by Cynthia Dane
“Did your father love her at all?”
“Yes. He did. I think he still does. He doesn’t understand why she divorced him. As his son, it’s the most frustrating thing about him. My mother was true to him for the length of their façade of a marriage. He didn’t appreciate that, so she left. She’s always been heartbroken about it.”
“Your father may still be in love with her on some level, but he is certainly not heartbroken about losing her.”
“Of course not. Because he keeps getting to do what he’s always done.”
Claire bristled against his body. “So is that it? Is he replacing your mother with me? Is that why he had that ridiculous painting of me done?”
She hadn’t expected Jake to answer. Let alone with what he did say. “My father didn’t have that painting done.” He paused. “I did.”
“What?” Claire lifted her head.
“It was done by my friend, a professional portrait artist. He asked me if I had any interesting subjects for him to tackle, so I commissioned that painting of you. It was supposed to be a wedding gift.”
“What?” Claire hopped off the bed. “What was the point of doing that? It looks like the painting of your mother!”
“I assure you, that was not a parallel I was trying to draw.”
“Well, you drew it.” At least Claire knew what she needed to do. This man wanted to draw shit? They could start by drawing some firmer boundaries between them, like not letting something like this happen again. “I can’t do this, Jake. Let’s forget this happened. I shouldn’t have… we shouldn’t have… oh, God, what the fuck have we done?”
“Claire…”
She grabbed her clothes and locked herself in his bathroom, where she cleaned herself up and attempted to shimmy back into her outfit. Here comes a new wave of nausea. She knew what this one was for, though. She had transgressed a level of sin that no woman was meant to endure. Sin she had foisted upon herself, and sin the world insisted she consume instead of the usual, healthy sustenance she was always told to eat. Fall in love. Get married. Maybe have some babies. That’s what I’m supposed to do.
What if she was doing it all backwards? What if she lived the human experience in the wrong way?
She found Jake waiting for her on the other side of his bathroom door. He had pulled on a pair of sweatpants and continued to look every bit the handsome male model that meant he was his mother’s son. Carmen Dominguez was one of the hottest women of the late ‘70s… I never stood a chance.
“I’ve gotta go.” Claire grabbed her bag. “Goodbye.”
He held her back by the shoulder. An explosion of desire consumed Claire once more, but she fended it off, determined to put as much distance between them as she could. Distance was great. Distance meant he wouldn’t be around to torment or, worse, seduce her.
“You keep thinking it too, right?” He released her, but she did not hustle out the door. “That we should’ve been brought together instead.”
“Don’t. Don’t do this.” Claire turned from him again.
“That’s how fate works, though.” Jake continued to speak even as she forced herself into her shoes. “It taunts you until you believe every lie it tells you. I thought it was fate that the woman I silently fell in love with became engaged to my father, but it was the wrong kind of fate. It was twisted.”
Claire hesitated in the doorway. “So write a script about it. Write a movie where the father and the world he commands understands what’s happened and gives his blessing to the stupid couple. You can pretend I’m starring in it.” She slammed the door behind her.
Tears fell down her cheeks as she raced to the elevator. She didn’t realize until then how much this situation tore her apart.
Chapter 9
Claire’s life was a rollercoaster of unfathomable emotions for the next five weeks. It didn’t help that said life continued down a destructive path of one sickening reveal after another.
Wish I could say that not getting the role was the worst. Ha! More like it was the easiest thing to digest since, as her agent always reminded her, there would be more roles and auditions. Failing to get one forgettable rom-com role was hardly the end of the world. Even if Jake had written the script with her in mind.
Fuck. Jake.
He was quietly relentless in his pursuit of Claire. Whenever their paths crossed at the Carter mansion or at the one industry party they both happened to attend, he was the consummate gentleman who only asked polite questions about her career and the wedding planning. Yet when she went home, she was subjected to unsigned letters, bouquets of her favorite flowers and, if she could believe it, the occasional mixtape comprised of soundtracks to movies they both loved. He called the first one, “Thoughts of You, Set to Late ‘90s Romance.” Songs from She’s All That and 10 Things I Hate About You were at the top of the list. At least he forewent the Titanic music, even though that was how Claire felt about their mutual attraction.
Because it was mutual. Agonizingly so.
She dreamed about him almost every night. Sometimes they were simple, sweet dreams like going for walks on the beach or having dinner at the top of a building. Other times she woke up so hot and bothered from how good he felt between her legs, that she flung herself over the edge of her bed and screamed into her nearest laundry pile. No matter what, she woke up with a tightened chest and a heart that asked her to please forget about that man.
She often woke up sick. It got to the point that her mother gave her dirty looks every time Claire raced to the toilet to be sick out of one of her orifices. The fact she missed two periods in a row was chalked up to stress. The alternative was something she couldn’t bear to think about.
Until she couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Just buy it. Claire stood in the middle of a Malibu pharmacy, sunglasses on and black scarf wrapped around her head. The tabloids had run an article about Claire and Arthur planning their May-December wedding of a lifetime, and it sparked a new slew of think-pieces on the internet. Was Claire a victim? Was Arthur a predatory creep, or just a creep? Whatever happened to Carmen, anyway? Hey, had anyone seen Jake recently? Wasn’t he cute?
So Claire was not in the mood to be spotted in the family planning aisle… not buying condoms or Kotex.
Buy the fucking tests! Two missed periods, enough puke to last her a lifetime, and constant, rabid thoughts of the last man she had been with? Pregnant. She was fucking pregnant, and it wasn’t even her fiancé’s child.
It was his son’s child.
Claire bought three, because why the hell not? She wanted two to be sure, and one extra because… why? To make her feel better? Sure! Why not!
The clerk didn’t look twice at her. She went home and snuck into her personal bathroom before any of her family or staff knew she had returned. The waiting game began.
What if I am pregnant? What if I’m fucked? What do I do?
She sat on the edge of her tub, face in her hands and phone playing songs of her childhood. Take me back to those simpler times, please. Claire was a robust twenty-five, yet she suddenly felt ancient. The weight of the test results weighed so heavily on her mind that she felt she had lived a whole lifetime and had missed the past fifty years. If only that were true. It would mean she was too old to be pregnant.
Both the first test and the backup test told her the same thing.
Pregnant.
She slumped onto the bathroom floor, numb.
***
“What do you think?” With his arm firmly encircled around his fiancée, Arthur brought forward a piece of red velvet cake and held it up to Claire’s lips. “I’ve always been a fan of things red and soft. Like your lips, Claire-Bear.”
She accepted the bite of sample cake and pretended to find it miraculously delicious. In truth, it made her sick. Everything sweet made her sick now. Red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting was liable to make her lock herself up in the bakery bathroom and pray she didn’t lose her whole lunch.
�
�Maybe we should stick with the chocolate with vanilla frosting,” Claire said. “A classic.” Even better if it meant she didn’t have to sample any more cake.
The head baker nodded in approval. “Our chocolate cake is world famous. It comes in three main types that are excellent for weddings. I’ll have my assistant bring out the samples.”
Gag.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Arthur muttered into his fiancée’s ear. “All I had to do was pull a few strings, and now we’re getting a wedding cake by one of the most celebrated bakers in LA. So nice of them to do this at the last minute after the last baker got shut down, huh?”
“Yeah, really nice.” Claire had put most of the wedding plans into Arthur and the planner’s hands. The only thing she was semi-interested in was picking out her dress, and that had fallen by the wayside now that she would be about four months pregnant and probably gaining weight by the day. I’ve already gained five pounds. That could’ve been the stress, though. Like the stress of keeping her pregnancy to herself for the past two weeks.
She hadn’t told her mother, her friends, or Arthur, that was for sure. She had a doctor she thought about going to, but had yet to drum up the courage to call him. That would be admitting what had happened. How stupid she had been.
How guilty she should have felt – but she didn’t.
There’s only one person I need to tell right now, and I’ve been avoiding him. Jake had backed off on trying to woo her again. As soon as the letters and bouquets stopped coming, Jake likewise stopped coming around for dinner with his father. Arthur said his son was busy writing his next script and tended to disappear for weeks at a time.
No, Arthur. He’s nursing his wounds after I stabbed him in the heart. Now she carried Jake’s child. Now she carried Arthur’s grandchild!
She needed to act. Fast.
This was how waiting to have sex with Arthur bit her in the ass. She couldn’t say, Surprise! I’m pregnant! and have him go along with it, because they never had sex. Shame, too. Odds were good she could get away with it, because the kid would still have some of Arthur’s genes and look a little like him. There was the other option, of course, and Claire had kicked it around her head, sometimes for whole nights at a time. Except she couldn’t bring herself to call a doctor to help her take care of her predicament.
Well, not until she had talked to Jake, anyway. He had a right to know. Maybe he would know what to do.
“Claire-Bear?”
She brought herself back to the present and picked one of the three chocolate samples with a wave of her hand. Arthur returned to telling jokes about 1980’s Hollywood to the head baker, who had only been a kid back then. Claire was too lost in her thoughts that said she was a stupid slut who couldn’t talk or fuck her way out of this situation.
Arthur would find out. When he did, that would be the end of not only Claire’s favorable marriage, but her whitelisted name in Hollywood. She’d be lucky to move to Seattle and be casted in local commercials for a hundred bucks an appearance.
“Honey,” she said in the back of Arthur’s car as they pulled away from her bakery, “I forgot to tell you, but I’m supposed to meet one of my girlfriends to go over my dress details. If you could drop me off a few blocks away from here, I would really appreciate it.”
“Aha, I knew you had changed up your dress again, Claire-Bear.” Arthur relayed the orders to his driver. “No problem. I have a meeting of my own back home. Here I was wondering how to gently take you home after having such a romantic date.”
Claire closed her eyes and sighed. “Yeah. It’s great when things work out.”
“Can’t wait to see your dress. You’re going to be the most radiant bride of the year!”
Claire waved him off. She waited long enough for the car to turn the corner before getting out her phone and figuring out where she was.
And where Jake lived.
She didn’t expect him to be home. If anything, she hoped he wasn’t home, because all she wanted to do was leave him a note on his door. Or at least leave a note with the concierge in the lobby of his apartment building.
“You must be Ms. Finn,” the man in a suit said from behind the counter. Claire took a step back. All she wanted to do was ask which unit was Jake’s before figuring out what to do next. “Mr. Carter said to send you up if you ever drop by.”
“I want to leave a message.”
“Oh! Of course! You can go up. The unit is 7C.”
Claire remained frozen in disbelief. “So he’s home right now?”
“I believe so. Could be wrong, though. Either way, he wouldn’t mind if you slip the note under his door.”
“Mr. Carter makes it sound like we’re quite close.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Ms. Finn, but he’s fine with you visiting. That’s all I need to know.”
“All right. Thank you.” Claire didn’t know what the hell she was doing when she got into the elevator. She should’ve insisted on leaving a message with concierge and calling it good. I mean, I must face him eventually, but I wasn’t prepared to do it right now. Claire fixed her hair and straightened out her clothing. Did she smell like Arthur? God, she hoped she didn’t smell like Arthur. Jake had a big enough complex when it came to his father.
Don’t be home. Don’t be home. Claire rang Jake’s buzzer. Don’t be home, Jake.
He opened the door. Claire was too speechless to say anything.
“Claire.” Jake propped his door wide open. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
She squared her shoulders. “We need to talk. Now.”
He stepped aside. Those jeans and that tight T-shirt were the definition of deadly. Likely to kill my sense of reason, that’s for sure. Claire had long accepted that she no longer had any morals. She was pregnant with her future stepson’s baby. She was pregnant with her own step-grandchild. God! What a mess.
Here she was, prepared to tell the father the wonderful news.
“Can I get you something?” Jake asked. “Water? A Coke?”
She shook her head. “No, thanks.” Fatigue overcame her. That was happening much more often lately. “Can I sit down?”
“Of course.” He gestured to his couch by the window. “Are you all right? You don’t have much color in your cheeks.”
Claire slumped onto the far corner of the couch. Her jacket crinkled around her. Her shoes slipped off her swelling feet. Sweat beaded her brow. Don’t be sick. Come on.
She didn’t know why she would be. Jake smelled great. Like a spring breeze in this polluted city. He wasn’t even wearing the aftershave from a month ago. He was… good.
“I’m not okay.” Claire rubbed her knuckles against her aching forehead. “Things aren’t okay, Jake.”
He sat down next to her. “What’s wrong? Is it because of what I was doing? I’m sorry. I’ve stopped.”
“That’s not it.” Claire couldn’t bear to look at him. The expectant look on his face… the hopeful aura welcoming her into his arms, and all she had to do was accept it. “I’m pregnant.”
He was silent. A clock ticked above them. The oven beeped that it had finished preheating. The air conditioner renewed itself with little vigor. Such mundane sounds that made the blood rushing in Claire’s head even louder.
“How long?”
“Excuse me?”
Jake rubbed his cheeks with twitching fingers. “How far along is it?”
“Oh. Ten weeks, I guess.”
Surely, he did the math in his head. Or at least those widening eyes must have meant he was semi-decent with numbers.
“Does my dad know about it yet?”
“Hell, no.” Claire turned toward him. “You’re the first person I’ve told at all.”
“What? Why?”
“You can’t figure it out?”
His visage implied that he’d rather not know the real reason.
“It’s yours, Jake. This baby’s yours.”
“But…”
“I’ve never
slept with your father.” Claire stood up. “I told him I wanted to wait until we were married, because honestly, the thought of sleeping with Arthur makes me ill. That’s not the morning sickness talking.”
“So that day at the audition…”
“I was already pregnant, but didn’t know it yet. It must’ve been from when we hooked up at the party.”
“Jesus… I…”
“You knocked me up, Jake. You knocked up your stepmother. Congrats.”
“You’re sure it’s mine?”
Claire snorted. “You’re the only man I’ve fucked in the past few months. If it’s not yours, then you better get on your knees and start making peace with God, because the Second Coming is about to happen.”
She grabbed her purse and prepared to leave again. She had done what she came to do. There was no reason to hang around and wait for him to catch up with her.
“Besides,” she said anyway, “I thought you’d be happy, in a way. You’re the one who wants me so much. Well, there it is. Our eternal connections, ‘til death do we part.”
Claire couldn’t take one step toward the door without Jake taking her by the hand and pulling her into his arms.
It was supposed to be romantic, she presumed. Yet why did she cry the moment her cheek hit his chest?
Jake let the tears fall against his T-shirt. The more she cried, the harder he held her, arms squeezing the air out of her chest as his nose nuzzled into the top of her scalp.
How? How could this man be real? They had only spoken more than a few words on a couple of occasions. They had hooked up like ravenous teenagers twice. Yet Jake had made his feelings for her clear. He liked her. Wanted her. That reassuring scent imbued into his clothing lulled Claire into the falsest sense of security every single time she encountered it.
“Why couldn’t it have been you?” Claire whimpered.
