Chapter Twenty-One
Noah
I met Elena at the bistro she’d suggested. It wasn’t the kind of place I usually went to, but she had sounded panicky over the phone, and I wanted to let her choose a place she would feel comfortable in. I had no idea what this was about, but I was worried.
On the way to the bistro, I noticed a red car behind me taking the same turns that I was taking. I glanced in my rearview mirror and frowned. I was being paranoid, I told myself. After Nicole had slashed Elena’s tires and visited me in my office, I was starting to see her everywhere. If I wasn’t careful, I would let her rule my life without actually being in it. So, I shook off the feeling that I might be followed and parked in front of the bistro.
Elena was already at the table, sipping a glass of water. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, so different from the dress suit she usually wore it to work, and her face was riddled with stressIt made my stomach turn, too. Was she here to break it off with me? I wasn’t sure how I would handle that. I had done a press release a few short days ago to ensure that we could be together without having to hide. That, and I adored her. When she looked up and saw me, her face lit up a little but not enough. Not how it usually did.
She stood up from the table to give me a hug. At least she was still doing that, she hadn’t withdrawn from me completely. I was holding onto small blessings.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I still feel very sick. It isn’t much better.”
“Have you gone to see a doctor?” I asked.
She glanced up at me with those bright green eyes of hers, but they weren’t the color they usually were. Her eyes seemed dull now as if the life had been drained out of them. What had happened?
“Maybe we should order something to eat,” Elena said, obviously changing the topic. I wanted to fight on it, demand to know what she had asked me here to say, but I didn’t want to force her. Instead, I would let her say it when she was ready. Whenever that was. Whatever she had to say.
“Okay,” I said, picking up the menu and glancing at it. When the waiter arrived, I ordered the first thing that I fell on. Elena ordered a salad and another glass of water. I realize I didn’t know what kind of food she ate. When she came over to dinner at my place, I had food ready for us, and the one time we had gone on a date, I hadn’t paid attention to her food. She had been too mesmerizing. Now, I wondered if the salad was something she usually ordered or if it was as out of place as it seemed.
“How are things that the office?” Elena asked. She was stalling.
“They are going well. Nothing new to report,” I said. I would play along for a while.
The waiter approached with our food a short while later, and an awkward silence stretched between us. I was getting more and more nervous. I was almost sure she was going to end things, now. She just didn’t want to say to me because she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I didn’t want to lose her. I had realized how much I had come to care for her, and I wasn’t ready to let go. I wanted to be with her.
Elena picked at her food, barely eating. I frowned. This was the second time that she didn’t want to touch her food where she hadn’t had a problem eating in front of me before. And the last time she had eaten at my place, she’d thrown up. I watched her as she pushed the food around the plate, getting lost in the motion as if she had forgotten I was there. I thought about her feeling sick, about her not being able to eat, about her calling in sick. She had asked me to meet her because she couldn’t speak to me in front of Lily. She couldn’t come to work because she threw up too often. Something was out of place, and as I worked through the facts, everything fell into place like pieces of a jigsaw.
Maybe she wasn’t here to break up with me. Maybe she had something else she wanted to say to me, and she didn’t know how. Everything happening at the same time would be too much of a coincidence for it not to be related.
“Elena,” I said, “what did you want to talk to me about?” I wanted her to come out and say it. I wanted her to tell me what was going on, even if it was only to set her at ease. She looked like she was struggling with inner conflict, and I hated seeing her this way. I wanted to see her smile again, her eyes bright and energy returned. The woman in front of me was a watered-down version of the woman I loved.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Elena said. I could tell how hard this was for her. Everything felt like it confirmed what I suspected. I leaned forward, moving my grilled cheese sandwich and soda out of the way to close the distance between us. Elena watched me with weary eyes.
“I think I know what’s going on,” I said.
“You do?”
I nodded. I glanced around us to be sure that no one would overhear, lowered my voice and reach for Elena’s hand.
“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
Elena’s eyes welled up with tears, and I knew I had guessed right. Her tears spilled over her cheeks when she blinked, and she raised her hands to cover her face.
“I can’t do this,” she said again.
“Hey, listen to me,” I said, reaching for one of her wrists. “It’s okay. Don’t cry. It’s okay.”
Elena dropped her hands enough so that I could see her eyes. They sparkled with tears, the most beautiful green I’d ever seen. “How can it be okay?” she asked.
“Because this isn’t bad news,” I said.
Elena blinked at me, confused. Maybe she didn’t understand how much I enjoyed having a child. How much Lily was the be all and end all of my life. Maybe she didn’t understand how much I loved children. How could she? We didn’t know very much about each other. But having another baby, having another baby with her was exactly what I would have wanted. I wouldn’t have planned it this way myself, but now that it was the case, I couldn’t be upset about it.
“I don’t understand,” Elena said.
“Having another baby will be amazing,” I said. “I would be so excited to be a dad again.”
Elena shook her head as if she was trying to understand what I was saying. “What about the media? What are they going to say about it in the papers? They’re already running around with so many stories I can’t keep up.” She took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder.
“No one has to know about this yet,” I said. “We can keep it to ourselves, decide how we want to handle it, be happy and excited together, alone, and when the time is right, we can announce it. Or we can keep it a secret. It has nothing to do with them.”
“But the company,” Elena started, but I shook my head, interrupting her.
“This has nothing to do with the company. This is about you and me, our future together.”
Elena looked like she was turning it over her mind, thinking about what I was saying. I watched as she took in the information and tried to make it fit with the current status of her life.
“You’re not upset about this?” she asked.
I shook my head, and I was unable to hide my smile. “I’m not upset about this at all. I want to be with you. If it was up to us, we wouldn’t have planned a baby so soon, but now that it has happened, we’ll make it work. I know I’m happy.”
Elena nodded, and finally, she smiled. It wasn’t a big grin, but it was something. She didn’t look so down anymore like she wished the earth would swallow her whole. We still had a lot of things to work out, a lot of things we would have to do, but I was excited to do this with her. I knew how to be a parent, and I wanted to do it all over again with Elena by my side.
“Let’s celebrate this for the happy miracle it is,” I said. “Let’s forget about everyone and everything around us and enjoy it between the two of us.”
Elena nodded. “Okay,” she said and let out a shuddering breath. “Okay.”
I smiled at her. “Come to my place,” I said.
“What about work?”
“I own the company. I can take time off whenever I want.”
Elena agreed to come home with me. She was smiling again although it was a careful smile as if she wasn’t sure she could be happy about how things had gone, as though she was waiting for the other shoe to drop and something to go wrong. But nothing would go wrong. I was elated that she was pregnant, that I was having another child, and that we were having a baby together.
We walked out of the bistro hand in hand.
“We have two cars,” Elena said.
“Follow me in your car,” I suggested. “I’ll lead us home.”
Elena agreed, and we walked to our separate cars. Iclimbed into my car and waited for Elena to pull out of her parking space and join me before I drove home. When I was about halfway, I realized the red car I had noticed earlier was behind us again.
It couldn’t be a coincidence this time, could it? I changed lanes a few times, taking turns to different routes than normal. Sure enough, the red car was following us, changing lanes when I did or turning whenever I did. It wasn’t a coincidence. Someone was after us.
I dialed Elena’s number on the car Bluetooth program and waited for her to answer.
“Listen, sweetheart, I don’t want you to panic. But someone is following us. I’m going to try to shake them so turn when I turn, okay?”
“Are you sure?” Elena asked. I could hear the panic in her voice.
“I am. But we’ll fix this.” When I said it, I realized how often I told her that.
“Okay,” Elena said, trusting me. I ended the call and took the next turn left. Elena followed me, and I watched as the red car did, too. I drove in no particular pattern through the streets of San Francisco, trying to stick to main roads with traffic lights and a lot of cars. I needed obstacles, a way for our follower to be stuck so that we could get away.
After a few more turns, I drove through a yellow light and Elena had the intelligence to tail me through. The red car was caught at the red light and we were free of it. I turned immediately, taking another turn or two before I finally headed home. I checked my rearview mirror a few times still, making sure we were alone and had lost our follower, but it seemed like we were in the clear.
When we arrived home, I parked in front of the garage and Elena parked next to me, getting out. She was beautiful. More than ever. Maybe it was because now I knew she was pregnant, but I couldn’t believe how beautiful she was.