“Eight weeks, not a moment later and that’s a lot of time!”
Mom smiles as she takes my hand, probably trying to get out of the meeting before the label changes their mind.
Tracey says, “Well, I can’t wait that long. I need to move on.”
John nods, “I can understand that. Besides, I assume Kylie will be out of the picture for the next few weeks.”
Mom nods and says, “She will.”
Then we leave the room so that they can all talk among themselves. We get to the elevator and the doors open. Mom laughs. “We needed to get rid of Tracey. She wasn’t good at doing your makeup anyway. She always made you look like a clown.”
At least we agree on one thing. There just one issue. Mom’s promised for me to turn things around in eight weeks, and I haven't been able to do that in three months. I sigh as the realization hits me. I felt good walking out of the boardroom, but now I feel shitty thinking about my reality.
Chapter Three
Noah
“What’s that?”
“Seriously, Dan, don’t ask me stupid questions!”
He came over five minutes ago, and since then he’s been taking photos and laughing at me, and so have Chad and Martin. It’s as if he got the whole Storm Rocks pose with him.
“No, I meant on your shirt. What’s that?”
Since they came, I can’t even put Richard down. Every time I attempt to do it, he screams at the top of his lungs. Even Aria came back for a while and said that she would help Richard. Not me. She wouldn’t want him having a salad for breakfast. She thinks that I’m stupid. Richard’s a baby, so of course, he drinks nothing but milk. Anyway, I was glad to get out of there, when lo and behold, as soon as I handed Richard to her, he started crying again.
I think that he must be my baby. He seems to know exactly how to wind me up, and now, I’ve got spit-up on me to prove it.
“Ugh!” I put him down. I don’t care if he cries again—which he starts to do the moment I put him down.
“Daddy, I could do with some milk too.” Chad’s sucking on his thumb pretending to be a baby.
“Please remind me, why I’m friends with you guys?”
They look at each other and start to burst into laughter again, the same thing that they've done since they've arrived. I run up and grab a new shirt. They’re quiet, and so is Richard. Martin’s a father of two and I thought that he could help me out, but then he said that since Gia gave birth to the twins, she’s been a right whiny bitch. Shit, if only she knew that he talked about her like that behind her back. Rewind five years and if anyone said anything about Gia being a money hungry gold digger who wanted to get with Martin for his billionaire status, he would have told us that we’ve never been in love. No one could say anything bad about Gia. Now that they were married, she’d started to show him her true colors, but then again, to us guys she was still the same.
Gia wanted to secure the marriage, and she wanted kids to do it. She got two for the price of one after she insisted on having fertility treatment to ensure that they had twins so that she wouldn’t have to conceive again. Martin went along with it. As they say, love is blind. If she requested the fucking Eiffel Tower, he would bankrupt his company just to get it for her. Now, she was a whiny bitch. Shit looks like someone’s going to divorce court soon, which would have made me happy if it wasn’t for the kids.
I walk down, this time with not only a new shirt on my back but a couple of towels too. Richard’s not getting me again. Not if I can help it.
Martin’s sitting on the chair with a bottle-feeding Richard.
“He didn’t want you; he just wanted food. And I figured when Dan said that you had a baby, you had nothing.”
Thank fucking goodness!
“Anyway, seriously man, what are you going to do? One thing’s for sure, you’ll be getting more pussy than you had before!” Chad smiles as he peers at Martin feeding Richard.
Martin sighs. “Do you guys have to be so vulgar?”
Dan stands up as if he’s figured out a Sudoku puzzle, “Shit, he’s right. Girls dig single dads. It’s like a fucking chick magnet.”
“Language! He’s only a baby. He doesn’t need to be exposed to such language yet.”
Martin continues to feed Richard and Chad shrugs, ‘He’s a baby!’
He’s not even Martin’s, but he's admiring him as if he’s his own. They look kind of cute together. I stand, completely lost about what to do next.
“I need to get a DNA test.” That’s as far as my forward thinking concerning Richard has gone. Fouls, calves, and even chicks I can deal with, but a baby is an entirely different subject.
“That’s all you need,” Martin sighs as Richard starts to fall asleep. He lifts him up and starts to gently pat his back. I’m tempted to ask him, beg him even, and then he shakes his head as if he can read my mind and says, “No.”
I thought we were friends, and he's so good at it. Richard could stay with Martin until I figure this thing out.
“You need to get him a crib so that he can sleep through the night, diapers so that you can change him, wipes… A car seat for when you take him out."
"Wait, car seat. He's not staying."
"Where's he going to go, Noah? His mom left him with you."
"I know, but I need to do the test, find out if he's mine, and then I need to find her."
"Why? So, she can leave him on someone else's doorstep?"
He can see that I'm distressed because I haven't got a clue.
"Look, I only brought one bottle and a couple of diapers with wipes. I can write a list, and then you can sort it out.”
“Can you help me?” I bend down on my knees in front of him and he grabs his phone. Ten guesses Gia’s calling him. Even if he’s at work, she calls him just to do whatever she doesn't like doing, which is anything that doesn't involve pedicures, massages, and manicures. Even with two nannies, she still picks up the phone to call him.
“I was going to say yes…”
“Gia,” we all say in unison.
“Yes, Gia wants me home.”
“Damn bro, when you gonna tell her to stop calling you like that? You could be at work or something.” Chad sighs, and he feels it the most. Chad and Martin were the best of the friends. They would hang out and do everything together until Martin hooked up with Gia, and then she put an end to it—just like everything else that Gia didn’t want Martin doing in life.
Martin ignores him, probably avoiding the topic. He argues with Gia about Chad, and the last thing he wants to do is argue about Gia with Chad.
“I need to go. Dan, give me a lift home?"
Dan nods, and then he goes to pat Chad on the back. Martin heads to the kitchen and starts writing on my whiteboard all the things that I need to get for this little tiny human being. Babies need so much. Even adults don’t require that much. Now I know why they say that babies are hard work. They cost too much and are too demanding. I’m waiting for him to stop writing, but the list goes on and on. The more he writes, the more frustrated I become.
“He can’t need all that for one night.”
“One night?”
“His mom will come back tomorrow after realizing what she’s done.”
“No mom leaves their baby unless they’ve got no intention of coming back.”
“What?”
“This Candy or whatever her name is. She left Richard on your doorstep like a bag of groceries. Richard’s what, around two months old?”
I was never that good at math even back at school; I wasn’t going to challenge his theory now.
“My point is,” he says as he puts the marker down and I breathe out a sigh of relief, “she’s not coming back for now. You need to be prepared to have a baby around from now on. That means no more going out all night and getting drunk all the time. In a way, it’s a good thing.”
“For who?” I say, trying to fight back the fucking tears. No partying cannot be a good thing for me at all.
> “We’re not in high school anymore. The partying, the late nights… That should have stopped a long time ago.”
“Damn, Martin, we’re only twenty-three, not forty.”
Chad comes into the kitchen, “Well, he’s nearly there, so to him that’s kind of how it feels now. He acts, walks, and talks like a man that’s past his sixties let alone forties.”
That may be the case, but Martin was the most mature out of the four of us back in high school—the one that always had a plan. Too bad he didn’t have one when he fell in love with the wrong woman. I want to say something to him, anything to make him realize that just because he’s married and has kids, doesn’t mean that he has to act as if he’s dead. But the words wouldn’t come out. I was the one that had some growing up to do, not Martin.
“Dan, you ready?”
“Yeah, man. I can come back later and help out if you like, Noah.”
“Nah, no need. I got this one.”
Chad smiles as he gives me a reassuring pat on the back. “We’re sure that you do.”
Then they leave just as fast as they came through the door. Richard’s quiet, and as I peek at him in the living room, I see that Martin has wrapped him up tight. Shit, he looks like a cocoon, and I’m tempted to take him out of it so he can at least move his hands and shit, but then I can see that he’s fast asleep for the first time since he came into the house. I grab him and put him on my chest. He’s not the only one that’s tired. I’m fucking exhausted.
Chapter Four
Kylie
As soon as we get home, Mom doesn't stop talking. She sounds like a mosquito buzzing in my ear. Just like when we went to Egypt and the damn things would be buzzing in my ears. No matter how many times I swiped them out of the way, they would just get closer to my eardrum.
“The thing is, you’re going to need to stay at the ranch. This thing is going to make you regret the rest of your life.”
I’m twenty-four. I have so many years ahead of me. Being dropped by my agent, label, and even my makeup artist is not the end of the world.
“Could you believe Tracey? I mean, to complain? She's not even that good, and she wants to get rid of me,” I say in my defense.
She holds on to both of my shoulders as if she’s trying to wake me up from a nightmare.
“You did hear what they were saying, didn’t you dear?”
I wish that she would stop calling me that. It must be the most condescending name ever, one that she never used until I came to stay at her house two weeks ago.
“Yes, Mother.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that. It makes me sound so old.”
“Now, can you stop calling me dear?”
That’s exactly what I said to her when she started to call me that. The only thing I've heard since I’ve been here for the last two weeks, is: ‘Dear, can you put that on the table? Dear can you not put that in your mouth? Dear can you wear something else but a hoodie?’
“Anyway, I spoke to Terrance,” she says as we walk into the living room. My stepdad, Terrance, is sitting in his chair, the same place that he occupies every time I come into this house. He's always reading the sports news. I swear if he had a job in sports, he would be a millionaire.
“When?”
She ignores me as she continues to talk. “And it seems like our children have gone off the radar at the moment. I don’t get it. You guys are not exactly kids, so I’m not sure why you behave like them.”
Does she really want me to answer that one? Besides, if she's referring to my stepbrother, Jason, he's always been a bit weird, so that's nothing new.
“Anyway, we’ve decided that maybe staying at the ranch is a good idea. You'll get fresh air. There's no McDonald's or Burger King. There’ll be no sneaking out and having late night snacks because everything's closed around there.”
I’m confused. Where is she talking about?
I’m about to ask her, but as usual, she’s doing all the talking. So, I distract myself like I do whenever she goes on one of her rants. That's when I realize that I dropped my phone on the table. But, now it’s safely in her hands, and she's dialing a number. I start to panic. "Mom, I’m not staying with Jason."
She laughs. “I wouldn’t be asking you to do that.”
Which means that she's talking about my other stepbrother, Noah. Shit, I don't want to be in the same room as him, let alone go and stay with him.
“So, I’m giving him a call, and I think that it’ll be good if you could ask him.”
She shoves the phone into my hand. I hear his voice on the other end saying hello.
“Noah, it’s me.”
Besides, Noah’s diet consists of eating well Monday through Friday and drinking too much at the local bar every weekend. Damn, I hate my stepbrother sometimes—especially now.
“Kylie, it’s been a while. I thought that now you’re famous you’ve forgotten about the little people.”
There’s one thing about Noah—he’s far from little. He’s slightly over six feet tall, with a killer body from working on the ranch and a smile that gets him laid every week.
“No.”
“So, what do I owe the pleasure?”
I start to get wet at the idea of pleasure and Noah in the same sentence. Damn, why does he still have that effect on me after all this time?
“I thought that I could come and visit you.”
Silence on the phone, but then he sounds as if he’s up to something, as if he’s running.
“Were you running or something?”
Again, he doesn’t answer, and then I think that maybe he’s gone and this whole thing was a bad idea. I knew that the moment Mom said his name and dialed his number. Besides, we're supposed to be keeping our distance from each other. Forever.
“Noah?”
“Yes?”
He sounds completely out of breath.
“What’s going on? Are you busy?”
“No.”
I should have hung up. The last time I called him was around six months ago to make sure that he wasn't going to be at my mom's birthday party. Now, I'm calling him to stay at his house. This is silly—no, it's fucking stupid. I’m the one that said it never happened, when we were at our parents wedding. I'm the one that told him that it could never happen again. We're stepbrother and sister. That kind of thing is just not right.
I decide that this conversation is on the road to nowhere, so I walk away from Mom and Tony and say, “Is this about what happened last time?”
“What happened last time?”
Oh, I don’t know Noah. We were drunk, fucked each other’s brains out, and it was the best sex that I’ve ever had, and then when you woke up in the morning, you said ‘that didn’t happen.’ So, I told you that it never did and would never happen again.
“Nothing.”
He doesn’t say anything again.
“Okay, so if you’re cool with me spending a little while with you then… that’s cool.”
“What do you mean by a little while?”
It seems like someone’s woken up.
“Well, I was thinking a week.”
Mom’s behind me prodding me. “Longer than that.” Where did she come from? Shoot, I wonder if she heard what I said earlier?
“Or a month.”
“Great. If you do, you need to do something for me.”
“What?”
As long as it’s not having sex with you ever again, then I’m good.
“Don’t worry, we’ll discuss it when you come. By the way, when are you coming?”
I want to change my mind. The only thing stopping me is knowing that Mom has a key to my apartment. I could always rent a hotel suite.
“Tomorrow!” Mom blurts out. She’s so damn close to me that she’s squeezing her body next to mine.
“In that case, I better get your room ready.”
Have I got a room? Since when? I've never been to his new house.
I’m about to ask, when once aga
in Mom shouts out, “Great!”
I move away from her. She’s annoying me. I’m about to say something else, but before I even get the chance, Noah’s hung up. Mom runs into the living room where I had just left the pair of them so that I could have a private conversation with Noah.
“Noah’s agreed for her to stay with him.”
Terrance nods, half-interested. “Great.”
I look at Mom, and she’s acting as if she’s won the lottery. “Being in the country with no access to junk food would do you a world of good.”
Not really!
“And you can ask Noah to help you out by maybe going for walks with you in the morning.”
“Seriously, Mom I’m not a dog.”
“I know that, dear. Why do you always have to be so crude?”
She doesn’t need to know the answer to that. I don’t want to go. I feel like a child being made to eat their vegetables on a Friday instead of making their weekly run to McDonald’s. I don’t want to do this, especially when Noah said that I had to do him a favor. One whole month living in the same house as him is going to be tough.
Mom grabs my hand and says, “This is so exciting. You’ll see. Not only will you lose weight, but you’ll have a number one hit.”
I must have my dad’s genes because I don’t feel happy or even a little excited about being under the same roof as Noah. In fact, all I feel is fear. I don’t know if I want him to control himself, or if I want to control myself—and that’s the issue.
Chapter Five
Noah
Kylie’s just parked the car, and I’ve got Richard inside. I didn’t want to scare her from the moment I saw her. If I came out holding Richard, she might just get back in her car and drive home. I haven't seen her in the flesh in what feels like forever.
She’s changed, really filled out. We haven’t spoken since that night. I’ve seen her on screen, and I’ve kept an eye on her social media, but that's been quiet for weeks. The only time we do talk on the phone is so that she can make sure that I'm not going to be somewhere. ‘Mom’s party. You going?’
Single Daddy (The Single Brothers Book 1) Page 2
