Stacy went into the bedroom and shut the door. If this were a real relationship, I'd swear that'd be her way of saying 'sleep on the fucking couch'.
Giving her an explanation was out of the question. She was only an employee, a vessel for my baby. Nothing else.
But then... as I began to walk down the hallway, I couldn't tear myself away from that hurt look on her face.
Stacy was young, gentle, yet smart and feisty. She wasn't the general stereotype I'd see everyday.
And that alone meant I owed her some sort of explanation.
I walked over to my bedroom door and turned the knob. It was locked.
I jiggled it a few times to see if Stacy would hear and let me in. No, this was the library all over again. I sucked my teeth and pulled out my master key.
She opened the door a crack, staring up at me with her big blue eyes. Tara's presence alone must've disturbed her.
"I'm sorry, Stacy." The word sorry was foreign to me. Stacy opened the door more and walked to the bed where she threw herself onto it and buried her head in a pillow.
"I didn't like her. You had bad taste in women. I'm disappointed," Stacy scolded.
I laughed and straightened my collar.
"I did indeed. But she was never my girlfriend."
"A fling?" Stacy asked.
"Almost. But something about her turned me off. Way off."
I sat on the bed next to her and rubbed her back.
This was time for a back massage. Maybe I could get her to do anything with a good enough massage.
Stacy let me knead in her back and shoulders for a few minutes until she jumped up.
"I have to take a shower, I feel dirty."
Those words stung me.
"Did I make you feel that way?" I asked, holding my breath. I wasn't used to rejection. Not from someone like Stacy who was slowly but surely breaking all my rules and making me break my own.
"No, today I walked through so much smog and dust, and grass and such. Plus, we had sex not too long ago."
I smirked. "Does that mean I can join you?"
"I don't think so. I might get dirty again," she said, winking.
Stacy left her covers behind and walked into the bathroom with a slow switch.
Her ass was perfect. Everything about her was perfect, and there was no more denying it. Fuck it all.
She wasn't just an employee or some carrying case for my child.
She was mine, and I was going to keep her.
No woman ever put this dull ache in my heart before.
She was the first. And my last.
Four weeks had passed.
We had decided to wait a little before we went to the doctors to see if she was pregnant. Stacy kept putting it off, and a tiny voice inside me wouldn’t stop talking.
Even if she was pregnant, was it mine?
After all, she did have a nasty habit of slipping out at night. Which I was going to address soon.
I had allowed her the luxury of part time assistant work while she went to classes full time. I didn’t ask where she went at night, as long as, she took the phone and promised to answer my texts, which she did, or call me if anything happened, which she never needed to do.
Still, she couldn’t seem to stop leaving at night. The phone had tracking capabilities that knew where she was and she knew that, so, maybe she assumed I knew where she was going. But I hadn’t looked. Because I wanted a modicum of trust and privacy in our relationship.
Trust. “Relationship.”
I don’t know where these concepts came from. They had been foreign to me. And I had decided it was time to get to the bottom of this. Because clearly I was falling in love with her, even if I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself.
Tonight, I was sitting in the living room, looking over more proposals and budgets for my company. Stacy whizzed by with her back pack and pounded on the elevator button to go down.
“What are you in a rush for?” I asked her. “I have my driver drive you to class every day.”
“Yeah, but your driver isn’t immune to bad traffic. Plus, I’m still going to be late.” Stacy smoothed her hair back and sighed. “And I have midterms today.”
I got up and went to her side, rubbing her back, I left a kiss on her forehead.
“Woah, what was that for? You’ve become super tender lately.” Stacy rubbed her forehead in mock wonder.
“Ouch, that hurt. I have a soft side too. Not many people witness it.”
“I can believe that,” she said with an airy chuckle.
I had to think she was falling for me too. But maybe I was just getting my hopes up.
The elevator bell rang and the golden doors opened.
“Before you leave, you forgot this.” I handed her the phone I had given her earlier. Sometimes she left it by mistake and I’d have to have someone take it to her. It was an accident when that happened.
But it irked the hell out of me.
“Oh, thanks! Sorry. Have a good day.” She jumped into the elevator and the doors closed, whisking her down to the floor level.
My phone rang back in the living room, and I jogged over to get it. It was my lawyer, Rob Greene.
“Rob, how are you?”
“Grant? Grant Carter, is that you? Why you sound… jovial.”
“I do?”
“That young girl leaving an impression on you?”
I cleared my throat. “What were you calling about again?”
“About that. That credit card you got for her. The card company called, since you had directed them to me for your financial and legal affairs until this stuff gets cleared up with your grandfather’s estate. They said that she was spending a high amount. Might wanna deduct it from—”
“How much?” I said, cutting in.
“Well, for the two weeks she had the card, she went through almost three hundred thousand. Some of it was school tuition I gather. But then there are a lot of cash pull outs.”
“Cash pull outs?”
The voice in my head spoke aloud again. Surely Stacy was an exception to what I thought about women.
“Yeah, I don’t have the total yet, but it’s got to be over ten grand,” Mr. Green said, coughing.
He needed to lay off the cigars.
“Okay, thank you for informing me. Anything else?”
“Is the girl pregnant yet?” Mr. Greene asked without hesitation.
“I don’t know. We find out this week. Stacy hates doctors, but she has no choice on this one,” I said, sitting down on the sofa and relaxing back into the memory foam. “She’s going.”
“Well then, be merry Grant.”
“You too.”
I hung up and dove back into my work.
The questions wouldn’t stop.
The fears rekindled themselves to a stronger flame. I remember how my mother did my father. The cheating, the lies, the heartbreak. My heartbreak. I couldn’t let that happen to me. Why had I let myself fall for Stacy?