Who's Your Daddy?

by Gallagher, Lauren

  “Do you really want to hear what he’ll have to say about it?”

  “No.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But he’s going to say it. If not now, then when he finds out later. I’d rather deal with it now than after the baby’s here.”

  “You’ll know then if the baby’s yours,” I said. “If it’s not, you might not need to have this conversation.”

  He stopped pacing and looked at me. “Whether the baby’s yours or mine doesn’t make a difference to me. I fully intend to be as involved as you are, regardless of the DNA test.”

  “I know, of course you are.” I sipped my wine and set it down. “But that might dictate how much your father needs to know.”

  “Maybe so,” he said. “But I’ve spent every night this week lying awake and thinking about this. I’d rather just get it over with. Then I can sweat over telling Ryan.” He sighed. “Besides, Dad got over it when Ryan was born. He might even be happy about it this time. Who knows?”

  “Yeah,” I said into my wineglass. “Maybe he will.”

  His eyes flicked toward me, and I had no doubt he sought more reassurance than there had been in my voice. I didn’t want to leave him hanging, but I knew his father. I knew their past. I’d offer reassurance when I could do so honestly, and this was not one of those times.

  Donovan started pacing again.

  “He doesn’t have to know,” I said.

  “I won’t lie to him about this,” he said, almost whispering. “I’ve kept enough of my life hidden from him, and I am not going to pretend to be ashamed of this baby just so he can sleep at night.”

  I didn’t know why I bothered arguing with him.

  We could have kept this under our hats and come up with some sort of explanation. Used one of the original cover stories we’d all rejected for one reason or another. Carmen wanted a baby, and one or the other of us had volunteered as sperm donors. Something. If anything, he could have just said the baby was mine and left it at that. As far as Andy Morris was concerned, I didn’t exist, and therefore any child of mine didn’t either.

  I understood why Donovan did it, though. He and I had faced enough judgment in our lives, but lying to people was exhausting. Pretending to be something we weren’t, keeping loved ones a secret, hiding important facets of our lives for the sake of someone else’s comfort, meant we ended up losing sleep and stressing over things. There was always the fear of someone finding out. The dark moments of shame and self-loathing when we wondered if the fact that we had to hide something meant it really was wrong.

  We’d long ago vowed not to carry those burdens for other people when it could be avoided.

  That wasn’t to say being open and honest was without its difficulties. I came out when I was seventeen. My family took it well, but there was still some tension, some shock and a period of adjustment.

  Since Donovan’s early teen years were occupied with school and his mother’s battle with cancer, and his late teens were occupied with being a parent himself, he’d barely had time to figure out who he was until much later. He didn’t even have his first relationship with a man until he was twenty-one, and he didn’t come out to his dad until he was twenty-six. We’d both been through our fair share of grief and headache over our respective sexuality, but mine was nothing compared to the massive rift coming out had created between Donovan and his father.

  Andy had been surprisingly supportive when his son became a father. He’d allowed Julia to move into the house, helped with the baby when it was needed, and had been known to loan them money when they were strapped. That had stunned the hell out of Donovan, who’d expected to be thrown out the way Julia was. The fact that an emotionally inaccessible father like Andy had, after making it known he wasn’t thrilled about the situation, let her stay in his home, had come as a huge surprise.

  With that in mind, Donovan had thought his father would, grudgingly or otherwise, accept him when he came out.

  He thought wrong.

  It was another five years before the two of them made a precarious peace. It had taken Andy that long to finally sit down and talk to his son, who to this day ached for his father’s approval. Andy still wouldn’t acknowledge me, but the two of them were inching toward some semblance of forgiveness and acceptance. The rest would come in time.

  And now Andy was on his way over, and Donovan planned to be open and up front about our situation with Carmen. No explicit details about exactly what had happened, just that there was a baby on the way. A baby we’d be keeping and raising with his or her mother.

  On all of that, I agreed with him. What bothered me was the part he wasn’t admitting. Deep down, Donovan wanted few things in the world more than his father’s approval. He’d been up front and honest with his father about Julia’s pregnancy, but had kept his sexuality a secret for years. In some convoluted way, he thought skipping the secrecy and going straight to the truth this time might help. Or maybe a grandchild would be a more palatable, even welcome, confession than a boyfriend.

  I supposed it was possible. Andy might embrace this baby like he’d embraced Ryan. I didn’t hold my breath, though. Even if he did accept this situation, Donovan would take an emotional beating before the conversation was over. No doubt the comparisons to his younger and more successful brother would come out. I suppressed a groan and tried to keep my expression neutral. The comparisons Andy made between the two brothers was one of many things that made me want to choke him. For all his imbalanced affections, I sometimes wondered why the man didn’t just name them Jacob and Esau.

  The soft hum of an approaching engine turned both our heads. When that engine turned into our driveway, I looked at Donovan. He closed his eyes as the color slipped out of his face.

  “Guess it’s showtime,” he said, barely whispering.

  I touched his face and kissed him. “Good luck.”

  He opened his eyes, and a weak smile formed on his lips. “Thanks. I’ll probably need it.”

  Three sharp knocks on the front door, and a shudder went up Donovan’s spine. He took another breath before disappearing from the kitchen into the foyer. The air pressure changed with the opening of the door. Donovan said, “Hello, Dad”, or something similar. I couldn’t quite make it out.

  “I need to have a smoke,” Andy said, his voice sharp and loud as always. “Mind if I have one before we go in?”

  “Sure. Yeah.” The door closed behind Donovan, and I couldn’t hear anything else that was said.

  I moved into the now empty foyer. Staying off to the side where Andy hopefully wouldn’t see me—God forbid the man have to lay eyes on “that creature” with whom his son cohabitated—I watched.

  Neither of them spoke while Andy pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

  Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Donovan cupped his elbow in one hand and chewed his other thumbnail. Closing his eyes, he drew a deep breath. Oh, God, he was getting right to the point, wasn’t he?

  His father said something. A question. Maybe asking if something was wrong, though I doubted he gave a shit.

  Donovan looked out at the road, then at his father. As Donovan started talking, Andy raised his cigarette almost to his lips, but something in his son’s words halted his hand. The more Donovan spoke, the stiffer his father’s posture became. Almost imperceptibly, Donovan shrank back, his brow knitting in a preemptive flinch. He paused, started to speak again, but stopped when Andy gestured sharply with his cigarette.

  I couldn’t hear what he said, but it hit Donovan hard. He stared at his father, eyes wide, lips parted. Then he winced and looked away. His Adam’s apple bobbed and his cheek rippled as he set his jaw, but oh, Andy wasn’t finished. Ashes and glowing embers flew off the end of his cigarette. Donovan kept his eyes down, and his shoulders sank lower and lower with every wave of his father’s hand. Just watching them made my chest ache. No one in the world but Andy could reduce Donovan to this.

  Andy smashed his cigarette into the ashtray we kept out there for him,
and then he stormed off the porch toward the driveway. He stopped to throw some other comment at his son. Then he turned to go instead of staying to watch Donovan’s shoulders drop under the weight of whatever he’d said.

  The engine turned over.

  The car backed out of the driveway.

  And Andy was gone.

  Donovan put his hands on the railing and let his head fall forward. I pulled open the front door and went out on the porch. He didn’t react to my presence, didn’t even turn his head at the sound of my footsteps.

  I laid my hand between his shoulders, and he jumped but still didn’t look at me. I rested it there tentatively until I knew if he’d pull away or not. When he didn’t, I rubbed gently.

  “You okay?”

  He cleared his throat. Then once more. Without a word, he turned on his heel and went back in the house, leaving my hand holding the empty air where he’d been a second ago. The front door clicked shut and my fingers curled around nothing.

  I closed my eyes and exhaled.

  Fuck. Here we go again.

  I went back into the kitchen. It was no surprise that Donovan wasn’t there. Ryan was, though, and judging by his raised eyebrows, he must have caught onto his father’s mood.

  “Is Dad okay?” he asked, glancing at the staircase that led to our bedroom.

  “He will be.” I hoped.

  “Another fight with Grandpa?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Saw Grandpa’s car.” He gestured at the driveway. “Figured if he was here, and then Dad was pissed off, they must’ve gotten into it again.”

  “He say anything to you?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Nope, just came in and went upstairs.”

  Well, there was that. Donovan had a hell of a temper, especially when it came to his father, but at least he always gave Ryan and me a wide berth when he was that angry. There was one occasion when Ryan was younger and made the mistake of whining to his dad about something right after Donovan had gotten off the phone with Andy. To this day, Donovan was absolutely mortified by the very thought of how he’d spoken to his son just then, and ever since, he didn’t go near Ryan when he was upset with Andy. That wasn’t to say Donovan never lost his temper with Ryan, but he refused to take out that particular brand of anger on anyone ever again.

  “What’s Grandpa’s problem this time?” Ryan asked.

  I shook my head. “Don’t know.” A lie, perhaps, but in the grand scheme of things, I figured I could be forgiven for not going into detail. Donovan wasn’t ready for Ryan to hear about this yet.

  “Well, I’m off to work,” Ryan said. “Hope Dad’s feeling better.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

  After he’d left, I tapped my fingers on the kitchen island and stared at the empty staircase. There was no point in going to talk to Donovan. The last thing he wanted to do right now was talk. To me, to anyone. Of course that drove the therapist in me crazy, but it was his way, and I’d long ago accepted it. He needed to process it, and he needed to do it alone.

  To occupy my own idle hands and give me something to do while he dealt with things, I went into the garage to work on my car.

  I hadn’t been in the garage fifteen minutes when the faint sound of movement in the kitchen turned my head. The front door was only a few feet away from the garage’s side door, so when it closed with more force than usual, the vibration found its way in here. Keys jingled. Heavy footsteps thumped across the porch, then scuffed on the walkway. A car door opened, closed, and an engine turned over.

  Exhaling, I closed my eyes. Whatever his dad had said, it must have been bad. Driving was Donovan’s outlet of choice when he was really upset, and I’d learned early on that he’d be back eventually. Sometimes it was ten or fifteen minutes. Sometimes it was a few hours.

  There were a few places he might have gone. A park where he liked to walk when he needed to cool down. The gym. Driving aimlessly for hours on end. He’d even gone to his mother’s gravesite once or twice, though I’d never gotten a straight answer about whether that had helped him or not.

  I shook my head and went back to working on the car. He’d be back.

  By the time I’d finished replacing a faulty belt, it was almost seven. He’d been gone a couple of hours, and he still hadn’t returned. Patience, I told myself again and again.

  I tried to relax in front of the TV for a while, but couldn’t think of anything except where Donovan might have gone and how he was doing.

  Eight o’clock came and went. Nine o’clock. Ten.

  By eleven, I convinced myself I needed to at least try to sleep. I had a few early appointments in the morning. They weren’t paying to see a counselor who nodded off in the middle of a conversation.

  Lying in bed with my hands laced behind my head on the pillow, I stared into the darkness and listened for his engine. It had been ages since he’d disappeared for this long.

  All I could do was be patient.

  I balanced on the fine line between asleep and awake until a low rumble brought me back into full consciousness. I blinked in the darkness, searching for the sound and its meaning. A moment later, slow, heavy footsteps came up the stairs.

  Relief flooded through me, and I glanced at the clock. It was about twenty past twelve.

  The door opened slowly. Donovan didn’t turn on the light as he got ready for bed. He barely made a sound, probably trying not to wake me. When he climbed under the sheet beside me, I rolled over and put my arm over his waist.

  “Hey,” I whispered.

  “Hey. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  I kissed the back of his shoulder. “I wasn’t asleep.”

  Donovan didn’t say anything. I slid my palm down his forearm until I found his hand. When I did, I closed my fingers around his, and he pulled our joined hands close to his chest.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Better than I was earlier.”

  “Where did you go?”

  His shoulder moved in an exhausted parody of a shrug. “Just drove around.” He pressed his lips to the backs of my fingers. “And then I went to my dad’s place.”

  I stiffened. “You…what?”

  “After everything he said this afternoon,” Donovan said quietly, “I went to his place to talk to him again. To say my piece.”

  “What did he say this afternoon, anyway?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath. “I didn’t even get to the part about how this happened before he went off on me.

  “What do you mean?”

  He laughed bitterly. “Once he found out we were expecting a baby—didn’t even get to the fact that it was Carmen or that this wasn’t some surrogate thing—he flipped out. Said I was an irresponsible parent for deliberately bringing a child into our ‘arrangement’, as he called it.”

  “Jesus…”

  “Then he said…” Donovan trailed off.

  “You don’t have to repeat it.” I held him tighter and nuzzled his neck. “If it’s too much.”

  He kissed my fingers again. “He said that as it was, if I was going to set this kind of example, then Ryan would have been better off staying with Julia. From the get-go.”

  “What?” I breathed. “That’s…”

  “I know.” He sighed. “And I just kept thinking about that while I was driving around. The more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got. I mean, the asshole thinks my son is better off with her than with me.”

  He let go of my hand and reached for the nightstand. The light clicked on, and we shifted so Donovan was on his back.

  Touching my face, he whispered, “All the things she’s done, all the ways she’s been an irresponsible parent while I’ve busted my ass trying to be Ryan’s dad, and my fucking father thinks the kid’s better off with her just because I’m with you.” His thumb brushed over my cheekbone. “I mean, what the fuck is wrong with him?”

  I clasped his hand and kissed the back of it. “Don’t know. But it speaks vo
lumes about what kind of father he is, not what kind of father you are.”

  Donovan nodded. “Well, it doesn’t matter now anyway because he’s not going to have anything to do with any of us.”

  I blinked. “He said that?”

  “No.” He ran his fingers through my hair. “I did.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You said it…to him?”

  “I told him when he decided he could bring his impossible standards down far enough for his lowly son to please him, he was welcome to come back, but until then, he could kiss my bisexual ass.”

  I laughed. “You’re kidding. You really said that?”

  “Well, I used a few more choice words when I said it to him.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all.” I kissed him. “I’m proud of you, Don. That took some serious balls.”

  “You’re not going to go into therapist mode on me, are you?” He grinned, and damn it was good to see that.

  I chuckled. “No, just going into ‘gloating boyfriend who doesn’t have to put up with the asshole father-in-law’ mode.”

  Donovan laughed aloud. Then his expression turned a little more serious, and he shifted his gaze away. “I should have done this a long, long time ago. It was bad enough having him around Ryan. Maybe we can spare this kid.”

  I trailed my fingertips down the side of his face. “You weren’t ready before. It just took you a while to figure out you don’t need his approval.”

  “I don’t need his approval,” he whispered. “I don’t need him.” Donovan pulled me closer. “I have everyone I need.”

  I kissed his cheek. “And none of us are going anywhere.”

  “I know.” We held each other’s gazes for a long moment. Then a playful grin spread across his lips.

  “So,” he said. “Since you’re the victorious gloating boyfriend, are you going to collect your spoils of war?”

  “Depends.” I slid my hand under the covers, moving slowly down his abs. “You in the mood to give me my spoils?”

  “I don’t know. You—” His voice caught when my fingers wrapped around his cock. He recovered, looked me in the eye, and whispered, “You tell me.”