Accidentally on Purpose

by L. D. Davis

  “It’s going to be fine,” she said softly.

  “I did the math,” I said, looking at her finally. “Luke hates me, mom, and I don’t know how Kyle is going to feel about raising someone else’s kid.” There. I put it out there, even though I was sure she already knew it.

  “Luke doesn’t hate you, honey.”

  “Yes, he does, and I don’t blame him.”

  “Emmy,” She said firmly. “Luke does not hate you.” She said it with such assurance, I suddenly became suspicious.

  “How do you know?” I whispered. “You know something and you’re not telling me.”

  She sighed, stared at the floor for a moment, as if she was thinking about how to tell me something, which bothered me. My mom was so blunt and never had a filter, so I couldn’t imagine what would make her hesitate to open her big mouth now.

  “I talk to him every now and then,” she said, with another sigh.

  “You what?” I started to stand up, but she firmly pushed me back down.

  “You two broke up, and I was honestly really concerned for his sister Lena, you know because of the cancer.”

  After my trip to Chicago with Luke, my mom went out of her way to introduce herself to Luke’s family. I mean she really went out of her way. It started with phone calls and letters (my mom is computer stupid), and when Luke and I went again for just a long weekend, my mom tagged along. She charmed his parents, gained the trust and admiration of his sisters, and wooed the children with gifts and her grandmotherly ways. When I told her we broke up and that Luke didn’t want any contact between the families, I thought she had ceased speaking to them. Apparently I was wrong.

  “Wait. You were allowed to have communication with his family, but I wasn’t?” The idea hurt me to the core. It was like I was being cut off from my own mother in a way, and of course I had really fell in love with his family, and I had never quite gotten over losing them.

  “Not at first. He wouldn’t tell me what happened, but you know I already knew. I’m old, but not stupid,” she gave me a knowing look. “I had to promise not to tell you, and I had a big problem with that, but then…” she suddenly looked so sad. “You’re never here. You barely call anymore, so I didn’t see where I would really have the opportunity to tell you anyway, and the truth is I really couldn’t turn my back on that family.”

  I blinked back tears, knowing that she was right. I sucked at being a daughter, just as badly as I had sucked at being a good girlfriend to Luke, especially when he was going through so much. I wanted to be angry, but I couldn’t find it in me to be angry when I knew that my mom was doing what she does best when her stupid mouth wasn’t in the way, caring for other people and their needs.

  “Is Lena…” I couldn’t bring myself to ask the question.

  “She’s doing as well as we can hope for. Their father passed away last month, though. Your dad and I flew up there for the services, helped pay for some of the expenses.”

  “That’s so sad,” I felt bad for Luke and wished that I could have been in my mom’s position to go see and comfort him. “So, how do you know he doesn’t hate me?”

  Again, she looked as if she didn’t want to release some information to me. Guardedly, she said “He’s hurting, and he’s sometimes bitter, but never hateful. It’s going to take some time…”

  “Mom, you can’t tell him.” I squeezed her hands. “You’re still holding secrets from me and I’m your kid. You have to keep this from him.”

  “Why don’t you want him to know?”

  “I don’t think that it will help anything right now. Mom, please!”

  “Okay…” she was reluctant to withhold the information from him.

  “Besides, until there’s some DNA testing done, we can’t know for sure. You can always use that as an excuse if it comes up later.”

  "I won't say anything, Emmy.," she sighed.

  “Thanks,” I stood up. “I’m going to go pack.”

  “You want your ultra sound picture?” she offered it to me.

  “No.”

  I dragged myself upstairs to my room and threw myself onto the bed. I should have felt better after the conversation with my mom, but I felt worse. I felt as if I had thousands of pounds of weight sitting on my chest. I couldn’t find an ounce of happiness about the situation. I wasn’t sure what it meant for me and Kyle, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do in a few months when the baby was born. Would I be waiting around for Kyle to leave Jess still, while caring for a baby? Or would I be alone, with no father around at all? I know there were single parents in the world, but I never ever thought that I had whatever they have inside of them to do it. I wasn’t even sure if I would be a decent parent with someone else. I felt that no matter what, I was going to fail. I mean I couldn’t even figure out I was pregnant! How was I going to raise a child?

  If I had paid attention to my symptoms, I probably would have figured it out sooner. What I thought was an extended case of a stomach virus soon after Luke’s departure was probably morning sickness. The morning sickness slowed down, but at least once a day I had the urge to vomit. I thought it was anxiety, as well as the fluttering in my belly. The sleepiness I had been feeling, I thought was a result of the busy season at work. My sudden extreme interest in bacon and cheese curls (together) should have been a clue, but I didn’t think it was weird at all. While my face and hips had definitely gathered some extra weight, I thought my slightly rounded face was attractive and as for my hips, I thought maybe I had to cool it on the bacon; however, the fact that the weight sat mostly at my midline didn’t even hint to me that there could be something growing in there. I figured when the busy season was over, I would spend more time at the gym, and covered up in bigger clothes. I was so freaking stupid.

  I packed my suitcase for my early morning flight, and went downstairs for some dinner. I hoped there was bacon in it.

  ***

  Kyle returned from Fiji late Sunday night. He dropped the succubus off and then came straight to my house. I wasn’t expecting to see him until work the following morning, and he didn’t text or call to let me know he was coming. I was laying on the living room couch, with the television on, absent mindedly rubbing my belly. The fluttering had begun again, and now I knew it wasn’t anxiety, but fetal movement. I didn’t even hear the door open, and I wasn’t sure how long he watched me before letting me know he was there by saying my name.

  Automatically, my hand flew away from my belly and my head snapped back to look at him standing in the entrance way. I tried to sit up, but learned I couldn’t do that as quickly and easily as I had in the past. How did I not notice these things before?

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” I said.

  “I know.” One thing Kyle was not, was stupid. Where some men would probably think that I had a stomach ache or ate too much, I could almost see Kyle’s thoughts. He knew, and I didn’t have to break the news to him.

  He stood where I found him, staring at me, and I stared back. Either of us knew what to say. After several uncomfortable seconds had passed, I finally spoke, to break the ice.

  “A pretty good number of girls in my family are pregnant or just recently had a baby. I didn’t know it was really contagious.”

  “It’s like the fart touch,” he said, and finally we had an open dialogue for this momentous conversation.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “It doesn’t matter to me. I already love this baby like my own, and we’re going to raise him together, as a family.”

  Kyle had said that a month ago, the night he returned from Fiji, and found out I was pregnant. I had suggested a DNA test and explained why, but he had objected. He was disturbingly excited about the news, and started spewing off all kinds of plans for our expected child. I couldn’t take it anymore and cut him off.

  “Yeah, you know we’re going to have a great time,” I said with obviously fake enthusiasm. “You, me, the baby, and Jessyca.”

  He bit his lip, glaring at me as if
I had just said the most offensive thing in the world.

  “Give me some credit, Em, will you? Jessyca isn’t going to have anything to do with our family.”

  “I really want to believe that, but I’ve been an idiot for all of this time.”

  “Here we go,” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “You know why things have had to be this way.”

  “That does not make it okay!” I banged my fist on the table, making the plate holding my hot bacon rattle. I took a deep breath, and a piece of bacon. “My point is, I have a hard time believing you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do, and I don’t know if I want to wait for it to happen.”

  “So, what…you’re just going to cut me out of your life?” he asked.

  “I would rather be alone, depending on no one, than to depend on someone who is clearly undependable.”

  “You’ve given up on me – on us.” It was not a question, but a well-placed guess.

  “Every day that I have to share you with Jess, I lose more and more of myself. I’m so knotted up inside from this relationship, Kyle, I’m not sure if it can ever be fixed.”

  He stared at me stupidly, speechless.

  “You get so pissed off when I make comments about your lack of action, but that’s really not fair. I’m the one who should be pissed off, and if I were the old Emmy, I wouldn’t be standing here with you, like at all. You don’t understand, Kyle, you are breaking me,” I choked on the last few words, unable to hold back the onslaught of tears and sobs.

  Stupid hormones.

  He held me for a long time, murmuring empty promises into my hair, begging for my patience and understanding, and insisting that the triangle would soon be dissolved and we would be able to get on with our lives. I know that he believed what he was saying, and that he really thought that things were going to change now, but I didn’t have any faith in his words, and it was harder to admit the truth than to delude myself.

  A week passed, two weeks, and then finally a month. It was almost New Years and nothing changed. Kyle said he was trying to settle some business connections before he severed his relationship with Jess. From a business perspective, I understood, I really did. From a personal perspective, though, I simply saw it as another delay, another link in the chain that kept me bound to him.

  I didn’t visit my parents for Christmas because I had plans with Kyle, which he significantly altered at the last minute. I didn’t bother to make New Years plans with him, and instead tried to make plans with my parents, but they were going to Chicago. I wasn’t supposed to know about it, but my mom “slipped” in conversation. She offered to stay home or to come see me so I wouldn’t be alone, but I lied to her, telling her I wouldn’t be alone, that I would be okay.

  I was feeling more and more depressed about my situation, and I thought of Luke a lot more than I ever had in the past. I wondered if there would ever be a day when I didn’t think of him, now that I was going to have his flesh and blood with me for the rest of my life. I was losing sleep, this time with actual anxiety, not just the fluttering of the active child growing inside of me. My appetite was lacking, bacon and cheese curls wasn’t even doing it for me anymore. When I should have been gaining a little bit of weight, I was dropping it. I was always good at hiding my emotions in public, especially at work, but I was so overwhelmed, so weighed down by it all, I didn’t have the strength anymore to put up appearances. It was also becoming impossible to hide my swelling belly, and I knew that people were looking at me, wondering first, what the hell was wrong with me, why I looked so miserable, and second, who the father was.

  My work started to suffer, so much that Kyle delegated most of my tasks to Eliza, and delegated her tasks to the assistants I had hired. I didn’t even know why I was showing up anymore, I barely did anything. So, one day when Walter Sterling called me to his office, I really thought that he was going to fire me, or take away my position and put me back in the mailroom.

  "Would you like a drink, Emmy?" Mr. Sterling asked, pouring himself a drink.

  In the past, I wouldn't have dreamed of accepting a drink from him, in his office. I would have been ridiculously professional, stiff as his drink. But that was then. I couldn’t drink the alcohol, I had done enough of that before I knew I was pregnant, just another thing to worry about. Had I damaged my baby? Eric couldn’t give me a positive answer.

  "I’ll have water," I answered.

  "Well, that's different."

  He handed me a glass of cold water, and silently we watched the streets below out of his floor to ceiling, wall to wall window.

  "How is your family?" He asked.

  "Fine, I suppose."

  "Did you see them on Christmas?"

  "No."

  We stood in silence again for a minute or so. I thought about leaving, but Walter Sterling didn't call me to his office to look out of the window and ask me stupid questions.

  "You have been having an affair with Kyle for, hmm...about a year now." And there it is. He said it so casually, we could have been speaking about the weather.

  "About a year," I confirmed, still watching the streets below. "Another water, please." I held out my empty glass, but he was reluctant to take it. I was well aware of the irony of the situation. I should have been catering to him, not the other way around and we both knew it, but he said nothing and refilled my glass.

  "I really like you, you know, Emmy. You are the best administrative assistant in this building. I gave you to Kyle because I knew he needed you to get on track and stay there. You've done a damn good job."

  I stared at him, not because he complimented me, but because I wanted to know where this was going.

  "I am confused as to where this is going," I said, not too kindly. "How did we segway from my affair with Kyle to my work? Are you firing me?"

  "Fire you? No, of course not. Firing you would bring questions and unwanted attention and we don't need any more of that right now,” he nodded to my pregnant belly. “Besides, I’ve always wanted you to stay with the company, to grow here."

  "Then what do you want, Walter?" I've never in my life addressed him by his first name.

  "You're making Kyle lose focus of what's most important. He should already be married by now, having children with Jessyca Venner, not you." His tone was still so casual, that it was making me a little queasy. I never thought that this man who I had always thought well of could be so evil under it all.

  "What if he doesn't want the bitch?" I asked.

  "It doesn't really matter if he wants the bitch or not. There is a lot of money riding on their inevitable nuptials, a lot of money and the birth of a whole new era here at Sterling Corp."

  "Don't you think that's a lot of pressure to put on one person?"

  "He was fine until he started screwing you. You've got him all wrapped up in you, he can't see or think straight."

  "Some may say the man is in love."

  "And I would agree, but he has a duty to two families."

  "Does Jess know she's someone's duty?"

  "Yes, she does, but she truly loves Kyle, and in some ways, Kyle loves her, but not the way he loves you."

  "It doesn't matter," I said, putting my glass down. "His 'duty' will win."

  "With you and the bastard child around, he could delay this thing for an extremely long period of time. Timing is everything."

  For the first time, I felt an emotional response directed at my baby. I put a protective hand over my belly, offended, and hoping his little ears did not understand the word bastard.

  "I have to admit, I'm jealous," Walt chuckled lightly. "You're a gorgeous woman, with a fantastic personality, and I would bet thousands that you're an animal in bed."

  "Don't tell me you want to take me for a test drive," I said.

  "Who wouldn't want to? Even in your current state," He laughed. "But that would only further complicate matters, would it not?" He strolled away to the other side of the room, where he pulled a picture off of the wall,
revealing a safe. I snickered, thinking it was cliché, obvious.

  I stared out of the window while Walt rambled on about the good of the many outweighing the good of the few, or something. I vaguely remembered Mr. Spock saying something like that in a Star Trek movie, and thought how unoriginal Walter Sterling was.

  "So," he said, with a finality that made me turn around. On his desk were four stacks of cash. I thought maybe he wanted me to go to the bank for him or something, but then it hit me.

  "You're trying to pay me off?"

  "There's one million dollars here. I will keep you on the payroll, also, so you won't be losing anything. You can eventually return to the company, or if you like you can just go work at one of our other locations, or not come back at all. I would understand."

  "You realize that my own family is wealthy and I'm not in need?"

  "Even the wealthiest of people aspire to acquire more money."

  "What if I refuse your offer?"

  "It never once occurred to me that you would refuse."

  "You're a little too confident, don't you think?"

  "Not at all. Let's be frank, Emmy. You don't like being Kyle's side piece, you know in your heart that he isn't going to commit to you. You're probably falling apart inside, wishing you could escape, just disappear. It's better that you leave on your own than to be forced."

  "You're forcing me." I whispered.

  "I am providing you with a means of escape."

  I was angry that he was offering me a bribe. I was more angry that I was thinking about accepting it.

  "I don't trust you," I said to Walter. "And your ideas are total swiss cheese, anyone could see through them, and who does this?" I pointed at the pile of money. "There are hungry children throughout the city and you want to pay off your son's mistress. I feel like I'm in the middle of a daytime soap. That money is probably company money anyway, which means you'd just nail me for embezzlement. You're crazy."

  "You thought about it," he said, not hiding his animosity for me. "You were going to accept my offer."