Imperfections

by Shaniel Watson

  This is something completely different. We've had the sex and it was amazing, it was more than amazing, it was so good I had to stop and catch my breath. Catherine is not just any girl. She's Cat, the little girl with the ponytail bouncing every which way. Trying to prove she was tough enough to keep up with me and Chris on the playground.

  I smile and cringe every time I think about the time she flew head first off her bike into the concrete. She was so little. She was trying to prove she could keep up with Chris and our friends by doing a bike stunt. She tried to jump a fence with her bike. Something she saw us do all the time. Chris was angry at her for following him around. No guy wants their little sister hanging around him and his friends all the time.

  He told her to go home she was just a stupid little girl that wasn't tough enough to hang with us. That was the wrong thing to say to her. She was so angry. She screamed at him, "I'm going to show you, Chris, I'm tough enough to do what you boys can do!" When she jumped the fence, the takeoff was good but the landing was bad. Everyone's heart dropped and hit the floor with her. When I saw her little body fly off the bike I was scared shitless and didn't know what to do. We ran toward her, all I remember thinking was I hope she's not dead, I hope she's not dead. I've never been so scared in my life.

  That was the first and only time I saw Chris cry. There was a gash on her head and he was covered in blood, crying, and shaking. We brought her home and Sophie was the only one there. She saw the blood and freaked out. She rushed her to the hospital and took us with her. We were so relieved when the doctor came out and told us she was going to be fine. She had to get ten stitches. After that day we became a trio. Chris never told her she couldn't hang with us again and when he did he was more sensitive with his approach.

  I see Kate sitting in a chair in the waiting area going through her phone. Nice office. It looks like Kate. Upscale, well-polished, sleek, and modern. It all looks brand new, like you should only look not touch. I walk up to her when she sees me. "Sorry I'm late."

  "You didn't miss anything. All I did was fill out the paperwork."

  "Do you know how long it's going to be before you see the doctor?"

  "Why, do you have somewhere more important to be? Or is it that you don't want to be seen with me?"

  "I'm only asking because I need to know if I should cancel my four o'clock appointment."

  "Oh, that's not my problem," she says, still looking down at her phone.

  "Look, Kate, I didn't come here to argue with you. This is not an easy situation for either of us. Drop the attitude and stand down." I finally get her attention and she looks at me. "This would be easier for both of us if we're civil to each other for however long we're here." I don't know if I can keep my temper in check for even an hour with the attitude coming off her.

  "Fine."

  Ten minutes later, after sitting in complete silence watching her and her phone, the nurse calls her name.

  "Ms. Reed."

  "Yes."

  "Should I come in with you?"

  "That's why you're here, right? You had some questions you wanted to ask my doctor."

  "Do you have to get undressed or need privacy for whatever you do at these exams?"

  "What, are you scared I'm going to get undressed in front of you? If I do, it's nothing you haven't seen before."

  Yeah, nothing I haven't seen before, but I don't want to see it again.

  "Don't worry, Nick, you can take the crease lines from your forehead. The only skin I'm exposing today is my stomach."

  "Are you sure you don't want me to wait outside till you're finished?"

  "Fine, wait outside the exam room. I'll tell the doctor to get you when the exam is over."

  I don't feel right being in there with Kate, it's too personal. She follows the nurse down a hallway into an examining room. There's a chair outside the door. "I'll wait here until you're finished." The nurse looks at me, she has a warm smile. Cute redhead with dark brown eyes and shoulder length hair. I'd say she's around twenty-five.

  "You don't have to sit out here, Mr. Reed, you can come in with your wife."

  My eyes move over to Kate. I uncomfortably wait for her to correct the nurse but she doesn't. She smiles at me, turns around and walks into the room. I look down at the nurse standing in front of me. "She's not my wife, we're not married." I put on a smile and try not to sound annoyed.

  "I'm sorry, I assumed you were together, you looked like you were a couple."

  "It's okay. I'll wait out here until the doctor's finished with the exam."

  Thirty minutes later, the doctor walks out of the exam room. Dr. Horn, a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair. I met him on his way in to examine Kate, we shook hands and I told him I had a few questions to ask him after he was finished with Kate.

  "Mr. Alexander, you can come in now. Ms. Reed said you wanted to be in here for the last part of the exam."

  I enter the room and I see Kate lying down on the table with some type of gel on her stomach. What the hell, I told her I did not want to be in here for this. She takes one look at my face and I know she can see I'm not happy. She looks away quickly like she's not sure what or if I'm going to say anything to her. I stop looking at her and turn to the doctor when he speaks.

  "Okay, we're all ready." He places something on Kate's stomach and tells her to watch the screen. He starts moving it around her stomach and I hear a swooshing sound.

  "Kate, are you ready to see your baby?"

  She doesn't say anything until she looks at me. "Yes."

  I look at the screen intently. The swooshing sound starts to get louder and louder then I see it. The doctor touches a few buttons and points to the screen while he's talking. He points out the arms, legs, head and body of the baby. I sit still staring at the screen listening to the doctor. He points again at the screen.

  "This is the baby's heart. As you can hear, it sounds strong and everything looks to be progressing normally."

  Kate looks at me, and she's smiling a genuine smile. She can't stop smiling at me, she's so excited. I don't know what to do; at a time like this you should be happy. I wasn't expecting this. I could be hearing my baby, my baby's heartbeat for the first time. This could actually be my baby I'm looking at. I take a step forward and look at the screen while Kate talks to the doctor.

  "Can we find out the sex of the baby or is it too early?"

  I look at her and then the doctor curiously. "Isn't it too soon for that? She's hardly even showing yet."

  He looks up from the machine at me. "No, at sixteen weeks if the baby is positioned right, there's a very good chance you can see the sex of the baby."

  I'm not sure I want to know. This is not what I signed up for when I came here today; all I wanted to know was when she will be able to take a paternity test. I scrub my hand across my face. The doctor sees the uncertainty on my face. Kate answers for me before I can say no; I don't want to know anything but this is not my child.

  "Yes, we want to know!" she says firmly all excited.

  The doctor turns his head to me with his bushy eyebrows knitted together. "Are you sure you…both want to know?"

  I must really look uneasy. I take a shaky breath to steady myself. "Yeah."

  He turns back to the monitor moving the machine around Kate's stomach a few more times hitting more buttons.

  "It's a boy. Congratulations, you're having a boy."

  Oh shit! I'm having a son. I'm going to be a father.

  "I come waving my white flag!"

  "Get in here, Ava." I told Ava to meet me at my house and for once she's on time. I follow her into the living room. She sits on the couch with her coat and bag still on. One hand's on the strap and the other one in her lap. In case she has to make a fast getaway.

  "Ava, you look nervous. You can relax I'm not going to bite you." I sit down on the other end of the couch. She watches me and slightly arches one of her eyebrows. "I only bite the women I take to bed but only if they ask me nicely."


  "Honey, they should be careful, they don't know where your mouth has been. I'm surprised they don't leave foaming at the mouth. If your bite is anything like the tongue-lashing you put on me yesterday morning, I'm surprised they're not dead already."

  I shake my head and smile at her. "Good one, Ava, good one." I sit back, put one hand over the couch and watch her take off her coat.

  "I'm not joking. I can still feel the whip marks going across my back. All because I took my friend out for a few drinks to relax, which I wouldn't have had to do if it weren't for you. I think you owe me an apology."

  "No, I don't think I do. What I owe you is another tongue-lashing for taking her to a club with Matt!" She pouts and tilts her head to the side with her eyes open wide like an innocent blue-eyed doe. This look might work on most men, including her father but not on me. Ava is a lot of things but innocent isn't one of them.

  "In my defense, the only reason I took her out was because of you! She was really upset. She was coming down on herself hard for what happened between the two of you in the car. I told you to talk to her and tell her the truth, not make things more complicated. You know that's what you did?"

  "I had to. I couldn't tell her the truth first; you know Cat as well as I do. If I told her the truth first, she would have bolted out of that car and that would have been the end."

  "Probably."

  "I had to buy some time."

  "And how is complicating matters going to do that? I don't want her to get hurt."

  "I had to hurt her. There is no getting around it."

  "How is hurting her going to get you more time?"

  "If I'm lucky, I unintentionally bought myself enough time to at least let her give the idea of us a chance."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I did something stupid. Something I hardly ever do."

  "You've been doing a lot of that. You should stop, especially if it involves a female member of Cat's family."

  I lean my head back and close my eyes. I hate that I hurt her. "I tried to talk to her, but she was so upset and angry. She wouldn't return any of my calls."

  "She told me everything about Kate, the fake marriage, and the pregnancy. This is a lot of shit to deal with. She needed to get her mind off having sex with her pregnant sister's fake fiancé. I'm not sorry for taking her out to forget her problems for a while and showing her a good time."

  "I'm glad you were there for her and she had someone to talk to." I sit up and look at her. "What I'm pissed off about is you taking her out with Matt. You know how I feel about him and Cat together. Saying I was angry when I found out he was with her doesn't describe it. I know that fucker wants her."

  "That doesn't mean she wants him. You've been friends for years with Matt. I don't understand why you're ticked off because they hooked up once a million years ago."

  I get up off the couch and walk into the kitchen to get a drink. "If I would have known back then, I would have cut his ass off at the knees and hung him out to dry. He took advantage of her."

  "Don't rewrite history, Nick. He didn't take advantage of her as I'm sure Cat told you. I think she was the one taking advantage of him."

  "Whatever, Ava. He was wrong. He was our friend, he should have thought about her like a little sister." I take a drink of my beer, turn around and lean against the counter.

  She puts her knees under her on the couch and puts her hand over the top of the couch. "Like you did? You were holding back your feelings for her because of your friendship with Chris. You spent a lot of years thinking of her as a little sister, watching her grow up from when she was a little girl into a girl with a rocking body. You had a lot of conflicting feelings in regards to the relationship you had with Cat and Chris. Matt didn't have that problem. He didn't have the same emotional attachments, his conscience was free and clear to let himself be with her."

  She's right about that; no matter how much I wanted her, my conscience was killing me for even thinking about her that way.

  "I don't want you orchestrating any more meetings between them. He's not good for her. I know things about Matt that wouldn't be good for her."

  "No more meetings with Matt. But I can't stop her from hanging out with him if she wants to."

  "You can't, but I don't need you making this more difficult than it already is." I walk back into the living room and sit back down.

  "I wasn't expecting you to be this calm after you called me and ordered me over here. What's changed since yesterday? Maybe you weren't as angry as I thought you were."

  "Oh, believe me, I was angry after I found out what happened with Matt in that club and Cat leaving like that. After I called you, I worked out for two hours before I could calm down."

  "What happened with Matt and Cat?"

  "I'm sure you already know, Ava. If you don't want me to get worked up again, let's not talk about it. That's something for Cat and I to talk about when I can talk about it without seeing red."

  She holds her hands up to me. "You don't have to tell me twice. I'm going to leave that talk to you and Cat."

  I need to talk to someone about what happened today and Ava's the only one I can talk to. "Ava, I'm going to trust that you won't tell Cat what I'm about to say."

  "Okay."

  "I mean it, Ava, she already has enough reasons not to be with me."

  "I know she does. To be honest, Nick, if I were her I wouldn't give your ass a second thought. Imagine, you have all this stuff to deal with before you even start the relationship."

  "I know. You don't need to remind me. I was at the doctor's office today with Kate."

  "Really, how did that go?"

  "I saw the baby and heard the heartbeat. Hearing and seeing this little thing made it real. I realized this child could very well be mine."

  "Yours and Kate's."

  "I can't deny that anymore."

  "So you're saying that you think this baby is yours?"

  "I'm saying, before, it wasn't real to me, it was in the abstract. I couldn't touch it, I couldn't see it, I couldn't hear it. Today, for the first time since Kate told me she was pregnant, it wasn't something we just talked about, I could see it, and I could hear it. Seeing that little thing on the monitor and hearing that heartbeat changed things. It made me feel something that I didn't feel before I stepped into that exam room."

  "That's a problem now, isn't it?"

  "Yes, it is. One more thing to hurt Cat, pulling her away from me."

  "Cat stands to lose a lot more than you if you convince her you two can be in a relationship. People are going to be angry and hurt, there's no way to avoid it. If you're not going to be one hundred and fifty percent in, leave it alone. I don't want her to get hurt any more than she already is."

  "Neither do I."

  "But you do know there is no possible way for her not to be hurt? You just admitted to me there's a high probability this child could be yours. You do plan to tell Cat about this revelation you've had? I'm not going to lie to her for you."

  "I'm not asking you to lie for me. You know I wouldn't do that."

  "I was hoping this baby was someone else's."

  "So was I. We took the paternity test today."

  "You did?"

  "Yep. The results are going to be ready in a little over a week. I'll know for sure—"

  "If you are the daddy!" I look at her like, for real? "Sorry, I've always wanted to say that and when would be a more appropriate time to say it than now. Continue please. You were saying…"

  "I was saying, I'll know if I'm the daddy, as you, Maury, and Cat would say."

  She tries to hide a smile. "That's my girl, see, great minds."

  "Yeah. I'm going to give Cat the time she needs; that's why I haven't contacted her since she left my apartment. When the test results come back I'll tell her. There's still a chance I'm not the father."

  "This is one test I hope you fail. I mean, if this is your child I'm going to love it no matter who its mother is. You know she hates me."
/>   "As much as you hate her."

  "I've tried being nice to the witch. She's nothing like Cat. Sometimes I don't know how they can be related. If this is your kid, she's not going to want me around it."

  "Let's not get ahead of ourselves; let's wait until the test comes back to see if I'm the father."

  "Well, she couldn't keep me away even if she wanted to."

  "I know that."

  "How do you think Chris is going to react when he finds out Kate's pregnant with a baby that might be yours and you're going after his baby sister?"

  "I think he's going to react the same way you think he's going to react."

  "I hope not. If it is, someone's going to go to jail for murder."

  "You might be right. If the tables were reversed, I would want to kill him."

  "Let's hope it doesn't come to that. I would hate to see my beloved cousin and my future man at war with each other."

  "Future man?"

  "Yes, I said it and if I say it, then so shall it be."

  "If that's what you want to believe, who am I to tell you differently."

  "Yes, it is. I need to ask you something."

  "What?"

  "Is Chris seeing anyone?"

  "Why don't you ask him yourself?"

  "You know he won't tell me the truth. Besides, you're the only one who would know. You know how secretive he is about his personal life. At one time I was beginning to think he was gay."

  "Chris is a lot of things, Ava, gay is not one of them." I crack a smile because I know for sure he's not.

  "Well you never know these days. When you never see a man with a woman, he's well put together at all times, and he looks as good as he does… You start to wonder."

  "Chris and I are similar in a lot of ways and you don't think I'm gay."

  "Everyone knows you're not gay and if there was any doubt, the situation you have going on now would put those doubts to rest. You owe me for taking Chris home that night so you could be alone with Cat."