Chapter Seven - Erica
This was not what I had planned. I detested him – detested the way Kyle Murphy behaved, the kind of self-righteous air he had about him, but he was sexy as hell. And we both had gotten what we wanted: each other’s body. And I had gotten my interview.
My dad had read the article too, and the same evening he had called. I let the phone ring till it reached voicemail and then I heard his voice leave a message. “You interviewed Kyle Murphy, kid? Your mother would be so proud.”
I bit down on my lip when I heard the message. I played it again, over and over. Yes, my mother would have been proud if she were still alive. But what about him? What was stopping him from admitting it… admitting that he was a little proud too?
Anyway, that was all over. Kyle Murphy was over. It had been two weeks since the article was published and my editor was already sending me out for games that I had never covered before. The interview was a success. My face was on the national map. My hard work had paid off. No journalist had ever gotten that close to Kyle Murphy before, nobody had asked those questions and neither had he bothered to answer any of them before. But I had caught him at the right time, when he was at his weakest, at his most satisfied. He had answered everything.
So, the interview was a success and I was beginning to forget about him until I started feeling sick. Not the kind of sickness in your stomach you feel when you’ve had too much takeout on a Friday night. No, this was sickness in the morning, sometimes at work. I had to run to the toilets, then wash my mouth and drink water to compose myself. It had been happening for over four days. It was time to take a pregnancy test.
I was in denial for the first few days, and then I took the test again. Kyle Murphy was a one-time thing, it was a quickie after a game, before an interview. Long gone now. And yet, I was pregnant with his child.
The first feelings of anger gave way to sadness, then to panic, and then to a feeling of misery. What would happen to my career? I wasn’t ready to be a mother. What about my dad? This would give him something to laugh about. If he had a son, he wouldn’t have made such a mistake in the middle of a blossoming career, would he?
I smashed a flower vase in my apartment. Then, I googled Kyle Murphy on the internet and stared at images of him attending concerts, after-parties, and award ceremonies, a different woman on his arm each time. I had seen what was under all those clothes, those tuxedos in the photographs. He had been inside me. Those green eyes had looked directly into my face. He had nibbled my ears, touched my nipples… And now I was pregnant.
One bad decision, one moment of irresistible weakness and now I was pregnant with his child. I was carrying the child of a man I’d never meet again. Kyle Murphy was inaccessible to me. He was American royalty now. I couldn’t even get in touch with him if I wanted to. Not that I wanted to. As much as I would have liked him to take responsibility for what happened, I wouldn’t want my child to have a father like him.
I fluctuated between anger to feeling those warm feelings that a mother feels for her unborn child. The days went on, my sickness continued, and I tried to hold down the fort at the office, all the while coming to love the child growing inside me. The child that would never know its father. Never know that it had been conceived in a shower cubicle in the locker room, after an NFL game.
I believed I would be able to get over it, that I’d be able to get past it. I’d keep the pregnancy hidden for as long as necessary for my job to continue until I had to take a short leave of absence. I was slowly convincing myself that I’d be able to take care of the baby alone, that I’d give it a childhood better than my own. That after the father I had, my child might be better off without the presence of a father at all.
So I attended sports events, went to games, interviewed more sportsmen – none of whom were nearly as successful as Kyle Murphy of course. But life continued. I was coming down from the shock of finding out that I was pregnant.
One morning, three weeks after I had met Kyle Murphy, I walked into the office. I was fifteen minutes late, entering to find a newspaper waiting for me on my desk. Someone had left it there for me to pick up and read. I probably wouldn’t have noticed a newspaper (in a newspaper office of all places) if it weren’t for my face being in the center of the page.
A blown up image of me, not the usual official mugshot that went along with all my other articles. This was a grainy, zoomed-in image of me sitting cross-legged on a bench in a men’s locker room. I was wearing a loose shirt and my legs were bare. My hair was wet and slicked back and I had a notepad in my hand. In front of me stood Kyle Murphy. I was looking up at him. He was naked, his ass pixelated to provide some semblance of modesty.
I had a smirk on my face and he was looking down at me. I was in the middle of interviewing him. I didn’t have to read the whole news story to know exactly what it was about. I had gotten the interview with Kyle Murphy in exchange for sexual favors. Which was the truth.