I smile at her. “Not like you are, though,” I say.
We lay in the bed for another half hour, not speaking, just cuddling, just enjoying the sensation of our bodies naked against one another. I’ve been with a lot of women, but I can’t say that I’ve ever cuddled. At least not like this. There’s still the sexual tension here, but it’s calmed down, now that we’ve had sex, and we can just relax and enjoy being near each other, being with each other.
The light is soft and dim and this basic hotel room, I’m certain, has never looked more inviting, more at peace. It’s interesting how my perceptions change now that I’m satisfied, now that I’m happier, more at peace.
I’ve never felt more relaxed or calmer than with Chloe, naked, curled up against me, her head nestling in the crook of my arm, her arm slung across my chest, her breasts pressed lightly into my side. Her toes curl absent-mindedly around mine, stroking the tops of my feet and my ankles, my lower legs. I gaze at her magnificent legs, so smooth, so perfect.
Chloe’s phone rings.
“Just let it go,” I say sleepily.
“I’ve got to check,” says Chloe. “It might be my dad.”
She gets up, naked, and bends over. I admire her ass as she does so, and the way her breasts and hair hang…
“Hello?” she says, looking concerned as she stands straight up, turning towards me where I lie on the bed, the covers half covering my muscular body.
“This is she,” says Chloe, in a worried tone.
There’s a silence as Chloe listens to the person on the other end of the line. I guess it’s not her dad if she has to identify herself. It already doesn’t look like whatever happened is good, judging by Chloe’s face and the fact that it’s four in the morning.
Chloe’s face turns white as a sheet as she listens without saying anything.
My heart is beating quickly. I’m worried, worried about Chloe, suddenly realizing that I care about her like no one I’ve ever cared for, and I hardly really even know her well. But despite all that, it feels like we’ve been together for a long, long time.
“I’ll be right there,” says Chloe.
“What happened?” I say, as Chloe puts the phone down and starts getting rapidly.
“It’s my dad,” she says, her voice sounded stressed. She’s talking quickly and quietly, the way people do when something very serious happens. “I wasn’t there for him when he needed me. Something happened with his kidneys. I don’t know, I didn’t understand it. But he called 911 and an ambulance took him to the hospital. He’s in the emergency room right now. I have to go see him. This could be the last chance I have.”
“I’m coming with you,” I say, jumping out of bed and throwing on all my clothes.
She nods at me. There aren’t tears in her eyes, but it looks like she might begin to cry, as if she’s trying hard not to cry.
“Ready?” she says, scanning the room just once to see if he’s left anything. She doesn’t even look at herself in the mirror as she leaves.
I follow her down the hall.
“I can drive,” I say.
She shakes her head. “I’m going to need my car,” she says. “I have work tomorrow too.”
“But you won’t have slept at all,” I say, checking the clock on my phone. “It’s after four in the morning now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, looking very, very worried. And not about herself, but about her dad. “Follow me in your car. I know the way to the hospital.”
I guess she’s been there before plenty of times.
It’s a half hour drive, and she’s driving fast in her old car, speeding along the empty dark streets, our headlights casting cold white light over the dead leaves that scatter in the wind.
It’s chilly but I don’t turn on the heat, or the radio. I’m staring straight ahead, trying to catch glimpses of Chloe in the driver’s seat in her car. I wonder what’s going through her head, and I wonder whether she’s crying.
We get to the hospital and she doesn’t even park right, just puts her car in the lane. It’s the middle of the night so it doesn’t matter much. I park my car, and then jog over to her, and catch her as she’s rushing inside.
“Here,” I say. “I’ll park the car. Don’t worry about it.”
I park her car too and then head into the hospital emergency room to find her. It smells bad in here, a sickly kind of smell. There are people sitting around and moaning, with all sorts of aches and pains that I can’t identify. There’s a weird buzzing sound that’s loud and it sounds like it’s some sort of malfunctioning fluorescent light.
I tell the receptionist who I’m looking for and she points me into the room. Apparently there’s no problem with visitors right now.
Chloe is standing by her dad’s side. He’s lying in the bed and he looks yellow. He’s hooked up to all kinds of tubes, IVs spiraling out of his veins. He has that seriously sick look, the strange tone to his skin, and the way he’s lying, as if he’s been sapped of all his energy, makes him look really sick.
“I came as fast as I could, Dad,” Chloe is saying.
“I’m glad you’re here,” says Chloe’s dad, weakly, as if he’s really struggling to speak.
I walk into the room slowly and give an awkward wave at Chloe’s dad.
“Hi,” I say.
“They’re’ going to have to put him on dialysis,” says Chloe. “His kidney isn’t working.”
I nod slowly and gravely, feeling terrible and awkward here, not knowing what to say. I don’t have the word, and I’m wondering how her dad is going to react to this. After all, why am I here with his daughter at four in the morning, and why wasn’t she at home?
There’s only one possible explanation and I wonder if in his sick state if he’s going to put the pieces together. Then again, she’s a grown woman, right? Can’t she make her own decisions?
“What are you doing here, Dan?” says Chloe’s dad, apparently gathering all of his strength to ask this question. He picks his head off the pillow and stares at me, more of a glower really, putting all his energy into it.
“I was…”
I stop speaking. I simply don’t know what to say. I can’t simply say I was sleeping with his daughter, can I?
Damn it. In college, I don’t run into problems like this.
Chloe gives me a look that I can’t read. Her face is indestructible, even though I know she’s upset. There’s some other emotion there that I’m not picking up on. If I had to guess, it would be anger towards me. But that wouldn’t make sense, would it?
“He was with me, Dad,” says Chloe.
“You were…?”
Chloe nods.
I don’t say anything.
I can see the anger in her father’s face. Serious anger.
“He’s sick,” says Chloe. “It’d be better if you go, Dan.”
“But…”
“You have to go,” says Chloe, in what sounds like an angry whisper. Her eyes shoulder. The anger is clear now.
But why is she angry at me? It doesn’t make sense?
My hands are tied. I can’t stick up for myself in a situation like this—it just wouldn’t be worth it with a sick man like this, a dying man.
I learned about dialysis when my aunt had it. It’s a horrible process where they clean your blood. It depends on the person, but with Chloe’s dad, I don’t think he’s going to live much longer, not more than a couple months on dialysis.
I head to the door and Chloe doesn’t follow me. Doesn’t she want to say goodbye? I mean, I know her dad is sick, but…
“You know I’m headed back to school soon?” I say. “I’m not sure we’ll be able to see each other…”
Chloe nods at me stiffly.
“Bye,” she says.
I don’t understand this attitude. After all, we just spent the most incredible night together.
Suddenly, I remember I have her keys, so I go to hand them to her. But she doesn’t move her hands to accept them, ins
tead keeping them crossed in front of her, under her breasts.
I put them on the nightstand, and I leave the room, with Chloe and her sick father both glaring at me.
What the hell just happened?
I head out into the cool night and get into my car and drive home in silence. The world around me seems to have become terrible, in the sense that everything that was imbued with magic only hours ago has now become flat and dull. The leaves blow with the wind, but they don’t move that place in my soul, doing nothing for my spirit. My body has become like an automaton, like a robot. I don’t know what happened with Chloe, but I know what that look meant. I don’t know why she acted the way she did, but I know what it means for us.
Her dad’s disapproval of me is more important than her feelings for me. That’s what this all means.
Well, her dad is dying, I tell myself. Cut her a little slack.
But I can’t…
Not after the incredible night we spent together in the hotel room.
How could she be so cold to me after that? Everything in her demeanor screamed “get away from me and don’t contact me.”
I’m on absolutely no sleep by the time I get home, so I crawl into bed, fortunately arriving before my parents have woken up. I don’t fall asleep though, despite how exhausted and tired my body is. Instead, I listen to the morning sounds of the house, my parents getting up, brushing their teeth, turning on the radio.
The sun is up now, but it’s a cold and weak sun that barely penetrates the clouds.
Sometime around 8am, I finally fall asleep for a few fitful and restless hours.
Chloe
The next few days go by in a blur. I’m stuck here in the hospital, eating and sleeping here. I call out of work.
I think of Dan often, but only with anger. I don’t quite understand my own reaction. I just know what I’m choosing my dad’s side of the situation right now. After all, he’s dying, right? Can’t I just do what he wants for now?
He doesn’t approve of me hanging out with a guy like Dan. For one thing, Dan’s reputation precedes him even around these parts. And who know what’ll happen when his college reputation gets back here.
Even in high school, he was too bad, too much of a rowdy troublemaker for someone like my dad to approve of. Now that Dan is older and muscled, stubbled, with a deep commanding voice, a real man, my dad approves of him even less. That’s why he gave him that trick with the plumbing, to try to confound him. My dad knew why Dan was there. He knew he was there to see me, and he wanted to distract him, to try to discourage him with a complex and unsolvable plumbing problem.
I still don’t know how Dan managed to fix that plumbing…
He sure knew how to work mine.
Shut up, I tell myself. Now isn’t the time for stupid dirty jokes. Your dad is dying.
I have this voice that runs through my head, my conscience, I guess. But all it tells me over and over is that my dad is dying. It’s not the most helpful thing in a situation like this, because I obviously already know that my dad is dying.
They cart him into the dialysis room a couple times a week and he sits there for hours staring at the wall, refusing all forms of entertainment. I go with him at first, but now he doesn’t even want me to go with him. He doesn’t like me to see him in this weak state, hooked up to a machine that he depends on for survival.
I call out of work and my boss is pissed enough to fire me over the phone. She knows my dad is sick and she knows I always cover for other people when she needs it. Well, fuck. Screw her.
She completely screwed me financially. But I can’t worry about things like that now.
The days are drifting by.
I got a couple of text messages and even a call from Dan. I didn’t pick up the phone. He left me a long voicemail about how much fun he had with me, and how much I meant to him.
I want nothing more than to tell him all the same things, but this isn’t the time for that. Can’t he see that? Can’t he see that my dad needs me, and I need him? He’s the left family I’ve got left, except for my Aunt Donna, who’s got to be in her 80s now, and I haven’t seen her since I was a little kid.
I don’t respond to anything Dan writes. Can’t he see I don’t have time for that now?
Eventually, he stops writing.
The days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into one month. The days have gotten colder and the strongest of the oak trees have dropped all their leaves. (There’s a species around here that holds onto their dead leaves for a long, long time).
The days are shorter and there’s less light. My car is having problems starting up, and I have to jam my foot into the gas pedal as I crank the engine in order to get it to run. There’s a problem with my power steering, and I have to keep filling it up with steering fluid every day, since it leaks out overnight. Eventually, the cost of the steering fluid is too great, and I just stop putting the fluid in, losing power steering altogether.
Losing power steering is like a metaphor for my life right now. I have no direction, and I can’t afford to get any. I have to be there for my dad.
I’m not longer spending all my time at the hospital, and neither is my dad. I drive him in for his dialysis appointments. I wait in the waiting room as the machine filters his blood, removing it from his body and replacing it over the course of a few hours.
I feel like I’m losing him. I feel like I’m losing everything.
There’s no one to talk to.
Dan’s stopped writing me or calling me, and who can blame him. After all, I was the one to never respond to him.
It’s all my fault, and it always has been. At least that’s how I feel. I start blaming myself for everything, falling deeper and deeper into some sort of depression.
I don’t notice when my period doesn’t come, but one day, I wake up feeling sick to my stomach.
Strange, I think to myself, before the pain suddenly increases, the nausea overtaking me.
I sprint to the bathroom, before my dad’s even woken up, and thrust my head into the toilet bowl.
The vomit pours out of me.
And I never vomit.
This is weird, I think, as the urge takes me again and I stick my head back into the toilet, letting out another stream of strange colored vomit.
Feeling better, I brush my teeth.
How disgusting, I think to myself, looking to the toilet bowl before flushing it.
Wait a second…
I suddenly think of my period. This is when I realize I didn’t have it last month.
Oh shit.
That’s not good.
My mind goes into hyper drive, trying to remember if maybe, just maybe, I’d somehow gotten my period and forgotten about it.
But, no, I definitely didn’t get it. I’m fairly regular, with it usually coming around the same day each month.
Oh shit.
Could I be pregnant?
Would the timing make sense? I was with Dan, what, a month ago, a month and a half ago? Was it three weeks ago?
I try to count back in my head to Thanksgiving weekend but I give up. Calendars and dates and times have never been my strong suit. I’m more of a literature person than a math or science person, and I knew this would come back to bite me in the ass someday.
When you think you’re pregnant in the movies, there’s always a helpful but sarcastic friend to help you out, to go buy the pregnancy test with you.
But this is real life, and I’m all alone. There’s only my dad, and I’m certainly not going to tell him. I’m not talking to Dan, and anyway, he’s hours away at college.
I pull out my phone and start searching the internet for answers. It turns out “Am I pregnant?” and “How do I tell if I’m pregnant?” are some of the most common searches there are.
In the end, after half an hour of frantic internet research, I decide to go get a blood test, paying for it with my own money, rather than using a home test kit. The home test kits apparently aren’t very accurat
e.
So I drive myself to the lab after first ordering the test myself on the internet.
I’m squeamish about blood, which is one of the reasons that my dad’s dialysis bothers me so much.
But it goes off without a hitch, and by the end of the day I have the answer, which pops up in my email.
“POSITIVE,” say the email. I don’t even read the rest of the words. They just swim before me in a blur.
All I know is I’m pregnant with Dan’s child, and I don’t even talk to him anymore.
I feel an affection for the child that will be. It’s combined with something I still feel for Dan, despite what happened between us. And, honestly, I’m not even sure what happened between us.
There’s no one to tell. No friend to commiserate with.
It’s just me, all alone, with my dying father at the other end of the house.
Dan
Six Years Later
Huge bodies are rushing towards me, trying to tackle me, trying to slam their hundreds of pounds of muscled flesh into me.
I dodge left, using a complicated footwork maneuver. Someone’s coming at me from the left now.
And someone’s coming at me from behind.
My vision is limited by my football helmet. I can hear my own breathing, and the sound of players rushing around me, colliding with each other as they try to tackle me.
My feet are pounding into the turf.
I’m aware of every muscle, every movement.
My consciousness has shifted to tunnel vision, something elite athletes like myself experience when everything is going just right.
It’s right now that I know I’m going to make the touchdown. There’s no doubt in my mind. Once the tunnel vision kicks in, everything starts to look like it’s in slow motion.
No matter how many of them rush at me in their bright purple and yellow jerseys, no matter how determined they are to stop me, I will evade them all.
Seconds later, it’s all over.
I cross the final line, and I throw the ball down in celebration, doing my little dance, using my knees and elbows.
Running Back's Baby: A Secret Baby Romance Page 5
