SEVEN
Getting back to her routine was not as easy as Carla anticipated.
She had thought she could easily fall back into her the life she had before her night with Jackson, but it was getting difficult to remember who she was before that weekend. Going back to Brad was out of the question and she was glad to learn he wasn’t in town anymore. Everything had changed over the weekend and she couldn’t stop thinking about Jackson.
He was the first thing on her mind as soon as she woke up and the last on her mind at bed. He invaded her dreams and night after night she woke up feeling hot and bothered. Even work at the office was getting harder. For the life of her, Carla could not concentrate on her tasks and she frequently found herself watching the door to the CEO’s office. Many times, she forgot that Jackson was not in and she would get up and head for his office. But he hadn’t been to the office the whole week.
The day following their arrival home in Manhattan, he had called to tell her he wouldn’t be in the office the entire week; something about needing to go see his sister, Kayla who was married and living in Miami.
Carla didn’t know what to make of her situation. She might have accepted her lot as being Jackson’s weekend lover, but she couldn’t stand for them to have a strained relationship at work. What would happen when he came back from his sister’s? Would he fire her, or would she be pushed into leaving the company? She wondered if he still wanted her to have the EPE project now. She wanted to talk to him about all of these things, but she had no idea what to say to him. What if he wasn’t willing to listen? What if he didn’t want to see her again? He hadn’t bothered to call since he left, and she wasn’t about to call him first.
However, the tension kept rising and it was all she could do not to just pick up the damned phone and call him.
“Earth to Carla.”
Carla snapped out of her reverie to find a co-worker standing in front of her. Percy Ville worked in the marketing department but sometimes when there was something they needed her to help them with, they came to her. Carla tried to appear alert as she watched Percy place a file folder on her table.
“What is this, Percy?” she asked him. She hoped he hadn’t noticed that she had been wool-gathering in the office.
“You open up and see for yourself,” Percy said with a grin.
Now curious, Carla opened the documents and began to read.
“It’s everything on the EPE project… Vietnam to be the pioneer country and building activities commence in six months!” she exclaimed in surprise. “I thought it was going to be a while before building commences. Jackson must have heard wrong.”
“He didn’t hear wrong,” Percy corrected. “Decisions were changed yesterday, I suppose.”
“Wow! Does Jackson know about this?”
Percy looked like she just asked the dumbest question ever.
“Of course, he had the documents sent to the department with instructions to bring them to you,” he said.
Carla didn’t know what to make of this. Obviously, Jackson still wanted her to work on the EPE project, but he couldn’t even call her to tell her himself.
“So, good luck handling the details,” Percy said, interrupting her thoughts.
“Thanks.” she answered distractedly.
Frowning, Carla stared at the phone on her desk willing it to ring.
****
“You’re what?!”
Carla cringed at the high-pitched note of her friend’s voice. Tears stung her eyes as she repeated the news to Sharon.
“I’m pregnant.”
Silence met her announcement at the other end of the phone. Carla felt the tears start to drop as she stared at the pregnancy kit in her hands. Those two lines were as bright as bright can be; she wasn’t mistaken. She had felt ill continuously for days but had attributed it to the Jackson crisis she was going through – he still wasn’t back from his visit to his sister and she hadn’t heard from him, it was now obvious that he was perhaps hoping she would quit somehow before he could get back to the office. However, when her period didn’t show up this month, she had feared the worst. Now, it was confirmed. She was carrying Jackson’s baby.
“Oh Carla, what are you going to do?” Sharon said at the other end of the phone.
Carla laughed tearfully. “Well, that’s sort of why I am calling you – I don’t know. I’m so scared, and I have no freaking idea what to do.”
Carla was sitting on the floor of her bedroom in her unbuttoned shorts and top. After seeing the result, she had blindly run into her room to call Sharon first – and who else? She had nobody else in the world.
“Are you going to tell him?” Sharon asked.
When Carla finally told Sharon about sleeping with her boss, her friend didn’t blame her in the least. “We can’t help but fuck up sometimes, girlfriend,” Sharon had said dismissively. “I know there’s no future for me and Romlos but I share a bed with him every night. Now you’ve got the bug out of your system, go on and move on.” What Sharon didn’t know was that it wasn’t a casual fling like she might be having with her African stud in Kenya. Carla had told her friend all about liking Jackson since she worked with Adrian, but she hadn’t told her friend that the sex had meant something to her; that she dreamt of Jackson more often than she should, and that she couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing him again.
“I don’t know,” Carla wailed. “I don’t want to tell him, but I don’t know how I can keep this a secret. I work at his company and I haven’t been with anyone else. He’s coming back next week. What will I tell him? I can’t! He’s been through this sort of thing as a child. He said he never wants to get married; I knew this before sleeping with him. What if I tell him and he thinks I want to force him into marriage! What if he hates me and my baby?”
“Calm down Carla, slow down! You’ve lost me here. What the hell are you talking about?”
The tears were coming down fast and hard now and Carla stuck a fist in her mouth to stop the sobs threatening to escape. Breathing in a huge gulp of breath, she explained everything to Sharon.
“And I know he never wants to get married,” she concluded on a sob. “What if he sees my pregnancy as a trap? It’s déjà vu, a repetition of his own life. Despite everything, he is an honorable man, Sharon; he would want to marry me, just so his child doesn’t end up suffering like he did. And I would never forgive myself for that.”
“Will you say no if he asked to marry you?” Sharon asked very quietly. She hadn’t said a single thing all through Carla’s tearful explanation except this.
Carla’s tears stopped. She tried to think, to answer Sharon but no words emerged. Sharon too remained silent for the longest time.
“Wow girlfriend, you’ve gone and fallen in love, haven’t you?”
The words, spoken so softly ran through Carla’s body like an electric shock. Her entire body stilled at the realization that Sharon’s words were nothing but the truth. She had known it all along but had only been denying the truth. She should have known better, she should have known why she couldn’t get her thoughts off Jackson Daniels.
“Carla, Carla,” Sharon called over the phone, but Carla could not respond. She couldn’t say anything even if she wanted to.
Slowly, Carla stood up unsteadily. Without thought, she went to the vanity table in her room and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Candid blue eyes stared back at her. Carefully, Carla examined her features in the mirror. Red hair, large blue eyes, strong cheekbones, small pouty lips and a small firm jaw made up what many called a pleasant face, she wasn’t extra-ordinarily beautiful. She was only five feet five, too. She was nowhere near as beautiful as the women pictured in the magazines with Jackson. How had she dared to fall in love with him when those women couldn’t tie him down? What hope did she have?
None, she knew.
And just like that, Carla knew she was never going to tell him about the baby. When she thought her feelings for him were neutral, she could have considered having a discussion with him but not now. She was not going to spend the rest of her life loving a man who would hate her for shackling him in marriage. And Carla knew she was going to love him forever. With the realization that she indeed loved Jackson, was the realization that her love was true. She never would have been upset with him at the banquet otherwise and she certainly wouldn’t have considered having sex with him afterwards.
Still looking into the mirror, Carla firmed her jaw and took the decision she knew might haunt her for the rest of her life.
Drying up her tears with a fist, Carla grabbed the phone off the floor where she had left Sharon hanging.
“Sharon.”
“Thank God! I thought you had gone and done something stupid!”
“How is the healthcare in Kenya, especially for pregnant women?”
“What?” Sharon sounded like she had suddenly been thrown into unfamiliar territory.
Carla waited. She was sure Sharon heard her alright.
“You’re not thinking of…”
“Answer me Sharon,” Carla said determinedly.
“Well there are a few good hospitals in Nairobi but…”
“Thanks Sharon. Now tell me how to get a visa.”