After work, I went to the grocery store. I was out of prenatal vitamins already. That happens when you spend the first week gagging on them and throwing them up—you have to take another one then. So it was time to refill those and to pick up some popsicles. Some boxes of popsicles. If the dipshit manufacturers would just make a box of only the orange ones, I wouldn’t have to buy five boxes at once. Because this baby loved orange popsicles. It was all I craved. I could even eat salad with chicken in it for the nutrients if I told myself I could have some popsicles afterward.
I was trying to talk myself into getting orange juice and freezing it into pops for a healthier, less sugary alternative. I stood at the refrigerator case, staring past my six boxes of popsicles at the orange juice display. I fished the prenatal vitamins out from under the popsicles because getting cold couldn’t be good for the vitamins. I plopped them on top of my purse in the front of the cart and debated whether to try orange juice or not. But no, it was the syrupy sweet orange taste that made my mouth water, the sugary popsicle flavor. I backed away from the juice and went the other way.
I heard my name.
“Layla,” he said.
I froze. That voice skated up my spine and lit up nerve endings that had been very silent for weeks and weeks. I looked over my shoulder, nodded at Tyler and turned to go.
“Wait,” he said.
Tyler was holding a loaf of bread—a far cry from the boards he’d been balancing on a shoulder when we met. I looked him up and down, his sleeves rolled up and his worn out jeans. It hurt to look at him. The ache went deep. He was looking at me so hard I had to look away.
I followed his eyes to my cart, knew he saw the vitamins. He reached out and picked up the box, looked at me questioningly. I felt my face flush. I tried to snatch them back. It was an instinct, like I could rewind what just happened and walk away.
“Are you pregnant?” he asked, his low voice barely above a whisper.
There was no use lying now. “Yes,” I said. There was nothing for it but to brazen it out.
21
Tyler
“Mine?” I managed to ask.
“Yes,” she said, “what did you think?” I shook my head.
“I don’t know what to think.”
I was too stunned. Layla was having my baby. And she’d kept it from me.
“So, let me get this straight,” I said, feeling anger warm me as the shock wore off, “you knew you were having my baby. You didn’t trust me enough to even tell me. Did it ever occur to you that I would want to know this? That I wanted you and I would want this baby? That I fucking told you I loved you. What more did you want from me? What else am I supposed to do to prove I’m good enough to be a father?”
She turned pale. I saw her throat work as she tried to swallow. Her hand tightened on the cart, but it rolled a little and she seemed wobbly. My arm snaked around her waist, holding her up. She held on to my arm, her eyes wide with alarm. Her lips were pale, too.
“You need to sit down,” I said decisively. I reached over and grabbed a case of soda off a shelf and then another. I set them side by side so she could sit on them, then I lowered her onto them. “Okay?” I said.
Layla dropped her head into her hands, elbows on her knees. She sat on the soda box, and I thought she looked like she was going to sway to one side.
“I think I’ll just join you down here if you don’t mind,” I said. I grabbed a box of her popsicles and sat on the floor beside her makeshift seat, “So what color is it you like? I was always a grape man myself.”
“Orange,” she said, her voice barely a breath. But I heard it.
I ripped the box open and dug through the white wrapped pops until I found one that looked orange. I tore the paper off and held it for her. She looked up gratefully and took it. I opened a grape one and stuck it in my mouth.
“See,” I said, “you’re not fainting in the grocery store. We’re just a couple old friends who decided to have a seat and crack open a box of ice pops and catch up on our lives.”
She gave a weak laugh, wobbled a little on the box where she sat. I shucked off my coat and folded it, set it beside me.
“Here,” I said, “I’m just gonna sit you here.” Without waiting for an answer, I picked her up and settled her on my quilted barn coat so she could have some cushion.