by Tia Lewis
“Huh?” He was confused. Totally in the dark. I knew that I had a good friend in her, but I was starting to recognize just how loyal that she was to me.
I put my hands on his shoulders, taking a deep breath. “I’m pregnant.”
A million things happened on his face all at once. Surprise, shock, disappointment, happiness, regret. When he finally found his breath, all he said was, “That makes sense.”
I laughed. “What does?”
“Everything. I mean, you’re starting to look a little…”
“Fat?” I asked, in a warning tone.
“I was gonna say ‘different.’”
“Like hell, you were.” He was treading on thin ice with me, and he knew it.
He smirked. “And everything else. You don’t drink coffee anymore, and you don’t take shots with us anymore. You always have your feet up when you’re not working. It all makes sense.”
“So you see why I don’t want to be around the smoke, then.”
“Of course, of course. It’s still gonna be a real pain in the ass getting everybody to go outside.”
“I don’t have to work it,” I said. “One of the girls can cover for me, and Harris is good at running glasses from the kitchen and liquor from downstairs. I think Violet could handle it if she needed to.”
He frowned. “I know you need the money now,” he said, already thinking ahead. Just like his wife. “Are you sure you’re even up to it, though?”
“I’m sure. I feel okay, and it’ll be fun to see everybody together.”
“And they would all be happy to hear that you’re having a baby,” he said.
“Bullshit.”
“No bullshit!”
I shook my head. “You don’t get it.”
His expression changed. “One of them is the father.”
“Yeah.”
“Who?” I shook my head, and he held up his hands in surrender. “Fine, fine. I’ll do what I can, but I can’t make any promises. If it’s too much for you and you wanna leave, I get it. Do what you have to do.”
He walked out of the office shaking his head. I could tell that he was fed up with me, but there was nothing that I could do. I followed him out to help Harris stack glasses. He was always so eager to be helpful, and my mood picked up after hanging out with him for a little while. I couldn’t help but feel a little affection for him. He was sort of everybody’s kid brother.
“Tamara? Do you feel okay?” Harris asked, stacking the empty racks once we finished with them.
“Yeah, why?”
“You look tired,” he observed quietly. “And a little…”
“I swear to God if you say fat...” I warned.
“I was gonna say sad. Jeez, I would never call you fat! You don’t look fat. You look beautiful.” He blushed, then. A lot. I turned away so he wouldn’t see me smiling and feel even worse.
“Thank you,” I managed to say without giggling.
Harris hurried away like the bar was on fire.
When everybody started pouring in for the party, I knew that I was in for it. Drake wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept hovering around me like I was about to break. Asking me if I should be on my feet. That was the best part. I couldn’t find Nicole—if I could, I would have asked her to get a handle on her man. I was about to kill him.
I asked anybody who lit up around the bar to take it outside, telling them I had a headache and couldn’t handle the smell. They all seemed okay with it, despite the cold weather. I hoped that it would keep going smoothly, but I was too busy pouring drinks and saying hi to friends to worry too much about it.
But still, Drake bugged me, incessantly checking on my welfare and inquiring about how I was feeling. At one point, when I couldn’t find Harris, I went to the kitchen to pull another rack of glasses out of the dishwasher. When Drake saw this, he flew to my side.
“Are you sure you should be carrying that?” Drake asked, trying to take the rack from me.
“Sure, why not?” I replied, raising my voice to be heard over the music.
“You know why not!” He raised his voice, too; now both of us were shouting at each other. I tried to yank the rack toward me; I did not need his help. I hoped that I wouldn’t end up regretting the fact that I told him.
Just then—literally, at that very moment—the music stopped. And Drake shouted into an almost quiet room, “Because of the baby!”
The room went silent. Dead silent. Not a single person said a single word. I didn’t even think they blinked. I wanted to crumple up into a ball and disappear.
“I am going. To kill. You.” I glared at Drake and muttered through clenched teeth.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
Then the room exploded. Everybody congratulated me, cheered, or clapped me on the back. Two of the old ladies dragged me out from behind the bar and made me sit down with my feet up. Another one of them poured me a ginger ale, which I gratefully drank even though I didn’t feel nauseated. Everybody wanted to know when I was due, whether I knew if it was a boy or a girl—everything, I realized, except who the father was. Maybe it was an unspoken rule that a person just didn’t ask that question. I was all right with it, of course. I went along with a smile, glad everybody was happy for me. I could almost forgive Drake for opening his mouth.
Almost.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” I looked up to see Irena, Diesel’s girlfriend, smiling down at me. “We’ll keep these idiots in shape for you. No smoking in here. You hear that?” she bellowed. For a little girl, she had a big set of lungs. “No smoking in here! There’s a pregnant woman!”
“Oh, God.” I buried my face in my hands. Everybody laughed. But it was sweet laughter. Nobody was making fun or thinking that I had screwed up. There was nothing but acceptance from all of them. When I dared look around again, I caught Nicole’s eye. She looked so smug, I didn’t even need to ask what she was thinking. She was right, and she knew it. I had nothing to worry about.
I knew that she would be worse than ever, telling me that I needed to make the big reveal to my baby’s father. Yeah right. That shit wasn’t happening, at least not anytime soon. I looked around to see if Creed had heard the news. How would he take it? I wished that Drake had kept his big mouth shut so that I could tell people in my own way, in my own time and on my own terms.
11
Creed
I walked downstairs to join the party. It didn’t sound like a wake. It sounded like a celebration. I heard people congratulating somebody. I heard the word “baby.” Of course, my first thought was that Drake and Nicole were expecting. I hurried downstairs.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, smacking Drake on the back. “Congrats, brother!”
“On what?” he asked, smiling but looking confused.
“The baby!”
“We’re not having a baby,” he explained.
“Who is pregnant, then? I thought that I heard somebody talking about a baby.”
“Yeah. It’s Tamara. I shouldn’t have let it slip—she didn’t even want me to know. But now everybody knows.” He shrugged it off and then turned back to the bar to get a drink.
I felt like I was about to fall over in shock and disbelief.
A baby?
She was having a baby?
When was the last time that we were together? I tried to think back, but it was all a blur. It wasn’t like I a kept a calendar or anything. My head was spinning.
A baby?
Was it my baby?
No fucking way!
She would have told me. Wouldn’t she? Unless she wanted to wait until she knew that everything was okay. So, that was why she acted like such a bitch all the time. At least it wasn’t just me that she was pissed at. Why couldn’t she have just said something?
I found her sitting on one of the couches with her feet up on the coffee table. There were at least ten women around her, old ladies and girlfriends, giving her advice and asking questions and giggling. She was the center of attention at Jack’s wak
e. Maybe that was for the best, I thought. New life was something to be happy about. We were due for some good news.
I couldn’t stop asking myself the big, burning question. Was the kid mine? Was I going to be a father? I waited until her eyes met mine, and we locked gazes. I asked without asking, staring at her. Was I hopeful? Was I dreading her answer? I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell how I felt.
It didn’t matter, anyway. Tamara shook her head—just once, just enough to let me know she knew what I was asking and the answer was no. It wasn’t my baby. I should have felt relieved. And I did, for the most part.
The rest of me saw red.
Anger bubbled up in my chest. I thought it might choke me once it reached my throat. I remembered feeling that way when I saw my buddies go down in combat. A sniper picked them off one at a time, and I was filled with rage because we couldn’t figure out where the fire was coming from. I had felt hopeless, helpless like there was nothing that I could do to protect my friends because some asshole was taking them out and there were so many possible locations where they were hiding.
I felt anger like that back then because there was nothing that I could do. We had thought that we were safe, and we were wrong. Just like I’d thought I meant something to Tamara, and I guess that I was wrong about that too. If the baby wasn’t mine, then she had been screwing around with somebody else while we were together. Who the fuck else was she fucking around with back then? And why didn’t I know?
I looked around, almost sure that everyone knew what a jerk I had been to her. How I had, let her play me. She had led me around by the dick, and I had let her. I felt like everyone knew that she was sleeping around but me. I was sure of it. I had been a fool for her.
Just like I had been a fool for Angie.
I felt sick. I was sure that I would throw up. All the old memories came back. I felt like an idiot like everyone had been laughing at me behind my back. Like everybody knew what a tool I was. While I was out there getting fired on in the heat of battle, she was getting fucked by another guy. While I literally prayed to make it home safe to her, she couldn’t have cared less.
And even though Tamara and I weren’t sleeping together anymore, I had still kidded myself in the back of my mind that we had something special. Something that I couldn’t put my finger on, but it had felt like pure magic. As if we had a bond, almost. She had obviously not felt the same way, or else she wouldn’t have screwed somebody else on the side. I had been another woman’s fool, and that shit burned me to the core.
No matter how hard that I had tried to distance myself from the past and all the old bullshit, it had found me again. I would always be some woman’s poor jerk.
“You okay, brother?” Diesel asked, throwing an arm around my shoulders. I didn’t hear him at first—if he hadn’t touched me, I probably wouldn’t have noticed him there.
“Huh? Yeah. I was just thinking how much I need a drink. A lot of drinks.” I went to the bar and held out my hand. Harris was back there, pouring drinks as fast as he could. He slammed a whiskey into my hand before pouring one for somebody else. I tipped it back, letting the burning liquid go down my throat in hopes of erasing everything that I was feeling. I slammed the glass down and held my hand out for another. Then another. I intended to get rip-roaring drunk, and as fast as possible. I had to get away from the shit in my head, and drinking was the only way that I had ever found to do it.
After the fourth, or was it the fifth, I was feeling good again. The pain was there, the anger, but it was softer. Sort of wrapped up in cotton, so it would bounce off things without leaving much damage. I could handle that. I could smile again, too, and talk to my friends. We told stories about Jack, and that helped me forget, too. If I could focus on him, I could stop focusing on the pressure in my chest that threatened to choke me.
She was still there so I couldn’t forget. I would see her moving around the clubhouse looking like she was walking on air. She would laugh, and the sound would go straight to my heart and make it clench in hot, furious anger. I would see Harris behind the bar and know why he was there—because none of the women would want her to work. They all would be around her and make her feel comfortable, and I would clench my fists and wait for the wave of fury to pass as I watched all them smiling and giggling together.
Tamara had been fucking around on me the whole time.
Granted, we hadn’t had a relationship or anything. I reminded myself of that even as I burned. We had never said that we were exclusive. Just because I hadn’t slept with anybody else didn’t mean that Tamara couldn’t—and it wasn’t like I had deliberately not had sex with anybody because of her. It had just sort of happened that way, but I’d thought it was okay because I’d figured that she wasn’t sleeping with anybody else either. She was good at keeping secrets, that’s for sure.
I had to keep telling myself that no one knew what had happened between us just so that I could stay sane and not kill anybody at the party. We were the only two people in the world who had known that we were ever together unless she had told somebody. No, she wouldn’t have done that because she had said that she didn’t want anyone to know since everyone talked so much and spread rumors. I had been all for it at the time—I didn’t want the rest of the guys in the club to be assholes about it when they found out that we were sleeping together. I was starting to wonder if all that secrecy was because she didn’t want the other guy, whoever he was, to know about us.
Who was it, then?
I looked around, my eyes flickering around the room. It was full of friends when I first came down to join the party. Now all that I saw in front of me were potential enemies and some anonymous asshole who had betrayed me. The booze wasn’t exactly helping me think clearly.
“Hey, you.” A girl came up to me. I didn’t recognize her in the dim light. Red hair, big tits, wearing a cut-up t-shirt and skin-tight jeans. Knee-high boots. I liked that look. My cock twitched a little, even after six drinks.
“Hey, yourself. What’s up?” I let her get close to me. I let myself breathe in the scent of her. She was wearing a sensual perfume that made me want to lick every inch of her.
“I haven’t seen you in ages,” she said. “I’ve been so busy with school.”
“Oh, yeah?” Like I gave a fuck. Had I been with her before? I couldn’t remember. It was possible, especially since it seemed like she knew me. I slipped an arm around her waist and leaned against the wall, bringing her with me until she was leaning against my chest.
“How are you?” she asked. “You look good.”
Bullshit. Drake looked good. Diesel looked good. Ace looked good. The three of them could have been in one of those Magic Mike movies about the male strippers. I was just the bouncer in the film.
“Not as good as you, darlin’,” I crooned, leaning in to get a better smell of that perfume. I heard her sigh a little when I tickled the side of her face with my beard. There was no doubt what she was in the mood for.
Yeah. I would make sure that Tamara knew that I didn’t care that she had jumped on some extracurricular dick. She was just a typical whore like the rest of the single women of the club so I shouldn’t have been surprised.
I made up my mind then and there to fuck this chick, whoever she was, and make sure that Tamara saw me go upstairs with her. That would show her that she got one up on me when she spread her legs for someone else, but I could get around too. She wasn’t the only willing pussy out there, and I would be just fine. She could go and have her fucking baby, and I would be okay.
It wouldn’t end me. We had both moved on with our lives.
“You wanna get the hell outta here?” I asked, glancing over at the stairs to tell her what I meant. It wasn’t like I had to give her too much of a hint. This bitch was already primed and ready.
“Yeah, I do,” she whispered, running her hand down my chest, down my stomach, and finally ending at my crotch. My length was already thickening, and she gently squeezed my rapidly hardening cock. I gr
oaned deep in the back of my throat, glad that it was dark in there and that her body was covering mine. Not that it mattered. I had seen people straight-up fucking during club parties back in the day. It had calmed down a lot since then, but I still didn’t want to put on a show.
“Come on, then.” I would take a long way, leading her past Tamara. I took this redhead by the hand, still not able to remember her name, and snaked through the room to get to the couch where Tamara sat like the fucking Queen of England. I was surprised that they weren’t rubbing her feet and feeding her grapes or some shit. What a fucking joke. She had spread her legs for some prick, and everybody treated her like she was something special because of it.
I caught her eye as I walked past, and she looked over at the girl whose hand I was holding. What did I see on her face? Disappointment? Or a smug sort of knowing look, like she knew what I was doing and thought that I was a joke? Or maybe she just didn’t care.
We were already upstairs, and half undressed before I realized that I didn’t care, either. And I didn’t feel like going through the effort to fuck some random girl just to get back at somebody who couldn’t have cared less about me. It wasn’t worth it. I just wanted to close the bedroom door and shut everybody else out.
“What is it?” The redhead asked as she sat on the floor in between my knees. I was hard, but I wasn’t into it. It was a shame, too, because she was attractive and I had a feeling that she knew how to make a man’s eyes roll back into his head. I had a vague recollection of her giving me a blowjob once before.
“It’s not your fault,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve got a lot on my mind tonight.”
“Is it about Jack?” I would have told her it wasn’t, only that was the most convenient excuse I could imagine. Her face was full of understanding and pity. I had to go with it.
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking a lot about him tonight. It’s been tough.”
She nodded, eyes wide. “I get it. Do you want to just, you know, hang out for a little while?”
It wouldn’t have been a struggle to spend time with her. She was a nice enough person. I wouldn’t have to be alone for once. But my heart wasn’t in it. I would be a miserable bastard the whole time, while she could be downstairs having fun with someone else.
