She looked at me again, taking a deep breath. “It’s been about twelve years, but I’m Naomi. Naomi Hurley. We...uh...we spent a night together…”
The memory came rushing back to me. Naomi.
She was right, it was about twelve years ago. I was only twenty years old, and the two of us met through mutual friends at a party. I could remember exactly what she looked like the first time I saw her, despite the fact that I was already trashed when we were introduced. Her blonde hair was longer then, falling to the middle of her back, and the skirt she wore that night barely covered her ass. She was the hottest woman at that party, with a naturally flirty smile. I had wanted her immediately.
She lived in the same apartment building where the party was taking place. So, of course, that was where we went. After a wild night of passion, we’d fallen asleep wrapped around each other.
It was a one-night stand, an exhilarating memory, tucked away in the back of my mind after so long. Now, as I recalled it, it was just as potent as ever. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Um...can we talk for a minute? Maybe in the kitchen?” She gestured to the galley kitchen behind me; the long narrow space was lined with dark grey cabinets on each side.
I looked at the kid again.
Naomi spoke to him in a soft voice, “Gavin, take a seat in the living room. You can play your game on my phone.”
Gavin took the device from her.
I had a dark suspicion about what might be going on here. Why else would this woman I barely know bring her son to my house out of the blue like this? But it couldn’t be...could it? “Is he mine?” I asked abruptly, not bothering to go into the kitchen to talk privately as she clearly wanted. My chest suddenly felt tight, and I waited for her to deny it. Surely it wasn’t true…
But she didn’t say no or tell me I was completely off-base. Instead, Naomi pressed her lips together into a thin line and nodded her head in three jerky movements.
This time, when I looked over at the kid - at my son - a surreal feeling came over me. I felt like I was dreaming. This couldn’t be real, it was too crazy.
Yet, as I looked—really looked at him—I could see it. He wasn’t exactly my twin, but that shade of light brown hair was so similar to mine. Or at least, it was the color that my hair would be if I didn’t keep it so short. He had his mother’s blue eyes, but his nose was straight with a slightly bulbous tip, just like mine and my father’s. Those were the only similarities I could see between us, and it would be easy to write them off, but Naomi had already confirmed their significance. I had a son.
“Holy shit…” I mumbled.
Naomi grabbed my arm and pulled me into the kitchen.
I didn’t even try to resist, allowing myself to be directed that way even while I continued to stare at Gavin.
He was frowning at me, the look on his face almost challenging.
I had the feeling that he was watching to see what my reaction to the news would be. That realization made me feel like there was a heavy weight resting on my shoulders, I was somehow relieved when I was in the kitchen, out of his line of sight. I leaned against the counter.
Naomi stepped back into the other room. “Sit on the couch. I just need to talk... I just need to talk to Jay alone for a moment,” she told Gavin.
I couldn’t see him anymore from where I stood, but I assumed he did as she said, because she walked back into the room a second later, leaning against the counter opposite of where I was standing. The space was so narrow that our feet were almost touching as we faced each other.
Naomi crossed her arms over her chest, her shoulders tense. “Can you please not cuss in front of him?”
“What?” I asked, my mind reeling from the bombshell she just dropped on me. Did I cuss? There were so many scrambled thoughts in my mind that I couldn’t even recall what had come out of my mouth.
“I try not to cuss in front of Gavin,” she repeated.
I shook my head in disbelief. That was the least of my concerns right now. “How old is he?”
“Eleven.”
I wanted her to say more, to offer up an explanation for why she kept this from me for so long, but it seemed she didn’t intend to do that so easily. The beginnings of anger and disappointment swirled in my gut. I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands, trying to wrap my head around this.
Had I really missed the first eleven years of my kid’s life?
Maybe not. Lots of people had brown hair. And how many different shaped noses were there in the world?
“How could this happen?” I asked. Immediately realizing it was a stupid question, I continued before she could answer, “I mean—are you sure? That he’s mine?”
“Yes.”