“About twenty years or so.” He shrugs again.
“You must have been floored.”
“I saw that perfect little baby lying there on its mom’s chest, and all I could think was that Fred should be in the room. Not me. It was his kid. I could see it immediately. It wasn’t just because of the color of her hair. It was all over Laura’s face. She was devastated.” He shoves his hands deep into his pockets. “But underneath it all, she was a mom finally. And it wasn’t my place to ruin her day, so I left.”
“Do you ever wish she had told you before the delivery? That she’d told you about the ‘one time’ and given you a choice whether or not you’d stay? Do you think you would have? Stayed, I mean?”
He shakes his head again. “No. I wouldn’t have stayed.”
“Why not?”
“We’d been through too much. We’d lost four babies, gone through years of fertility treatments, and we’d lost all of what we’d had in the very beginning. Everything I loved about her was gone by the time we got pregnant.” He snorts. “Or by the time they got pregnant. We weren’t the same people. We resented the hell out of one another.”
I point to the picture. “You looked pretty happy here.”
“She was smiling into the camera at Fred.” He makes a rude sound in his throat. “She slept with my best friend. My best friend slept with my wife.” He picks up the picture, stares at it for a moment, and puts it away in a drawer.
“Then what happened? After the hospital?” I sit down on the edge of his bed and he sits down next to me. He scratch
es his nose.
“I went home and she didn’t. That was the end of it.”
“It’s not the end of it,” I tell him.
“Yes, it was the end of it. I haven’t seen her since.”
“Why aren’t you working?”
“I drank myself into a stupor, taking vacation so I could do it up right, and then I went back to work. But I didn’t quit drinking. When I was off duty, I would drink, and then I would drag my ass to work the next day.”
“You got into a fight with Fred at work.”
He nods. “I broke the bastard’s nose.”
“Good.” I feel a certain sense of satisfaction that he did that.
He shakes his head. “Not good. I hit him because he put a picture of the baby on his desk. That’s all he did. He put a picture of his kid on his desk.” He sighs. “So my drinking, my dragging ass, the fight, and the mistakes I was making led to me being put on administrative leave. My superior told me that I needed to get my shit together. Then Pop called and he needed me to come home. And then when I got here, you were here.” He holds his hands out. “And here we are. You and me. Sitting on my bed.”
“Just like old times.” I lay my hands on my belly. “Well, almost.” I laugh.
Jake chuckles. “If it was like old times, I’d be trying to get in your pants.”
I fake a gasp. “You mean you’re not trying to get in my pants?”
He leans over and kisses my forehead. Then he says quietly, “If I was trying to get in your pants, you would definitely know it.”
Butterflies take flight in my belly. “I wish things were different.”
“I don’t,” he says. “I like them just fine the way they are.” He brushes a lock of hair behind my ear.
“I’m feeling really fat and really pregnant and really needy, Jake, so I’m going to get out of here before I start to cry, okay?”
“Wait,” he says as I stand up. He grabs my hand. “You owe me some secrets.”
My belly jumps as the baby lands a solid kick. “I would love to tell you some secrets, Jake. I’d love to tell you all of them, but right now, I really have to pee.”
He laughs and spins me around. Then he pops me gently on the bottom. “Go pee. We’ll talk when you’re done.”