BRITTANY
The look on Beatrice’s face is priceless as her mouth hangs open. The man holding the baby nearly falls down. “This is him?” he asks.
Jason nods. “I am him. Is that the baby? Mind if I hold him?”
I look at Jason, not sure about what he’s doing, but go along with him. The guy looks at Beatrice. “Do I let him?”
She looks shell-shocked, so I answer, “She told him he was the father, so I think you should.”
My bossy tone has him handing the baby to Jason, who takes the tiny thing and looks at him. The baby has dark hair, but so do both men who could be the father of this poor kid.
But as the baby moves around a little, waking up, he opens his eyes and I see they’re brown, too. Both Beatrice and the other guy have brown eyes, so that gives me a little hope this child isn’t Jason’s.
Jason notices the eyes too. “Awe, he didn’t get my blue eyes. That’s a real shame.”
“He got my eyes, Jason,” Beatrice says. “He looks like me.”
Jason shocks me as he nudges me with his shoulder. “Want to hold him, baby? You might be a second mother to him, after all.”
My stomach flip-flops, as it’s not in me to threaten anyone. Especially with their child. “No. Once we find out for sure if he’s yours, then I’ll get to know him.”
Beatrice lets out a sigh of relief, then holds out her arms. “It’s time for him to eat. Let me have him.”
Jason hands the baby to her. “I guess I’ll see you back in the judge’s chambers when the test comes back.”
She nods. “You’ll get a call, I guess.”
“I left instructions at the lab to notify me once the results are available. They told me it’s typically two days. You need to go have his blood drawn, too. Then a couple of days after that, we’ll have the results,” he says as he lays a hundred-dollar bill on the counter. “That should cover our check.”
He takes my hand and leads me out the door. I lean in and whisper, “You handled that very well.”
As we get outside, he turns to me and kisses my cheek. “I did, didn’t I?”
Then a voice calls out behind us, “We should talk, Bobby.”
Jason stops and looks at me. “Damn it!”
I shake my head. “Not another one.”
He nods, and we turn back to see a short woman with a blonde bob smoking a cigarette and walking toward us. “I saw you leaving the courthouse earlier and followed you here. I waited just inside the café, in the little game room to the side entrance. I heard it all. So, is your name Jason or Bobby?”
“Jason,” he says with a sigh. “I was going to send out messages to everyone later this evening. I’ve been lying to all of you.”
“All of us?” the woman asks as she drops the cigarette and smashes it with her boot.
Jason looks at me. “Brittany, this is Allison.”
I nod at the woman, who nods back. “Nice to meet you, Allison.”
“I can’t say the same,” she says. “You see, I just saw this man three weeks ago, and it was my understanding that we were a couple. A couple who didn’t see other people. So when I made a little visit to my hometown and saw him walking with you and holding your hand, well, naturally I was confused. Then I saw this little scene with another woman and a baby. By the way, did you by chance overhear her talking to that other man? He may be the father of that baby, too.”
“We did overhear them talking,” Jason says. “Look, Allison, I’m sorry about all of this. I’ve been living a lie and I’m stopping that. I stopped a week ago when I ran into my first love. My only love, really. I didn’t mean to hurt any of you.”
The woman laughs kind of manically. “Hurt me? Don’t worry about it.” She pulls out her phone and presses a couple of buttons, then hands it to him.
She has his app. And there on the screen is a blinking green light. He laughs. “So you’re a player too, Allison.”
With a nod, she says, “Why else would I allow my man to spend a day or two out of the month with me? Of course I have more men on the side.”
“So no hard feelings then?” he asks as he hands her phone back to her.
She shakes her head. “Nah. It was me who pressed the issue.”
Jason nods. “You were on the aggressive side.”
“So, what’s up with that woman?” she asks. “Because I’ve seen her around. She’s about four years older than me, but I know her by reputation. A real tramp, that one is.”
“Oh yeah?” he asks. “So is there a chance there’s more than me and that man who could be that baby’s father?”
She nods. “I also noticed that she and he drive some very nice cars for a nurse and a fry cook. Are you footing that bill?”
He nods. “The truck is in my name, but the house and the car she drives are in her name.”
“Well, now I’m a little pissed. You didn’t buy me a damn thing.”
I look at Jason, who seems kind of uneasy. “Well, you didn’t ask for anything.”
“She asked for those things?” she asks him, as her hands go to her hips.
“She did.” He looks a little sheepish, and I see the wheels turning in the woman’s head.
The door opens and out comes Beatrice, sans the baby. She shrieks, “What the fuck are you telling him, Allison Gates?”
Allison spins around. “What a fucking slut you are, Beatrice!”
“You stay the hell out of my business,” Beatrice shouts as she comes at Allison with her fists raised, ready to fight.
“You need to stop this, Jason,” I whisper.
He nods and moves his body between the two of them. “Stop it! There’s no reason to fight. It seems we’ve all been lying. It ends here and now. No one is the victim here.”
Beatrice’s eyes are narrowed at the younger woman. “You’ve been fucking him too, Allison?”
Allison laughs and nods. “But it seems you’ve been fucking him in a few ways. You need to get the fuck out of that house he bought and give him back his cars, you money grubbing bitch!”
Jason seems so out of control of the situation, I feel it necessary to step in. “Okay, let’s just calm way the fuck down.” I step up to stand beside Jason. “There’s a lot to think about. I’m sure that each situation can be dealt with as an individual case. And Jason’s lawyer will be the one handling that business.”
The short blonde seems to be much like a banty rooster as she turns to me. “And why the fuck do you think you get to say anything?”
I look down at the barely five-foot young woman and stifle a laugh. “Because I seem to be the only one here who actually loves and cares about this man. You two seemed to only want things from him. You both are about as aggressive as I’ve ever seen.”
Suddenly, I find the women standing next to one another as they look me up and down. Beatrice says, “This one here is pretty bossy. I think she needs to wake the fuck up about this man. Maybe you and I should let her know what kind of man he is.”
Jason holds up his hands in surrender. “Hey, now, let’s stop this! We’re leaving. Come on, baby.” He grabs my hand and we go toward the rental car.
Behind us, I can hear both women shouting about how they’ve fucked the man by my side and how he’s fucked them and my ears are on fire as he puts me in the car.
I know Jason is no innocent in this, but damn, those women are awful. As he gets into the car, I find myself asking, “How in the hell did you find either of them attractive, Jason? They’re such bitches.”
He pulls out of the parking lot. “I honestly do not know, Brittany. What I’ve been doing up until I found you again is a real clusterfuck in my head. I guess I do need to see a therapist because I don’t know why I’ve done any of the things I’ve done.”
Leaning back and resting my aching head against the headrest, I close my eyes. This is all too much to deal with. These women may all be kind of loose cannons. Is that what I want to deal with for the next couple of years until they move on?
He hands me his cell phone. “Can you send out a group message to all the women on my app telling them I’m sorry? I’m a liar and a cheat and am getting the hell out of their lives for their own good. Then I’m getting rid of that phone, which is apparently bugged by at least that one nut job.”
Taking his phone, I look at it and think about what he’s asked of me. Then I look back at him. “Don’t you think you should write the message, Jason?”
He shakes his head. “Baby, my mind is soup right now. I’ve finally found exactly what I want, and it’s not coming to me as easy as everything else has in my life. It’s infuriating, and I don’t know how to handle it. I want to take you, marry you, and go back to Bora Bora, where no one knows us.”
“That’s kind of running away from your problems. You know that, right?”
He looks straight ahead. “That’s my M.O. after all, Britt. Things get tough, I move on.”
“That’s always been your problem, Jason. You have to stand up and face things. We could go with what you want, but then you won’t learn a thing. You need to face the consequences of your actions. When you get involved with aggressive people, bad things happen.”
He looks at me with a chuckle. “Britt, do you think I haven’t learned that? I have. I have completely learned my lesson.”
“If something happened to me … let’s say I died. Would you be able to keep your ass out of those situations on your own?” I ask as I watch his face go tense.
“First, never talk about you dying.” He looks at me as he stops at a stoplight. “And yes, I think I could keep myself out of these situations. I never had the want to before you. But even if I lost you, I don’t want this kind of life anymore.”
His hand moves over the top of my leg as his eyes hold mine. I want to believe him so badly. And that alone has me wondering if I’m being gullible. I haven’t been naïve and gullible over anyone else since him.
I’ve built up the walls to stop that from happening, but here I am again, just like that nineteen-year-old girl who placed her hope in this man. He’s spun the biggest web of lies I’ve ever seen.
His handsome face seems to be begging me to understand him. Is that all he really has ever needed? Someone who can understand him?
Can I understand him? Can anyone understand why he’s chosen to make these fake relationships with not one, but many, women?
“Jason, if I asked you to take a lie detector test, would you?”
He glances at me as he pushes on the accelerator as the light has changed to green. “Why would you need me to do that? I’ve been upfront with you this whole time. I’ve told you everything. You’re the one person I’ve done that with.”
“How do I know that for sure? And how do I know you’re being completely upfront with me now?”
The hurt in his eyes has my heart pounding. I can’t stand to hurt this man. Being hard and honest with men has never been a problem with me, but with Jason it seems to be so hard it actually hurts me, too.