the hallway and back to Bella. “Tell Whitey after a few more months. I can only imagine the gifts he and Alexa are gonna unload on us… and Bella?”
I stop in front of her. She’s beaming.
“Yes?” she says.
“Names! We have to start thinking of names.”
Bella nods. “Yeah, but Jax?”
“Yeah?”
“We can, just... I thought, maybe, we could call her Natasha. What do you think?”
I sit down on the carpet again, and Bella sits down beside me.
“Jax?”
“I… I think…” I turn to her, taking her face in my hands. “I think that’s perfect. Natasha, my baby girl.”
And then I pick Bella up and sweep her into the bedroom. Our bedroom, our silk-sheeted, black on red, silk on velvet boudoir where I have made love to my wife, and made a baby with my wife, and will make love to my wife, will make more babies with my wife.
“Natasha,” I say, flinging Bella onto the ruby comforter.
“Natasha!” she declares, tossing a decorative velvet pillow at me.
I catch it, fling it back at her, and collapse on the bed beside her.
We lie there, all curled up in each other and these silky, silky sheets, and our incredible, stupendous love, laughing at nothing but how lucky we are, at the gloriousness of life itself. Every once in a while, one of us will say it: the delicious refrain, the fusing of our past, present and future into a being, a creature, a child that will be our better in all ways.
We say it to ourselves, murmuring it to the universe: “Natasha, Natasha.”
THE END
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