Due Date_A Baby Contract Romance

by Emily Bishop

  Their bank accounts were unbelievable, and their wives were big-titted and tight-waisted, wearing large, blonde curls. Of course, I’d heard that many of these gorgeous babes were also eager tech gurus themselves, or else surgeons, anesthesiologists, realtors, writers. “They’re fucking go-getters,” Hank had said once, when I’d scoffed that the women I’d seen were just after the skinny tech nerds for their cash flow. “They appreciate depth of conversation. They want a man who can see more than their bodies. They want, well, more.”

  I hadn’t believed it. But now, as if I glowed with this kind of inner knowledge—now that I was poised to be a fucking father, maybe—I eyed the techies in the lobby earnestly. One poked a pen against his eyebrow, muttering to a coworker beside him about the social accounts. Slowly, the pen made light blue traces against his skin. “If we can’t keep up with social, man, we can’t keep up with the next generation of users.”

  “Wesley!” The top secretary circled her swirly chair toward me, her eyes nearly popping from her skull. “Well, it’s been quite a few years since we saw you around here. I only recognize you from your father’s picture of you and dear Hank on his desk.”

  A picture of me? Dad hadn’t had any mention of me, his black sheep son, in his office in all the years I’d popped by. After a small wrinkle formed in my forehead, I bucked forward and squeezed Monica’s hand, flashing her a smile. “It’s good to see you. Good to be here,” I said, nodding firmly.

  “And such good news on your end?” Monica spewed. “I mean, I know that you’re having a little one of your own now. And getting married! It all happened so fast. Although, with my Michael, when we knew it was time for marriage and kids, we just knew. We didn’t want to waste a second.”

  My heart felt pressed down with the lie, and my smile slowly curled to the floor. But within seconds, Monica had whirled her large apple bottom from the wheely chair and led me toward the far hallway, continuing to gab. “I’ve arranged all the paperwork for you, sir,” she continued. “I hope you don’t cramp easily, because it’s quite a bit of signing. Your father, making you a partner! I mean, I know he appreciates family more than anything else. I know that better than anyone. I’ve been working with him for almost ten years.”

  My father, appreciating family better than anyone? Again, my stomach felt tight, twisted. I remembered the first days of the start-up, with my father speeding off at five in the morning, sometimes with nary an appearance that night. Sometimes, he slept off his boozy, business meetings at the office, his head sloshed against the desk.

  The large boardroom at the end of the hall drew toward me. I swallowed sharply, my fingers itching. Within minutes, the lie—that this baby was something more than just a contractual obligation—would be in full swing. They money would surge into my account. I’d get my shares of the company stock. I’d feel a dramatic weight drop from my shoulders. And Remy, well… She’d have the cash flow to pay her actors, her film crew. And maybe, Jesus, she could get the hell out of that shit, smoggy-carpeted apartment. Maybe get the hell out of the Mission District and get a better place near the water. I wanted her to see the ocean, to breathe the salty air.

  * * *

  God, I needed to get her the hell out of that bar. If she so much as inhaled a lick of secondhand cigarette smoke from Quintin, I’d smack my fist against a wall.

  Once the papers were signed, my fingers smudged with blue pen, I walked slowly down the hall with my father, my copartner. My leader. I felt a strange allegiance with him. Could even see the ways we spoke similarly, with our hands, emphasizing different words. At the edge of the lobby, he stopped short, his shoes skidding slightly against the hardwood floor. He turned eagle eyes toward me.

  “That Remy. I’m curious. What changed? What made you think that you and her… That you could be…”

  “Dad,” I said. “Haven’t you met her?”

  The words eased so evenly from me, without hesitation. I realized, with a jolt, that this was all the information I needed to give. Remy was a stunner, a charmer—an artistic woman with a cunning business sense. She was every bit the person my father was. Perhaps better.

  “You’re right,” my father chuckled, clapping me on the shoulder. “Just don’t fuck it up, OK? It can be so easy to fuck it up. You know I did it with your mother. Jesus, did I ever destroy our love.”

  My dad’s words haunted me as I strutted back toward the road, hailing a taxi with a sweep of my hand. I slipped into the back and drew up my online banking on my phone. With careful fingers, I typed in Remy’s bank account details, dropping in the one million I owed her. A fucking million dollars. When all those years before, a buck or two had been enough for a milkshake, or a beer with a fake ID.

  “Hey,” I called up to the driver, as he whirled me closer to the cabin. “Can you actually take me closer to the city center? I want to go to the Mission,” I said, a sudden wave of urgency making my stomach tighten. “Please,” I added, a word I was unaccustomed to using. Still, I swam through my father’s words. Don’t fuck it up. Don’t fuck it up.

  17

  Remy

  Sam and I sat perched at the edge of our seats, midway through the auditions for the mother role. A woman in her early sixties, with dark gray curls, teetered across the mock-stage in the little rented-out room in the Mission, calling out the words from my script.

  “You couldn’t handle me when you were a teenager, and you can’t handle me now,” the woman, Gwen, spat.

  “But mom, I was only eighteen,” Sam echoed across to her, reading from the script. “You abandoned me. And I had to pick up the pieces of my own life and try to, I don’t know. To make it somehow.”

  “Well, it looks like you’ve really made something of yourself,” Gwen sneered. “An underground strip club and bar? Jesus, Hallie. I got to say. You’re definitely one of the great successes of this family.”

  “Fuck you,” Sam screeched back.

  “All right! I think I’ve seen enough,” I said, smacking my hands together. I beamed up at Gwen, who took a small bow. Immediately, she melted into a simmering, bright-eyed sixty-year-old. She was one of five women who’d come out for the meaty role of the mother. The three who’d come before her had been sullen and meek. Unable to reach their voices out across the room and really articulate the volatility of the mother character.

  “This script, Remy.” Gwen sighed, splaying her hands through the air. “I mean, I worked in Hollywood. Jesus, did I work in Hollywood. But I’ve never read anything like this,” she continued.

  * * *

  I felt a flush trickle across my cheeks. I pressed my lips together and leaned closer to her, waiting.

  “I don’t often see roles for sixty-something women,” Gwen continued. “Just the fact that I got to act today, with you and with Sam. It meant the world to me,” she said. “Really. Thank you.”

  Gwen turned toward the door, where the last of the sixty-something actresses waited in the next room. Her large, slumped ass tilted left, then right.

  “Gwen?” I called out to her, just as her fingers gripped the doorknob.

  She spun back, her eyes large, hopeful.

  “I don’t think we’re going to need to see anyone else,” I continued, trying to sound professional. Powerful. “Please tell everyone else to head home. And Gwen, we’ll be having our first table read with all the main characters tomorrow afternoon. I’ll email you the details immediately.”

  Gwen’s knees buckled forward. Her hands smacked together as she brought the brunt of this information to her chest, holding onto it. I tried to force the smile from my face, but it stuck strong.

  “Thank you, Remy,” she whispered. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

  Gwen snuck back into the waiting room to tell the others the news. Sam grinned at me in her absence, as we sat alone in the echoing room.

  “You just made that woman’s entire decade,” she said, giggling.

  “Do you honestly think that anyone else could p
lay that character like she could?” I asked, sighing. “She put the fear of God in me.”

  * * *

  “No, no. You’re right. It isn’t as obvious, picking out the Xavier character. But I think that guy Patrick is a great option,” Sam continued, slipping through various folders, headshots. Patrick’s eyes were electric blue, his hair a pristine blonde, and his cheekbones high, almost German-looking.

  “You just think he’s hot,” I said, tittering. “But I told you. They don’t get together in the end. There’s not even a sex scene. The story’s not about their love.”

  “Come on, I know that. But their story’s all about will-they, won’t-they. All that sexual tension! Maybe it could translate into something in the real world.”

  “Ha,” I sighed. Drawing up from the chair, I arched my back, feeling the muscles ache. “Jesus, I’m always so sore. This baby…”

  “The baby’s hardly the size of an almond at this point,” Sam said, slipping her arms into her coat and shrugging it on. “Can’t imagine what your complaints around going to be when you actually—”

  “Hey. I’m new at this,” I sassed her. “And we have been in these goddamn chairs all day.”

  As we glided toward the door, shuffling folders, I caught a shadow just beyond the window. Stopping short, I watched as Wesley strutted along the sidewalk, wearing a business suit, his hair gelled back and sliced down the side, making him look incredibly GQ. Well-manicured. The kind of man who had several billions of dollars in his bank account.

  “Jesus, is that Wesley?” Sam asked, clutching her throat. “What the hell?”

  I didn’t wait to hear her speak. I scampered toward the door, rushing past the sixty-something ladies as they prepped to leave—slipping thin elbows through optimistic cardigans and mumbling. I felt like a wave of vitality, of promise. When I reached the door, I found myself face-to-face with Wesley, jaw-droppingly handsome, a cunning smile stretched across his cheeks. Pressing my hand against my throat, I whispered to him.

  “You signed. You did it.”

  “Baby, I did,” he nodded, his eyes burning. “And I’ve just sent the money to you. You’re all set.”

  I felt a sudden urge to thrust my arms around his neck, to bring my lips against his. Every part in my body ached for him. My tits—their brown nipples so perky lately—nearly burst from my T-shirt. I could see his eyes tracing across them, studying my form. My pregnant body.

  But instead of touching, my words cut through the tension.

  “We haven’t been able to find the male part,” I stammered.

  “Oh?” he asked, tilting his head.

  Again, my heart lurched. My pussy pulsed with a jolt of desire for him. Behind me, one of the women tapped a claw-like fingernail on her watch. “Think I can get the heck out of here, Miss Remy? I got my car in the tow zone.”

  I shuffled to the side, my words coming in sputters. Wesley followed me, his eyes sunny with humor. The woman ambled toward the clunker car near the corner. Already, the thing had a parking ticket, bright red beneath the sun.

  “Why don’t you do it?” I finally asked, throwing this lasso toward Wesley. In the back of my mind, I recognized that this was a potential tactic: keep him close. Keep him with the baby and me. Make him involved with my life.

  “Sorry. What do you mean?” Wesley asked, his eyebrows furrowing together.

  * * *

  “Be in my movie,” I stammered. “Be the lead male. I know you can act. Hell, it’s what we’re doing together, right now. Playing the part of lovers. Playing the part of parents. What’s another role?”

  I watched the information tick across Wesley’s eyes. Behind me, I heard Sam gasp slightly, catching the last of our conversation. But still, my eyes burned into Wesley’s, waiting.

  “Why the hell not?” Wesley said, wrapping his muscled arms across his chest. “Fuck it.”

  He beamed down at me, agreeing to be by my side—a kind of partner, in a sense—for the duration of this art project. I realized, in the silence, that I hadn’t thought he’d stick around after this part. That I’d drive from set to doctor’s appointments and back again, until he returned, pretended to “be a dad” for a second to save face for his father.

  Then what? What had I assumed? That we’d return the engagement ring? That I’d raise our baby alone?

  Sam marched up beside me, staring up at Wesley with a kind of rueful smile. “If you’re really going to hire this clown, then tell him he has to be at the reading on fucking time tomorrow, will you, Director?”

  I batted my eyelashes at Wesley, giving him that secret look of ours—when we were in on a joke that no one else was. My voice found sarcasm.

  “What do you say, Wesley? Can you hack it?” I asked him. “Can you be here on time, and make sure my other actors don’t wait?”

  Wes slid his fingers through his hair, catching on to my game. “You mean sliding in about an hour late isn’t kosher?”

  * * *

  Sam scoffed, walking past us and into the sun. Her shadow danced behind her, her curls catching the light. “Jesus, you two. It’s like we’re still in high school, and you think you know better than anyone. I’ll see you both at the reading tomorrow. Wesley, if you fuck up my girl’s film—I will kill you.”

  Silence fell between us as Sam ambled from the street corner and back toward her apartment, her hair swishing quickly against her back. Still so conscious of the sexual energy between Wes and me, I pressed my hand against my lower abdomen, unable to speak. Finally, Wes cut through the silence.

  “I wanted to ask you. To celebrate.” He paused, his nose inching closer to mine. I half-thought he would kiss me, sealing this kind of strange deal between us. But he held back. “Do you want to go to Taco Shack?”

  Immediately, my face screamed with electric joy, my cheeks growing wide and my eyes alight. I pressed my hands against his chest, shoving him playfully. “I love that place!” I cried. “Are you kidding me? It’s still around?”

  Taco Shack had been our go-to dinner stop as teenagers. We’d shrugged ourselves into the same old booth about two or three times a week for three years, gobbling tacos and bickering, or else kissing, our lips tasting of hot sauce. I remembered the last time we’d been there like it was yesterday. I’d been wearing this sinfully short yellow dress, my hair wrapped up tight in a red bandana. “You can’t just drive your motorcycle across America,” I insisted, slurping one of the margaritas they never declined to serve me. “You’d get murdered in like Illinois or something. Or you’d have to call your dad and have him pay for you to come home.”

  * * *

  “Why don’t you ever fucking believe in me?” Wes had demanded, smashing his fist into my taco. “Why can’t you just listen to me for a second?”

  “I am listening. All you do is make fake plans, Wes. I want something real from my life, you know? I actually want to become something.”

  “Well, why can’t we fucking do it together?” Wes had asked. “You can fit on the back of the bike anywhere we want to go.”

  “Face it, Wes. It’s not like I’m going to become an actress in the plains of Kansas, or on some rocky cliff in Maine. It has to be in LA,” I’d spat back. “And you leaving me? Well. I always knew you would. I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

  “Just eat your tacos, Rem. You always get so fucking mean when you’re hungry.”

  I drove us out to Taco Shack, remembering the familiar route and feeling almost guided there, my elbows twitching left and right to steer. We pointed out the old sights—the once-dilapidated old house on the hill that someone had suited up with a fresh coat of paint, and the ice cream shack that had transitioned into a realtor’s office. “These tech assholes,” Wes clucked at this, giving me a knowing look. Of course, we both knew that the cash flow in our accounts was purely thanks to this world. The tech boom we so hated? It was a necessity now.

  “I’ll take the old spot, shall I?” I said, throwing the car into the spot and halting the
engine. I placed my hand over my stomach, suddenly swimming with wooziness. “Man, I need to eat something. I feel like I’m falling apart.”

  “Pregnant women normally report feeling that way in the first few weeks,” Wes offered, darting to my side of the car and helping me to my feet. I staggered into him, feeling the electricity of his touch. The words Sam had spoken about the two main characters in the film echoed in my head. Will they? Won’t they?

  Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself.

  “What do you mean? You’ve been reading up on normal pregnant women stuff?” I asked, taking a few small steps away from him. “You’ve been doing research?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging, his face growing shy. “I just wanted to, erm. Know what you were going through.”

  How could he possibly leave me? I wondered now, with a lurch. But I couldn’t focus on it. This baby, my film. They were all that mattered now.

  Taco Shack had stayed true to memory, with a busted-out surfboard stretched across the far wall, the pop machine sputtering out orange and grape sodas, and the same stoner cook making meat sizzle on the grill in back. Wes and I darted to the register and ordered our familiar tacos, the spiced beef and the pork carnitas and the guacamole and crunchy tortilla chips. Wes paid with a twenty-dollar bill, leaving the pimply cash register worker a giant tip for the ten-dollar order. The kid nearly leapt with excitement, but he only said, “Jesus!”

  Wes and I sat in the familiar booth in the back, across from one another. I tore into the taco, immediately feeling my wooziness dissipating. The savory flavor crept across my tongue. Wesley lifted his own taco, just watching me, almost captivated. I chuckled to myself and blurted out, “Hey! Stop! You know I don’t like it when you watch me eat.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m doing it,” he said. Suddenly, he ripped into his own taco with a ravenous bite, his eyes still focused on mine. As he chewed, we both fell into raucous, teenager laughter, our heads falling back.